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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: September 28th, 2023

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  • It might disappoint you to learn that among american english speakers, literacy isn’t a good indication of maturity by age. Barbara Bush made a literacy initiative that’s still around, the One Good Thing® left over from the bush regime. The site has a handy map to show you the 40-60% adult literacy rate counties spread all over the states. It definitely helped me come to terms with the fact that sometimes a kid who is trying is gonna be more eloquent than an adult repeating the same tired take they’ve been rebutted for a thousand times.

    It’s easier for me personally to gauge age as it scales up when anonymity is involved - referential humor, recognizance of the ancient runes (Duckroll, Bill Murray’s face with only the jaw moving), and informed chitchat about presidential behavior predating Bush SR are all dead giveaways that a user is older, but with younger users you have a lot of hobby/interest overlap going all the way up to people in their 40s. You can’t look someone in the eyes and see if the light of youth has gone out yet on forums and imageboards.






  • As a US citizen I am painfully aware that I could dip down to mexico and buy a competent EV at 35~40k USD value in MXN. Alternatives in the states, even produced here, are upwards of 50k for the poverty model. Maybe the engine itself is cheaper, but the vehicles absolutely are not (unless you are being denied options by your government as part of an ongoing slap fight).



  • Sure the industry is gaining money, but you’re ignoring specific company shutdowns and restrictions that shaped the industry out of the hands of certain players. There have been a lot of regulatory fingers in the pie, particularly above state level, that weren’t aimed at making the populace safer but instead at making those companies unable to produce or sell their most popular products. There’s also a lot of legal language bites like “e-cigarette” and “open container” that are seeing non-uniform interpretation in legal states, across vape legislature and cannabis legislature alike.

    Draconic legislature isn’t quite turning the country into a hellscape for consumers, sure. But it’s clearly a possible side effect that isn’t being considered, especially as states are beginning to take it upon themselves to start outlawing studied hemp-derived cannabinoids (like delta8/10 or THC-P or THC-A) that are provided for under the 2018 farm bill.

    Tl;Dr while the industry is growing, it’s clear it has enemies with legal power and that’s the crux of the complaint.






  • I don’t pen a word without 20 hours invested in the game unless it is a short title. I talk about the game with friends conversationally to get my thoughts in order, then I actually do a write-up if the game seems to deserve some word-of-mouth for innovation or refined design.

    Sometimes, 20 hours isn’t enough for a game’s whole story, and it needs further investment to have a real analysis of scope - path of exile, elite:dangerous, any given mmo or fighting game, some 4x and rts, plenty of titles have zoomed-out takes that really take familiarity to understand.

    Nothing bothers me more than clear beginner takes on a game written flippantly. Impossible to tell if someone is sharing an experience or just parroting what they read about the game when people talk about some titles recently, like gaming discussion has become infected at large by /v/ bandwagon culture.

    It’s rare, but sometimes in talking or writing out how a game felt to play, I kind of change my mind about the experience. In the past few years I had the opportunity to just pick up a bunch of AAA titles as they dropped frivolously, since I sold a lot of dota 2 items from early TI events for mad steam bucks. I’ve noticed new IP in particular get a lot of hate from people who didn’t play the game at all and decided that without seeing any actual gameplay whatsoever, and going in to them I was kind of flippant myself, but by the end of the experience the gameplay always matters more than whatever the huge negative press cycle is focused on. Shitty dialogue? Level design woes? Random focus on a feature the genre typically does not have anyway? Sure, whatever, but I hardly remember anything from a game except for where the fun was derived when all is said and done.

    Stephen King said the secret to being a good writer was to “Read a lot, write a lot” and keep that up. If you want to articulate your thoughts about a game, or even just improve at playing one, the same concept (practice) works all around here. I’m not going to say a disciplined approach is required for truth or validity, especially when it comes to games, but it sure helps you reach it in ways that literally just repeating what other people are saying cannot.

    Play Outer Wilds.