If you want an entry point, I really enjoyed Like A Dragon. Lets you test out the vibe without needing a lot of background on the actual story of Yakuza.

Don’t just focus on the books, as impactful as that is worldwide. Dollywood is the largest employer in the Pigeon Forge area now. She founded a bald eagle sanctuary in the 90s. Tons of scholarships in Sevier County to help address a dropout rate that was, at the height of her popularity in the 90s, over 30%. Coronavirus research donations and vaccine awareness. AIDS research funding (through a charity album). She helped fund a hospital, helped with wildfire and hurricane relief, so much more.

You might be right to go “well some of those were probably tax writeoffs”, but she clearly took the words and idea of the early country stars she knew like Johnny Cash and decided “all this money and power is worthless unless I help people with it.”

Even in the US, a lot of TOS/T&Cs are unenforceable. It’s harder to get a judge to say it, but there’s case law holding a LOT of these as useless - and your point would also almost certainly come up even in a civil suit, let alone a criminal trial.

It’s a way for them to semi-legally force you to not take your sick leave, because it’s gonna always be a huge pain to get to your GP (or urgent care in the US, because your GP is booked solid for another two months) and get that doctor’s note.

No no, that’s too slow and slow is expensive. Time is money and we have to move faster and break more things in order to disrupt the market. /s

Multiple interviews are also done because there’s far too many people in the hiring chain who don’t really need to be there. I’ve had interviews for lower-level managerial positions where literally the vice president or some other person who clearly has better things to do than to be there, is there just to “be involved”, or (in one case) all hiring decisions had to be run through the VP. I’ve done panel interviews with 6 different HR people at once who clearly just need something to justify their existence.

It happens occasionally for retail, especially if they’re hiring you for anything above grunt work. Manager? Even shift lead? You’re likely looking for at least two rounds of interviewing. I had sales positions that wanted me to interview two or three times as well.

Target identification, threat assessment, determining level of force necessary, simply being a human face rather than a machine. Drones are also vulnerable to electrical issues, signal issues, all sorts of things a human simply doesn’t need to worry about or are more easily remedied in a human.

Occupying land is not simply about killing the enemy, and multiple armies have learned this over the course of human history. Rarely are you concerned with SIMPLY taking the land - even if it’s agrarian capacities or whatever you’re worried about, having the employees still alive (largely) leads to better outcomes. Having a functioning economy in the occupied zone leads to less resistance. Facilitating the continuity of life within the occupied zone does too - and that doesn’t work if your “occupation force” is a bunch of robot dogs that mow down anyone for being in the street.

Drones cannot occupy a city. Drones cannot hold land. Even in the grim darkness of the 21st century, a drone is far more susceptible to outside factors eliminating its fighting capability than a human soldier standing in the same spot. At the end of the day, yes, a bulk of the fighting will be done by remote, but you’ll still need meatbags with guns to actually advance and take areas. There’s really no way to get around that unless we somehow develop autonomous robots that are able to make smart choices and strategize on the ground without human oversight, and I simply don’t see us managing any serious level of “AGI” from the current idea of machine learning, at all.

It also just has a lot of really cool factions to fight in general. I will always love the Clockwork.

Man I fucking forgot about Freedom Force. Hours lost in the first one just for character creation, I must’ve spent days fine tuning things.

I recommend Skate Bird.

Don’t forget college sports. If your parents are early Gen X or Boomers, college sports weren’t quite as big a deal - they weren’t quite as commercialized until the mid-80s, which started salaries for coaches and staff flying.

In many states, the highest paid public employee is a college football coach.

I dunno, with his incompetence, Waspinator might be a fun hang.

Just make sure he doesn’t get possessed again.

Nah, that just helps to normalize it and let people think it’s just harmless and fun.

It’s easier for the news and the government to deepfake things like “huge mobs of Mexican narcoterrorists just over the border” or “there’s a nuclear missile silo in Iran” or whatever with this.

This is called “goetta” here in Cincinnati. Usually you toss some spices in the mix, fry it up and serve it for breakfast. It’s delicious. I know Pennsylvania has a similar thing called “scrapple”.

Now, without the spices, yes, terrible.

The dude likely never commanded more than 1000 guys at a time before this, and he legitimately just doesn’t have the training or the temperament to be in the position of running the ENTIRE military. There’s a reason you make generals and admirals your SecDef: they actually have training in things like strategy, and have enough experience to know what actually wins a war.

Guys like Hegseth, who don’t really have experience in high command, think “muscle and grit and cool guys with guns” win wars. This makes him more popular with actual soldiers, but it doesn’t win you wars, and his insistence on culture war bullshit over actually doing things that work is rapidly losing him the soldier support too.

Different method of action, but yes. Turns out coating your entire GI tract in an impermeable film for a day or so is a bad idea.

Maintenance Phase did an episode on it a while ago, well worth a listen.

See, here’s the thing, we would’ve heard about it. Trump and all his ilk can’t keep their fucking mouths shut and would’ve been lording this shit over us. Someone would’ve said SOMETHING, because none of these people can keep a secret.