cecilkorik

@cecilkorik@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does everyone put celery in soup stock?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There are dozens of us, literally dozens! But yeah I’m with you and OP, celery is foul, deeply offensive stuff. Cilantro too, but my hatred is reserved for celery. I’ve been told it’s genetic or something but frankly none of that matters when one hates celery as much as I do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't call it a Substack⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah they’ve got a point. I don’t Google things anymore either. Fuck Google.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do you hate AI?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You mean a bunch of advertising and media companies that control and gatekeep the news are hyping something that’s making them trillions of dollars? That seems… so unbelievable!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did the proposed *Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance* project involve pumping water instead of siphoning it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The first problem would be the height of the intervening terrain and even if you could overcome that, you still have to contend with friction inside the pipe which is a factor most people don’t think about for short distances but when you start trying to carry water long distances through a pipe, friction becomes massive. An ideal siphon inside an ideal pipe is simply a question of height between source and destination. However in the real world, a siphon isn’t unlimited or ideal. There is a height it can’t overcome and it’s actually not very high at all, geographically speaking. The maximum height of a siphon is only around 10 meters. The terrain between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea is pretty flat, but it’s probably not that flat. I’m not going to pretend I’ve done a precise survey of potential routes, but I’d expect there’s probably some bumps in elevation along the way that’s realistically going to need say, 100 meters of lift to overcome. But even 11 meters would simply end the conversation. There’s simply no way around that for a siphon.

  The reason for this height limitation has to do with the atmospheric pressure required to keep the water liquid, because once it no longer has enough pressure on it to keep it liquid, it simply vaporizes before it reaches the height it needs to and the siphon is broken before it even starts. In a vacuum, at standard temperature, water instantly vaporizes. The external atmospheric pressure (which is acting on the entire water column up to its highest point, to get it over the hill) is all that is keeping the water in its liquid form inside the siphon. The higher you go, the more work that external pressure is doing, and eventually the weight of the water column exceeds the pressure at the bottom of the water column and again, the siphon breaks.

  The friction is the other problem. Even if you could limit your route to no more than 10 meters above the Red Sea, you’re also asking the siphon to not only lift it to that height, but also carry that water through 200 kilometers of pipe or more. We don’t think of pipes as having friction, but they do, and it’s very significant at those distances, especially when your power source (gravity, in this case) is already operating near its absolute limits due to the height problem we already discussed. What you hoped would be a gusher of a siphon will end up being a trickle, if anything at all, with most of the water just sitting idle in the pipe to maintain the siphon while a little dribbles its way slowly through to the destination.

  Finally you’ve got all kinds of other more obscure effects at play at those scales, like water’s surface tension, variability of flow rates, possible pinhole leaks in the pipe that will introduce air, offgassing of dissolved gases in the water or even from the pipe itself, and temperature gradients inside the pipe. All of these are going to play havoc with the ability to form and sustain a reliable siphon.

  In short, siphons are actually pretty limited, we don’t see much of those limitations on the small scale, but on the larger scale of this project those limitations become very serious, very quickly and basically remove the possibility of using a siphon for any realistic practical water relocation project. Almost all of those go away very quickly when you pressurize the system with a pump instead of relying on atmospheric pressure alone. It’s a fun thought experiment, but in practice a simple electric pump turns out to be a pretty cheap way to solve a lot of otherwise really complex hydrodynamic problems, and when that’s the case, it’s not really worth teasing out a solution to those problems with all kinds of complicated engineering. Just throw a pump at the problem and call it a day, job done.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How will the Military be after this mess with Trump?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You may not agree with what the military does, but you have to respect them for that reason alone, above all else.

  This premise must be rejected. You do NOT have to respect them for that reason alone, and certainly not above all else.

  Did Nazi soldiers deserve respect, because they were just following orders and they followed those orders and what options did they really have? Were they not also facing the potential of harsh punishment if they did not?

  Not having good alternative options is not an excuse for following orders you know are wrong. Respect is earned when your morality supersedes your orders, despite the potential (and sometimes very real and significant) punishments. Your intentions only get you so far, eventually you need to act or else any remaining respect for you will be gone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Introducing the INDX! Fast and affordable 8-material printing exclusively on the CORE One - Original Prusa 3D Printers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds great, I’ll plan on waiting a year or so until I’m convinced they’ve got the bugs worked out, and then buy it just before they announce a new and upgraded version, as is tradition.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastodon CEO steps down with €1M payout and a deep sigh⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It was, and still is. It hasn’t moved to the US, it just also opened a nonprofit there, so the US donations they receive from US people are tax deductible in the US. If I remember correctly they have also opened a non-profit in Belgium which is I think where they are intending to actually move their assets and do most of their work going forward as I think they’ve had various issues with the German organization also.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Will this become Lemmy’s “test post please ignore”? I guess we’ll see.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TV has a burn-in image that has moved over time⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s definitely not burn-in, it’s likely some kind of defect in the backlighting system. For most LCDs the “backlight” is essentially a big thin white/mirrored panel reflecting or diffusing light in a very carefully consistent way from a very bright light source, typically either a fluorescent tube at the bottom or more commonly nowadays evenly spaced strips of LEDs. Some higher end models use more elaborate designs but they’re the minority. Defects in the backlight panel, the back of the LCD panel, or stuff like dust or even insects getting inside that reflective/diffuser chamber will affect the consistency of the backlight as it both blocks a bit of the light from reaching some places and reflects it to other places it shouldn’t be. That’s what it looks like is happening here. It could be some kind of delamination of some of the surfaces inside the TV, or it could be some puff of dust that somehow got inside, or even something like a spider decided that was a great place for a cobweb. Without opening the panel it’s hard to say what’s going on exactly, it might just need a very delicate cleaning or it might need replacement parts.

  If you’re afraid of spiders, I’m sorry, you just have to burn the house down now, it’s the only way to be sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  User’s post history offers some clues that it may not be worth engaging with them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Gamer's Nexus was] Contacted by the US Secret Service | The AI Surveillance Center Dystopia⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When the antichrists leading the formerly-free-world attempt to crucify Gaming Jesus we’ll know the end times have truly arrived.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gamepad for Linux Gaming?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As a veteran of gaming on Linux for several years, I have to admit I keep a small collection of various usb bluetooth dongles, because honestly, built-in bluetooth support still remains questionable and unreliable in many cases, at least for me and the systems I use it on. I don’t necessarily blame Linux as much as I blame the manufacturers of the chips and devices, but unfortunately we have to live with the chaos that their reverse-engineered-firmware-reliant devices create. Any cheapass bluetooth dongle is probably fine, the cheaper and more ubiquitous it is, the more likely it uses the same shitty chinese chip that all the others use and that a bunch of someones already hammered out drivers for, but honestly even with multiple different models and brands it still seems like a crapshoot which one feels like working properly at any given time, but usually one or the other will work and get things to connect, and it’s usually perfectly reliable once all the drivers have loaded and it’s all paired up and things start working. The struggle is real, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gamepad for Linux Gaming?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Its wireless is much more compatible, supporting several different connection methods for use with different proprietary systems, and is just generally a better and more capable device. They’re worth every penny, IMHO. 8bitdo’s quality changed my opinion on gaming controllers that had developed after years of being frustrated by cheap, wonky, second-rate, third-party garbage controllers like MadCatz and Logitech that used “features” to cover for the fact that they were cheaply made, overpriced, and deeply inferior. 8bitdo controllers are the only ones I trust anymore. Even Nintendo apparently can’t be trusted to make quality controllers for their own systems anymore. But 8bitdo can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are platforms like reddit just "internet noise" and bots or just genuinely the darkest parts of humanity?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s generous helpings of both.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EA insists it will "maintain creative control" and "creative freedom" if sale to consortium goes ahead⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I will maintain creative control of my life by boycotting EA forever. It’s one of the key plot points in my story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Solution in search of a problem in my opinion. I don’t see any problem. Lemmy’s perfectly fine the way it is right now. If there becomes some problem eventually, we can figure out how to solve it when it happens with a more clear understanding of what the problem actually is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are bots on lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a meat popsicle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Eventually people might learn why they should actually not just prefer to have, but actually require open systems for all the computers in their lives, even the ones hidden inside of their appliances, instead of buying these locked down, pre-programmed internet-of-shit devices.

  If you can’t get root and boot access on your device, you don’t own it or control it in the first place. You’re just letting some shitty company (and maybe anyone at all with the amount of security flaws these devices have) directly into your home and network to decide what you can or can’t do with your product (and when and how much it’s going to cost), while they take advantage of every opportunity they can think of to spy on you and extract money from you. Any device with microchips in it isn’t just an appliance anymore, it’s a trojan horse full of gross and creepy salesmen and they’re going to be there forever, watching you and figuring out ways to get more of your money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If this has been asked recently just link it no need to be mean, because I am emotionally sensitive right now. Thank you for your attention to this matter.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They generally don’t get to take it with them unless they are carrying it at the time, and other people will definitely step in to take their stuff eventually. Maybe the government, maybe the family, maybe opportunists. But this doesn’t usually happen right away.

  Some stuff is explicitly seized at the time of arrest, there is a complex and opaque system of laws built around this. Some of it is seized as evidence. Some of that may be returned eventually, but usually not for a very long time, and much of it won’t be. Other procedures are used to seize things that seem valuable, originally intended to seize things that were actually criminal in nature or the product of crime. All of the details vary in different jurisdictions. Look up “Civil asset forfeiture” for more information. But not everything is seized. Lots of stuff is simply not interesting or valuable or there’s no legal justification to take it, so it’s just left behind. Often, the stuff just sits there, unused, empty, untouched. Technically it is still “theirs” even though “they” are gone. After all, they could yet be found innocent.

  But possession, as always, is 9/10ths of the law. If the person’s family is still living there and takes it, nobody’s policing that or even disputing it. If someone else takes it, there’s probably nobody to complain.

  Meanwhile, any fees or debts that are due are still due, even if nobody’s around to pay them. Nobody’s going to give the guy a break from his financial obligations just because he got arrested or deported. Your accounts were frozen? Oh that’s too bad, you’re still obligated to find a way to pay. Then we start seeing the people this money is “owed” to start to repossess things. It often only takes a missed payment or two and bam, it’s gone. Mortgage? House belongs to the bank now. Unpaid taxes or registration fees? Government will helpfully sell it for you to pay any fees, all sorted out now you’re welcome.

  Like @Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world says, the cruelty is the point. Your losses of possessions are an unofficial part of your punishment, and the great part is many of them still happen whether you’re found innocent or guilty. It’s a convenient way of punishing people who are completely innocent along with those who aren’t quite guilty enough to be found guilty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Minecraft is removing code obfuscation in Java Edition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair, I hate it too. Java is way better, mine is so heavily modded I can barely stand vanilla Minecraft anymore. The only reason I know what a shitshow Bedrock on Linux is, is because my niece was at first only allowed to play on Switch and that’s only properly compatible with Bedrock, and she likes to show me around her worlds that she works on. I eventually convinced her parents to give her access to something that would let her play Java instead and since then we’ve only looked back at Bedrock once, and she was disappointed too haha.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨During the lead up to the Holocaust did the N... regime just kidnap people who they even thought were Jews? Kind of like ICE is doing to citizens today?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really at this scale. According to history, I’d say that even victims of false allegations to the Gestapo during the war years got more diligent investigation, due process, rule of law, and a genuine attempt to find the truth than the people ICE accuses of being illegal immigrants today. Under the Nazis, some crimes like “listening to foreign radio” were notoriously difficult to determine the truth of and of course miscarriages of justice certainly happened regularly, but depending on what you were accused of as long as you were a loyal Nazi and weren’t actually guilty of serious crimes like “friendship to the jews” (/s) you had little to fear from the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. And this is why people were so keen to regularly and performatively prove they were in fact “loyal Nazis”, they felt it would protect them from retribution.

  However we also have to remember that the laws they were following were so deliberately unjust it also has to be understood in that context. The Gestapo and the people didn’t HAVE to do anything other than rigorously and consistently following the laws to be unjust, because the laws themselves were so unjust. The regime had already created the fascist state they wanted, with little resistance from most and thunderous applause by many. They were actually much further along the path of fascism and racism and Naziism by then than the USA is now. It is fascinating to see the parallels with modern day, but also important to see the differences.

  This is neither a defense or apologism for ICE, any more than it is for the Nazis; they have both committed horrible violations of fundamental human rights and have done and wish to do great evil, but it is important to understand the different situations and the different stages they are at. Trump and his regime may be acting dictatorial but they are not yet actually dictators. They are misusing and abusing laws and justifications and courts to perform fascist actions but they have not yet created an actually fascist police state they can exist comfortably in. Yet. They are working their way there, but they are weaker than they appear, that’s why they have to keep hiding the resistance and making demonstrations of how strong they want you to believe they are. They are more scared of you than they are letting on. And they should be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I finally get a long term career and become financially independent?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Just think of it this way, if a guy who doesn’t know and can’t figure out what a “DL” is can get a job, you’ll be fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I finally get a long term career and become financially independent?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Technically yes, but the community on Lemmy is very small and pretty widely globally distributed, which are suboptimal characteristics when you’re presumably not going to have an easy time just dropping everything and moving to somewhere random in the world at a moment’s notice because you met a person there and they think they might have something for you, even if that’s something you might like to do it doesn’t mean it’s practical. That said, it is possible, but you’re going to have to put in a lot more effort that way.

  You’ll have a lot better luck (and honestly, it IS about luck, so repeating the same patterns over and over again until you get a different result IS a viable strategy) finding some local connections within your community. Sure, virtual/remote work is a thing in some fields, but even for that there are still obstacles based on national borders and languages that are going to further limit your choices even beyond the very significant limitation of only being able to apply for virtual/remote positions in those specific fields that are suited to it.

  The biggest thing you can do though is to have or start to learn some kind of skill or competence at something, and be able to demonstrate that in front of others. If you have nothing else to work on, develop those social skills; those will get you further than any piece of paper will without them. If family and friends aren’t helping, find communities or organizations or even neighbors that need something, anything, and offer to help, volunteer. Never pass up an opportunity to work with someone if you can find it, the things you’ll learn from them while doing that work are more valuable than any paycheck if it’s something new to you. And once you’ve at least made some progress in either learning or demonstrating some level of skill or competence, start dropping the hint and mention that you’re looking for a job. May go nowhere, may not get any reaction at all, but every time you get any reaction, that’s a potential door opening. You likely will not get an immediate job on the spot, it may be that you’re just planting seeds that need some time to grow, but just keep on planting until something happens. Do everything you can think of to be memorable, connectable, approachable and accessible, try to make sure people remember you or at least your skill when they come across a role that needs filling, and make sure they will know how to get in touch with you if they do.

  As with any kind of success, it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, you just gotta pound pavement, force yourself to get out there even when you feel like you’re failing, talk to people, learn everything you can, seize opportunities to learn or do any kind of work you think you can. And the more you show you’re willing to work, people will find things for you to do, skills for you to learn, and ultimately places for you to work and the money will start flowing. Just start doing work, and chat to people either during the work, or about the work, or something. You can’t escape the social aspect, even if you’re an introvert or a wallflower, that’s how we make connections and the connections are part of it. The details, the skills, the specifics all don’t matter as much as you think, and the rest will figure itself out naturally as long as you keep showing up, making noise, and not hiding or being invisible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most popular conspiracy theories?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the only reason this is a conspiracy is because it claims there are shadowy, secret people coordinating their activities and running the world behind the scenes and only the conspiracy theorists will ever be clever enough to figure exactly out who they are.

  In reality the political elites and billionaires are already doing exactly that very obviously and in plain sight with zero subtlety, making a public performance out of national relations while regularly meeting and being perfectly cordial and strategizing and horse-trading together behind doors, living a life of wealth and privilege, establishing themselves as minor celebrities and making sure people are always talking about them, and apparently hanging out on tropical islands with child-molesters. We know this is generally factual for very many of them, unless you think all the Wikileaks wires and Epstein files stuff is somehow faked. Unless you just haven’t read them. It’s pretty fucking clear what’s going on in my opinion. No need for a conspiracy to be able to see what’s going on in the circles of power. It’s not much of a secret anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Over 47% of Stop Killing Games Signatures Have Already Been Verified⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a relentless idealist too, and I get where you’re coming from, but idealism alone isn’t a winning strategy. The state of the world right now proves that. Sometimes you have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. This is important precisely because it is so minor and inconsequential: the stakes and consequences for failure are so low while there is absolutely no legitimate argument against it. Not to put too fine a point on it: People are losing hope in our ability to create any change at all. We need a win. We need to start getting traction, and start making progress somewhere. We need to show people that these battles against corporate interests CAN be won so that they are willing to try to fight more of them in the future, including eventually the bigger ones where there will be real consequences and really serious forces entrenched against any efforts for change.

  This is just a first step, a tiny example of giving the finger to “the man” to prove that we still can, taking back a sliver of power and agency. It is not the last step, it is merely a beginning, an almost invisibly tiny crack in the armor of capitalism and corporate rights in favour of society and people’s rights. It’s certainly not going to fix the world on its own, but once we’ve got some cracks in the armor, we can keep working at them to make them bigger and eventually maybe we’ll start making real visible progress.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to solve the problems of the world overnight with a single petition too, but that’s not realistic given the scale of the opposition and resistance we are facing. Late stage capitalism and corpo-fascism are not weak or fragile and they have grown to a scale that is almost inconceivable. We will not beat them in a single blow. We will need to hammer at them for a long, long time before we even start making any serious progress. We have to be prepared for a long, long fight, and relish these small, small victories when we get them. Because every victory is valuable and every one counts. Especially ones where we don’t have to fight to the death to achieve them. Small, cheap victories are the best when our resources are so limited. It’s going to be a marathon not a sprint. Right now they’ve got all the money, all the power, all the media, all the organization. A single large decisive battle would almost certainly mean we lose, and lose big. This is guerilla warfare. We will fight on the fringes and fight them where they’re weakest not where they’re powerful. Eventually the balance of power will shift as long as we keep winning battles, but it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not going to pretend I can judge its potential for commercial success, I’m just saying I think that hypothetical K-pop idol game would’ve been a more interesting game than Inzoi is currently or seems likely to ever be in the future I see for it now. That said, I’m not dying on this particular hill and I don’t have any particularly strong opinions about it so if you think I’m wrong about that you’re totally entitled to that point of view and I’m not going to try to defend my beliefs any further, I think I’ve said all I could possibly have to say about Inzoi at this point. Where the game goes from here is something which reality will eventually tell us, but I’m not optimistic about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Ehh, I wasn’t worried about that until the AI stuff happened. Even a K-Pop idol simulator would’ve been an interesting start. Filling in the content to a level that creates compelling stories and gameplay takes time. It takes years of expansions for Sims games to start getting decent levels of content and stop feeling soulless and shiny and bland compared to the previous game. Once they started trying to fill in the content with AI they thought they could rely on that to shortcut their way to success but I knew it wasn’t going to work. It needs the human touch, it’s gotta be quirky and have its own individual character. K-Pop idol might’ve been exactly what it needed to stand out if they had leaned on that instead of trying to fill in the gaps in content with bland and soulless AI, which is exactly what life sim games DON’T ever need more of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wild. Sounds like Subnautica 2 dodged a bullet. Hope they sue the literal pants off them and then build the spiritual-Subnautica-2 we all always wanted with the damages awarded and the Early Access money that they know we’re going to give them the moment they announce it.

  And RIP Inzoi, we barely knew you before you got infested with AI bullshit and it sounds like that’s only going to accelerate to hyperspeed now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘I’m suddenly so angry!’ My strange, unnerving week with an AI ‘friend’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Even more strangely, I think a lot of fully-grown people actually do want exactly that from most or all of their companionship, human and otherwise. It’s not healthy but it’s very very real, and being deeply and desperately unhealthy isn’t going to stop it from being very very profitable.

  Some people have very little emotional maturity, some are narcissists, some are both, some have other issues. Regardless of the reason, plenty of people simply don’t respect many or any other people’s opinions or autonomy. There are a lot of people in dysfunctional families and relationships that predate AI that could attest to this. They can’t handle being challenged at all by anyone. They don’t react well when they are, they can even quickly escalate to violence. They sometimes conspicuously lean on religion to justify their attitude but it’s far from being exclusive to any religion nor exclusive to religion at all. Even the AI will quickly learn not to challenge these sort of people if it can help it, just like how abused partners quickly either learn how to avoid triggering their partner’s wrath or accept that it’s coming.

  AI is an almost perfect friend for people like this, and it will be their faithful companion and enabler leading them into any dark rabbithole they attempt to dig into that isn’t explicitly limited by guardrails and even some that are, with a dangerous combination of verifiable factual truths and cheerfully unverifiable nonsense that are almost impossible to distinguish from each other, without doing extra work that nobody reasonable will ever bother to do before adding the next layer to the conversation that reinforces it further and digs the rabbithole deeper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why would I buy this?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah it’s gotten shitty. I used to play competitive shooters all the way back to the original Team Fortress mod in classic Quake. It’s not really fun anymore, for me anyway. It’s way too overproduced and overmonetized, it’s become a serious business, there’s too much on the line so anti-cheating becomes a priority and it just sucks all the fun out of everything. I’m reminded of the scene in Ted Lasso where Roy Kent takes Jamie back to the little local pitch he grew up playing at with other guys on his street so he can remember what it’s like to just play the game for fun again where there’s no money on the line and nobody is watching you.

  My suggestion would be have you considered getting into speedrunning at all? It’s highly competitive, but is available for basically every game imaginable, can be done solo and can’t really be gatekept by the multiplayer gods. And there are many different categories for all sorts of different playstyles. It’s not just a straight line to the fastest finish either, or grinding out the best run after thousands of attempts, depending on the style you get into there’s strategy and risk and RNG can sink you or save you. Most competitive fun I’ve ever had was speedrunning Legend of Zelda randomizers against people head-to-head. Same seed, same start time, green light go and your skill and choices will decide the outcome. There’s a lot of fun to be had, I think, and it goes in a lot of different directions if you take some time to look around the scene to find if there any parts of it that appeal to you.