Alice is 16 and she’s got some arthritis keeping her grounded, but she’s still cuddly and loves her people. ♥️

Your points are totally valid, but I will share my reasons for having faith in this particular project:

1. The creators have been delivering projects for about 40 years now (not Kickstarter, but mostly as Toys for Bob).
2. The project has progressed significantly already - prototypes have been built and assets have been created. It’s not just a speculative project.
3. The project is of a manageable scope. It’s not planning to revolutionize anything or deliver innovative technology. It’s well-trodden ground, technically speaking.

I will admit that there’s risk in it being a small team chasing nostalgia, so even if it does deliver something, the quality may not be what we all hope it could be. But I have enough faith in the team that it can’t be worse than Star Control 3.

I could probably Name That Tune for 90% of the songs even to this day.

I’m looking forward to it because it’s the official sequel, from the original creators, over thirty years after the fact, to my favorite PC game of all time. Star Control 2 (Free on Steam but now renamed to Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters due to a bizarre copyright squabble) is an open-world (galaxy?) sci-fi adventure with brilliant and hilarious writing, endearing hand-drawn pixel art, and phenomenal music. There’s nothing quite like it. It was crafted with a deep love for gaming and I have no doubt the sequel is being treated with the same kinds of reverence.

EVERYBODY BACK THIS PROJECT! (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pistolshrimp/free-stars-children-of-infinity/description)

I love Brownie.

This is Alice. I got her at the same time as I got Milo, about 12 years ago now. Milo passed way in 2022 and I miss him all the time. He was my buddycat, Alice is my bunnycat. She’s soft, fluffy, sweet, and lazy. She loves a warm spot and a lap to cuddle on, though since she’s about 16 years old now, she can’t really jump up onto things anymore. We also adopted a little lunatic kitten named Chess, and she hates him passionately. We keep her sequestered away from the kitten and the new dog we also adopted, but the little bastard loves her so much and wants nothing more than to be her best friend. He sits on the other side of the door and sings to her all day. She just hisses back. She’s entitled to be crotchety though. Sometimes we take her out and bring her onto the couch and set her up with some lap time and she just curls up in a ball until Chess comes along, at which point she hisses ceaselessly until he goes away.

Unrequited love, what a sad story.

This is Chess:

I’ll throw some mostly retro curveballs. They should all be more than enough playtime to get you to Greece and probably home again.

The Longest Journey - old point and click adventure game with a sci-fi/fantasy between-worlds story and a likable protagonist. You get insane battery life playing this one.

https://www.gog.com/game/the_longest_journey

Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters - free release of a 32 year old open world sci-fi adventure. Literally my favorite PC game of all time. It’sa predecessor to games like Mass Effect and Starfield, and the music is incredible. Also a low power demand. This game could run on a toaster.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2645580/Free_Stars_The_UrQuan_Masters/

Marvel Midnight Suns - part phenomenal tactical card strategy game with superheroes, part relationship simulator where you can go stargazing with Spider-Man. Some reviews were harsh because of the weird combination, but if you appreciate the alternating battle/hobnobbing, it’s a hugely entertaining game. Goes on sale quite a bit.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/368260/Marvels_Midnight_Suns/

System Shock 2 - Another classic. Bioshock was a spiritual successor to this much deeper, scarier, more complex immersive sim FPS. It shares a ton of DNA with Deus Ex as well. Its predecessor, System Shock 1, was recently remade to much acclaim.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/system_shock_2

Or once you take either away, he will consistently want the one that isn’t there.

I love empirical cat ownership.

You read enough to get to the part where I pointed out “burden of proof” and ignored it completely. You’re a bad faith actor and an intellectually dishonest troll. I owe you nothing. It’s not on me to google shit, especially your insane and vague claim.

Nice non-defense.

Holy shit you’re bad at this. “Let me make a broad and extraordinary claim and it’s on you to prove it.”

Here’s why your rebuttal sucks and you’re bad at thinking:

1. You have never heard of “burden of proof”.
2. Biden wasn’t president when COVID was killing a million Americans, so your point is not just vague, it’s stupid.
3. You ignored all my other points completely.
4. Your only defense was completely unsourced whataboutism.
5. You think claiming “it’s not controversial” is like a cheat code for arguments.
6. Your fundamental “hellscape” argument relies on a definition of badness that is so impossibly narrow and dismissive that you’re basically claiming that Trump would only be a bad president if people were literally suffering and dying in the streets in such numbers that everyone had no excuse not to realize it, which utterly invalidates everything any human could do in a presidential term unless they literally went full Hitler.

Looking forward to your trenchant and scholarly “no u” rebuttal.

[citation needed]

Yeah, just a million preventable deaths, huge transfer of wealth to the upper classes, lots of children stolen from their families and caged, but my grocery bill wasn’t that high, so I don’t see the problem.

Your cat is my wife’s spirit animal.

Instantly reminds me of this.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/873/653/2f5.jpg

Note that this is the older model. There is a Litter Robot 4 now, and it’s much quieter and has additional features like weight tracking.

I personally think they’re a huge quality of life improvement. When my old model 3 gave up after something like 5 years, I ordered a new one the same day. Scooping is gross and tiresome, and if you like to travel on short notice, this can buy you about 4 days for two cats or 7-8 days for one if you also have an automatic feeder (much cheaper than this) or free feed them. By that point, it’s almost nice to get a sitter just so your cat(s) won’t get lonely while you’re away.

Yes, it’s expensive. But if you spend 5 minutes a day scooping, that’s about 1800 minutes a year or 30 hours. In my experience, the units last at least 4 years usually. Up to you.

Dude, spoiler tags!

Yeah but he used a ton of other people’s money to buy Twitter and destroy it, and even as the worst investment in history, there’s immense political value in letting him shit the bed with his new toy. He wouldn’t be able to get financing to spite-fuck WB because he’s a whiny little baby.

Never would have thought “other people’s genitals” would have been it, but I seem to have vastly overestimated their critical thinking capacity.