I really wanted to like the game but even a few hours of gameplay showed that it was repetitive and kind of bleak and depressing.

Just imagine, if you could be taxed more for unproductive infrastructure. Everything in the world would be solved, if you would just pay everything to the government, and they could re-distribute all of your income to others.

The entire reason why industrialization has delivered the promises of socialism, while socialism brought mass scarcity everywhere, is that productive activity generates resources that can be spent elsewhere.

Meanwhile taking more and more from existing industries, only to fund unproductive things (i.e. electric lines that don't allow for more production to offset their costs) improvershes everyone. It's why PRC has as many problems with useless infrastructure they built as they do. It's why their property market collapsed a few years ago.

Loudoun county is a well known example. There are several others.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fprogresschamber.org%2Fin...

This isn't really new or interesting. If you manage to get a lot of new industry in, you can tax that industry instead of your residents. Meaning you can fund more services, while taking less tax.

Air quality collapses. That's a new one. What exactly do they do to the air?

Gas turbines? Water vapor poisons the air now? Man, people living near oceans must be all dying from water vapor poisoning. Reminder that methane burns into H2O and CO2.

Chinabots are going really hard nowadays.

This is the other PRC sponsored talking point that is nonsensical. "They bring noise".

They have fans pointed upwards, and usually shielded with noise shields on the sides. As a result they emit far less noise than most industrial applications. Whatever noise they emit usually travels upwards, not sideways.

But crazy witch with 50 cats says that noise killed her latest litter. Tiktok said so, so it must be true.

There are people still using VMWare?!?!? And their main issue is COST, rather than the fact that VMWare is like a thousand years old?

Yeah, anti-datacenter propaganda really worked well in some places. Not many, but some.

In real world, data centers are currently reviving a lot of remote towns. Dilapidated infrastructure? They will rebuild it because they need it to work. Insufficient infrastructure? They'll finance the build out. Everything already fine? They will pay enough taxes to cut residents' tax bills by a significant chunk.

It's why the propaganda is focusing mainly on a handful of cases of corruption (i.e. officials getting bribed to offer better terms than necessary), as well as just blatant lying (oh my god they consume so much water, we're going to run out).

Mostly what is needed is for more small towns to realize that they can rebuild a lot of dilapidated infrastructure and lower property taxes if they make a good deal with a data center. Not to mention minor perks like fast potential to pull fast broadband access in a rural town, or build something that will be productive for a long time, like a new power plant.

You don't know him and don't know he's a sociopath.

However, the people who do know him say he's a sociopath, so they probably know.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fartificia...

Thank you for sharing this meme, which is completely unsuitable for this case.

In a Free to Play game, customer isn't a product. In-game purchases are the product. To get the customer to the product, customer must first install and play the game.

I mean the software is impressive and all, but since when is someone with a user ID in the 400,000s a long-time reader?

Valorant is free to play.

"I forget what they call it"

I think a lot of them are freaking out about how to keep their servants and security loyal in the bunkers. Your bunker seems like a great idea until your head of security starts cutting off your fingers and won't stop until you give him all the codes and combinations to the safe.

We've lost half the world's corals in 50 years.

That's actually a right-wing myth. The government never "ordered" them to do that. They did it out of greed.