I did eventually win but holy hell, was it really necessary to make those little rats get you like 70% of the way to toxic every time they graze you

Still working my way through Dark Souls II. Aside from a couple frustrating parts it’s been really fun, I wish I had played it when it was new instead of being a little hater so I could enjoy the online more. Other than that I’ve been getting back into Super Smash Bros. Melee a bit. I’ve been flirting with the idea of organizing tournaments that requires masks because I’d really like to play at locals again but the community here is really shitty about COVID safety (and accessibility in general tbh)

Girl who becomes anti-authoritarian because the Royal Rat Authority is making her too angry

There’s a pretty big leap between “Most posting happens during work hours” and “Many federal civil service workers spend most of their workdays complaining about their jobs on Reddit.” It’s not like it matters if people are shit posting at work all day anyways but their data doesn’t even back up what they are saying.

I don’t necessarily disagree that people in the US would take a bird flu pandemic with a much higher fatality rate than COVID more seriously. I do think it’s worth pointing out that COVID is still a serious problem that the vast majority of people are ignoring even if they know it means putting their well-being at risk. Even according to the CDC, COVID has been killing an average of 525 people in the US a week over the last 12 weeks. To compare, gun violence deaths minus suicides in the US in 2024 was about 319 deaths per week. It’s also well known at this point that even a “mild” COVID infection comes with significant risks of long term complications, from a severely increased chance of heart attack and stroke, to neurological issues, to damage to the immune system, and more.

Obviously it is not killing as many people as it did early in the pandemic, nor is it anywhere near 10% CFR, but it is still something that people should be concerned over and yet are not. I’ve talked to many people who know these things, who agree that COVID is still something worth worrying about, and yet do not mask or even keep their vaccines up to date. These are normal people, not even your Q-Anon freaks. It worries me to imagine having to rely on those same people in the potential bird flu pandemic.

this is more effective long term as well, because it can be used as propaganda against the effectiveness of “socialism”

However, people who are still harboring viewpoints that are in favor of imperialism should not be allowed on this site. If users like this do a lot of self crit and acknowledge their mistakes, I would not be apposed to them being here. However, users who actively believe that the U$ military is not a reactionary force, and that its soldiers should be treated with any level of respect should never be able to make it past account creation.

This isn’t representative of frauddog at all though? Like maybe I’m misunderstanding something but it sounds like you are saying this is the kind of person frauddog is and that’s obviously untrue. Frauddog joined the military as a teenager, and now as an adult is very aggressively against imperialism and colonialism. It’s not like null is an active troop secretly infiltrating this place. I think null should have had more humility in void’s last interaction on this site, like obviously having been part of the us military is pretty fucking shameful even if you were ignorant at the time, but it’s really bothering me how people have been acting as though null was like, a secret fed who actually loves the us military or some shit. And it’s frustrating to me that this is how null went out, because null had been talking about wanting to delete for a while due to the frequent racism from white users on this site, but since it went down like this if feels like that racism, that continues to harm users here, is being ignored in favor of pointing out a gotcha about a user they didn’t like. Idk, I know my thoughts are disorganized here but hopefully I’m making sense.

Why does it matter if the site looks less active than it is? It’s not like there would actually be a difference in the amount of activity if someone made a post in the trans community vs a comment in the trans mega, and the megas themselves are pinned to the top of the feed so I think they would be tough to miss. Personally, if posting in the megas were discouraged I would just post less, because I don’t feel the sort of things I comment in the megas would make good standalone posts. They are more like light chats or just talking about some stuff that happened that day, things like that.

The news mega would be the exception in my opinion, I do think that there’s often stuff posted in there that would be worth it’s own post, but I also don’t think it’s a big enough problem to warrant mods intervening.

Oh, and my pinball grind continues as well! I’ve learned a few techniques and I’m actually getting to the point where I can keep a game going for a bit and aim the ball intentionally, though I still miss my target a lot of the time.

I started Dark Souls II and made a cartoonish fancy butler type guy because I’m planning on doing a dex build to change it up from my usual build in these games (all strength caveman), and a goofy posh asshole seemed like the appropriate form for that. I also started 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for when I’m not feeling up to getting my head smashed in. Plus handheld gaming is always nice for the commute home.

As far as virtual pinball goes, Visual Pinball X is a FOSS simulator and works great. Agreed that it can be an expensive hobby though. I’m pretty poor and even playing in arcades is too expensive for me to do regularly. I can’t imagine ever owning a table, or even one of those faux tables that looks like a real machine but is actually just a simulation.

Espgaluda, or really any Cave game imo but I especially like this one and MAME is the best way to play it. The slowdown in the CV1000 games isn’t very accurate*, but everything else should emulate great. Battle Garegga is another good game if you are a sicko.

*You can lower the CPU speed in the settings for those games and it makes it feel good enough, but it’s still not really accurate and there’s not just a default Good setting for it either. Usually around 50% is close enough iirc.

Up on your thumb feels pretty comfortable imo since you mostly just need it for jumping. It’s rough if you play a character that has 360 inputs or something like that though. Hitbox style controllers in SSBM put up on your right pinky by default, that was tough for me to get used to…

oh idk what this is about, i was just talking about the one post that was 4 hours ago in your screenshot

Maybe they mean it goes in slop? I do wish that mods would say what the right community is when they remove posts for being in the wrong one.

Yeah I mean idk it might just be buzzword shit anyways, I don’t know if they are even talking about an llm or what. Just struck me as a red flag. In any case it’s no worse than anything amazon is doing

I haven’t tried it, but the fact that they brag about their machine learning ai in big bold letters on their front page already makes me not want to give it a chance lol. I use BookWyrm for tracking what I read and it gets the job done, but I don’t think it would be very useful for recommendations, and it doesn’t have a stats page unfortunately.

You do hit a certain point where you basically can’t lose though, especially if you use Shield Maiden block build.

Shield Maiden is so silly lol. Granted I’ve only done one run as her, but I was excited to try a new character since she wasn’t in the game the last time I had played. Then I built up enough block strength that I noticed I could just stand still and realized maybe I don’t want to play this character… The idea of being so tanky that nothing can hurt you is kinda fun but in practice it just feels like, if I can put my controller down and let the game play itself for a minute while I sip my drink, then what’s the point of playing a game where the whole appeal is dodging swarms of enemies?

I couldn’t fight off the urge to start something new so Final Fantasy VI is on the back burner for now. In its place I’ve started Cave Story, which I’ve only played about 2 hours of so far but I’ve been enjoying. Other than that I’ve been on a big pinball kick. There’s a table at my work that I found a good virtual recreation of, so I’ve been learning the mechanics and practicing in the hopes that I can get on the leaderboard. I only need 30 or 40 million to get on there, I can’t remember which at the moment, and I’ve already gotten a little over 20 million as my personal best so I think with some more practice and a little luck I’ll get on there soon enough.

As for my favorite games I played for the first time this year:

As for games that actually came out this year, well, I barely played any… I guess Caves of Qud is pretty fun? I think I would really like it if I played more, but roguelikes where you play as the same character over several play sessions never really stick for me. Halls of Torment and Balatro have both been good for the occasional play session, but I’m not too excited about either. There was some cool looking stuff on my back log I meant to play that came out this year, but I never got around to them. Maybe next year!