There are just some people out there who despite having every moral reason to do so, can’t get themselves to kill another person. I don’t necessarily think those people should be shamed. Especially because they are trying to defend their home and it may have taken getting to the front lines before they realized that they just aren’t capable of doing it

This sounds good but what is “Cajun seasoning”? Is there a specific brand, spice mix, or what? That seems like it could cause a lot of variation in the dish

It’s a little wild that ::: spoiler spoiler I can type this using the spoiler macro on boost ::: and yet boost itself doesn’t display it

M. Night Shyamalan’s viral marketing for Trap is getting really weird

I also imagine you prep very differently for an 8 day mission vs a 6 month mission. In terms of physical fitness, trainings, family life etc.

Conversely the worst is when that happens and a bad boss blind screws your run

It’s hard to offer strong heuristics for Balatro because you could theoretically build up to a point where you’ve got a crazy high multiplier but if your chips are low it doesn’t matter.

For example let’s say you’ve got a face card 4 of a kind build going with: Pareidolia, Zany, Smiley, Trio, and Family jokers. These give you (respectively) all cards are face cards, +12 mult for 3 of a kind, +20 mult for each hand (all cards are face cards), x3 mult, x4 mult for a total of 384 multiplier! On base 4 of a kind this is

60x([7+12+20]x3x4)=28,080

However if you were to drop smiley face (+5 mult per face) for scary face (+30 chips per face card) which by almost every heuristic is a bad decision your score becomes:

(60+120)x([7+12]x3x4)=41,040

Which is a way bigger score!

So while people can offer general advice like stack high chips on plasma, always go for total score multipliers, etc. sometimes you just have to evaluate your specific build and figure out the best play

Finally outside of decks like abandoned and checkered which are specifically made to get certain hands, there isn’t a “best” hand to go for. The highest possible scores I’ve seen all come from high card builds but most normal players won’t get those. I’ve won two of a kind runs, flush 5 runs, straight runs, flush runs. You just have to evaluate your deck and tarot cards to see your options

Generally some good advice is that Balatro is a math game first and foremost so you want to focus on things that raise your score the quickest. So adding chips is ok, adding multiplier is better, and multiplying your total is the best.

For example let’s say you are playing straights and you have a 10-6 with level 3 straights. So you’d have:

10+9+8+7+6=40

(40+90)x10=1300

So let’s compare how jokers impact that score:

Devious joker: +100 chips if you have a straight

(40+90+100)x10=2300

Crazy joker: +12 mult if you have a straight

(40+90)x(10+12)=2860

The order: x3 mult if you have a straight

(40+90)x(10x3)=3900

You can see those are very big differences! It’s also helpful to pay attention to the order of your cards. Generally Balatro cards are scored left to right. The most important thing is to take any card that multiplies any part of your score on the right so you can add as much to the score as possible, then you multiply that number

So in short: multiplier jokers are best, additive multiplier jokers are good, additive chip jokers are ok, and pay attention to the order of your jokers/played cards

For plasma specifically I’d focus on high additive chip jokers. While that’s normally bad advice, consider how crazy good a card with +50 mult on it would be. Now consider that a +100 chip joker is effectively a +50 chip/+50 mult (I know that’s not technically true but I’m illustrating a point). Also eventually you do hit a point of diminishing returns because plasma prevents you from having a super high multiplier or chips, so like every build, total score multipliers are the best

I prefer Sci-fi background noise so Surviving Mars is my favorite. Mass Effect is ok but I find it gets a little too cinematic and bombastic at times. FTL and Into The Breach, or really anything by Ben Prunty is good too

Yes. They spent years fighting Roe V. Wade with inane bullshit until one stuck. They fought student loan relief, immigration changes, and healthcare reform. Republicans in America have clearly demonstrated that they are dogs chasing after cars, and when they catch them they don’t care or realize what the consequences are. We need to stop excusing their behavior as if they’re “making a statement” or “posturing”. They tell us what they want to do, we say “nah, they don’t mean it”, and then it happens

Dick is/was a relatively common nickname

Recently Spider-Man 2. I platinumed that game in 26 hours I think. The story is good, combat is fun, there’s collectables and side missions but each is part of its own side story. They give you plenty of info to find almost all of the secrets too

By and large most millennials were children of boomers. Even a boomer born in '46 would only be 19 and average at first birth hovered around 24 for their generation. Most kids born from 1980-1991 which covers 75% of the years millennials were born had boomer parents. Math isn’t on your side and you keep saying Gen Xers did it, but what proof do you have?

Quick question, who gave them the trophies?

Eh, I think you’d be surprised. It really takes a lot of time to get someone from new hire to productive member of a team. Even with the money to just shotgun hire new people and keep good fits it still takes time for them to understand the vision, tech stack, workflow, and culture. I honestly think software is an environment where finding and investing in good people matters more than money and that no amount of venture capital will fix that

Highly motivated developers with passion projects will always exist (Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Dwarf Fortress). However producing high quality art in a corporate environment is possible, repeatable, and scalable if you acknowledge the inherent reality of creative development

A perpetual problem I have as a Scrum Master in the tech field is the business people’s inability to understand that nine women can’t make a baby in a month. There are just certain things where throwing money at it won’t give you any faster of a return on investment. More money doesn’t make better games faster, if anything it adds bureaucracy that impedes critical work. Most great video games aren’t capable of being produced on an annual basis and trying to hit your Q4 results over and over won’t magically produce high quality output

Yeah, when I lived near the Sierra Nevada we had 3 earthquakes in the year I was there. Granted I slept through all 3 and the worst thing that happened was a picture fell off the wall. Which is why I drew the comparison

When you live in a place with a lot of tornadoes you learn when you need to be scared and when you don’t. Tornado watch? Go about your day. Tornado warning? Get in a building, check the news. Sky is turning green? Shit is about to get real. They happen a lot and the vast majority don’t do any significant damage. I imagine it’s how people near fault zones react to most earthquakes or people in tropical areas react to heavy rain

Congrats, you’ve discovered the appeal of cruises and all inclusive resorts