Mnemnosyne

@Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I hate when a PC game is ONLY available on Epic Games store⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I might have been on epic’s side if they had delivered a storefront/launcher at least as good as Steam, then found they still weren’t able to compete and only then decided to try the exclusivity crap.

  They did not. They have a launcher/store that is far worse than Steam or even GOG (which is an accomplishment; GOG’s isn’t all that good and yet they manage to be worse by a large margin), and they didn’t even attempt to provide a better product/service. Instead they just started throwing money in order to secure exclusivity.

  It shows all they want is to muscle into the market, not provide anything better for people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ok boomer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t feel like a dick for that! That again is management’s fault!

  Remember that bagging your groceries used to be part of the service and part of the price, they eliminated that job to increase their profit margins!

  At least around here Walmart still bags them for me, except they now have the cashier doing it instead of a dedicated employee for bagging.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ok boomer⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Self serve gas was actually lower priced than full service back when the transition was happening, so there was actually a reason to do the work yourself.

  If it had been the same price, only I have to do the work of pumping it, damn straight I would have felt the same.

  In retrospect it was a bad deal because once full service went away entirely, so did the price difference, so I’m smarter now and wouldn’t use self checkout even if they gave a discount.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's Wednesday, my dudes.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is this meant to be sung to the cadence of one of Tom Bombadil’s songs? I dunno why that’s just what felt right when I read it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Help me to settle on a face design for the character I've just added to my game, called The Humorless Toaster. (It's only here to make toast, not listen to your nonsense.)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Counterpoint: toaster 1 looks like Hitler. Use toaster 1.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Seriously, what the f*** is keeping Donald Trump in this presidential race?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Moron is no longer enough. Republican voters at this point are malicious, not stupid, not poor gullible fools, they are malicious people who actively seek to harm others, no matter how ‘nice’ they may seem.

  I am not interested in hearing about how someone knows a Republican who is such a nice pleasant person, willing to help just about anyone, kind, caring, etc. It is a mask, like that of…I forget the precise medical term, either psychopath or sociopath. But the irony is they are worse because they do have the capacity for empathy, but they choose not to.

  And this is, and always has been, who they are. This is not new. This is exactly who they have always been, people who, if they lived in a different time, would happily own slaves, or watch someone tortured for the evening’s entertainment at the coliseum, or any number of such things.

  That’s the people we’re dealing with, and they are a significant portion of the population as they always have been.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Curse of Knowledge⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That article reminded me of that politician who said women’s bodies would prevent pregnancy from rape. Clearly he had so little contact with women he confused them with ducks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨little hopper⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Roaming the earth means roaming all - or at least a very significant portion of - the earth, not some very isolated region. So I would say yes - if some tiny population of mammoths was still alive in some limited area at this time, they were not ‘roaming the earth’.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people in this day in age become nazis/neonazies sexist or even incels when there is so much knowledge against it? Do they get anything out of being that way?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Consider this question: how is it that anyone under the age of 40 today has ever smoked?

  By the time they were born, the bad effects of smoking were well understood. By the time they were teenagers, not smoking should have been as obvious as not jumping in front of a train. People already addicted find it difficult to quit, but it in no way explains anyone starting.

  The question is different and yet very similar, because the things you mention wind up in a similar way. Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to. And these things you mention are much easier to fall into than smoking because parents, family, etc are all pushing it on people. Smokers generally aren’t pushing their kids, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc to smoke, and somehow smoking still proliferates to some degree, just consider how much more difficult to avoid it is for those whose families are actively encouraging them to fall into these methods of belief and hate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So it begins...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lex Luthor is actually a super genius. And he can actually improve the world tremendously, such as in Red Son.

  That said, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg was still a more positive and likeable character than Elon Musk.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon needs help reading a social situation⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seriously? From the story, anon did everything right.

  Saw potential interest, acted on it in a nonthreatening way, when no positive response came, took it as a rejection and did not harass or continue pursuing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon tries to be ethical⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The irony being that the person who rates themselves as unethical is actually likely to be one of the most ethical people answering; someone truly unethical would’ve lied about it in the first place, or failed to even notice or acknowledge their unethicalness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon breaks up⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So I do see how there could be a preference for a ‘shower’ because a big, well-formed dick is aesthetically pleasing even when soft.

  Not that I can imagine any real person would be so hung up on this one detail for that to be a real deal-breaker in a relationship.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon goes to PE class⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, it’s well understood that there’s a host of health benefits from regular exercise, and it’s also pretty well established that habits built during youth tend to be the most ‘sticky’ that we continue for the rest of our lives.

  Given these two facts, I suspect that there are in fact studies that show those who participate in regular exercise programs during their school years are more likely to maintain a higher level of fitness and gain the derived health benefits.

  That said, it’s likely a small but statistically significant increase, not a massive easily observable difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Knife vs. Gun Control?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Because so-called second amendment advocates are really just gun nuts, and so over the years they have worked hard to maintain the right to keep and bear guns, rather than arms.

  Thus knives, swords, halberds, maces, and all other ‘arms’ have had restrictions go unchallenged, or at least, not challenged by an extensive and well funded network of advocacy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨why isn't anyone calling for Trump to drop out.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And yet, instead of answering a simple question, you’ve launched into a ‘if only we could change the past’ screed.

  If there was a good answer to the question, people like you would just answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who would win: every human in the world vs. every animal in the world?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think ‘going’ anywhere would be an option. If you’re in basically, most of the civilized world, and not in a very secure structure, you’re immediately fucked. I said more than 50% but I guessed that as a very conservative estimate. We don’t normally realize just how many living things are around us, mostly bugs, but also small rodents and the like. If every one of those within a significant radius of every human suddenly went berserk and wanted the humans dead, most people are not in areas where the number of attackers would permit much survival.

  Those who currently live in certain desert environments, in certain cold environments, and so forth, would probably survive the first day, and then might have a hope of making it longer. But most environments in which there isn’t enough animal/bug life around to immediately kill you present serious other problems such as food supply. If you live at McMurdo Sound Antarctica, you’re probably not going to immediately be killed. But you will soon have issues feeding yourself and keeping warm.

  People in Iceland or northern Norway and other similar places might have the best chances. Probably not quite enough things around to kill everyone immediately, but the environment is one in which they might be able to become self-sufficient, but in the long term I have my doubts even for them. If the bugs and animals and such are so focused on killing humans that they no longer perform their normal functions, then you’re looking at immediate and total ecological collapse. If they’re not, then the population of bugs and animals will increase in all areas other than the most extreme environments, and sooner or later what few humans survived in those extreme environments are going to have to attempt to emerge.

  If humans had prep time, maybe. Assuming we could get over our normal difficulties cooperating and actually prepare for the event. There’d at least be a lot of survivors. But if it came as a surprise, suddenly someone flips a switch and the entire animal kingdom is trying to make every single one of us dead? We’re pretty much fucked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who would win: every human in the world vs. every animal in the world?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If this means that every animal immediately goes berserk and tries to kill all humans, and ‘animal’ includes bugs, then the animals probably win.

  Those people in relatively secure places without enough animals when it starts could survive, but there’s probably be 50% or higher casualties among the general human population in less than a day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stellaris gets a DLC about AI that features AI-created voices, director insists it's 'ethical' and 'we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves'⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, as long as people keep focusing on fighting the technology instead of fighting capitalism, this is true.

  So we can fight the technology and definitely lose, only to see our efforts subverted to further entrench capitalism and subjugate us harder (hint: regulation on this kind of thing disproportionately affects individuals while corporations carve out exceptions for themselves because ‘it helps the economy’)…

  Or we can embrace the technology and try to use it to fight capitalism, at which point there’s at least a chance we might win, since the technology really does have the potential to overcome capitalism if and only if we can spread it far enough and fast enough that it can’t be controlled or contained to serve only the rich and powerful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Archaeology⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like it should be simpler: did the culture the body came from have good enough records in other ways that we would be unlikely to learn anything by digging up the body that we couldn’t learn by studying other records? Then leave it alone.

  If they failed to keep good enough records, and knowledge would be gained by the study, then study away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨pick your side⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Science is blue because in every 4x game I’ve ever played the science icons are some form of blue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Soup⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lucky? From some of the other comments it sounds like you may be referencing something, but just taking the comment at face value, there is no way that is not the most horrific fate I can possibly imagine.

  Assuming you’re not conscious the entire time and only ‘wake up’ when you enter a solar system to study, it’s still horrific. You wake up, completely alone. You have no body and cannot move, and your attention is directed toward gathering data on some distant points of light. When you understand what’s going on, sure, there’s a bit of a sense of wonder…but it quickly becomes tedium, maddening, isolated tedium, as you slowly drift through a star system, gathering data on each planet and its star, over the course of fifty years or so. There’s certainly bits of interesting stuff, but we are still talking insane levels of isolation and boredom. Assuming you’re somehow prevented from going insane by the software in order to keep you functional, you can’t even escape into madness.

  …and then we imagine what happens if you aren’t shown the mercy of being conscious only during the few decades the probe is drifting through a solar system. What if you’re conscious the. entire. time. Once you’re in deep interstellar space, you’re alone. Able to think, perceive, experience, but in an unchanging, static existence. A year passes, and everything is so close to exactly the same that only with the precision of the measurements your tools can take can you determine there’s been any change. Ten years pass, then a hundred, a thousand. You drift, slowly, through interstellar space toward a destination impossibly far away, all while you wait, conscious, unable to die, unable to escape into madness, just…eternal…waiting. Until thankfully you finally enter a target solar system, get a few blessed decades of what, to your new perspective, seems like frantic activity. Something, finally, to do, to see, that actually changes. And then…you drift back out into interstellar space after a few gravity-assisted slingshots around this star system’s worlds, only to proceed on to your next destination, another several thousand year journey away.

  This is, by far, the most horrific imaginable torture.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not happening, dude⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of them, sure, but there are a lot of stories of how many lies recruiters will tell you to get you to sign on, so a pretty significant number are genuinely bad people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨History time: Instantly adjustable…⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If I’m not mistaken, adjusting lug refers to twisting a part of the handle; a similar design of razor my grandfather had, not as old as that one but still old, had such an adjustment. It wasn’t the same part that held the blade down, the blade was still fully secured and supported after doing this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are very few humans who would not be depressed if they were the last person on earth. Even the most introverted among us are still, well, human.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baldur's Gate 4 Isn't Next For Larian; Something Bigger Is Coming | Spot On | Gamespot⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They could turn that into a running theme, like how every Elder Scrolls protagonist is a prisoner to start with…

  But Divinity already has a long history and so does Baldur’s Gate so…ehh, doesn’t fit in quite as well. Maybe with a new IP they make it a tradition for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Square Enix’s president says it will be ‘aggressive in applying’ AI⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is actually what I look forward to most in gaming in the next decade or two. The implementation of AI that can be assigned goals and motivations instead of scripted to every detail. Characters in games with whom we as players can have believable conversations that the devs didn’t have to think of beforehand. If they can integrate LLM type AI into games successfully, it’ll be a total game changer in terms of being able to accommodate player choice and freedom.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Assuming the earth is flat, how many people are part of the conspiracy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If I understand correctly they have some kind of explanation where the sun works like a spotlight or something. But it also requires light to curve in weird ways to make any damn sense, soooo…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve put in 2000+ hours on Civilization IV, Stellaris, and Skyrim, and 1000+ on several other titles. So, since I could quite happily never purchase another game again, and simply play those games until I die, let’s use them as our baseline for what the cost should be, shall we? Assuming they cost $120 each (maybe a little low on Stellaris when you count all the DLC, and definitely high on Civ IV) I’ve played each of them for about 2,000 hours…that means I should expect to pay $0.06 per hour. Heck, let’s be generous! Let’s count Stellaris, with ALL of its DLC, at the price it currently is, without being on sale (except for one that’s at 10% off. I’ve bought most of the DLC on various sales of at least 30% off, but let’s try pricing all games as though they cost this much. That’s about $335. Which still comes out to $0.16 an hour. Not bad, I’ll take it!

  Granted, since most games don’t hold me for 2,000 hours, most games aren’t going to get that much out of me. I sometimes buy new games at a $60 to $70 price point. So, the average game would have to hold me for 375 hours in order to make the same amount I pay for it now. Which means in my entire Steam library, there are a mere 12 games that would reach that threshold of getting equal or greater than the $60 I’m willing to occasionally pay these days.

  I’m all for it! Most of my games would drop considerably in price, even at $0.16 an hour!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, for most games which you actually choose to continue playing, enjoyment per hour must be at or above a certain threshold otherwise you’d stop playing.