Literally moved everything to Linux (Nobara) like 3 weeks ago and the only thing I can’t get to work is Bizhawk which I can easily get around. It’s insane how far Linux has come for gaming and whatnot.

Your favorite album

I don’t disagree with there being tradeoffs in terms of speed, like function vs network requests. But eventually your whole monolith gets so fuckin damn big that everything else slows down.

The whole stack sits in a huge expensive VM, attached to maybe 3 or 4 large database instances, and dev changes take forever to merge in or back out.

Every time a dev wants to locally test their build, they type a command and have to wait for 15-30 minutes. Then troubleshoot any conflicts. Then run over 1000 unit tests. Then check that they didn’t break coverage requirements. Then make a PR. Which triggers the whole damn process all over again except it has to redownload the docker images, reinstall dependencies, rerun 1000+ unit tests, run 1000+ integration tests, rebuild the frontend, which has to happen before running end to end UI tests, pray nothing breaks, merge to main, do it ALL OVER AGAIN FOR THE STAGING ENVIRONMENT, QA has to plan for and execute hundreds of manual tests, and we’re not even at prod yet. The whole way begging for approvals from whoever gets impacted by anything from a one line code change to thousands.

When this process gets so large that any change takes hours to days, no matter how small the change is, then you’re fucked. Because unfucking this once it gets too big becomes such a monstrous effort that it’s equivalent to rebuilding the whole thing from scratch.

I’ve done this song and dance so many times. If you want your shit to be speedy on request, great, just expect literally everything else to drag down. When companies were still releasing software like once a quarter this made sense. It doesn’t anymore.

There are lots of parasitic bugs in this story, including Elon Musk

Guys… This is not a complicated discussion. I’m a trans woman. I’ve been the man. And now I’ve been the woman. I’m telling you without question I’m picking the fucking bear. Men are scary motherfuckers. A sizeable number of you are cruel, calculating, and downright uncaring. If you’re debating women about why they’d pick a potentially dangerous animal to be alone with in the woods instead of you, you have entirely missed the point.

Go talk to every woman you know in your social circles and in your family, and ask them if they have been assaulted or sexually assaulted by men. The number of them that says yes to that question is going to be depressing. Some of them might even confide in you that they’ve been raped. My own sister didn’t tell me until I asked her why she was so upset with my brother one time. She had recently been raped by a boyfriend and when men got angry around her she’d flip out. Those acts, when inflicted on you, poison your default view of your fellow man. If you can’t imagine a man being more dangerous than a bear, then you’ve never had to.

A bear can’t break my trust. A bear can’t gaslight me into thinking all the shitty things he does are because he loves me. And if I told someone I got attacked by a bear, at least they’d believe me. They wouldn’t need to bring out a bear assault kit to prove it. The bear is predictable. Men are not.

Some stay dry and others feel the pain

I don’t know how seriously to take this kind of discussion sometimes. I can rationalize that a person can do awful things to people in a fictional setting and it’s not a commentary of who they are as a person. On the other hand I cannot escape the feeling that I am replying to a genuine sadistic monster, based on everything you just said in this post. Forget all of that. Unnecessary commentary when there’s a point I want to make.

There’s a crucial difference in video games vs more free-form varieties like TTRPGs: You’re on The Rails. Video game RPGs are almost always on the rails. There’s no real sandbox game anywhere. Like there are good attempts, but at the end of the day, any game has programmed expectations for your inputs and what it can output. Video games can’t possibly fathom how deeply evil you could actually get. It would be a developmental and technological nightmare to try programming in all of your awful choices and how they could spiral the narrative. They have to do their best within the limitations of how much could possibly fit in a game. And I’m assuming the game companies also have to take into account the ratings system, and PR. Even if you could play the game any way you want, good AND bad choices, you’re going to get odd looks from people if they know the game allows you to sexually abuse NPCs, or enslave people through extortion. You know what I’m getting at? The real limitation isn’t the technology, even though that’s already a big one. Even in virtual, completely fictional settings, being allowed to play that shit out is wholly monstrous. And I can’t imagine the toll it would take on designers who would be tasked to write it.

So if you really want all of that and accept the risks, make your own CRPG where you can go all out on Evil. Being critical of developers and designers for not being willing to go as far as your twisted mind can go in a video game is a wild take. Go play in an evil TTRPG campaign if you want to get those kicks. It’s way easier.

I’d say for myself it’s a tit for tat situation.

If the company I hypothetically pirate from is a total prick, mistreats their employees, donates a part of the money they earned from my purchase to lobby to my government to reduce the rights of minorities, I won’t give a single fuck. I may even just never touch their product out of spite.

Are they inoffensive and fairly neutral? I likely won’t pirate if I have the means to buy it.

Are they basically ConcernedApe? I will follow them to the ends of the earth showering them with praise and riches. Never pirate and would actively shame those who do

We’re at the “demonization of being left-handed” stage of understanding.

Yes you appear to be left handed but couldn’t you simply train to use your right hand? You and all the left handed people should work on that

SNES purchased by my parents in 1992.

An old blade server I was able to take from my very first job, state of the art for the time it was made around 2002. It’s still running and I’ve been using it as a media and hosting server for years despite how out of date the specs are now.

Chad, Chet, Chaz, the unbroly Trinity

It’s crazy though because I see people mark videos that released like 30 minutes ago. I need to start doing my part

Complaining about AI in all the wrong ways to complain about AI. AI is definitely a poor substitute for actually well thought out feature implementations. But it has nothing to do with why your iPhone sucks to navigate on.

Only one I can give you is bisexual girlfriend. Take it or leave it

Disco Elysium is so fucking wild. It’s the most empathetic game I’ve ever played. I am someone who has an easy time putting myself in other people’s shoes. The character is an alcoholic mess, on the brink of a depression so deep he has totally fractured his own memory and sense of self. He’s a genius. He’s also an idiot. And he’s a cop/detective in a world that really despises cops. It’s what I would call the idealistic cop: the one that would put themself between a group of armed men and a group of innocent people with nothing but a dinky pistol and say stand down.

Anyway, I love how it makes me feel about everything in its place. The ideologies that drive us. The youth we waste on fooling around. The insanity and, somehow, the humor of racism. The mistakes that make us who we are. The idealistic pursuits that are so high they can never be achieved. How heartbreak never goes away.

Most importantly, I played a game with an internal monologue built-in as the RPG system, and it nearly exactly matches how I think and feel. My mind is also fractured as identifiable pieces of myself. I gave some parts of them names because it made it easier to separate the thoughts from how I truly felt. I have nearly all the same psyches just with different names from Volition, Half-light, etc. And it floored me. I have never played a game that was as introspective as I was. Right down to the simultaneously protective and self destructive thoughts clashing within and one winning out. It gave me a third person perspective of my own self destructive and unhealthy thought processes. And it helped me love myself a little bit more. I feel like I’ll never be able to play anything like it again for the rest of my life.

All is one

One is all

Dialogue and movement in films and shows is so damn well rehearsed that I can never truly get immersed. Real conversations are awkward. We stutter. We fumble words. We forget people’s names, or what we were just talking about. Never for dramatic reasons. Just because we’re human. Script writers are hyper focused on fitting as much wit and humor as they can jam in there. I think some authors of books fall into the same trap. A 16 year old character somehow has the wit and wisdom of someone twice their age. I want more scenes made with genuine stumbling embarrassing awkwardness.

You know those moments where later people learn that the actor improvised the line? Or the movements? Best one I ever saw was Heath Ledger’s Joker failing to blow up the hospital.

[ He turns around. Well shit. Looks back at the device and mashes the button a few more times. Hospital finally blows up and he gets startled. ]

THAT’S THE SHIT. Give me more of that. Let me see the characters fuck up. Get uncomfortable. Make genuinely minor mistakes. Give me flaws. Give me something that isn’t witty. I’m tired of getting bashed over the head with polished scripts.

Animated movies tend to do this better to be fair. Lots to appreciate from the recent animated Spiderman movies for example.

They’re not just calling it big, they’re calling an elephant big in comparison to a crude 8 year old’s drawing of said elephant (and of course the colouring is not inside the lines because it doesn’t have to conform to the consistent rules of an elephant). What purpose does that serve unless you’re the 8 year old trying to make your drawing sound impressive? See how small and unique my elephant is?

Meanwhile the whale sitting right next to the elephant is like wow that was a very specific callout on their size when I’m sitting right here. That kid must really hate that elephant.

It’s quite ridiculous. Wrong or right don’t factor into it.

Calling 5e and pf2e bloated with unnecessary rules, meanwhile Pathfinder and 3.5e are quite literally full of a couple decade’s worth of volumes and modules, in comparison to OSR?

I don’t know if you’re a boomer, a troll, or both

I (almost) never make any plans. I travel to the city, and then I decide what to do on the spot. Whatever I happen to be in the mood for. Most places I visit have something I want to see already and I don’t have to plan for it. And if there are night life activities, I’m checking them out. No rules. No itinerary. Just spontaneous adventure.