You are suggesting that the pandas looked badass and that this Dracthyr looks goofy. I’m not a WoW player, but it really sounds to me like you just have a very strong, but subjective ideal about what is “badass” and what is “goofy”. You are treating that ideal as objective, but I promise you that others have a different opinion.

Also it’s a game that let’s you roleplay fantasy races and factions with a bunch of other nerds around the world (using the term “nerds” lovingly here). Why is it unusual that some things in that style of game gets a bit silly sometimes?

It’s kind of hard to have an incredibly varied and versatile powerset in a video game, simply becuase you have a limited set of inputs. So you would normally have a small set of powers that each serve a purpose. But then doing that and still representing 4 elements means each only gets very limited options.

Thinking about it, I can see two ways to make bending feel powerful, versatile and give a good representation to all elements. 1) maybe the best solution would be to have customizable load outs with various bending powers, and let you switch between those load outs on the fly so you can coordinate a few power sets that work well together but swap them when other sets are more useful to the situation. 2) An interesting idea would be to use situational awareness to execute moves without specific user inputs differentiating the exact power used. For example, you could have a single boost button that uses a different element depending on if the player is on land, water, in the air or dodging (fire rocket!). And you could have a close/melee attack and ranged attack for each element that you can specify, but the exact effect/attack it creates can vary depending on the environment and enemy type of the target. Let it feel a little bit like the character is making decisions, not just you, like Batman in combat in the Arkham games. And of course, there would be a charge up to a special attack that uses the Avatar state and all 4 elements at once.

I didn’t sign a release!

There is a kernal of validity to your point, but let’s not pretend like those things are at all the same. The difference between copyright violation for personal use and copyright violation for commercialization is many orders of magnitude.

Well, yeah. If you’re self employed, you have to report yourself too.

A flat tax is a poor tax. 5% of your income means WAAAAY more to someone working minimum wage with two kids than someone who has a second home, even if dollars and cents it’s way less. And the wealthy will evade a flat tax as much as they already do a progressive tax.

?

It should also be noted that if the vast majority of people do nothing special on their taxes and just accept the government’s assessment, then that leaves a much smaller group of people to be audited. And a much larger portion of those people will be those who are trying to weasel their way out of paying their share. Right now, with the IRS being criminally underfunded, they only focus on low hanging fruit, the small fries. With those people being boiler plater auto-accepting tax payers, that would mean the IRS has no reason to audit them and can focus on the big boys where the real cheats are. That’s another big reason we do not have that sort of system and why the IRS is currently so underfunded (despite every dollar spent on the IRS generating between 5 and 9 dollars in revenue from tax fraud/evasion). Those kinds of people pay to make sure it doesn’t happen.

They should (and do?) have the same information your employer, bank, or brokerage files. i.e. the same forms you use to fill out your taxes now. They know what you contributed to you 401k and your other retirement accounts.

Right. Filing taxes should only be necessary if you have itemized writeoffs or wish to contest the IRS’s statement of your tax liability. They already know what you earned their your employer, what’s been paid in taxes, what basic credits your qualify for, etc. They know what you owe so long as you didn’t have expenses to apply for that they couldn’t assume or know about. The only reason they don’t already do that or, at least until now, have a free public system for filing, it’s because tax companies have lobbied for decades to be able to milk the public for cash to help them file and navigate their tax liability.

No, they underestimated because they thought pc gamers would want to do whatever is necessary to play the sequel now, but pc gamers will wait forever if they have to rather than buy a console.

10+ years ago, it was very common to get an upgrade to your phone ever two years (or less). And at the time, there was a lot more variability in phones. And I mean in more than just battery life, storage capacity, camera quality, processor, etc. There used to be a variety of form factors to consider, sizes, genuinely different features and functionalities. The iPhone came about in 2009, and other smart phones soon followed, but even then there were still phones with physical keyboards, digital keyboards with stylus typing, flip phones, etc. Once smart phones completely dominated the market and all the manufacturers started just copying each other’s features and designs, eventually we got to the status quo of today where they’re all essentially the same. The only major difference now is the OS, and that’s largely just down to iOS vs Android.

Have you tried divining syntax from reading the entrails of a sacrificed goat?

Or that the Civil War was fought over states rights. To do what, AI? The right to do what?

You have a 2^n marbles and a scale…

Cost of living in the US is 40-46% higher than Italy, and we do not have benefits like free or low cost Healthcare like they have in Italy. My wife’s maximum out of pocket costs on her work sponsored insurance is almost 10k a year just for in-network services. If she has to go out of network for anything, her max is 18k for those services (which is in addition to the in-network pool). God forbid something terrible would happen, we could be liable for up to 28k in a calendar year just for her medical needs. We’re pregnant right now trying to save 30k just so that we’re covered for any medical expenses that will come up. My insurance is better than hers, but far from free.

Moreover, education is not free in the US. My tuition and books for my community college where I did the first two years of my degree (to save money) cost over 6k annually and the tuition at the state school where I finished the last two years of my degree was 10k annually. It would have been double that for both if I had gone to a school out of state.

I know I sound spoiled by comparison talking about needing such a big raise to even consider going back to the office. But it’s not a 1:1 comparison, is my point. That being said, I definitely am spoiled in comparison your SE’s in Italy and other European counties. Even with your lower cost of living and benefits all citizens enjoy, software engineers are underpaid there, imo. The work we do is highly skilled and lucrative. When put to good use and done correctly, it increases efficiency, bringing in more revenue while lowering costs, and it can create new streams of revenue as well. They should be compensated accordingly.

Edit: Oh, also just want to add that I just had to replace my car recently and we bought a, 6 year old, used, low-trim model minivan and that thing cost 25k after negotiating it down from 27k. And no way to take public transport to my company’s nearest office from my home, and it’s a 40 minute drive each direction for me is non-rush hour traffic. Would likely be double that each way if I had to make it in there for a 9-5. Just for some context on the cost of a vehicle and transport here right now.

If they required me to work in office (at minimum, they would need to pay me 30k more, 5-10k just to make up for gas and wear and tear on my car, 10k+ for the commute time, and 10k+ for the inconvenience, stress, clothes, eating out more for lunch, dealing with traffic, etc.)

Also, if my leadership was abusive and/or demanded prioritizing work over family and health.

I don’t have the highest paid job in the world, but we’re comfortable and I’m pretty happy with my company right now. Those are the things that would make me start looking elsewhere.

You could argue against creating the feature, but once it already exists and it’s not taking up any real processing power or cluttering the interface, why would you ever remove any feature. Does he understand it? No. Do some people use it and find it beneficial? Probably, yeah. Are you forced to use it? No. So what’s the problem?

It’s like a car manufacturer ordering a recall to remove the the mirror on the passenger side visor because he never uses it. Some people do, my dude, it’s not hurting anything, and it will actually cost you money to remove it instead of leaving it. Just leave it alone, dude.

Or… he’s not being honest and he wants to remove it because it hurts his ego to know that so many block his account. Yeah, it’s probably that.

Overheating, maybe? Are your fans picking up right before it happens? You might run with a temperature monitor app to watch for rising Temps.

If that’s the issue, check your cooler. Make sure your thermal paste is applied and has good coverage. If using a pre-applied thermal pad that came on the cooler, make sure you pulled off the plastic cover (a common mistake). Make sure you didn’t leave your cooler fans disconnected by mistake. You didnt mention changing anything else in the case, but just make sure your case fans are facing the right way and that nothing is restricting airflow inside and outside the case. If you had bad airflow before but your cpu didn’t run as hot, could be that you got away with it before and just aren’t anymore.