southsamurai
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Can we be real for a minute?
The kind of companies involved in android may have started in the US, but they’re international.
Buy a Samsung, it isn’t like it only puts taxes into one country’s coffers. Same with Google, which is headquartered in the US, but their phones aren’t actually made here. So you skip pixel devices, and feel all good about it, but if you actually get enough people boycotting them, it isn’t the us that takes the hit. It won’t even hit the pockets of the shareholders.
Who would take the hit is the people at the bottom, making the hardware, and that’s going to be whatever country has people willing/forced to work for bare minimum.
Some things, yeah, you can completely boycott and only US companies take the hit, which still isn’t really going to hit a big enough company because most of them are an international conglomerate’s property anyway. It might fuck over something like Arizona Iced Tea since that’s still a family owned company. But anything that’s publicly traded? Nah, it’s theater unless you boycott everything that conglomerate owns, and it ain’t like any of the nestle botcotts have hurt their bottom line in the decade or so it’s been going.
Phones though? There’s nothing you can buy that isn’t going to enrich Google in one way or another, at least indirectly. You can get close. Pine phones, fairphone, stuff like that where you have the ability to cut them out. But even going with a pixel and cutting google out from out still has feedback effect into Google’s influence via the secondary market keeping their brand with higher values, making their hardware look better than it is.
I get it, the shit is stirring, and you want to slap back.
But the only real way to slap back for real is to abandon smart phones. Some of those, android free, you can cut things down and maybe avoid sending funds into us coffers. LG dumb phones still exist on the secondary market, and they were decent. So I don’t doubt there’s other brands out there making phones that are decoupled enough that it might only be pennies instead of dollars.
Nah, no judgement at all!
I think part of that gap is whether or not the retirement is a choice, and how much you can engage in life.
See, for you, you actually still have a “job”. You have a shape to your life, a purpose, a structure.
As people get older, there’s less of that. And, sometimes less ability to engage in the fun stuff.
It’s all situational, really.
Yeah, rocket league is a sport game more than anything else, technically.
And, yeah, most rpgs are going to be better than all but the best sports games. It’s the sameness factor. One baseball game is much like another in what you’ll see and do on screen.
Not that rpgs can’t get samey, but they’re less so
Waaay obscure, but one of the few board games I’ve ever really enjoyed is solarquest.
I’ve played plenty of the usual board games over the years. They just weren’t anything I ever played because I wanted to play them. It was something to do, and people seem to naturally gravitate towards card and board games.
I had a chess phase in my younger days. I still play checkers checkers from time to time. “Chinese” checkers too, along with go. But those are still things that I’ll suggest when I’m with someone and looking for something to do while bullshitting.
I hate Life, and only play monopoly with the understanding that when I’m done with it, I’m going to give everything I have to whoever is the most behind. Sorry is okay, as is parcheesi.
But solarquest, I’ll find people willing to play with me because I like it. That and heroquest, but heroquest isn’t really a board game the way I think of the term, it’s a constrained ttrpg.
Both of those, my mom got me for Christmas after I begged for them, and I’ve never once been disappointed with them. I got both of them the year they came out, so we’re talking decades of play with both.
Heroquest, I used as a board with the figures good my d&d play for a long time as well as playing it as its own game.
Heroquest is cooperative, so I can definitely recommend it for low to zero conflict play. You’re uncovering a map, finding treasure, building a character. It’s d&d lite, in the best way. Original versions are expensive, but there’s a ton of printable versions out there, and it was rereleased in 2021.
Solarquest is essentially space themed monopoly on the surface. But, beyond your pieces being rockets and the concept of buying up parts of the solar system, there’s the flight mechanics where you have to have the fuel to go from one planet to the next. It adds a layer of thought and fun to it. Plus, you’re learning some local astronomy.
There’s rules for laser fights, and special roll actions, available as optional rules. It’s just fun. There’s an updated version available with more recent astronomy, fancier supplies and such, but I haven’t bought it yet.
Both of them are games I play with other old farts, as well as kids of all ages. I genuinely can’t recommend either of them enough.
Eh, going back at least as far as his real world days, he’s always been about being edgy and asinine. I’ve never heard of him directly fucking people over, but I can’t call him nice just because he uses a degree of manners in public.
It isn’t about his political views, idgaf about that as far as this subject goes. Until you get into actual extremists, the kind of right or left wing folks that make up the bulk of things tend to not be assholes in their day to day behavior. They don’t often pound their pulpit non stop, or publicly and directly bash any given group. Theo is like that, in that regard. It’s about him generally behaving as though he has some need to stir shit to feel like he’s funny.
No expandable memory, that’s the unforgivable sin.
But the form factor is unwieldy, no headphone jack, software dependent cameras, meh battery life, barely acceptable actual call quality as regards voice clarity, mid tier audio as regards music.
Now, the rest of the hardware isn’t bad on any given model compared to similarly priced phones. They use good glass, the radios all work well, and the processors are usually good picks.
I haven’t had a chance to fuck around with every model year. But they have consistently been a disappointment with call quality on the ones I’ve used, and the ones other people have used that I spoke to over a phone. That’s pretty damn bad by itself. Not so bad as to be unusable, but we’re talking having to pay attention closely in the worst cases.
Right now, nothing tops paprika.
It’s relatively expensive, even more so if you want it on multiple platforms as each one is a new purchase.
But there’s simply nothing out there better, period, much less on android. Better organization, better webclipping, better editing, better everything.
I tried every android recipe manager, and most of the windows based ones, plus some on iOS since my wife has the one flaw of preferring that (just joking, I ain’t mad at people preferring a brand) ecosystem.
Nothing could do everything paprika could do, and most of them didn’t do any single thing better.
Tangent!
I used to prefer being DPS. And then I played the first game that made healers and tanks fun for me. Shaiya. Wasn’t the best game overall. Kinda bad, and a ripoff of some parts of WoW. But it was fun to heal in, and very fun to tank in. You really could change the entire gameplay based on how you tanked, and how you healed.
Then I moved over to battle/war of the immortals. Again, flawed games, but tanking and healing were fun. Healing more than tanking in those two, but still more fun than DPS.
When I switched over to Neverwinter as my main gaming focus, the way they had the classes be able to handle tanking and/or healing was the most fun I’d ever had playing in PUGs. I could pop onto my haste cleric, keep everyone alive while also boosting them and put out play damage solo. Paladin? Same idea, only the team wouldn’t get hit much if at all. The fighter class was essentially pure tank, and good at it, but not as much fun as paladin for me.
I had more fun playing supports, heals and tanks than I ever did on DPS. It didn’t hurt that, on the games I played, I was great at tanking and healing. Enough so that my guilds/alliances would plan events around my schedule, even when the people were on the other side of the planet. Even on Shaiya, which was totally pay to win, I could out heal and out tank players that dumped tons of cash into it.
I miss it sometimes, but I’d have to rebuild my gaming PC to be able to play neverwinter now, because no way am I starting completely over on the ps5 with a controller that makes it much harder to play those classes. And none of the console based MMOs really entice me currently.
In general, it isn’t about waiting for prices to drop, though that’s definitely a part. It’s more about avoiding early adoption, imo. Waiting until there’s some degree of information about the game that isn’t marketing, then deciding.
The goal is to make sure the game is stable, that it’s something you actually want to play, and avoiding hype based playing. If the price drops, or there’s a sale, that’s icing on the cake.
In the case of visual novels, I don’t really think it applies. The only thing you’ll really avoid by waiting is any bugs that need fixing, and they aren’t prone to a lot of bugs that break the enjoyment of the story. It does happen, but it isn’t like the usual mobile game bugfest at launches.
I’m in the “if I can’t avoid them, I’m not playing the game long” camp.
I don’t hate them, and they can be fun. But most of the games that do them make them impossible to bypass. Like others have already said, when you’re questing, they just derail the gameplay experience. There’s times that’s okay, but if a game has them often enough, it ends up making me hate the game and quit.
It’s why I don’t go back an replay the final fantasy stuff.
Tangential.
Kosa would be a huge impact to all internet activity, and that puts the subject under technology laws/politics.
Afaik, the C/ allows tangential tech subjects, it doesn’t have to purely be hardware and software, things that effect our ability to use technology fits.
Edit: double checked, and the rules don’t exclude tangential subjects.
It’s too basic.
No folders, no ability to freely arrange things, so your app drawer is everything, and unorganized. Same with the home screen.
Which, I guess that might actually work for an eink device now that I think about it (just bought a poke 5 myself), particularly one that’s only going to be used as an ereader rather than a general purpose tablet with an eink screen.
There’s just a minimum degree of organization that becomes a problem when it isn’t there, and the device needs to be easy to use. But, yeah, I think you may have just countered my “useless” opinion. It might well be perfect for that use case, both in its bare minimum features, and how lightweight it is.
Damn. I finally got around to reading the article. That’s a hell of a story.
I can believe either main possibility though. It’s possible the dude just has a type, and a lot of really strange coincidence in his life. Unlikely that so many perfect coincidences exist, but not totally impossible (I’ve seen some weird shit in my fifty years).
It’s also totally believable that someone would create alternate identities for any number of reasons, some of which aren’t necessarily bad, though the degree to which it went is out of line if that’s the case. But I kinda doubt it was done fully benignly if that’s what the truth is.
And, I guess there’s always the possibility of a mix of those, with one or more of the three dubious people being real, and the rest fake.
But dude nuking everything online is super suspicious.
Pacman
Okay, I’m old, sue me.
But that game was my thing back in the eighties. And I wad good at it. Maybe not national best tier, and definitely not world tier, but it was not unusual for me to keep high scores on it that never got beat. The one actual arcade in town, I was never bumped off at all, nobody in town came close. I can’t recall the gap but it was enough higher that there was an extra digit between me and the next highest.
The arcade over in the nearest city, the gap was nowhere near as big, but it was there.
Even when I visited my cousin in Charlotte one summer, I took top spot on the machine there, though it did get beat later on. But I never went below third, at least at the time my cousin stopped going there.
There wasn’t much I was good at that was showy back then. I wrecked shit in spelling bees, and was a decent beatbox (though only decent). Nobody gave a shit about those. I’d play pacman and have a crowd watching. It was fucking awesome for my confidence at the time.
Wasn’t too bad at centipede either, but I would hover up and down in top ten at the two arcades I could visit regular, which isn’t that impressive if you know the game.
So, yeah, I’d go and watch pacman players if the event was close enough. I’d even try my hand at it if I didn’t have to go up against kids with their rassafrassin better reflexes lol.
People answer phones?
It’s a meme among people that know me that you pretty much have to leave a message if a text won’t do. I genuinely can’t remember the last phone call I answered. Thinking back, it was when my dad was having surgery, and they give calls with updates. That was maybe three years ago?
But I’ve been doing that since I got my first answering machine back in the nineties. I fucking hate talking on the phone. Even as a teenager, if it wasn’t someone I was having sex with, it wasn’t going to be a long call. The only exceptions were my two best friends, and my grandmother. One grandmother just didn’t call to chat. The other only called rarely, and you don’t fucking ignore your grandmother. Neither grandfather was going to call either. My mom’s dad would drive over if he wanted to talk about something with one of us. The other was dead.
There are two people I would answer a call from, my wife and my best friend. But they’d never call outside of an emergency because they know I hate phones for talking. I probably would for my dad, but he hates phones almost as much as I do.
Go scroll through the C/ for a bit, check the titles of posts, the kind of posts made.
This post is pretty far off topic for the C/, and is about a streamer, not gaming and games directly. Since C/ rules are set against streaming links entirely, that’s another layer of this post being off topic.
It is tangentially gaming related, but I would say that it doesn’t belong on this C/, and needs a down vote here, if not actually removed.
Yeah, this is the wrong place to post this. It’s tangential at best to technology as whole.
That being said, it is an important issue, and I would suggest posting it in the places another user suggested.
I have a whole mini diatribe about formal english vs colloquial and how formal will eventually catch up on this matter, but this isn’t the C/ for it. So holla at me if/when you post it elsewhere and you’re interested in that take.
My gen-x ass plays games with my millennial wife and gen-z kid. Sometimes, my mom plays too, so add a technical baby boomer to the mix. Technical because she came in at the tail end of it; they’re sometimes called generation Jones or some other weird shit.
Hell, My grandmother tried playing some games with the kids of the family back in the original Nintendo days. Didn’t quite have the patience for Mario and such, but she put in some effort just to understand. My grandfather wrecked us at duck hunt though. Only game he would play, but the guy was a competitive shooter, and his skill translated to the game well.
Having fun with people you love is just goodness. Board games, video games, card games, ttrpgames, whatever it is, try and be open to things, and you’ll have fun together.
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Sure, but intent does matter.
As does the structure of the comment/conversation.
For me, if I’m trying to convince someone as the intent, I go about it different than if I’m expressing my thoughts/opinions and if it ends up convincing them, that’s okay, but it’s also okay if it doesn’t.