Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
No bio...
User ID: 214
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
Definitely a lot of Genshin in the DNA of the art. I’ll probably get used to it thought
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
That makes sense to me. Last year I saw a Skyrim modding tool that let modders synthesize new voice lines from an AI that listened to and mimicked the lines of the in-game voice actors. It was rough but surprisingly solid, especially if you put in the time to chop up the lines by hand to make them flow better. I figured that if modders could do it (for free) then the actual industry must have something like that cooking.
I'm convinced that the HODL meme is a sociopathic way for current bagholders to get others to raise the price of their investment to the ideal cash out point. Many of the people who bought at the bottom made out with lifechanging money.
A lot of them though, yeah. They're just idiots. I begged my friend to sell his Gamestop stocks at his buy-in price when the stock rallied back up to it, but he held on for the MOASS and is now in the red. I don't know what can be done to protect those types, short of just not allowing them to spend their money on stupid things, which opens up a new host of (worse) issues. As the adage goes, "a fool and his money are soon parted."
EDIT: I may be undervaluing the clout you get in these communities for HODLing and hanging on well past when you should have sold. For some people, the money may not even matter and it’s more about the clout and fun of fucking around with like minded men with a normally serious topic like investing. Again, not my thing, but for some that may be worth it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I've been playing Rimworld, which feels appropriate given the circumstances. I did a run last year with Royatly installed, which was nice but felt more like a well-polished mod. This time I have Ideology installed, which makes the game feel complete, to put it simply. Being able to modify how colonists think with a dynamic ideology you can convert others to is both fun and feels true to what the game is trying to be. It's worth playing again with it installed if you've done one run but haven't been back to it.
I'm also running more mods than I've done before, at least on Rimworld. I'm quite into modding Bethesda games and have made a few simple mods for myself in Skyrim, and while that process has gotten more user-friendly over time, if you really want to get into it you're going to have to do a lot of reading and be prepared to get hands on with it. Rimworld's mod support is... shockingly good. Compatibility is rarely an issue as long as the mod maker has updated to the latest version of the game. It remembers your mod order for each save and will automatically regenerate it for you if it detects a difference. It's so nice.
Some of the standout ones are the Rimworld of Magic, Vanilla Expanded, Outposts, and Rim War. I did a tribal start which kneecaps your tech growth and is much tougher overall than a drop run. Combined with ideology it really feels like you're some group of tribals that has broken off and is doing its own weird thing. Rimworld of Magic interacts with Ideology so my tribe venerates magic and has a priestess that can awaken the spark of magic in colonists to let them eventually become one of the (overpowered) magic classes the mod adds. Extremely cool. I've teched to electricity but I've kept the colony electricity-free, letting magic serve our needs as we move through the midgame.
Outposts and Rim War gives you a dynamic, warring world to play around in and raid. One of my pawns has a spell that lets him teleport in our attack squad of powerful gun-wielding mages to annihilate rival resource outposts and colonies, forgoing the need to caravan over there. The magic is definitely OP but it feels like our small group's unique advantage that lets us punch above our weight despite the low numbers and lack of electric tech.
Still not near the victory condition yet. I might eventually get electricity, but we'll have to see. I may try to wipe out my rival tribe instead. Rimworld is proving to be one of my favorite games of all time at this rate.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I view it as more akin to the printing press, game development engines, digital art tools like photoshop — something that will increase creative output, not decrease it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
9d ago
I don’t believe it’s been covered here, at least not recently. I’d certainly be interested in hearing about it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1mo ago
Very true. I didn't prioritize Kawakami and even skipped Chihaya in my first run because I was so peeved about getting scammed by her, and this time around knowing who to prioritize made things go much more smoothly for me. Jose and Ryuji's reworked instakill make it trivial to farm money and XP. I'm not complaining too much as I like having the money to fuck around with Persona crafting, but I wish there was a way to only get the money so I wasn't overleveling the content so much.
The scenes introducing the new characters could be awkward, but I can accept why they had to be inserted in like that. Maruki was handled much better than Yoshizawa so far, and I agree with you that her scene in the casino was goofy and makes zero sense. For me, all of the followup phone conversations tacked on to every confidant or how the Phantom Thieves start a new groupchat every day to gush about how evil their current target is wore very thin.
Makoto was one of my favorites originally, but she really gets on my nerves now. She becomes the main character once she joins, and I wish the game didn't feel obliged to pretend that Joker is the leader since she it's so clear that she is. The way the Phantom Thieves are so thoughtlessly cruel to Mishima rubs me the wrong way too, since the narrative never acknowledges how hypocritical it makes them look. I still love Haru, Ryuji, Yusuke, Akechi, and my favorites from the first time around though.
I have high hopes for the new semester. I was spoiled ahead of time on the direction it takes and it seems quite interesting. I did follow a guide to make sure I wasn't missing any of the triggers for it, though.
Haha, I fused Izanagi and Kaguya in the early game before I realized how busted all of the DLC personas were and dropped them. It's a shame, because they have cool designs, but it feels like cheating to use them for combat or itemization. If they were a bit weaker it'd feel better to use.
My main squad is Jack Frost, Pale Rider, Titania, Seth, Bugs, and Alice. I'll say that having the means to keep personas you like relevant past the dungeon you fuse them is a great mechanic. Theorycrafting their movesets to cover every situation and going through the steps to get the builds online scratches a certain itch. I'm thinking of adding Metatron or training up Kaguya now that her ability isn't gamebreaking, but they won't be necessary to finish.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1mo ago
I'll have to see how Royal handles the original endgame content post-Shido to compare. I don't remember the original endgame being that bad, but the ideas in it definitely grabbed me so I could have overlooked any pacing flaws it had.
It's all the stuff Royal added to the original game that makes the pacing suffer for me. Like those pointless followup phone calls every confidant has where they repeat the ideas you just saw two minutes ago. The extra scenes for Kasumi, Akechi, and Maruki feel a bit out of place, but I like those characters enough that I don't mind too much.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
5mo ago
Try running Stable Diffusion. It's open source and you can find a specifically-trained model for whatever you want. If you can't run it locally, you can find a million services online that can do it for you. You don't need to deal with content restrictions or it adding diversity to all of your prompts. I use a site called NovelAI, which runs its own version of SD trained off of an anime booru. They recently put out a new version of the image gen and it's really good. The progress made since just the last year is astounding.
We could have easily been in the timeline where the big three image diffusion models (Dall E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney) all kept it locked down, but since one of them broke ranks and made it open source, it's opened up a world of potential for everyone to use image generation how they want.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
7mo ago
Usually 6 classes a semester, in addition to AP credits and 1-2 summer classes. I graduated in three years, which was bittersweet since college was a ton of fun and it took a while to get over missing that last year. On the other hand... tuition is expensive, and I'm glad to not have that year's worth of debt hanging over me.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
It’s kind of sad yet hilarious that it was somewhat of a plot twist and subversion of the current zeitgeist that the handsome cocky blonde guy was actually a loyal, genre-savvy, and courageous ally to the protagonists all along.
That really stood out to me. I remember hoping he would show up to help at the end and was quite pleased at how it turned out. It was notable because that kind of character is usually made the villain.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I plan on it, but I'm waiting a year or two for the unofficial patches, DLC, and good mods to get established. I'm hoping I enjoy or can at least stand the game design and writing, because it will be a big portent for how the next Elder Scrolls will turn out.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
Before going into Maverick I thought it would be a "legacy character passes the torch to the young, diverse successors" plot, as these sequels tend to be. The movie even teases this for a long time before surprising you with the opposite. One could say it... subverted expectations.
Tom Cruise movie trivia is always a hoot. In Mission Impossible: Fallout, he memorably broke his angle filming a stunt, but pushed through to finish the scene in absolute agony so as to not ruin the shot.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I'm certainly staying put even if they started taking recruits for the Mars colony tomorrow. But I don't mind taking the office job route you talked about, and I plan to get engaged soon. The pot is sweet enough in America that you can just coast if you're a certain type. That said:
all you need to do is study computer science and learn how to program (trivially easy) and you can make a comfortable living and essentially enjoy an easy and materially prosperous life. America is a place where trivial email jobs pay $100k a year. The young man doesn’t leave because, by being born an American, he has already won the lottery of life.
Come on. This is not trivially easy. It's easy if you have a high enough IQ and can put up with school and office life for 80% of your life. Even if we're talking about email jobs, that still selects for a certain level of agreeableness and conscientiousness. There are many people who simply lack the cognitive horsepower for this kind of work, and there's a large group of people for whom this is a living hell. I don't mind the work, but you must agree the modal office environment is very feminine.
My college friends are all capable of and okay with this route, but I have a lot of other friends from different backgrounds that this is not a viable path for. In any society, there will be people unhappy with the current order, but the rising trend in sexlessness and radicalism indicates that there are more unsatisfied people than normal right now. If there were a compelling alternative path, I think there'd be a lot less societal stress from men with unfulfilling lives.
Yeah that's a fantasy, and there are many good arguments for why space can't be the escape valve for those people, but my point was that such space aspirations were a frontier fantasy, not a utopian fantasy as OP was saying.
But very few Irish or German peasants in 1850 who emigrated to the US became wealthy or anything even close to it.
Their earnings potential was much better in America, no? That's why they came. They wouldn't die rich by the standards of landed European money, but they'd be wealthier than they ever would have been had they stayed in Europe. There was a legitimate reason to go, because there was a lot of "unclaimed" land and opportunity to die with some land and money, not a landless serf.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I feel you. Covid saw my job switch from wasting two hours of my life a day in commute time to fully remote. I suddenly got 8-10 hours of my life a week back. I moved out of state and took advantage of the extremely cheap flights to hop around the country visiting my family, friends, and (at the time long-distance) girlfriend. I could skip town for a week at a time without needing to take time off, since simply bringing my laptop was enough to work uninterrupted.
I’m still remote, but looking for new work and a lot of the places want hybrid employees. It’s hard to give up…
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I listen to most of my music through Youtube. It often shows me interesting new music in my recommended and in the automatically generated playlists.
Also, sometimes random other media will send you down a rabbit hole. I discovered They Might Be Giants when I was younger from them doing a partnered event with an MMO I played. The event’s story featured the band members and their music would play in the relevant zones.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
10mo ago
Everything since MAPPA took over making the show from WIT aka the “Final Season” which has pretty much been 3 seasons of content. Barring a few amazing scenes I really dislike what it did with the characters and themes of the story.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
10mo ago
I finished Divinity 2 this week and quite liked it, though I’m not sure I would rank it among my favorite RPGs yet. I loved the Red Prince though, he was a great companion.
My favorites include New Vegas, Three Houses, VTMB, Mass Effect (ME1>ME3>>>>>ME2).
The Elder Scrolls series is my favorite though, with Skyrim being my favorite game of all time. For all their faults, no RPG really offers what the TES games do. Witcher 3 has reactive storytelling, but in exchange for that you will always play Geralt with a preset story. In Skyrim, if you turn left out of Helgen you can have a whole play through without ever becoming the Dragonborn.
Granted, I mod Skyrim to its absolute limit to fix all my issues with it and revamp the mechanics. Oblivion also needs mods to fix the horrible leveling and item scaling situation. Morrowind ironically is the most playable unmodded, all you really need is a visual overhaul and bugfixes to dig into it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
You're correct with regards to TikTok's content moderation. It's more willing to serve you extremist content than current-day YouTube, but much more moderated than Elon Musk's Twitter. The posts linked are possibly only still up because the algorithm and human moderators aren't looking at MrBeast content with as much scrutiny as they are at Little Dark Age Hyperborean edits.
Still, it's interesting to see the posts up with that many likes. Usually the ban threshold for content like that is tripped before a post or account gets too big. Maybe there weren't enough user reports to flag them?
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I was hooked since since he first posted Alex Jones Worsdsmith almost 4 years ago. Now he has the attention of people like Peterson and Scott Adams. I'm quite interested to see what kinds of ideas he will meme into the ether of right-wing twitter if he keeps this up.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
This is a good point re Pippa. That said, now that more people are aware of her I wonder if she'll be forced to kiss the ring or lose her platform. There are a lot of anonymous or quasi-anonymous people able to stick it to the activists, but they've made it so that if you want to stay on the big platforms, you have to either remain unnoticed or show public deference to them. With people like Hasan spotlighting her on his stream, the former option isn't really there for her anymore.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
It does seem like a case of pathological compassion. Fortunately, there was some debate on the issue in the class. Maybe half to a third of the students, including myself, argued as you did, and this was in a very orthodox left environment. That said, this was a few years ago and things have only heated up in the culture war since then, and it was clear which side the instructor favored.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
After getting farther in I have to downgrade my rating on the plot from serviceable to actively awful, so I'd say the other review you read had it just about right. I find it increasingly difficult to just enjoy the gameplay when I feel so disconnected from the story it services, but YMMV.
The character designs are pretty goofy, but at a certain point I just got used to most of them. I chose the male main character but am starting to think this was a mistake. He has a lot of feminine character traits that I find very grating on him, and would probably mind less if he were a woman.
I do a combo of Roth IRA + the lazy portfolio 3-way split. I'm avoiding looking at the numbers as of late so as not to stress out since they're investments for the very long term. I don't really do individual stocks or options since I don't value my financial predictive ability that highly. I recently broke that rule and tried crypto trading and wound up with universal losses, though fortunately I only used a relatively small amount of play money to buy in. This has only reinforced my personal rule to stick to long-term stuff and not try to beat the market.
More options
Context Copy link