


800 Euros is $930 US which is probably close to reality, but the problem is gaming pricing as a rule looks at the number as being comparable without conversion.
So you get sillyness like the PS5 Pro launching at $699 US but £699 and €799. Even though that conversion comes out to be $699 $937 and $930.
I could see them launching at $1,000 US and then trying to go “Well, that’s the same as £1,000 or €1,000” when it’s not.


The Steam Deck is $650 for the 1TB OLED version.
The Steam Machine reportedly has 6x the power and a 2TB version.
Why is $950 out of the realm of possibility?


For real! And you see all those comments about “Why isn’t it priced like a console?” and I’m like “My brother in Christ, have you SEEN console prices lately?” $600, $650, $700, $750, $800?
Handhelds are even worse.


I love all the articles going “It’s going to cost more than you expect!!!” and I’m like “Really? Because I ‘expected’ around $1,000…”
It’s like people haven’t been watching pricing in the last year or so…


They bury the lede with all the stuff about Sappho, which is cool and all, but the article doesn’t get on topic until about 1/2 way down.


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/book-wicked-gregory-maguire-explicit/
In a 2014 interview, he commented, “I deliberately included a ribald, unappealing sex scene in the first 10 pages so people would know it was not for children.”


Can’t say I’m that surprised about Wicked. People get drawn to it by the musicals and stay for the porn. LOL.
Have you considered seeking professional help?


Any sense of when this might have been?


Yeah, I have an implanted heart monitor now that talks to my phone, it sends a signal back to the docs if anything goes wrong.
My heart has stopped a couple other times, nothing as dramatic as 8 seconds, 4 or 5 seconds here and there. Doc says not to worry as long as it only happens when I’m sleeping and I’m like “Dude! How am I supposed to sleep now?”


You and me both, brother, but mine was January, 2024.
Had my 2nd heart attack in an emergency room, in the middle of a snow and ice storm, as the power goes out.
“OK, you need a stent, but we can’t do that here, we have to get you to a different hospital and the ambulance can’t get here because of the snow and ice. It’s coming.”
Ambulance doesn’t come. I wake up at 6 AM and am fiddling with my phone, nurse comes in.
“Were you asleep about an hour ago?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your heart stopped for 8 seconds.”
“. . . Um, ‘thank you’? I don’t know the correct response to ‘your heart stopped for 8 seconds’.”
Are they communists because they are red or because they have seized the means of production? 🤔
Next on my reading list:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/588857/toms-crossing-by-mark-z-danielewski/
1,232 pages.
Hope that dude was getting ganked in Arc Raiders later that night…
In the 1950s, French men were incredibly sexist, and Bond had no use for women. LOL.
“The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had sampled almost everything else, and now— yes, it was time for a long snort of ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible, slobbering sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on ether is to do up a lot of amyls—not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.”
Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Not the only reason:
Casino Royale:
"‘First of all,’ and he inhaled a thick lungful of Caporal, ‘you will be pleased with your Number Two. She is very beautiful’ (Bond frowned), ‘very beautiful indeed.’ Satisfied with Bond’s reaction, Mathis continued: ‘She has black hair, blue eyes, and splendid … er … protuberances. Back and front,’ he added. ‘And she is a wireless expert which, though sexually less interesting, makes her a perfect employee of Radio Stentor and assistant to myself in my capacity as wireless salesman for this rich summer season down here.’ He grinned. ‘We are both staying in the hotel and my assistant will thus be on hand in case your new radio breaks down. All new machines, even French ones, are apt to have teething troubles in the first day or two. And occasionally at night,’ he added with an exaggerated wink.
Bond was not amused. ‘What the hell do they want to send me a woman for?’ he said bitterly. ‘Do they think this is a bloody picnic?’"
I just want to say how much I love Lemmy. Yes. Privateering. 😉 Although technically privateers were privately owned vessels operating under government sanction.
So think Gravy Seal boats capturing an oil tanker.


That’s fascinating, roughly contemporary with the Vulgate, but in Greek instead of Latin.
I was always told the Vulgate was the first to bring it all under a single language, but this could / should pre-date it by a few decades.
The Vulgate was comissioned in 382. Looks like Jerome used both the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus as basis for the Vulgate.
Babylon 5. You don’t fully appreciate season 1 until you watch season 4.