I managed, but I’m a glutton for punishment. In the first one you can kind of go guideless as long as you know a few fundamentals: determination is most important as it gives more skill points and easily pays for itself - by endgame you easily have everything capped. Certain combinations of skills also become game breakers, like being able to duplicate items or pumping up exp gains, etc, but the game isn’t that hard and if you want to do everything you have to run multiple times anyway. That holds especially true in SO2, apparently.

On that note, SO games use divergent path storylines but rather than being a “choose a faction” or something, it’s dependent on party members. In SO1, it’s basically three ways things pan out for certain arcs depending on who you recruited, with some members required for others. Luckily there was a flowchart, so blind-ish runs can sorta use that without blatant spoilers. It gets kind of interesting because certain mutually exclusive characters are related in unpredictable ways, so multiple playthroughs kinda reveal more depth… at least as far as a game originally made for SNES can be.

Luckily the game isn’t that long so it wasn’t much of a chore to do multiple playthroughs, especially with fast forward functions of ppsspp emulator. Doing it on original hardware might have been more of a chore, though.

The skills system really calls out for a guide, it’s really easy to misallocate points early game. Or at least that’s my understanding; I did SO1 on PSP recently but uses the same system more or less and you can make life a lot easier with proper planning.

The recent remaster supposedly has better documentation, although I’m not sure I like it better.

I’m starting up… Pokemon White Version 2 completely out of the blue because RetroAchevements is beta testing their multiset feature and I’m a sucker for the Professor Oak Challenge grind. (It’s pure madness, truly a waste of time grind beyond human comprehension, but it’s also an excuse to binge watch stuff and keep my overactive brain in check).

As always I recommend RetroAchevements in general, though. Truly an endless supply of old stuff to do!

I’ve been holding out for a Full Body experience but might just have to emulate it at this point. Although missing out on cutscenes is a real shame-- when it first came out, my wife and I played the game and watched the scenes together and uh… was an interesting and tense situation. Lol

NPR yesterday mentioned quite clearly in an interview with John Bolton that economic sanctions are the biggest factor in Iran, and very much on purpose. It is a US strategy, even pre-Trump.

He acknowledged the cultural upheaval that’s been going on years ago, too, and also that negotiations with their regime is a “waste of oxygen.” But sanctions were definitely central.

Though I suppose NPR isn’t really sensationalized… you wouldn’t interview John Bolton if you wanted sensational news.

Yeah… That’s a violation of FERPA and is reportable offense that’ll get ya fired or sued. Lol

Look, they’re not exactly Bush levels of smart… Sigh

That’s what I figured and I appreciate the confirmation. Since I work in education it’s probably a “better safe than sorry” approach since the laws on student privacy are actually enforced, unlike in corporate. (Obviously it’s security theater, though, as web apps and Windows integration make emails and files easy to steal anyway).

Half right, but it’s a UPS dropbox- they have a deal with Amazon. Occasionally it’s delivered by drone!

See, that’s why you always jailbreak your sex robot. That, and who knows what corporate wants to do with all that semen it’s collecting.

Yeah, I think if it’s web apps it’s fine, just aren’t ideal. I was mostly frustrated I couldn’t use a third party email app or OneDrive integration app. It’s more a grievance with the university I work for, though.

I’ll be trying to contribute to that!

Already hit a difficulty since my workplace uses Microsoft for everything and the admins lock out third party stuff. I guess I can access files on outlook and OneDrive via browser based options but God they’re awful.

This is a little misleading. It’s my understanding that the original decline in US school lunches owes its start to farm subsidies. It’s one of the reasons they over use corn-- including syrup-- since the government heavily subsidies it by buying surplus and processing it. Then it goes to the school (I think accurately to say sells to the schools but I’m not sure?)

Anyway, it’s partially true in that we’ve got only marginal improvements in school lunches since the feds and most state governments don’t give a shit about education or long term health. It’s easy to ignore since political office is short enough that you won’t ever get credit for significant gains you cause. Dems are the only ones who try since it’s more of an image thing, and only if enough people care (and they’ve got easier targets for that, unfortunately).

Would take me a while to dig up, it was from a few years ago. If you want, try searching something like “interview and job performance” into a research search database (Google scholar is usually an easy one to use). Trying it myself, first hit is a meta analysis with a good amount of citations. (But I’m not going to read anything right now, my kids are waking up lol).

That said, it’ll favor papers with statistically significant findings, so non findings get lost to the file cabinet problem.

Edit: I lied, curiosity got the better of me so while my kids were eating breakfast I glanced at the results of the meta analysis which gives a few corrections. Tldr, impression management, physical attraction, having non verbal things interview look at, etc, are ok predictors of interview ratings but weak with job performance. Doesn’t seem concerned with actual skills, but I think that’s better covered by what they’re referencing in their literature review.

Nice when it’s official. Best I’ve seen is a mod that reverts changes.

So many… I like the details, too. I remember when some of these happened, like when Telltale went out of business (and then upon coming back haven’t relisted).

Quite a few just have remastered versions, which I have mixed feelings about. I feel like they should allow both from a preservation perspective, but I also wouldn’t want someone downloading the older version out of confusion.

And tiktoks. Especially tiktoks, now that I think of it.

Him 20-30 years ago probably would have. This is a man who, when I was a kid, made a custom UI for msdos so my brother and I could play games easier. He wouldn’t just tinker, he’d probably be contributing.

Old age and alcoholism has kind of robbed him of that, though. At this point he’ll probably just ask me to fix it if it goes wrong, lol

Asshole would be a good name for a mix between Jackass and Punk’d. You pull dangerous pranks on people that often end up getting someone hurt.

It ends with jail time, of course.

There’s actually research on how little correlation there is between interview performance and job performance in most cases. This includes cases with “objective” tests during the process, if I remember right.