I agree with you but the silliness of the leveling system did have its own charm. As a kid I spent so much time jumping around and putting points into getting those athletics skills high enough that it became a bit game breaking.

There’s a certainly a balance somewhere in there but I don’t think the game was ever difficult enough, playing on medium difficulty, to feel like you’ve fallen too far behind the curve. For context I’m thinking mostly about oblivion.

I probably played through oblivion more times making builds that weren’t optimal and had weird stats than I did trying to min/max my attributes. I think, for me, leaving room for that kind of gameplay is part of what made the older games so special.

I’m in WA so unless they’re certain Rainier’s about to blow I don’t think it’s for location specific reasons. I’m seeing some rumblings about it on Reddit too.

Here is a great NPR podcast on it. But basically they tried it in California, people liked it, TurboTax didn’t and lobbied against it. They sent you how much you owed and you could verify it, confirm, and send it back super simple.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero

I think a lot of this is about context too. I don’t think anyone would bat an eye if you used the ok symbol in that context. I still use it pretty regularly, but I’m also not a white dude or using it for no reason in photos and only to my white friends. They probably had some other problematic instances and this was the final straw to kick this guy out.

A lot of the political discussion I’ve read on here has also been pretty well thought out. I feel like people are taking time to explain their perspective more and even if in general it’s been more left leaning there is definitely more nuance. I was surprised by the quality of some of the discussion around the end of affirmative action.