Cold case season 3 episode 1

Hello hello.
Okay quick confession: I’ve never actually listened to a season of TAZ. I tried with the first few episodes of Balance, but by then I was already so burned out on MBMBaM (like, 2 or 3 eps a day for a few months) that it didn’t draw me in.
Anyway, I figured I’d have a look and see how long it’s been since the last time I listened to an episode of MBMBaM. According to Spotify, I stopped listening weekly halfway through Episode 529: Throw Me in the Dumpster Behind the Applebee’s When I Die, released on September 30 2020. From there, I’d occasionally listen to a minute or two before bailing and made it all the way through Episodes 553, 554, and 564 before giving up altogether the following week, in June 2021.
0:00 – MaxFunDrive ad read by Justin is basically “I’m not gonna waste my time or yours trying to explain why you should support MaxFun, just give us your money!” and honestly, I love laziness disguised as frankness.
0:44 – I feel like they would have quietly removed the “Travis insists he’s a ‘sexpert’” line a while back but they left it too late and now there’ve been enough weird Travis Moments that it’d make people assume something scandalous was about to surface if they changed it.
1:02 – My music tastes are a little eclectic but mostly pretty basic, with a big emphasis on upbeat alt and indie pop, so I should enjoy the Montaigne song, but nope! At least I never liked the old one much, so it’s not a downgrade.
[Obligatory semi-relevant anecdote: I took a solo trip to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago as a little birthday present to myself, both to visit some friends and to go see Carly Rae Jepsen in concert, since she wasn’t coming here to New Zealand on her tour. Probably the best concert I’ve ever been to!]
1:54 – Already tensed for the incoming Travis intro bit
2:10 – Okay it’s a “we have to raise enough money to save the podcast from being demolished by the local billionaire” joke. And he’s called Dr Guhart (sp?). Fine. I know that premise has been a touchstone of Western pop culture for decades, but I wonder how much longer it can last. Are younger Gen Z kids making jokes about having to win a ski race to save the rec centre? What’s the modern equivalent? Make a GoFundMe that’s immediately drowned out by all the cancer patients? Camp out in the replies of MrBeast’s tweets trying to convince him to monetise your plight?
“[I]f we don’t raise a bunch of money, he’s gonna turn our podcast into a place where they grind up puppies into sausages.” Travis is really good at making his setups sound rehearsed and unnatural. I don’t need a great acting performance when someone’s doing an improv bit on a podcast, but please don’t make it sound like you cycled through every possible combination of evil act and innocent victim before landing on the one you thought sounded the most comically cruel.
2:58 – “If we raise enough money we can legally murder Dr Guhart.” Okay I like this one better.
4:00 – Not to be a killjoy or anything but Dr Phil is a) irrelevant and b) awful. I don’t need a 30-second bit about him with no punchline.
7:40 – Twee Travis comes to the table, in what I can only characterise as his 20% baby voice, with the classic “you don’t have to tweet it; you can just go back to the old-school tweets where you just whisper it to a bird and then you let the bird go and then the bird comes and finds us and whispers it to us.” I am 90% sure he’s said this exact joke (?) before and it’s never been cute or funny!!!
8:25 – Justin’s pre-question bird question feels like something they’ve already discussed several times already but I don’t know if I’m just wired to hear everything they say as derivative.
12:40 – Question 1: How do I show off my yo-yoing skills to my colleague, who introduced me to the hobby, now that he no longer yo-yos?
Seemed kinda promising at first with the stuff about Riverdance yo-yoing, but there were a couple of not-so-comical misunderstandings between the three of them. Justin makes a reference to 'nipple-height as a shorthand for the exact thing they're all talking about and Griffin assumes he's being suggestive for no reason.
16:54 – Question 2: Can I sit in front of the CostCo TVs and just watch an entire movie? Is there anything wrong with treating CostCo as a low-cost movie theatre?
Being repetitive is the most unavoidable of the podcasting sins, but it’s wild to come back to MBMBaM and hear that the questions are still “I want to do a slightly weird thing in public. Am I good?” and Griffin’s immediate response is still “There’s nothing stopping you except the unspoken social bond of our shared humanity.”
24:30 – Ahhhhhhh Travis is trying to sell me on their bonus content. He starts with the $5 level and then passes over to Justin, who was not listening closely enough to know what had and had not already been covered. Never change!
27:27 – They make a joke about how the unedited naming ep stretch goal is worse than seeing how the sausage gets made but they don’t even call back to Travis’ stupid puppy sausage bit. Amateurs!
27:36 – At least they’re self-aware about the BYOP pizza party stretch goal being a bit shit. Not surprised to learn that it was Justin’s idea. Never change!!!
30:30 – “Brown recluse bite. Almost died. Didn’t. Can’t?” Okay this got a wry smile out of me. It’s been said time and time again on this sub, but Justin has a lot of comedic talent as soon as he bothers to put in a teensy bit of effort.
30:38 – Oh boy it’s time for my first ever Wizard of the Cloud segment.
31:10 – WikiHow to Run a Teddy School
This concept has no legs. Griffin’s angle is basically just “Isn’t this crazy??” and, I mean, yeah I guess so, but without a personal anecdote or question to latch on to there’s nothing here for me to find entertaining. From previous episode threads I feel like this is how it always goes, right? A deliberately ~wild~ WikiHow is chosen and then the brothers react to it like “damn, this is wild”.
35:42 – Travis has never seen Paddington or Paddington 2 and I hope he never does because he doesn’t deserve to.
38:55 – Justin and Travis both balk at the absurdity of expecting teddy bears to pass a toy to each other when they’re inanimate objects and Griffin rightfully points out that they’ve been talking about the concept of Teddy Bear School for several minutes now and this is an issue you probably have to make your peace with before engaging with the topic.
39:15 – They double down on this as if they don’t understand how children’s make-believe works. Yes, you’re going to have to physically move the bears yourself! The WikiHow writer is playing in the fictional space of Teddy Bear School. Are they seriously expecting the article to read “using your hands, manipulate the bears’ bodies and limbs to simulate the actions of walking, talking, eating, and playing”?
Griffin concedes the point because he wants this to be over. I don’t concede but I agree that we need to get out of this comedy black hole.
40:19 – Question 3: How can I eat soup powerfully during my lunch hour instead of looking like a peasant? (??????????????????)
Yeah baybeee! This is the MBMBaM content I crave! I love these cart-before-the-horse questions, where you can tell the listener started with the desire to submit a question – any question – and then scrambled to contrive a problem in their life that they could shape into this high-calorie, low-nutrition comedy slop.
It’s a food question, so it’s guaranteed to get a little bit of interest from Justin. The premise is vague enough that it’s easy for Travis to interject with something irrelevant and uninteresting in the name of being wacky. It’s a social dilemma that isn’t really a dilemma at all, so they can hopefully tie it up at the end by gently letting the listener know that they don’t have real problems.
Justin starts off in a strange direction by suggesting that the only way to eat soup powerfully is to eat it quickly, like a starving runaway taken in by a kindly stranger, which is so clearly incorrect it’s making my head spin. If we’re really gonna try and psychoanalyse the power dynamics of eating, I'd say that wolfing down your food signals a sense of desperation, or perhaps a fear that someone will come and take the food away. That’s peak Dickensian peasant! Eating food slowly suggests a) that you’re really enjoying it and b) that you have all the time in the world. You’re in no rush! Everything’s under control and you’re free to savour your delicious veggie soup. You didn’t just make it because it’s easy and it fits with your restrictive diet: veggie soup is your favourite.
42:25 – Travis has a bad idea about eating soup from a tumbler labelled with a soup-related title, e.g. 'Soup Doctor, PhD'. Griffin riffs on this with the mildly funny idea of having “Caught ya looking!” written on the bottom of a soup bowl for when you slurp up the last of it, but Travis ruins it by suggesting that you instead put a picture of you with another soup bowl and a different message on that bowl (he doesn’t provide an example of a funny message). It’s like they’re playing tennis but Travis has a little bit of poop on his racquet.
“Have someone else feed the soup to you” is a decent Travis answer which he then ruins with the pointless addition of a narrative where the listener saved that person’s life in the war.
46:19: Title drop! ‘Travis’s Fast Soup Cup For Boys’ would have made me laugh in 2019. Now it just blurs together with everything else.
47:20 – More MaxFun stuff. I’m kinda tempted by the MaxFun recipe book, for jerking purposes.
51:27 – Least surprising segue into Munch Squad ever. Apparently, this is the first in a while, so it better be a good one!
52:06 – Chipotle has added Chicken Al Pastor to menus worldwide. Cool. We don’t have Chipotle here in New Zealand, but its reputation precedes it.
I don’t share the brothers’ discomfort with using the word ‘protein’ as a catch-all for meats/beans/quinoa/etc. in a meal description. Travis acknowledges that it’s inclusive of non-meat options but says we can come up with something better. To be honest, I don’t even think that’s why I use the term. Even setting aside vegetarian options, I think saying “chicken is my favourite protein” sounds less weird than “chicken is my favourite meat”. Maybe it’s a regional thing?
It’s very funny how much of Munch Squad is just Justin being pedantic about phrasing and word choices in a press release he’s reading for free. Oh, they said “craveable” twice? They’re implying that their Chicken Al Pastor might differ from the traditional dish? What a scoop!
55:55 – Buffalo Wild Wings has a Bed & Breakfast. Okay I looked this up and the articles I found were from March 2020 (oof). We also don’t have Buffalo Wild Wings in New Zealand.
1:00:06 – Baskin-Robbins introducing chick’n and waffles ice-cream as the March flavour of the month. Obviously, it can’t have real chicken in it, so the whole concept is terrifying, but the jokes about it are only okay. I actually had to look this one up, but we’re three for three: we do not have Baskin-Robbins here in New Zealand.
I was going to make some comment about cultural osmosis and how it’s wild that I’ve passively absorbed so much information about all these brands without ever patronising them myself, but when it comes to American cultural exports it’s more like active transport (little joke for all you cell physiology nerds out there).
1:04:15: They started talking about ‘Daniel’ and it took me a while to remember from previous episode threads that Justin has been doing a zero-effort Daniel Day-Lewis impression as a running gag lately. Luckily I’ve got him on his week off.
1:08:00 – Did not realise that they started reading random quotes from unexpected sources as an outro. I guess it’s on-brand to finish with a joke where the punchline substitutes mild surprise in place of actual comedy.
That wasn’t an awful listening experience, but if I didn’t write all this stuff down I would not remember any of it. It didn't inspire me to go back to listening weekly, but it wasn't so bad that I'd never put myself up for a recap again.

For the past 2 ranked seasons, gold has been an absolute nightmare. It was legitimately easier for me in DIAMOND than it is now in gold. (I’m in gold now due to bad placements and gold being a nightmare to climb out of rn)
There is too much of a variety of skill level. Gold feels like a cluster of different ranks for some reason
This is the general type of game I’ll have: —2 players who are obviously at least diamond level, carrying the team —1 or 2 players who seem to be genuinely gold level, holding their own but not doing good or bad —1 or 2 players who are obviously way above their genuine rank, probably bronze
these ranks I personally determine are based off obvious game sense and game knowledge, and general plays. NOT a case of them having a good or bad day through aim and whatnot

Hey guys! I just got some really good news which I was not expecting so I want to share the good vibes! Sorry I haven't been on in the last few days, life's been busy 😅
Rules: 1. DBAD 2. Tell me some good news that you've gotten recently either about yourself or someone else 3. Have something $40AUD or under on your wishlist, and a gift card in case I can't work out international buying (+ an email somewhere on your list so I can do the gift card) 4. I'll close this in roughly 24 hours to give everyone a chance to enter 5. (Optional) tag a friend or even a random person to share the good vibes 💗

I’m sure the recent news release about spring cleaning had some people like ???
But if you look closely at the wording & links, you can see it’s all deliberate.
In the beginning, the VP is quoted saying they’ve curated a few “fan-favorite” items. Note this is different than towards the end where they talk about Yankee/Woodwick candles and specifically refer to them as “customer-favorite” brands. Semantics on these releases are everything & I believe they intentionally differentiated those. Why?
Because these are the items in the paragraph following the mention of “fan-favorite items”: 1. MOON and stars storage bin 2. APES & other animals on storage bin 3. Heathered ZEN blue color storage bin
And:

1. SQUARED AWAY storage bin
   
2. Essential COMFORTER storage bag
   

They could have chosen any bins out of the 2000+ I’m seeing on their website, many of them with hundreds of more reviews, and better reviews at that. That’d make more sense for “fan-favorite” items right? But no, they somehow choose one with moons, one with apes, and one specifically colored heathered Zen blue. How many times have you ever seen that color name?? It’s not a common one at all. These are not just random bins they chose with their eyes closed; they had to select each product with intention & therefore must be aware about how they will be perceived.
Then, if that message wasn’t clear enough, they added two more items just in case. Literally one called the “Squared Away” storage bin, and another with the word “comfort” in it.
I personally try to avoid tinfoil, but this one is just so obvious. Add in the timing of this release right after the RSS announcement, as well as the sleep news release right after the $100mil news, they know people are getting antsy & they’re telling you to chill the fuck out. Be patient, be zen. Peace ✌️🙌💎 Edit//wording

Hi guys,
The point of this post is to give you a sense of how buys and sells on Sushiswap will impact the price of Moons, and with it the market cap.
There are a lot of assumptions, which I will hopefully cover in this post. But I want to reiterate that this will not be exact due to changing market dynamics, including more people adding / removing liquidity from the pool, and also that I don't know what the initial liquidity in the pool is. Once again, this is a ROUGH estimate, but you can use it to have an idea of how price moves.
Here is a screenshot of the most relevant portion
Here is how to read the chart. The yellow line is about where we currently are.
If there is a buy order for 1 ETH that comes in, that user will get about 5,761 Moons. This will change the price from 0.302 to 0.306, a change of 1.3%. But notice how much the market cap changes? It goes from $33.1 million to $33.6 million! A $500K jump from a $1,750 buy.
This is why usually I don't pay attention to market caps. In the case of Moons, there is only so much liquidity out there, and it's really easy to influence the market cap with a relatively small amount of buys. For example, to hit a $50 million market cap, we would only need about 35 ETH of buys. $60K of buys will bump up our market cap by about $20 million!
Now back to some of the assumptions. I assume that price is constant at $1,750. This will obviously not be the case, but it makes this analysis easier. Also, as price moves further out of this range, the model will vary considerably more than the actual price moves. And also, I assumed 0 fees (0.30% actual Sushiswap fees), since fees also make the calculations more complicated.
In summary, here is how different buys / sells will affect the price of Moons. Hopefully this can help you plan your own trading.

• Buy 1 ETH of Moons = price goes up 1.3%
• Buy 5 ETH of Moons = price goes up 6.6%
• Buy 10 ETH of Moons = price goes up 13.6%
  
• Sell 1 ETH of Moons = price goes down 1.3%
  
• Sell 5 ETH of Moons = price goes down 6.6%
  
• Sell 10 ETH of Moons = price goes down 12.5%
  

One last point is that I didn't want to use this post to talk about AMM (Automated Market Makers). There are lots of great info on Youtube about AMMs, but to give a really quick summary
Generally there is a constant factor where a * b = constant X for example. And all the AMM does is rebalance a and b based on buys and sells, so that a * b will always equal X. This is a VERY simplified explanation, but it is the basis for my model.

Liza Weil’s performance leaves me in awe. yes, Paris is obnoxious and mean in the beginning, but as we get to know her, she’s just an insecure but really smart teenager. it also makes sense bc of her parents for her to be so insecure and have to strive to be a perfect child. anyways, what are some of your favorite Paris moments? I love when the Puffs go wake Rory up for the Puffs initiation, and Paris asks Rory, “so this is how you look when you wake up?”, and Rory says “uhh… yes”, and Paris goes “nothing in my life is fair”. The moment she shows some vulnerability when Rory invites her to stay over for dinner at the inn’s slumber party for the old english-themed dinner and also, when they’re at the Franklin discussing themes for the upcoming issues and she’s freaking out because no one cares besides her and Rory. These are all episodes in the second season bc I’m rewatching <3

I'm a first time watcher, since I've love Addison in season 3 of Grey's and I wanted to see Amelia's origin story, I decided to give this show try and I kind of liked season 1, but I'm in the middle of season 2 and I don't know how much more I can handle.
I like some characters and medical cases and I know every episode is supposed to look at an ethical issue from different standpoints, but so far an episode about abortion ended with the phrase 'a baby died today' and one about high-end sex workers who only wanted STD screenings but one of them ends-up beaten half to death by a client and then dropped as a patient by Addison, who supposed to be one of the most open minded of the bunch, if not for being classist af.
The glorification of cops also is not amazing, although Christopher from Gilmore Girls does make a couple of good points about economic inequality and classism, but that's a different story.
Is this going to stay the general message of the show or does it evolve? I can't keep screaming at my laptop.

Tried watching Season 1, Episode 3 this evening on my Roku 4k TV and I noticed that the colors are brighter and the print just seems sharper when watching on one of the Ad-based free channels, but when I try watching on Peacock (because it has no ads), the print quality doesn't seem as good despite it also being "HD". Anyone else try comparing these? I kept switching back and forth to compares and it only confirmed it more in my mind.

For context: My wife and I are looking to buy a ~$1.5M house as a first time buyer (we live in a very HCOL area, so sadly $1.5M gets us a starter-ish home). We have enough cash and cash equivalent to pay $300k as 20% down (and have $50k as emergency cash fund), and another $300k of liquid investments (mostly ETFs, large cap tech stock).
We are probably looking at 6.5% fixed for 30 year mortgage. At 6.5%, I consider that a good enough return on equity (yes I'm being somewhat conservative), so would hate to pay the bank when I have more liquid investments and/or 401k to borrow against. How should I prioritize?

1. Liquidate investments first? Or borrowing $100k across my wife and my 401k? (while no jobs are safe, we are able to cover $100k payback in the event we lose our jobs, so not too worried about that). Do both? We'd still have >$350k of retirement investments after taking the $100k loan, so we don't view this temporary 5 year loan to significantly impact our long-term retirement finances (but am I thinking of this correctly??)
2. How much more should we pay into down payment? Another $150k on top? If we put another $150k down (so $450k in total), we'd still have $200k of liquidity remaining and $100k of illiquid investment that will become liquid in the next 3-5 years. In worst case, if we face a liquidity crunch, we can rely on our parents for emergency
3. Should we consider 15 year loan vs. 30 year loan? In the event one of us loses our job, we would be able to still comfortably pay monthly mortgage and associated homeowner costs with 1 person's salary (we're roughly 50/50 in income) with a 30 year loan, but would feel squeezed with a 15 year loan with 1 person's salary. If we both lose our jobs, we should still have 2.5-3 years of liquid investments to cover us as runway before we reach financial hardship. That said though, the amount of interest we pay for 15% is just so much lower in aggregate, so the cheapo in me feels urged to consider 15 year, until at least interest rates come down and refinance?

What am I missing? What am I thinking incorrectly? Thank you in advance!

A bit of background: I’m basically a total beginner in flight simulation and only started playing with the xplane zibo mod 737-800 a couple days ago on xplane 12. My usual procedure follows: 1) cold engine startup and FMC configuration. 2) cabin pressure, Vrefs, minimums, altitude calibration on the EFIS 3) taxi onto the planned runway in fmc and take off using toga and around 1500 turn on Lnav Vnav. Follow the SID 4) sleep for a few hours, follow the STAR and then when it’s close to the planned arrival runway, hit the APP on the MCP and then turn off auto throttle and autopilot right when the guy in the background says “minimums”. I would have set the Nav frequency and course beforehand for this ils approach.
As I start to utilize more functions on the plane, mainly the radio communication part, I’m running into some questions. I am using the default xplane atc, so it’s that robotic voice talking, not real people. When communicating through the COM radio and requesting clearance and departure, my assigned runway is sometimes different from the one I put in the FMC. Is the solution to this problem waiting until I am given a runway and then inputting it into the FMC? A similar thing can happen when I try to land, where my given runway is different from my expected landing runway. I understand this is normal but I’m just having difficulty dealing with it lol. Second thing is how do I utilize the transponder? I know that when requesting for clearance or entering a new airspace, I’m supposed to get a squawk number and it allows atc to follow me, but it seems like the transponder doesn’t really do anything since I’m not fully utilizing COM radio. At the moment, I’m trying my best making use of the COM by tuning into the ATIS and getting the QNH to calibrate the pressures, requesting clearance, taxi, and departure, requesting ILS landing, but a lot of times I end up disobeying the atc orders because my assigned runways are different from what in put in the fmc and I’m not quick enough to change it. And when would the transponder become of use? What about the ADF radio, does that have any use?

Driverless tractors stoke 'fear mongering' at Cal/OSHA
A Cal/OSHA board has denied two petitions and several requests for an advisory committee to update a 70s-era labor code that bars the use of autonomous tractors.
With farms under water, a waterlogged California Ag Day endures
The celebration of agriculture was subdued by a cold, driving rain—as farms battled to hold back floodwater from snowmelt and topped levees.
India’s tariffs are killing US apple exports, and farmers plead for help
The U.S. Apple Association’s board of directors sat down with Biden administration officials last week to plead their case for their farmers. India’s crushing tariffs were a primary focus.
Farm bill could include FIFRA exemption effort for plant biostimulants
Companies that make biologically derived products designed to enhance soil and plant nutrition are backing a bill that would establish a definition and a regulatory pathway for those products.
Low CRP rental rates spark fear of another dust bowl
When the wind blows in Prowers County, soil tends to follow. The southeastern Colorado county sits at the heart of what is known as the “Dust Bowl” region, a place where the fear of prairie winds scattering tilled dirt through communities and towns looms large.
Lawmakers pushed to use farm bill funds to stop research slide
Congress is under pressure to finally put a significant amount of farm bill funding toward reversing a decades-long decline in public research funding that has seen facilities decay even as universities and companies struggle to find new scientists.
Pandemic’s end brings SNAP work requirements back into effect
Republicans and Democrats are beginning to chart the path of how they want to address food assistance work requirements in the 2023 farm bill discussion at the same time requirements return to pre-pandemic standards in May with the end of the public health emergency.
California agriculture output receipts exceed $51.1 billion
The 2021 California Agriculture Statistics Report reports production by the numbers for the state producing over one-third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts.
Syngenta Group reports record sales
With all business units experiencing double-digit growth, Syngenta Group sales for 2022 were $33.4 billion, up $5.2 billion or 19% from the previous year, the company reported.
USDA extends comment period for cattle, bison traceability proposal
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has extended a public comment period to allow for feedback on the January proposal requiring electronic identification for the interstate movement of certain cattle and bison.
World Water Day marks 30th anniversary
This year's World Water Day will be the 30th anniversary of the global event bringing awareness to the need for water and sanitation for everyone across the globe.
Farm Hands West: Cadby joins Western Growers; Naturipe Farms adds Johnston
Jeana Cadby has been hired by Western Growers to be the new director of environment and climate and Naturipe Farms has brought on John Johnston in the newly created role of director of premium products.
https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/19107-syngenta-group-reports-record-sales

Expectations:
Before we dive into the details of building an ultra-low budget gaming PC, it's important to set expectations. Yes, this is a low-spec computer that won't be able to handle the most demanding games at maximum settings. However, for those on a tight budget who still want to enjoy PC gaming, this approach can deliver a solid experience. By getting creative with components and focusing on value, you can build a gaming PC that is capable of running most modern games at 1080p with medium settings and 60 frames per second, all for a fraction of the cost of a high-end gaming PC. So while some may criticize the specs of this build, remember that it's all about getting the most out of your budget and enjoying PC gaming without breaking the bank.
If you have a specific game in mind you want to play, check out its Steam page and view the minimum hardware requirements, if the game wants modern or powerful hardware, you probably won't have a great experience playing it on this computer. However, there are many, many games on Steam that have surprisingly low system requirements and can be enjoyed just the same on this computer.
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Step 1: The PC Itself
First, we're gonna start with a refurbished office PC. There are a few sites out there that do this, the one I'm familiar with is pcliquidations.com so I'll be using that as an example for the rest of this guide, you don't have to use that one you can choose whatever site you like- hell even ebay, facebook market place, or craiglist just be prepared for sellers not knowing the specs of the systems they are selling.
If you're using pcliquidations, just click desktops and then click all of these are requirements on the left sidebar. What we're looking for is a computer with at least the following specs:

• Price somewhere in the neighborhood of $120-180
• Form factor is NOT "Micro/Ultra Small"
• Intel i5-4XXX (4th gen i5, or AMD equivalent, used office PC's from this era are almost always Intel, a 4th gen i5 hits the sweet spot for having 4 physical cores that have decent single thread performance without breaking the bank, if you have more budget to spare you're better off putting towards the graphics card)
• 8GB RAM (DDR4 is preferred- but at this price point DDR3 is likely what you'll get, which isn't impressive by any means, but it'll get the job done for sure. Also, if you go DDR3, 16GB RAM kits are dirt cheap these days, like $25 usually)
• 256GB SSD (pcliquidations usually puts these in their refurb computers already, watch out for the 128GB SSD's, that doesn't leave much room for games)
• One PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot (Some of the listings don't specify what generation the PCIe slot is, so you may have to google the computer model, find the manual or spec page, and see if it is PCIe Gen 3.0)

When checking out the computer's listing on pcliquidations make sure that the option to add a video card is there on the right side of the page and that "XFX Radeon 6400 4GB" is an option to add BUT DON'T ADD IT. They want $200 for the RX 6400, but it's on amazon for $145. This basically just ensures that the case will actually fit a low-profile graphics card and that the motherboard actually has a PCIe x16 slot.
When it comes to building PC's, this knocks out case, motherboard, CPU, PSU, RAM, Operating System, and storage for $120-180, not bad all things considered. In this current state, it's simply just a decent running computer for regular usage. But, we're here for gaming so onto the next step:
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Step 2: The Graphics Card
Now that we have a PC that fits most of the minimum requirements for gaming, we just need something to handle the graphical part of gaming, which is most of the workload anyway. What we're going to be looking for is a graphics card that handles 1080p decently, DOES NOT require external power connectors, and for the low-profile refurbished computers that flood the refurb market, it probably also must be "low-profile."
The vast majority of refurb office desktops are small form factor, if you want to have more options for a graphics card, get a desktop that is not small form factor, make sure that "SFF" does NOT appear in the title of the listing on pcliquidations, just keep in mind this limits your options for a desktop.
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1. AMD Radeon RX 6400 - Now I know a lot of people aren't going to like this option, but it is a modern graphics card released in Q1 2022. The benefits of this card are that it is sips on power at 53W maximum, which is great for the power supply that comes included with most refurb office PC's. We put this graphics card in the computer my little brother inherited from grandma, and honestly I'm not disappointed, he plays 1080p medium settings and it's totally playable. In some areas it may not get 60fps, might dip more towards 45-50fps, but it's still totally playable. The XFX Speedster RX 6400 is also low-profile and comes with a mounting bracket for low-profile cases, this is advantageous for most of the refurb office PC's out there because it can actually fit in them. On amazon it's $145 right now.
2. NVIDIA GTX 1650 (USED) - This is one that get recommended a lot, but prices are all over the place in the used market. On eBay, some are listed for $200, some are listed for $70, all coming from sellers with no ratings to sellers with lots of ratings. If you're willing to go the used route, this may also be a good option depending on pricing. This card also comes in a low-profile form, but from what I can find, it seems like the low-profile versions aren't as common.
3. NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti (USED) - Basically the same situation as the GTX 1650 BUT it is an older card and it is out performed by both of the cards listed previously. If you're straining your budget and find one of these at a good deal, it may prove to be worth it, some games you may have to lower the resolution to 1600x900 or turn the graphics settings down to low, or both.
4. Other - If neither of the cards you find here are at good prices or you just want something else, do some research, look at benchmarks of other cards, see if they come in low-profile variants if you need it, and make sure they don't require an external power connector (6pin, 6+2pin, etc.)

If you have some extra padding to your budget, you're willing to go elbow-deep in a PC case plugging in things, AND you got a non-small form factor desktop, this is where some more options open up to you. You can upgrade the power supply and get a nicer graphics card. We're not going to go deep into deal here, but this can open the door to 1080p High-Max settings, or even 1440p Low-Medium settings, depending.
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Step 3: Install The Graphics Card
You've ordered the PC, the graphics card of your choice, received them, and you're ready to game. Turn off the PC, unplug the power cord, open up the side panel of the case, hold the graphics card in such a way you don't touch any of the little components on the board or the gold connectors, and insert it into the PCIe x16 slot closest to the CPU. In some cases you may have to literally break off the part of the case that blocks the output of the graphics card, but they're designed to do this. Screw the mounting bracket into place on the slot in the back of the case. In some rare cases the slot closest to the CPU might not be the x16 slot, if you want to be really sure read the manual for the computemotherboard and find which one is the x16 slot, 99% of the time it is the one closest to the CPU.
Make sure when you plug in your monitor, you plug the HDMI or DisplayPort cable into the graphics card itself, NOT the motherboard. Now, go to the manufacturer's website (NVIDIA or AMD) and install the drivers for the card. It'll usually download an exe file, run the exe file, wait for it to do its thing, and you're ready to game.
Step 4: Upgrades and The Future
A few cheap upgrades could include upgrading to 16GB of RAM, make sure it is DDR3 or DDR4, which ever is in your system. Add another SSD for more storage for your games, 1TB SATA SSD's are fairly cheap these days, $45-50, and will allow you to store many more games if you have them, just make sure you have the SATA power cable (usually there are extra power connectors along the ribbon already going into your current SSD), a standard SATA cable, there might be more in the computer itself, and that you have an available SATA port on the motherboard, refer to the motherboard's manual to make sure that the one you plug it into operates at full speed.
A medium-upgrade would be upgrading the power supply and the graphics card, which I glossed over just before Step 3. Ultimately, for any "major" upgrade, this machine will not be "future proof" in many ways, if your sights are higher and your budget is higher in the future, you're better off building a modern computer from scratch down the road.
Step 5: Game
When purchasing games on Steam, make sure to review the minimum hardware requirements on its store page. There are a vast amount of games that this computer will handle just fine, but some modern or poorly optimized games won't perform well at all, or may even be unplayable (I wouldn't try to play Cyberpunk 2077 on this machine...)
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TL;DR - Buy a refurb office PC with decent specs, slap a budget graphics card into it, 1080p game. For more detail, read the post lol.

1. how good is this game. i already played the older ps3 version of the game. do i need to unlock anything?
2. i heard theres new voice actors for the game. is it possible to switch to the old voice actor if in case i find the new one not to my liking?
3. how hard is comboing? what are some techniques to learn.
4. is the game updates already over or are we still expecting more content?