“Yes the planet got destroyed, but one beautiful moment we had a really nice dinner”

$20/month doesn’t include the externalized costs. Foolish take.

Is there a name for this kind of joke? I remember seeing it in like 2002 with a picard + firefly + something else mashup. It’s kind of funny, but extra formulaic even as memes go. Reminds me of my dad trying to talk about media, so maybe it’s like some sort of mutant dad joke.

Did you forget that within living memory options for watching movies at home were limited to tiny televisions with poor sound, and what was either broadcast (possibly with commercials) or what you could rent at a store?

“Always seemed like such a weird place to go” if “always” is limited to like “after 2010” maybe.

I don’t think there are good arguments for eating meat, and I think people get mad at vegans because of the cognitive dissonance. “If eating meat is bad, and I eat meat, then I’m bad. But I’m not bad! They must be bad! They suck!”

Sometimes you see this with other things. Like if someone walks or takes a bike instead of driving for the environment. “If driving is bad for the environment, and I do a lot of driving, I’m doing bad. But I’m a good person! Fuck them for making me feel bad!”

Most people are just large children.

Sometimes people try to justify eating meat. Some reasons are more defensible than others. Someone with severe allergies might have trouble getting nutrition from vegan options. Someone saying “but I enjoy it” is acting like a child.

In short, most people are operating mostly on emotional levels. Facts don’t really matter. Feelings drive them. I think this is the root of most of our problems, honestly, that people can’t put aside their emotions.

Personally, I try to minimize how much meat I eat, but I’m okay with accepting sometimes I do bad things.

Someone posted on one of the subreddits I used to read, and I tried it out. I stopped using reddit because of the API thing and a general dislike of private consolidation that you get with sites like it.

It’s been fine. Some rough edges but worth it.

I first played Dark Souls 1 when it first came to steam on the recommendation of a friend of mine. I wasn’t really sure about it at first. I somehow missed picking up a weapon as a sorcerer, so I was trying to bonk hollows with the staff for like 8 damage a pop. I thought, “Wow, this game really is hard.” Then I found a proper sword and was like, “Oh.” . I also struggled a bit with that first plathrough and looked stuff up on the wiki very quickly. It wasn’t until DS2 came out that I was able to get into the blind playthrough groove. Where the pursuer killed me over and over and over. This is fine.

I think if I could only take one with me to a desert island, it’d be Elden Ring. It’s the biggest, with a lot of variety and stuff I haven’t seen or played. Even if some of the bigness leads to tedium (eg: getting the upgrade bearings on every playthrough).

But is it my favorite? I’m not sure. The first one really nailed the “abandoned, old, place” vibe. The firelink theme is iconic. It did a search to see if anyone had written about it, and found a big ol’ video doing a lot of analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjKAQ-zI5Ns

Side note: using words other than “said” for dialogue attribution is generally poor style, and a common mistake.

There’re a lot of blogs and books about it, but here’s the first one I found https://bookblog.kjodle.net/2011/06/06/he-said-she-said-the-fine-art-of-dialogue-attribution/

Not the person you’re asking, and I don’t know PF2e super well, but: it has felt very mechanics-first. You pick stuff from a list to make a build and play that. Sometimes that can inspire a cool story. Sometimes you have a story idea, and you find mechanical options that work nicely with it. But it still feels very constrained. Especially when it “doesn’t come online until 5th level”, so you end up playing something weird and off-story because you needed a level of rogue in order to such-and-such.

Contrast something like Fate where you free form come up with your high concept and aspects. If you want to play “psychic asshole Batman” you can just write “Psychic Vigilante” on your sheet, and don’t have to find feats or anything in a book. Your character can work and be yours from the start.

But that’s a very different mode of play. Some people really like the gamey buildy parts, and that’s fine too. (Except when you have a group and discover you all want to play an RPG, but that means incompatible things to folks, heh)

Would rather they invest in, like, housing, food security, climate crisis, any number of other more useful things. I know you could say that about anything- like all the money being spent on movies seems frivolous next to that stuff- but AI is especially dubious.

Our society’s priorities are all wrong, and I don’t think it’s going to get better without a lot of suffering. Maybe not even then.

Men protagonists tend to feel kind of cliché.

Also I’m a little shallow and like seeing women, especially powerful, competent ones.

I have money and they don’t. If I give them $1 or $5 or even $20, I won’t notice the difference and they will almost certainly have a positive change from it.

I don’t give money to the really aggressive homeless lady though, because she scares me.

Nothing really is speaking to me :(

Nine Sols is supposed to be very good, but it’s a slim discount and I’m not really in the mood for the genre.

I think I want a like party RPG like bg3 or pillars of eternity, but I think I’ve played all the acclaimed ones.

At least I’ve still got guild wars 2 keeping me company. It’s old, but reliable. No subscription or power treadmill, so I keep going back to it. Highly recommend

I don’t live in Ohio so I’m not one to talk, but like… why not protests? Are there protests and I’m just not aware? Like big fucking “make him afraid to leave his house” protests.

It just feels like bad right wing stuff keeps happening and everyone’s like “ok”.

But I’m just some dude living a sheltered life.

“artificial difficulty” is poorly defined. Most parts of a video game are artificial. You get 100 health and 5 healing potions? Well those numbers were just made up, and could easily have been 50 and 1, or 200 and 10. The boss takes 5 hits to defeat, or 10, or 3?

I think people say “artificial difficulty” when they mean “I don’t like this”, but that’s not very useful for a discussion without digging deeper.

Your position is about a thousand times better than the denial-ism of most meat-eaters. “Eating meat is morally dubious, but I am making this bad trade off” is better than the usual “Shut up meat is tasty and like they don’t feel pain and if they did it’s only for a moment and it’s longer they deserve it for being lower on the food chain. And the environmental impacts are just made up but even if they were real they’re not a big deal, and if they were then it’s not like it’ll affect me, and if it did well fuck you.”

That is, some people who eat meat refuse to acknowledge that there’s any drawbacks or moral pitfalls. I guess that’s too hard on the self image. Cowards, really.

I try to minimize how much meat I eat. It’s a baby step. It’s hard when like work does an outing and there’s no vegetarian options. I don’t want to make a big stink about it every time. But I’m not going to pretend that eating meat is morally the high ground or good for the environment.

Sometimes people are like “Well I just enjoy a hamburger” as if that’s any sort of justification. Maybe I just enjoy punching cowards in the throat, but we can’t always do what we want, now can we.

Oh, I’m also on that side of the “game difficulty” argument. I mean, I don’t care much about what’s offered in single player games. I usually play on the default settings. But one time I got into an argument with someone who said he should be able to unilaterally adjust his iframes and parry window in PvP, and that guy can fuck himself.

I think I have an undue emotional response because a lot of the time it feels like the other person didn’t even try. It’s like someone who goes to a restaurant and just immediately pours salt all over the dish. Just try it like it was delivered first.

Or they usually eat pizza, but they order this soup dish. And then they get mad they’re burning their hands when they try to scoop it into their mouth. Use a spoon. Stop blaming the soup and use a spoon.

I guess more broadly my problem is I don’t believe other people are any good at introspection and emotional regulation. People just feel things and make up justifications. We all do that some of the time, but I think some people are just always in that mode.

“political violence is never acceptable” their site says, and that’s certainly a stance. I guess just get in the oven or whatever.

Political violence should not be the first choice, but “never use force” feels naive.

You’re going to be pretty sad when your kid dies due to your poorly informed decisions.

Not great at some of the emotional assuagences. Like, it’s not enough to be right, you also have to make them feel good. Hell, you don’t even have to be right.

Sometimes I feel it’s like “hey don’t eat that it’ll make you sick” -> “fuck you don’t tell me what to do” -> they get sick and learn nothing.

Like, we’re all emotional. Me, you, everyone. But I feel like some people listen to almost entirely the emotional channel, and I don’t really know how to tap into that very effectively.