Shitposter while I tend to two babies. Maybe when I have my life back, I’ll help us get a few more niche communities back?

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Farming karma on the fediverse requires Arch Linux, Star Trek, beans, US politics in an unusual channel, and of course, hate posts about reddit.

    Oh and pro-tankie or anti-tankie depending on which instance you want karma on.

    Incidentally, I’m glad we don’t really care but the fun part is voting is all public so… be mindful. Lol


  • Not too surprised. What I’ve seen from friends and family in the industry is a mix of union busting and natural shrinking after the 2020 boom. AI is kinda frowned upon for those AAA companies (at least at middle management and below) so it wasn’t so much job replacement although that option might still galvanize union busting.

    Granted the companies in question are Japanese and Korean developers, so the US side is mostly licensing and marking and such. And if I’m being honest, some of those marketers really should lose their jobs, or at least stop getting paid twice that of actual talented people… sigh.



  • In many ways, bad parenting is often why people go to therapy in the first place, haha. That said, I’m referring to something unrelated to parenting, as there are an assortment of disorders that have little to do with parenting.

    Also, discipline is tricky; parents have to use more than punishment in their toolbox, like praise for good work, modeling kindness, etc., and avoid modeling physical punishment since that tends to be the main reason a kid hit other kids… although I doubt the banana parents hit their kids.

    Screening can help identify the cause of problematic behavior. In the US, that legally is required by the schools in federal law (i.e. IDEA), but obviously enforcing said law isn’t happening, even in better administrations.



  • Yes, depending on the age and if police are on campus. Police tend to be permanent on some campuses for “security” but schools with them statistically show a much higher rate of incarceration. Although expulsion is also a fast track to prison, too.

    Unsurprisingly, police tend to be in predominantly black schools, although even in desegregated schools (for which there are very few), it’s black students most likely to get in trouble for acting out. Socioeconomic status accounts for some of this, though.




  • Early into college I convinced a few people there isn’t free will because it contradicts everything we know about psychology. That said, I also explained it didn’t matter since there’s so much going on that it’s difficult to predict a person’s behavior with absolute certainty, even with a multitude of information about them.

    To simplify, a coin flip is considered random even if all the forces are physical and deterministic. The angle and strength of the flip, the air resistance, gentle breezes, the precise gravity where it takes place given the pull from the earth and hell, even the moon… you can factor in so much and be right maybe 99.9% of the time with proper controls and yet there’s always something.

    Human brains have magnitudes more going on, so even if some factors are strong predictors, there’s always an illusion of free will since there are so many other factors we haven’t even imagined.




  • I managed, but I’m a glutton for punishment. In the first one you can kind of go guideless as long as you know a few fundamentals: determination is most important as it gives more skill points and easily pays for itself - by endgame you easily have everything capped. Certain combinations of skills also become game breakers, like being able to duplicate items or pumping up exp gains, etc, but the game isn’t that hard and if you want to do everything you have to run multiple times anyway. That holds especially true in SO2, apparently.

    On that note, SO games use divergent path storylines but rather than being a “choose a faction” or something, it’s dependent on party members. In SO1, it’s basically three ways things pan out for certain arcs depending on who you recruited, with some members required for others. Luckily there was a flowchart, so blind-ish runs can sorta use that without blatant spoilers. It gets kind of interesting because certain mutually exclusive characters are related in unpredictable ways, so multiple playthroughs kinda reveal more depth… at least as far as a game originally made for SNES can be.

    Luckily the game isn’t that long so it wasn’t much of a chore to do multiple playthroughs, especially with fast forward functions of ppsspp emulator. Doing it on original hardware might have been more of a chore, though.





  • NPR yesterday mentioned quite clearly in an interview with John Bolton that economic sanctions are the biggest factor in Iran, and very much on purpose. It is a US strategy, even pre-Trump.

    He acknowledged the cultural upheaval that’s been going on years ago, too, and also that negotiations with their regime is a “waste of oxygen.” But sanctions were definitely central.

    Though I suppose NPR isn’t really sensationalized… you wouldn’t interview John Bolton if you wanted sensational news.




  • I hope they succeed, though I think people are probably a bit like me: I like Steam features (achievements, community art, guides, etc) more than I dislike DRM (except very invasive DRM). Granted I grew up knowing how to crack most of my games, so I’m not as threatened by the standard DRM.

    GOG isn’t as robust in features, although they could probably win me over if they could integrate features with less restrictions (e.g. trying to get a non steam guide in the steam overlay is difficult) or get an archivists approach to gaming with a Launchbox like system that fills in media for all games, has custom themes and integrates legally gray services like RetroAchevements. If GOG was Launchbox with a store, I’d be so fucking down… But they’d probably get sued. Lol