A frog who wants the objective truth about anything and everything.

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  • 9 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Besides upgrading to an SSD like another person said, I guess an electronic pressure cooker was a pretty sweet upgrade. It’s incredibly multi purpose, cuts cooking time dramatically, allows me to walk away and forget about cooking with no consequence, and often only requires cleaning a single pot for an entire meal.

    Like ya know those old TV ads for kitchen gadgets that try desperately to convince you it’ll change your life, but you never actually use them? An electronic pressure cooker is one the few cooking gadgets that actually lives up to the hype.


  • Perhaps RPG’s with a party, like Mass Effect, Baldurs Gate 3, Fallout New Vegas (many companions with their own stories to find and tag along), Star Wars: knights of the old republic, dragon age.

    Some shooters like the later Band of Brothers games, valkyria chronicles or the Mafia series you may enjoy as well.

    In Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, there are multiple paths to choose to complete the game, and one option is to choose a fun companion come with you to help you throughout.







  • That sounds similar to this quote:

    “It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” — Edsger Dijkstra, 1975

    But there’s been a good deal of programmers who have said that BASIC, and its ease of use and seeing almost instant results is extremely useful to not turn people off learning to code to begin with. Python is functionally the new BASIC in that regard, and while the language itself may not teach you to become an expert programmer, it may have gotten more people in the door than otherwise would have.

    But that’s just my 2 cents.


  • Long is an interesting example, since he definitely did strongman Louisiana politics, but he did seem to have the working class interests at heart, where as Trump only pretends to. We didn’t get to see what he would do long term, but its been argued that his presidential run, and more specifically his ‘share our wealth’ program forced Roosevelt even farther left in his policy.

    Share the wealth proposed to put into federal law a wealth cap of 5 million for every American, with the excess used to fund what amounts to a universal basic income back in the 1930’s, and didn’t discriminate against minorities. It also advocated for free education, free healthcare, and a 30-hour work week.

    From all the information I’ve seen, including the excellent Ken Burns documentary, the poor and working class of Louisiana loved Huey for legitimate reasons, while the rich and politically corrupt, who were targeted by him, absolutely hated his guts.


  • I grew up in a religious household that eventually became infatuated with what essentially amounts to doomsday cultism after the 2008 financial collapse.

    The religion encouraged a lack of critical thinking development, and I easily bought into the scheme. We became fairly extreme preppers, stockpiling food, planning to move somewhere even more remote that wouldn’t be a nukeable target while also not being downwind of fallout from a neighboring target. We purchased plans on how to build various styles of underground bunker on a budget, and guides on how to rear animals and farm for subsistence.

    At some point I came across a video of Christopher Hitchens debating a Pastor. I almost didn’t watch it, as I was afraid that to even entertain the ideas of someone trying to tempt you away from the faith would be dangerous, a way for Satan to worm his way into my mind and prevent my soul from being saved during the end times that were right around the corner.

    But I was curious too, very curious. So I watched it. And I couldn’t come up with a single logical argument of how he was wrong.

    That was the first glorious crack in the mental armor I’d put up against doubt of any kind. I would think about it frequently, which led me to want to find evidence that would prove him wrong, so I watched a different debate with a different pastor, then another, each one widening the gap, until one day I had to admit to myself that it was bullshit, from top to bottom.

    That opened the floodgates. What else have I not questioned? All this prepping, for what? All the mistrust in others, the seclusion, the countless hours of research on how to (impractically) survive as independently as possible… it was all pointless, or worse, actively mentally harmful.

    Amazingly, when I slowly presented all these findings to my family, they saw reason. I think they were all as worn out from the constant terror we guzzled down from crackpots too, and if anything were relieved that it could come to an end.

    From that point on, I made an effort to give myself a proper education, to finally trust in the scientific process, and to not be so intellectually lazy that I could be tricked into something like that ever again.

    So the last time I really changed my mind in a major way was about a decade ago.






  • That was a fun review, I like the style you went for with it!

    I played this back in the day on the 360, which didn’t seem to have the bugs you encountered. I recall having a pretty good time with it, and it was short enough not to overstay its welcome. The jumping mechanics and training for it were unique at the time, and I thought it was a nice twist on the WWII formula.

    The lacking narrative (or at least, I don’t remember one, or any characters) hurt it, as it felt sort of like I was playing a multiplayer game alone at times.

    I also thought it was neat how the sniper rifles were more accurate/less wobbly if you slowly squuezed the analog trigger, I’m not sure I’ve seen that elsewhere.

    But yeah, good review, I’d honestly enjoy reading more from you.


  • The remake has much better gunplay and graphics, and overall has been ‘smoothed out’, but personally I think the new casting choices were unbelievably bad, and take all of the soul out of the game.

    If you can get past the jank of the original (and get the community patch to add the old music back in), I personally think the original is the better game by far, but I was a huge fan of the original, so I’m biased.


  • Boycotts are fickle things, sometimes gathering a following big enough to make a corporation cave, but many other times, not getting any steam at all.

    And even if a boycott is successful against one company, it doesn’t mean they won’t try the same thing again, or try their usual ‘do something extreme, then walk it back to where you originally wanted it’ two-step, which is generally very effective at getting what they want. They know how to manipulate the public to their desires, they have whole divisions dedicated to that (though sometimes even they get caught unawares). If we went this route, the issue is that this tactic is done frequently enough that people would likely get boycott fatigue. “Ugh, another campaign? Another publisher screwing us? I just can’t anymore.”

    At least against corporations, actual consumer protection law is a much more reliable long-term solution to an enemy that will try every tactic to avoid real, effective change in favor of the consumer.







  • He’s showing his true colors here. either doubling down so his initial reaction doesn’t make him seem foolish, or he really has a soft spot for mega corporations due to his ties with Blizzard.

    Ross wrote a response to Thor’s in the comments of this video, but it’s a bit buried. I’ll include Thor’s for context as well:

    Thor:

    I’m aware of the process for an initiative to be turned into legislature much farther down the road after many edits. If people want me to back it then the technical and monetary hurdles of applying the request need to be included in the conversation. As written this initiative would put a massive undue burden on developers both in AAA and Indie to the extent of killing off Live Service games. It’s entirely too vague on what the problem is and currently opens a conversation that causes more problems instead of fixing the one it wants to.

    If we want to hit the niche and terrible business practice of incorrectly advertising live service games or always online single player only games then call that out directly. Not just “videogames” as stated in the initiative. Specifically call out the practice we want to shut down. It’s a much more correct conversation to have, defeats the actual issue, and stops all this splash damage that I can’t agree with.

    Ross’s response:

    @PirateSoftware I actually wasn’t planning to write to you further since you said you didn’t want to talk about it with me and I’ll still respect that if you’d like. But since you brought up what I said again I’ll at least give my side of that then leave you alone:

    • I’m 100% cynical, I can’t turn it off. I wasn’t trying to appeal to legislators when I said that, I doubt they’ll even watch my videos. I was trying to appeal to people who are are kind of doomer and think this is hopeless from the get-go. I wanted to lay out the landscape as I view it that this could actually work where many initiatives have failed. Did it backfire more than it inspired people? I have no idea. I’ve said before I don’t think I’m the ideal person to lead this, stuff like this is part of why I say that; I can’t just go Polyanna on people and pretend like there aren’t huge obstacles and these are normally rough odds, so that was meant as inspirational. You clearly weren’t the target audience, but you’re in complete opposition to the movement also.

    • I’m literally not a part of the initiative in any official capacity. I won’t be the one talking to officials in Brussels if this passes. The ECI could completely distance itself from me if that was necessary.

    • In my eyes, what I was doing there was the equivalent of forecasting the weather. You think it’s manipulation, but I don’t control the weather. I can choose when I fly a kite based on my forecast however.

    • It was also kind of half-joke on the absurdity of the system we’re in that I consider these critical factors that determine our success or not. So yes, I meant what I said, but I also acknowledge it’s kind of ludicrous that these are perhaps highly relevant factors towards getting anything done in a democracy.

    Anyway, I got the impression this whole issue was kind of thrust upon you by your fans, you clearly hate the initiative, so as far as I’m concerned people should stop bothering you about it since you don’t like it.