KoboldCoterie

@KoboldCoterie@pawb.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The $700 price tag isn’t hurting PS5 Pro’s early sales⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, this all but guarantees that we’ll see more ridiculously high priced consoles in the future, too. Good going, folks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But instead of giving up, we should be trying to fix these issues.

  Genuine question - how long do you think we should try to fix the issues before coming to the conclusion that they can’t be fixed through conventional means? Do you think we should resort to nonconventional resolutions at all, if the conventional ones cease to function or don’t yield results? If not, why not?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨*Everyone liked that*⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  it is literally illegal for a CEO to do the right thing if it will cost shareholders

  Source?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conditional probability⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that was inherently my problem with the whole thing. It may have had good intentions originally - using metaphor to draw attention to a problem in a way that might have gotten through to people who don’t understand or reject more straight-forward discussion - and that’s great when it works, but because of the absurdity of the premise, it ended up being a magnet for scrutiny and objections. As a result, there were three main kind of responses:

  • Accepting the premise at face value, and agreeing that a woman should choose the bear.
  • Objecting to the premise, because it is patently ridiculous if taken at face value.
  • Objecting to the underlying message.

  Group 3 were the truly toxic responses, and they did a good job at highlighting the underlying message (or perhaps at highlighting a specific kind of person, who will just object to anything a woman says no matter what, or who refuses to believe that women are justified in their fear of men, or who are incels, or whatever else), but they, and the responses to them, kind of took over the entirety of the discourse surrounding it… it became about those people objecting and others objecting to their objections. At that point, it felt like the whole point was to shine a spotlight on toxic individuals, and the real message was lost to that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ROFL⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a great article about the nuances of various options.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conditional probability⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, and that’s fine - but if that’s the case, why do we get long-winded explanations with stats and math like the one linked to earlier? Maybe not everyone got the memo that it wasn’t supposed to hold up to scrutiny, but when someone writes something like that, apparently with the intention of it looking like an actual statistical analysis of an actual situation, they’re opening themself up to analysis and criticism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ROFL⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s pretty neat to me that we’ve created this weird language around laugh onomatopoeia.

  There’s a very different tone and meaning between “ha”, “hah”, “haha”, “hahah” and “hahaha”, and I think most people can pick up on it with very little exposure without ever actually being told the difference, or even being able to explain the difference in words. I’d be willing to bet that 30 years ago, it would have been far less of a ubiquitous experience.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conditional probability⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This seems to be comparing percent of women who’ve been attacked by a bear to the percent of women who’ve been attacked by a man, which… I mean, I guess? But a more fair statistic would be comparing the percentage of bear encounters that result in an attack to the percentage of man encounters that result in an attack. This is also comparing fatal bear attacks to non-fatal man attacks.

  I agree with the conclusion that a woman has a greater chance of being victimized by a man than by a bear, but this whole argument just feels like it’s designed to not stand up to critical analysis with the intent of labeling whoever tries to call it into question a misogynist, though, and I’m not going to get into all of that again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conditional probability⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I assume that part of the intent with these type of scenarios is to draw attention to toxic masculinity by baiting out toxic responses, which is fine and obviously it’s effective if that is the intent. However, any attempt to respectfully disagree with the premise was also treated as toxicity and that just made me not want to engage with feminists or the discourse at all, which seems counter-productive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨conditional probability⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not here to argue about the bear metaphor, but this claim seems spurious at best. Even if there’s only 1 fatal bear encounter per 10 years, the number of bear encounters is so low that I don’t think this statistic can possibly be true. Do you have anything to back up your claim, or is this just a gut feeling sort of thing?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I have to be knowledgeable about a particular superstition in order to sign in to access a government form⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The purpose of these questions is to verify your identity; they have your DoB, and are asking the question to confirm that you are who you say you are, so if you answer N/A when the correct answer is one of the other 4, you’ll be denied access to whatever you’re signing up for.

  All that said, “What month were you born in?” would have been a much better question for the reasons OP notes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I do not want to do anything. Is this addiction?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds more like depression than addiction. Hopefully someone with more experience can chime in, but common symptoms of depression include:

  • Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy doing
  • Persistent tiredness or lack of energy
  • Difficulty concentrating on things

  which sounds like what you’re describing. It might be worth talking to a professional.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fake Or Real?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In fact, the clip was a scripted experiment by a Reddit user who fed NotebookLM a detailed prompt instructing it to simulate a conversation about the existential plight of an AI being turned off.

  Someone gives an LLM a prompt, gets the result they asked for. Not sure what the collective gasp is about. Is it interesting to think about? Sure, I guess, but we’ve had media about AI achieving sentience for a long time. The fact that this one was written by an AI in the first person is its only differentiating attribute.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You know what would be cool? If all those (job name) simulator games could all be joined.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.

  Casual players can be fine with some games. Some actually become easier with Archipelago (e.g. Noita, Risk of Rain 2) since you’re getting meta-progression between runs that normally wouldn’t be there. Others though are especially punishing for new players (Doom comes to mind - you have to be pretty intimately familiar with the levels. There’s keys hidden in secret areas sometimes, for example, and ammo can be very scarce.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨all better⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Every time I see this, I can’t help but feel like it works better without the third panel. Showing it happening dulls the comedic impact of the final panel. Anyone who doesn’t know what Kirby is about isn’t going to understand the comic anyway, and anyone who does doesn’t need the third panel to understand what happened.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games to play with my late 40s brothers?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  One brother is on an Xbox One is on a PC One is on a steam deck with WiFi hotspot.

  That’s going to be the limiting factor.

  Are you specifically looking for something to play against each other? There’s some pretty good options for co-op games with crossplay, and that might make for a more friendly experience, but if you’re in the mood for something competitive, options are a little more limited.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon plays videogames at a friend's house⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That honestly doesn’t look like it would be bad to use. If you’re holding it close to your chest, that seems like it would have your hands in a more natural position, so it’s probably ergonomically better, for some people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon doesn't tip⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  So what you’re saying is, tips are bullshit, and it’s really just a shakedown? Got it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨your mom falls significantly faster than g⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  When you carry a ton of feathers, you also have to carry the weight of what you did to those poor birds…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'He was an incurable romantic': The boy who lived a secret life in World of Warcraft⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Not only WoW, but most old MMOs were built around being social experiences. The really old ones (Everquest, most notably) were basically chat rooms with games attached. The gameplay was very slow, and you relied heavily on other players to progress, so you spent a lot of time just chatting with people, either in zone chat or in groups or in guilds. Over time, you started to recognize the same names showing up in the same places, or as you progressed, the same players would be progressing at the same pace so you’d keep seeing them as you moved from zone to zone.

  It was also a lot easier to build friendships for otherwise socially awkward people. You had an immediate common interest and common goal (advancing in the game), so you had common ground to talk about, and a common activity to enjoy together, but during the downtime, conversation would often shift to other things - where you lived, how old you were, what your hobbies were… so you’d get to know people ‘outside the game’, too.

  Nowadays, WoW and other MMOs are much more fast-paced, and much more solo play oriented. There’s still group-required content, but it’s very action-heavy; you don’t have a lot of time that you’re just sitting around chatting, and groups are much more short-term things. 15 or 20 minutes, whereas once upon a time, it was 3+ hours as standard.

  I met my oldest friend in an MMO about 24 or 25 years ago… we accompanied each other to a few different games over the years, and now we aren’t playing anything together, but we still talk. I flew across the country to attend his wedding a couple years ago. Similarly, I met my wife in WoW. Our first “date” was killing bugs in Silithus together. We’ve been together for about 18 years.

  Old (as in, early-late 2000s) MMOs generated a lot of friendships; this isn’t at all an uncommon story to hear from people who played them at that time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since when does a clock need a privacy policy?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Every time you look at the app, they share the time you’re seeing with every other user, it’s a privacy nightmare!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Vampire Survivors’ genre has been coined ‘Bullet Heaven’, literally the opposite of bullet hell. The fact that it has the tag on Steam is kind of meaningless. Monster Hunter: Wilds’ Steam Page has the Dating Sim tag, but I’m willing to bet I won’t get to romance a Rathalos.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oblivion Horse Armour dev looks back on hated DLC – “We had no idea what we were doing”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “[Horse Armor] must have been [sold] in the millions, it had to be millions,” Nesmith said. “I don’t know the actual number, I probably did at one point, I just no longer remember that. And that was kind of a head shaker for us: you’re all making fun of it and yet you buy it.”

  And that right there is the reason why the industry is absolutely saturated with this shit now. If people had just chilled the fuck out when this shit was first introduced, made sure it was an absolute flop from a sales perspective (not only for this one, but for others that were released back then, too), we might be in a better place now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does it seem the majority of protests in the US are to oppose something while so many protests in other countries are looking to influence improving something?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The geography is also a huge contributor. To protest something on a national scale needs significantly greater buy-in from the country as a whole than protesting something on a national scale in a European country. We have a huge amount of land area over here and with the exception of major cities, we’re very spread out.

  Spain is one of the larger European countries, and is about 500k sq. km, as an example. The US is about 9.1 million sq. km.

  Protests happen on local scales but they don’t make national news, only the really massive ones do, and those require a lot of coordination and time investment from the participants just to show up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does it seem the majority of protests in the US are to oppose something while so many protests in other countries are looking to influence improving something?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s all just framing, no? You could frame all of your examples of protesting to “improve something” as protesting against something, and vice versa.

  Protesting for improved living conditions is just protesting against poor living conditions. Protesting for higher wages is protesting against low wages. Protesting for lower tuition costs is protesting against high tuition.

  Protests by definition are an action objecting to a thing. What are you seeing happen in other countries that’s so different to what’s happening here, when you don’t selectively frame it as “for” a cause rather than “against” a thing?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I had to install directx 9 to run gta 4 on windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  GTA4 is 16 years old at this point. Why would you expect it to support DirectX12, which is 7 years newer than the game?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon works the phones⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I worked in phone sales directly out of high school; this is not inaccurate. Exaggerated, but not at all inaccurate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if you ever traveled 1K miles by bus, would you recommend it?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I took a ~1200 mile bus trip about 20 years ago; it had multiple layovers and took about 36 hours total so it sounds very similar to the trip you’re taking. Frankly I would not do it again. This is from a trip up the east coast of the US so my experience might not apply in the country you’re going to.

  I’d have to wait between 3 and 5 hours to board the next bus. Optimist me says great! I could go sightseeing, but with a large and heavy backpack this might not be a good idea…

  If you’re using bus terminals in big cities, don’t expect to be able to get anywhere interesting and back again in that time. Large bus terminals are crowded (basically like a small airport) and sprawling and you’ll likely be fairly overwhelmed just trying to get to where you need to go to. They’re also generally not located in the middle of metropolitan areas; you’d most likely need to take a taxi to get to wherever you wanted to sight-see. It would not be a pleasant experience. If you’re considering this, check a map of the area around the terminal first and see if it’s even an option; don’t just wing it, and plan to need more time when getting back to the terminal than you think you should, especially if it’s a non-English speaking country.

  Then there’s food, which at bus stations or in tourists areas is neither good nor cheap no matter where you are, personal hygiene, pickpocketing… I’d be traveling solo.

  Expect to pay more than you otherwise would. Consider bringing food with you if you’re concerned about that.

  are travelers allowed to eat in the bus? Am I allowed to bring my own food?

  Yes, and yes, at least for the US-based busses I’ve ridden on. They’re pretty chill. Don’t expect to have a tray table or anything, though; don’t bring messy things. Something like a bagged sandwich, or snack items, though, should be fine.

  The busses themselves were fairly comfortable, much moreso than a plane - the seats are well cushioned, you have room to move around. The ride itself was not bad. However, the layovers are killer. None of the legs of the trip were long enough to really sleep, either during them or between them; it’s hard to sleep on a bus (for me, anyway) - they’re not the smoothest rides, and sleeping at the terminals didn’t seem wise. I was a bit stressed about either missing my connection or someone nicking my stuff, though, so that added stress definitely made the trip worse than it could have been. I felt pretty awful by the time I reached my destination and just could not wait to be off that bus. Thirty six hours is a lot longer in practice than it sounds like when you’re planning things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendation engine: Downvote any game you've heard of before⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Definitely another great one!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Recommendation engine: Downvote any game you've heard of before⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s unfortunate that RPGMaker games have such a consistent and distinct aesthetic, it’s really obvious when a game was made with the engine, and a lot of the reviews mention it, too.

  That said, this is definitely one of the best RPGMaker games I’ve played. They really stretch what’s possible with it. Can’t get away from that look, though.