It's not something that's immediately obvious, but Godot's scene system is pretty much entirely optional. You can bypass it and interact with the various servers that handle rendering, navigation, physics, and other core functionality directly. They actually recommend it for performance optimisation. You could also implement your simulation using that same server architecture if you wanted to: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/contributing/development/core_and_modules/custom_godot_servers.html

Now, I'm assuming they mean pre-computed and animated destruction, but there's a little part of me that's hoping they go Red Faction Guerrilla with it. A large-scale FPS where the battlefields can change in violent and truly unpredictable ways would be incredible.

The W11 SE laptop I bought this week had an energy drink ad as its default background. It was a genuine shock to see how bad things were getting over there in the Microsoft world.

I just checked, you were right. Lenovo were the ones who pulled that stunt.

In an ideal world, this would mean that they're beginning to understand that moddability gives their games a lot more longevity. But, I highly doubt that's what's going on.

That looks like a moisture issue to me. Some TPU filaments will absorb so much water from the air that when heated, the water boils out and creates awful bubbling and pitting in the printed part.

My internet drops consistently enough that if I want to watch a long video, I'll preemptively download it with yt-dlp. Maybe it's worth trying that.