HelixDab2
@HelixDab2@lemm.ee
- Comment on It's fire... Maybe concerning but fire still 3 days ago:
How have you forgotten Remedy, with Alan Wake, Control, and Quantum Break?
I feel like Finland might be where I belong. If only I could realistically learn Suomi…
- Comment on It's fire... Maybe concerning but fire still 3 days ago:
Lots of weirdly emo ballads, TBH. The metal is good, but it’s still pretty niche from what I understand.
- Comment on Is a Quest 3 really worth it? 3 days ago:
It depends on what you’re doing with it.
I use it solely for Ace XR, which is a dry-fire simulator/tracker. Ace XR is available solely for Meta Quest (2 & 3), so I didn’t really have many options. Unfortunately, I’m currently rehabbing a serious injury, and I am unable to practice.
For gaming? Not really. I like the PSVR2 headset more for that; it’s a better headset overall. I’m still working on getting it set up to work with my PC though. As other people have said, getting corrective lenses for a headset really makes them more enjoyable if you need glasses; it’s a pain in the ass to have to put in contacts when I want to use VR. For the Meta Quest specifically, and upgraded head band and spare battery (that also acts like a counterweight) is very nice to have.
- Comment on Can't install app because it isn't "certified" by the government 4 days ago:
For Tor to work, you have to reduce your security settings, and allow javascript; that’s not generally a good idea when you’re using Tor. Even when you do that, the network is slow enough that videos don’t seem to complete loading. (I just checked.)
- Comment on Paul vs. Tyson 1 week ago:
Paul is 9-1, the one loss being a split decision, and 6 of the wins being knockouts. He’s inexperienced, but that doesn’t mean he’s not good.
I want to see Tyson knock him out in under ten seconds. But I don’t think I’ll get my wish.
- Comment on Paul vs. Tyson 1 week ago:
Eh. I dunno. Tyson is in his 50s, and has a much shorter reach than Jake Paul. As much as I’d prefer to see him win, I don’t think that Tyson is gonna pull this off.
- Comment on Vultr doesn't let you use Bitcoin until you've already set up payment using a credit card or PayPal 1 week ago:
TLA agencies would have no problem with a cover identity to “prove” who they are. Your average citizen is going to have a hard time buying a slightly used social security number that they can use to get an ID that will pass KYC laws.
- Comment on Caves 2 weeks ago:
I’ll keep that in mind. I live at a high enough altitude that I’m literally in the clouds pretty often (e.g., when it’s overcast everywhere else, I’m in pea-soup fog), so cedar is one of the prime choices for anything that’s going to be outside, just to keep it from rotting.
- Comment on Caves 2 weeks ago:
Sadly: no attic. I need try making an attractive bat roost for them. I wonder how bats feel about cedar, since cedar is rot resistant?
- Comment on Caves 2 weeks ago:
I love seeing the bats coming out at night in the summer; I can see them in the front clearing, swooping around after moths. I’ve got a bat house, but I think that it’s been vacant for years; I need to find a better way to attract them to my home.
- Comment on The Divine Dick 2 weeks ago:
Currently I recommend bupropion and atomoxetine, but once I get an appointment with a psychiatrist, I’ll probably recommend lisdexamphetamine.
Modafanil is pretty great too.
- Comment on The Divine Dick 2 weeks ago:
To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which doesn’t kill you psychologically scars you and leaves you with a lifetime of therapy bills.
- Comment on The Divine Dick 2 weeks ago:
According to Mormons, god is literally male, with (perfect) male genitalia. There is also a god–the-mother, who is female, and is both secret and sacred (they really don’t like talking about her), and also utterly subservient to god the father, because of course she is. According to Mormon theology, both gods were once mortal, and were raised up to godhood by their godly parents; Mormons–if they’re good enough–can go to Mormon super-heaven, where they will also become gods in their own right. Before everyone was born physically, they were born spiritually, in… More or less the same way babies are born now, except in heaven, to a heavenly mom. And there were hundreds of billions of spirit babies, so I guess that god the dad and god the mom really like sex or something? The implications start getting really, really weird, very fast. Which is part of the reason why Mormons don’t usually want to talk about stuff like this with people that aren’t Mormon.
I believe that the quote is, “As man is, so once was god. As god is, so man can become,” or something like that.
Source: was Mormon for >25 years.
- Comment on In the era of remakes and remasters, what niche game would you like to see receive the treatment? 3 weeks ago:
The entire Ultima series for sure. I think those were the first CRPGs I played. I loved Ultima: Underworld I & II, but I was never able to get Ultima VII: Pagan to run properly on my computer. (And, holy fuck, that was 30 years ago.)
But also The Elder Scrolls: Arena, TES: Daggerfall, TES: Battlespire, TES: Redguard, and TES: Morrowind. The first two TES games would be challenging to make, given that many of the areas were randomly generated, rather than being designed.
- Comment on In the era of remakes and remasters, what niche game would you like to see receive the treatment? 3 weeks ago:
Having seen the trailer for Gothic, it looks good. I really hope that it’s actually good.
- Comment on Is it okay to take drugs to make yourself a better person? Does it make a difference if "better" is mental or if it's physical? 3 weeks ago:
Example: roids. Used appropriately, they can help improve your body.
Correction: they can improve aspects of your body, at a very, very steep cost. Pretty much all oral anabolic steroids are C17α-alkylated, and they’re hepatotoxic (i.e., cause liver damage). All steroids will fuck up your lipid profile to one degree or another, and all of them can cause heart disease, specifically hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Boldenone in particular will sharply increase red blood cell production, which in turn increases blood pressure, and can cause strokes. All of them will shut down the hypothalmus-pituitary-testicular axis (HPTA) feedback loop in men, leading to testicular atrophy. Most AAS will cause hair loss in men that are sensitive to DHT. AAS can fuck up your hormones enough that men can start lactating (!!!). High doses of testosterone can cause gynecomastia, because testosterone aromatizes into estradiol. In women, all AAS will cause some degree of virilization.
There are not very many IFBB pros that make it to 80; if you want your candle to burn brightly, it’s going to burn out fast.
- Comment on Pretty sound reasoning here. 3 weeks ago:
I believe that’s correct; but it’s not all handguns, only a very, very few. Any handgun that’s gas operated (and there are, like, five) is definitely still going to fire.
- Comment on Why don't we just gather up all the ocean's trash and all the nonrecyclables, put them in a rocket, and launch it into the sun? 3 weeks ago:
So, um, 400M rockets.
Yeah, that ain’t happenin’.
- Comment on Why don't we just gather up all the ocean's trash and all the nonrecyclables, put them in a rocket, and launch it into the sun? 3 weeks ago:
I think you wildly underestimate the amount of trash we’re be talking about here. This wouldn’t be a rocket, this would be thousands, or hundreds of thousands of rockets. And that’s just the start.
- Comment on The grand prize 3 weeks ago:
Going with your 5’ x 5’ x 5’ size, that should weigh about 132,624 pounds, or about 66.3 tons. The price, as of 2018, was about $30,000/ton. That works out to be about $2M.
Still a pretty heft prize.
- Comment on Brazilian Wandering Spider 3 weeks ago:
FWIW, even if it only cause a four hour long erection, that is not what your partner is going to want.
Trust me on this.
After an hour–usually less than half an hour, IME–it’s not going to matter how much lube you have, they’re going to be hurting. You’ll be frustrated, they’ll be frustrated and in pain, and no one is going to be happy. Maybe there are a very, very few women that like getting pounded for over an hour straight, but I haven’t dated one yet.
- Comment on Why do cell phones have a data limit but home internet doesn't? 4 weeks ago:
Lots of home internet does have a data cap, but you might not realize it. Typically what will happen is that, once you hit your cap, you’ll be rate throttled. That throttle might not affect most video streaming since Netflix is really good at video compression, but you’ll see the hit if you are, for instance, downloading large games from PSN, Steam, etc.
- Comment on Anon loves sunny days 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, I have, and I got stiffed out weeks of pay I was owed because it was with a fly-by-night contractor that had a nose-candy problem. …Which is why I don’t do that any more. (Plus, he insisted on doing shit in the most backassward, bullshit way. I’ll be surprised if his shit doesn’t kill someone some day.)
If you work for a reputable company–not as a 1099 contractor, which is self-employed–then you probably have to be paid overtime pay. If you get a W2, and you’re not getting OT when you have to put in more than 40 hours in a week, then you need to consult with an employment attorney.
- Comment on Anon loves sunny days 4 weeks ago:
Disagree; most people that work outside are still working for a wage, and OT pay kicks in once you break 40 hours in a week. That limits most places to 8 hours, unless you’re talking about undocumented immigrants that don’t have any labor protections, or people that are self-employed in some way.
- Comment on Anon loves sunny days 4 weeks ago:
Doesn’t bother me; it’s 2 minutes to spray it on, and then re-apply every hour that I’m outside. As long as I’m wearing a hat to shade my face, I don’t have to worry about putting any on my face, and then sweating it into my eyes.
Doing hard manual labor in the mid-day sun at the height of summer though? That’s def. unpleasant as fuck. I can do 2-5 hours, and then I’m just done for the day. I don’t know how some people can do that for eight hours a day, day in and day out.
- Comment on Anon loves sunny days 4 weeks ago:
I love WEARING SUNGLASSES.
I love WEARING A HAT.
I love DRINKING WATER.
I Love WEARING SUNBLOCK.
Jesus christ dude, if you get yourself into some kind of shape that isn’t round, you aren’t going to have these problems.
- Comment on Magic Mineral 4 weeks ago:
You misunderstand. Before tetraethyl lead was removed from gas–in the 70s, I think?–engines were not nearly as good as they are now. My dad was doing really, really well to get 100,000 miles out of a car in the 60s and 70s; you used to see a service station attached to every single gas station, because of how much service cars needed. Now, 200,000 miles is close to the minimum that people would expect with only preventative maintenance. It’s nearly unheard of for people to need to replace valves and regrind valve seat now, except for high compression, high RPM engines (esp. supersport motorcycles). But that was just normal before the mid-70s. My dad has done multiple full teardowns on engines before the 80s, replacing head gaskets, piston rings, valves, and so on. These days that’s almost unheard of.
I think that the most intensive valve maintenance that I’m aware of that’s common right now is cleaning carbon off for some of the direct injection engines. I know that it’s an issue with Volkswagon cars, but most cars don’t do DI. You’d have to check technical service bulletins (TSBs), but most cars are very trouble free compared to what you could expect prior to the 80s.
- Comment on Is Andrew Yang involved at all in Harris's campaign? 4 weeks ago:
IIRC, Yang ended up being pretty far right as far as Democratic candidates went; not who I would want in a cabinet-level position.
Beyond that, he really doesn’t have direct political experience, and being in a cabinet does require pretty solid abilities at managing politics. Or, it does if you want to be effective. The gov’t isn’t a business, and it shouldn’t be run the same way a for-profit business is run. To that end, I don’t think that politics and public service is really Yang’s wheelhouse. If he wants to cut his teeth on state politics, and then move up to the national level, he’s welcome to prove me wrong. (Not that he gives a shit about my opinion. But I think he’ll have a hard time getting elected without getting lower-stakes experience first.)
- Comment on Can someone give me an overview on the Jill Stein situation? 4 weeks ago:
Honestly? No idea. Didn’t watch the debate, because the kind of thing that would make me vote for Trump isn’t going to come out in a debate. Would it surprise me, given that Trump is so eager to slob the knob of any authoritarian, like Orban, Putin, or Erdoğan? Not even slightly. Stein at least–and this shows just how goddamn low this bar is–doesn’t praise authoritarian leaders.
- Comment on Why did it take so damn long for humanity to "learn" how to draw/paint realistic images? 4 weeks ago:
Most people can see color well enough, the difficult part is understanding how to translate that to a flat, uniform surface that doesn’t emit light.
Most people think they see color, light, and shadow well enough. But they don’t. They know what color a thing should be, or what they perceive the color to be, and so they can’t see the way that the color really is. I think that part of the genius of a painter like Lucien Freud was that he was showing you the colors are they really are (…kinda of…), rather than the way people think they are. Highlights on a face aren’t just going to be lighter; they’re going to have different hues, depending on your light source. Flattening colors out to black and white seems easier, until you realize that you can have two wildly different colors that have almost identical values, and so you have to introduce some unnatural contrast in order to make a distinction between objects. Hell, B&W in general requires increasing contrast and fucking around with your virtual white and black points, or else your drawing looks flat and lifeless.
Photography–particularly film photography, where you don’t have software interpreting the image–can be a useful tool in seeing this. Without any filters, you can examine detail areas of an image and see how reflected light, and how shadows, are changing the hue of what you’re seeing. Your brain automatically makes adjustments, unless you’re really looking. And training yourself to really see what’s actually there, versus what you expect, is a very challenging process.