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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2618 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 19, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So where do people place the bar for being a fan of a genre? The content quality for every genre typically follows a power law distribution. If I only like the top 5% of anime, am I really an anime fan?

I would say someone is an anime fan if they a) watch anime; b) are interested in anime as a genre, looking out there for new works etc. rather than just being fans of specific works.

I like the video game sub-question, since there's a well-known phenomenon of casual gaming (3 in a row and other phone timekillers, primarily) not being considered "real gaming". I'd reckon the primary drive for this, rather than disdain towards the casual gamer demographics, is the lack of any perceivable community around casual games.

I’m gonna take the cowardly way out and reduce everything to language games. More specifically: for the term “anime fan” to be useful, it should tell you a lot about the kind of person whom that term describes, people who refer to themselves as “anime fans” should be able to have qualitatively different conversations among themselves than people who don’t, etc.

For some concrete scenarios:

  • Alice has only watched Cowboy Bebop and Dragon Ball Z. She says “I don’t watch that icky stuff for weebs; I just like good stories.” Alice is probably not an anime fan.
  • Bob watches every series that comes out each season, even if most of it is garbage. He discusses them online (even if most of that “discussion” consists of sharing screenshots of the girls in each series), rates them, etc. Bob is probably an anime fan.
  • Carl is into film and television, and this interest in moving pictures extends to some anime. He knows about certain famous auteur directors (e.g. Yuasa, Satoshi Kon) and is able to talk deeply about the technical and artistic merits of Perfect Blue. But he doesn’t necessarily partake in the broader subculture as an activity distinct from how he’d discuss French New Wave films. Carl might not be an anime fan, although it’s harder to say, and it certainly does seem that he has a greater “appreciation for the medium” than Bob.
  • Dennis doesn’t watch any anime. He doesn’t read manga either. He does watch YouTube videos posted by e-celebs summarizing or reacting to the latest flavor of the month series, he scrolls through /r/animememes, and he likes erotic fanart of anime characters on Twitter. Yet somehow, this almost makes me inclined to call him an anime fan, since even though he doesn’t actually watch any anime, he does partake in the culture surrounding it. (The word Ive seen people use to describe people like Bob is “secondaries”, that is, secondary fans.)

The common thread here is that at the end of the day, deciding to call yourself or someone else an “anime fan” is inherently a social act. If other people weren’t involved, then there would be no need to raise this question of identity: you could just watch some amount of anime on your own, in addition to whatever else you do during your time, without attaching a label to it. What this means is that if you are going to go to the trouble of applying the term “anime fan”, then the criteria for application should necessarily have to do with how to categorize groups of people.

  • There is a list of anime shows, numbered n from 0 to nshows − 1.

  • The list is organized in descending order of quality q, from 1 to 0.

  • You like all shows from 0 to nyou − 1. (nDradisPing ≈ nshows × 5 %.)

  • If ∑0nyou − 1(q) ÷ ∑0nshows − 1(q) > 0.5—that is, if you like more than half of all anime shows on a quality-weighted basis (or if you estimate that you would like them if you were to watch all anime shows and could judge all their quality)—then you are a fan of anime.

(epistemic status: probably only 25 percent a joke)

I definitely like the mathematical approach here, but wonder if it survives contact with subcategories and niches in broader genres. For instance, I would definitely consider myself a fan of videogames but... there's a LOT of different types of videogames and I only like some of them.

Let's suppose as a simplified example that there are 20 categories of video game, Puzzle games, RPGs, Roguelites, MOBAs etc..........

And suppose in our imaginary example that all of them have an equal number of games, and all of the same distribution of games by objective quality. But I only like 9 of the categories. Suppose I like every single game in my 9 favorite categories, but no games in the other 11 categories. Then my score would sum to 0.45 < 0.5.

Is it fair to say that I am not a fan of videogames in general and should only describe myself as a fan of those 9 categories? If it was only one category: suppose I only liked Puzzle Games, then I would agree that I should be called a fan of "puzzle games" and not a fan of video games in general. But if it's 9 different categories across the spectrum that differ wildly from each other then it seems hard to describe my preferences as anything other than a "fan of videogames".

Is it fair to say that I am not a fan of videogames in general and should only describe myself as a fan of those 9 categories?

IMO, yes.

I can think of another standard that addresses your complaint, but it's even less workable than the first one.

  • There is a list of all non-video-game creative works, numbered n from 0 to nworks − 1.

  • The list is organized in ascending order of quality q, from 0 to 1.

  • There is also a list of what those non-video-game works would look like if they were video games, numbered n from 0 to nworks − 1.

  • For each work, the imagined video-game quality q′ presumably will not be the same as the actual non-video-game quality q.

  • If ∑0nworks − 1(q′) > ∑0nworks − 1(q)—that is, if you think that, on average, the overall quality of a non-video-game creative work would be improved if it were turned into a video game—then you are a fan of video games.

This only measures the difference in video-game fan-ness in comparison to creative works fan-ness. So would give a false positive for someone who hates all creative works but hates video games slightly less. I suppose you could further modify it by hacking the two measures together, perhaps take this and add a minimum amount of video games liked from the previous rating. But that ends up a lot less elegant.

Maybe the issue here is just the strict cutoff threshold. Ie maybe you take the first score and instead of saying someone > 0.5 is a fan and someone less than 0.5 is not a fan, you say that someone's fan-ness is a sliding scale from 0 to 1. Ie, someone who likes all video games ever is more of a fan than someone who only likes half, who is more of a fan than someone who only likes 0.1 (while still keeping the quality weighting so someone with horrible taste who likes the worst games is less of a real fan than someone who likes good ones).

Yeah, that doesn't really click with me. Many non-video game works wouldn't work as video games, but that's not because I don't like video games - it's because video games are best when designed as a game from ground up.

I think there are a lot of visual-novel fans who would disagree with you.

wat

So I finally finished Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Not a bad book by any means, but I don't really get why people think this is one of the best things ever written. While I enjoyed the last 80% of the book, and the last 30% was really fantastic, I had to read almost an entire novel of confusing and soulless exposition in the first 20% of the book. Even in the "better" last 80%, Sanderson could really have used a more aggressive editor. The characters are interesting enough, although I found most of them to be two dimensional rather than three dimensional, although this may change in the later books. Prose seemed fine, although difficult to judge because I was reading in Spanish. Book also seems to lack any kind of nuanced themes, although there is some stuff about mental health, religion vs. atheism, and morality in general. All in all, fun if bloated, epic fantasy, that doesn't have anything particular to say about the human condition (other than being depressed doesn't relieve you of responsibility to other people).

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by Sanderson, and I probably will continue with the series. Friends have told me his writing improves over time, which bodes well for my future reading experience, and jives well with my veneration of consistent and patient work as the key to pretty much anything (Sanderson is a very reliable writer who is very transparent and consistent with his deadlines).

I'm a sucker for such scenes as Bridge Four turning back in Book 1, "Honor is dead, but I'll see what I can do" in Book 2, the last day of the trial in Book 4, Maya coming back with the cavalry in Book 5. And the anemic love triangle resolving among the proper social ranks. Other than that, this has been merely a decent fantasy series.

I think outside of the world building, there’s not much to Sanderson. It’s interesting in a kind of D&D setting way, but it lacks a lot of cultural elements, the characters and plot aren’t that interesting, the politics is nonexistent.

Are we talking about the Name of the Wind?

That is the joke

There is kind of annoying stuff in them, but I liked both books in the trilogy.

There is an internet theory that Patrick Rothfuss "father was his shadow writer. It’s Pats idea and world building, but his dad was the one who actually wrote it. After TNOTW and TWMF, Pat wanted to prove to himself that he could continue to write the books from now on. So he wrote TSROST all by himself. But he knew it wasn’t written the same and as the others. That’s why he says people won’t like the book because he knows it didn’t have the same feel as before."

Is that the second book in that series, or the entire series? I only remember reading the first one. And it was about the time I put down all Brandon Sanderson novels. I think he executes decently well, but he also goes off a formula. Or maybe its the same formula every fantasy writer uses. But things became too predictable and I got hardcore into web novels instead.

It's the first book.

The characters are interesting enough, although I found most of them to be two dimensional rather than three dimensional, although this may change in the later books.

It does not, Sanderson is not good at writing characters and this is an issue that becomes worse as the series goes on due its length and what he tries to explore with the characters. The characters are flat and the more you're exposed to them the more obvious it becomes.

Friends have told me his writing improves over time, which bodes well for my future reading experience,

This was true until about the Way of Kings but I would say that he peaked there and even started to decline a few books after, possibly due to his insane schedule.

Prose seemed fine, although difficult to judge because I was reading in Spanish.

What was the glyph Navani painted, and what is unit of value in the climactic trade?

The reason I love the book so much is because of those scenes, starting from when we see Syl full size.

I don't think he's written a better book since, but he's written plenty of good ones.

See I think words of radiance might be my favorite but the end of way if kings is wonderful.

I do love the see with Adolin in the Sadeas camp... And Adolin in general. What a baller.

Two months ago I decided to take up bicycling. Thanks for the advice everyone. After determining that as my learned friend @MollieTheMare indicated, the Pacific mountain bike I'd come into was kind of a piece of shit, I went hunting around for other bicycles I could borrow from people, and found myself with a menagerie of old bikes that had been sitting in garages for years or decades now sitting in my garage and being fixed up and ridden around my neighborhood. I've got a 90s Trek hybrid for girls, a 2012ish Trek hybrid for men, a remake Schwinn cruiser, and a Jamis road bike from the 2000s that I quite like but have to keep fiddling with to make work for me because it's actually the wrong size. Eventually I'm going to return all but maybe one of them to their original owners. I'm still kind of figuring out what exactly I like/want/need in a bike, and how to go about finding it.

So cycling mottizens, consider this the "What are you riding?" thread, or the "What bike would you advise someone to buy?" thread. I'm curious what the fine people of this place think is a good bike.

It depends on how you plan to ride it and where. Obviously.

With some caveats. If you are going offroad, get an MTB, of if you want to slam curbs. If you want to jump around like a bunny, get a BMX or a trials bike. If road cycling interests you, NOT only if you want to ride on roads exclusively, then get a road bike.

IMO hybrids are the best and I stick to them. They are fast enough on the roads, if you have to navigate a curb or two you'll be fine, offroad shortcuts too. I used to commute around 6-10 miles so a hybrid made the most sense given curbs, offroad, stairs, roads, etc. Nevertheless, I think hybrids are the most enjoyable aside from their practicality.

Also don't cheap out on tyres and brakes, you'll thank me later.

In my opinion, if you're mostly on the road, not doing serious distance yet, and not entirely sure what kind of riding you want to do, then a Hybrid is probably what you want. Usually they're mostly mountain bike frame and parts, but smoother tires, possibly road wheels, and at least slightly relaxed handlebars. They're usually okay-ish at pretty much everything and not terrible at anything. Maybe not quite enough tire grip and wheel strength for semi-serious trail riding, and not quite comfortable enough for long rides at high effort level compared to a road bike, but you probably won't notice until you actually try to do those things.

You probably want brand names on everything, but not top-end stuff. Usually means Shimano parts and pretty much any brand advertised and sold in actual bicycle stores. 2012ish Trek hybrid sounds decent as long as it comes reasonably close to fitting you. I don't honestly know what that runs these days, but used is probably a good deal. Bikes like this will usually go thousands of miles without breaking stuff, and are easy to fix or replace parts on if needed. The Walmart specials tend to start falling apart after a few hundred miles and be difficult to fix or find replacement parts for.

It may take some experience to understand how road bikes are really supposed to fit and work. You should be leaning forward enough to put significant weight on your hands. The drop bars provide several places to put your hands to help with this strain. Between putting significant force on the pedals most of the time and keeping some weight on your hands, there shouldn't be that much weight on the seat most of the time, so it's not meant to be that comfortable for just tooling around.

The only bike I actually have right now is a fixed-gear on a road bike frame I built many years ago. It's decently fun and comfortable for most things for me, and ugly enough to not be an attractive theft target. The lack of gears make it not that great for climbing hills/bridges, but it's okay for me on the ones near me. Also not great for carrying cargo, but I don't have much need for that now. I used to have a nice hybrid like the one I'm suggesting, which had decent saddlebags for cargo, but it got stolen a while ago. I do miss it a bit, but I wouldn't have storage room for it now anyways. I sold my nicer road bike a while ago too, since I don't ride long-distance much anymore.

It might also be worth getting a setup for changing out tire tubes that you can ride with if you are interested in riding at least moderately far away from home and civilization.

It's decently fun and comfortable for most things for me, and ugly enough to not be an attractive theft target. The lack of gears make it not that great for climbing hills/bridges, but it's okay for me on the ones near me. Also not great for carrying cargo, but I don't have much need for that now. I used to have a nice hybrid like the one I'm suggesting, which had decent saddlebags for cargo, but it got stolen a while ago.

Interesting how that is a consideration I don't really have for this purchase, but is clearly important for others. 90% of my rides start and end at my house, the rest are on trails in parks, and none of them feature public stops.

It may take some experience to understand how road bikes are really supposed to fit and work. You should be leaning forward enough to put significant weight on your hands. The drop bars provide several places to put your hands to help with this strain. Between putting significant force on the pedals most of the time and keeping some weight on your hands, there shouldn't be that much weight on the seat most of the time, so it's not meant to be that comfortable for just tooling around.

I've been embarrassed by this already. I actually really like how the road bike rides when I get it under way, but getting it under way ends up being significantly harder or more clumsy than the more upright bikes.

The only thing that makes me consider pushing a bigger budget, like $500 rather than $200, that some of the newer bikes I see around are 1x10 or 1x12 gear systems. The 3x8 systems you see on most used bikes seem to add a lot of complexity for very little benefit (to me). Older bikes too, but nothing that's both working and cheap. One of those weird manufacturing moment-in-time things where for a while 24 speeds was really difficult to do from a manufacturing perspective and became the standard of excellence, and now you're starting to see less of it for the same reason: everyone can do it, so let's see what the best thing to do is.

Supposedly, the reason for fewer gears is that back wheels have improved to a bigger range of teeth, which means you can hit a similar range of gear ratios with only 1x12... and of course derailleurs are everyone's least favorite part of mountain bikes.

I assumed that the advantage of the 3x system was using a front shift to rapidly change gears, going from 3-5 to 2-5 only takes one shift where going from 1-12 to 1-7 takes five shifts. I would think the speed/reliability of the shifter would be the limiting factor here, though that might be my lack of exposure to higher end bikes.

3x systems are really more of a vestige of "More Speeds!" marketing that was devilishly effective against consumers. Secondarily, there were the engineering reasons:

  • A desire to reduce chainwear through cross-chaining
  • Limitations in derailleur reliability on the front chainring: To get to a small front chainring you needed a useless one with duplicate gearing in the middle

1x is all the rage right now for many of the reasons you've stated, and because the cycling industry has to reinvent what's popular to sell more. 2x Drivetrains have the same-or-greater ranges than the 3x systems of old. Note that 6/7/8-speed bikes all use the same chain size, and 8 is the most ubiquitous gearing out there. Once you get to 11/12/13 every drivetrain component is more expensive and proprietary.

If your budget is only $200, then you can't be picky about features. Hell, if your budget is only $200, offer that for the Trek, because that's about as good as you can reasonably expect for that price. The public has for some reason come to expect that a relatively complex item with a lot of moving parts, some of which need to be machined, shouldn't cost more than $500. It's like expecting to get a decent new car for $10,000.

I'm really kinda lost on what you're saying here, Rov, though I'm sure it's my ignorance of what I'm talking about. It seems to me like $200-300 is a reasonable budget for a 10-20 year old mid-range used bike around me, both from craigslist/FM and walking around the big bike flea market near me the other weekend, at which price point one can get a decent bike from a respectable brand with what I would consider a lot of different feature sets from suspensions to frame materials to gearsets to handlebars, so like yeah one ought to get picky.

I guess if I were looking for something really specific and in better shape it seems like $600-1000 gets me there, but I really don't get what I get other than "new" for more money than that. Enthusiasts try to explain it to me and I don't get it, it feels like they're telling me I have to buy a new Mercedes and a Camry just won't do.

Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to your posts, but I got the impression you were looking to buy new for that price, since most people buying used don't have much option wrt features or brands, especially at the lower end of the used market. Maybe things are better where you are, but most of what I see on FB marketplace/CL is junk, and the specialist bike sites are more along the lines of "This year-old $6500 bike is a steal at $3000". It's for that reason that I usually steer inexperienced (i.e. if you have to ask) buyers away from used models, because they simply don't know what they're looking at or if they're getting a good deal. The one exception would be buying use from a bike shop, where they often have fairly-priced trade-ins that are guaranteed to be in good mechanical condition.

That last point is something to consider and take into account. Any 10–20 year-old used bike is going to need a chain, probably a rear cassette, probably tires, probably new cables. The parts aren't expensive and you can do the repairs yourself if you're willing to learn, but there can be specialized tools involved (that are cheap to come by), and if it's your first time doing this work you simply aren't going to get it dialed in the way it should be. there's also the issue that if you don't know what you're looking at, it's going to be difficult to even know what parts you have to order. It's usually along the lines of if you can find out what the bike originally came with you'll find out that they don't make that part anymore. They make a close-enough equivalent (actually several) that will be compatible provided that you make some minor adjustments. These are the kinds of things bike shops will do without even telling you but that can give you fits if you try to do it yourself. At that point, it's almost easier to just take it to a shop and have them do it, which will cost approximately what you paid for the bike, which is why I tend to recommend buying used bikes from a shop that paid a lot less for the bike itself than you would have and with parts, labor, and profit can sell it for approximately the same price as if you had bought it yourself and had the work done, which may sound like a wash but at least means you can take your bike home and ride it on Day One without any surprises. I'm not trying to say this to discourage you from buying used, because I generally think it's a great idea, especially for what you're looking for, but it's something to be aware of.

Now that I have a better idea where you're coming from, I can give you some detailed advice. Most people here have said that anything from a reputable brand will be good, and they're right, but it's useless information if you don't know what a reputable brand is, and there are a few caveats. The issue is making sure you get a "bike shop bike" and not a "department store bike", which is generally easy to do if you buy at a shop but harder on the used market due to a variety of factors. First, anything by the following brands, from any era, can be recommended without hesitation: Trek, Specialized, Giant, Cannondale, Scott, Norco (unless you're buying it in Canada), Co-Op (REI's house brand), and Kona. GT and Diamondback must be approached with caution, as they make both higher-end models and models that are sold at places like Dick's. I wouldn't recommend one unless you really know what you're looking at. Schwinn and Mongoose are in a similar boat as they used to be good brands until they got sold and deprecated by their new owners. The goodwill has been gone long enough that few people would even be fooled these days, and require some convincing that one from the 90s is actually a good purchase, but unless you're looking at something really old they're best to be avoided. Raleigh, Jamis, Fuji, and Nishiki seem to have had various identity crises over the years where they can't decide whether they want to be a legitimate brand or a budget brand; a used model could be a find or could be crap, and there's no way of knowing unless you already know. Brands like Huffy, Next, Murray, Roadmaster, or anything with the name of a pickup truck is department store crap and should be avoided at all cost, as is anything that weighs about a thousand pounds. Someone mentioned Motobecane and Gravity's ID bikes earlier. They're basically cobbled together from spare parts, and can be great value for money, though buying one used is asking for an adventure. People also mentioned other internet direct brands, and there are innumerable boutique brands that also make excellent bikes. While I obviously wouldn't want to discourage you from taking advantage of a deal on these, most of them specialize in Serious Mountain Bikes or Serious Road Bikes, not what you're looking for, and in any event you aren't likely to find one for cheap at a bike flea market.

As for what you are looking for, I'd recommend a hybrid. They kind of get a bad rap in the bike community because they aren't particularly great at anything, but for someone who wants to do relatively short rides on the road or easy trails they can't be beat. There's a reason why manufacturers sell more of these than anything else. To explain why you should get one, it's easier to explain why you shouldn't get something else. The road bike may feel better on the road, but there are two big caveats. The first is that the riding position is going to be more aggressive than what you're probably used to, and while that's a good thing for the long haul, if you're talking about ten miles max at this point then I don't know if it's worth it to get used to it. More importantly, they aren't made for riding off-road, period. I know you said you plan on riding on roads, but crushed limestone rail trails can present a challenge, and gravel is pretty much off limits. If I only have one bike in the quiver, I want something that will be able to handle a dirt road in a county park that small children can ride without hesitation.

For similar reasons I would recommend against hardtail mountain bikes—if most of your riding is going to be on the road, and you don't have any intention of doing serious off-roading, a mountain bike isn't the best choice. The wide, knobby tires they're equipped with don't perform well on pavement and if you don't change them immediately you will soon enough, since asphalt wears them down quickly. Of more serious concern, though, is that these will probably have some kind of front suspension that will require its own maintenance and is another thing prone to breaking, except the bike is unrideable with blown out suspension forks and replacements are really expensive. Some hybrids will come with suspension forks to make things seem sportier; avoid these as well, for similar reasons. It's actually more imperative to avoid hybrids and low-end hardtails with front suspension because the cost of the forks takes up a significant proportion of the total cost of the bike, and requires sacrifices elsewhere. The forks are usually of low quality and will be the first thing to break, especially after 10 years. If you are considering a bike with suspension at all, only buy RockShox or Fox products and run from anything Suntour. A fully rigid mountain bike might be worth looking at, with the caveat that you'll want road-appropriate tires.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention gravel bikes, since others have. While this would be a good option, combining road bike geometry with a stouter frame and wider tires to handle the off-road better, they are a relatively recent development and have only become popular in the past ten years, and only within the last five or so at consumer-friendly price points. For full disclosure, these are great and this is what I use for all my road riding, rail-trail cruising, touring, and light gravel riding. The isue for your purposes is that there isn't likely to be anything available at the price you're looking to pay. A bike that sold for $2,000 in 2019 isn't going to lose 90% of its value in 6 years. If by some miracle you can find one, go for it.

Since you're likely getting a hybrid, a word of caution about what kind of hybrid you want. I've seen the term used for everything from old-lady comfort bikes to wannabe mountain bikes. I'd recommend something on the sportier side, with the cautions about suspension. These used to occasionally be marketed as "fitness" or "sport" bikes. You want to make sure that the riding position is similar to a mountain bike with you leaning fairly far forward and a fairly low rise to the handlebars. Some hybrids have handlebars with a lot of rise, favoring a mre upright riding position, but this puts too much pressure on your asshole. I'd also add that bike fit is more important than the bike itself.

I really don't get what I get other than "new" for more money than that. Enthusiasts try to explain it to me and I don't get it, it feels like they're telling me I have to buy a new Mercedes and a Camry just won't do.

I bought a brand new gravel bike last year. Before that I was riding a 1999 Cannondale hybrid that had seen thousands of miles and one partial rebuild. I was looking at parts for rebuild number two and was beginning to doubt the wisdom of sinking money into something that should be hanging on a wall by now, but it worked for what I needed it for and I didn't want to spend the money one a new one, or a new to me one. Then I was looking at my REI dividend statement that had been ballooning for years and now stood at $750 or so, and I had been using it to make minor purchases like chain lube because I hadn't had any major equipment needs in five years. Then I saw an ad that a $1200 gravel bike was on sale for $999, which meant that I could get a brand new bike for only about $300 out of pocket. Though I admit that's not a typical reason.

Certain enthusiasts need to have the newest and baddest shit that will be a failed, forgotten experiment in five years, though I guess that's not typical, either. The real reason is that buying new is just easier for the kind of money involved. Spend $200–$300 on a used bike and another $200 on parts and labor to get it up to spec and you aren't too far off how much you could get a comparable new bike for. The process involves a lot less friction than buying used, because you can just go to stores and test ride bikes and talk to a knowledgeable salesman about what would be best for you and go from there. When you're ready to buy, the bike is going to be there, and you pay with a credit card. Buying used means you need a certain amount of knowledge to know what you're looking for, can mean driving around and testing one bike at a time at a guy's house, which guy probably can't be of much help to you. You have to know what you're looking for in terms of mechanical issues. If you don't make a decision right away, the bike might not be there when you call again. You're going to need to give a stranger cash and be stuck with the purchase. No warranties will carry over to you. If it's a dud you could be out a lot of money. I bought the most expensive bike I own used, but for the casual rider looking at a first purchase, it's not something I'd recommend.

Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to your posts, but I got the impression you were looking to buy new for that price, since most people buying used don't have much option wrt features or brands, especially at the lower end of the used market. Maybe things are better where you are, but most of what I see on FB marketplace/CL is junk, and the specialist bike sites are more along the lines of "This year-old $6500 bike is a steal at $3000".

No that's pretty much craigslist here as well. Over time I've noticed some decent deals here and there, just wrong size or wrong style for me.

Though I may ultimately just keep the ones I borrowed. I'm fairly certain that the people I borrowed them from don't particularly want them back, at least not from me.

Any 10–20 year-old used bike is going to need a chain, probably a rear cassette, probably tires, probably new cables.

So, like, bike-sensei: I haven't actually changed most of those things on several bikes that haven't been ridden in years, and the tires are hit-or-miss, but with a bit of lubrication the rest seems to work ok in that I hop on and pedal it and it goes. Should I be changing out all those things as well?

With a 12-year-old used hybrid, unless I had information to the contrary, I'd assume that the previous owner rode it a moderate amount, that it still has the original chain and cassette, and that the chain wasn't regularly cleaned or lubricated. I know from personal experience that with moderate to heavy riding a cassette-chain combo will last about 5 years before being completely trashed. The caveat there is that this is mountain biking, which is inherently dirtier, and a 1x12 setup, which is inherently more fragile, but that's balanced by the higher-end components involved. I'd guess that a Trek hybrid from 2012 is running an 8-speed Shimano Altus cassette or whatever the SRAM equivalent is, which will only run you about 20 bucks online, and the chain can probably be had for about that, too, and for those prices I'd be inclined to just replace both now rather than wait.

The upshot is that it's probably due for one. It's not something I'd lose sleep over or anything, but for comparison the cassette on my Cannondale hybrid lasted about 8 years with one new chain in after around four. The reason I prefer just replacing it is that if you wait the early symptoms can resemble any number of other things that are harder for you do fix if you don't have a ton of experience. The chain and the cassette wear each other out, and this initially results in the chain having trouble engaging with the sprockets during shifts. Eventually it will slip when riding and jump to different gears, and may drop entirely. And a worn chain is more likely to just snap under load and inevitably leave you walking your bike back at the point in the ride that takes you farthest from your car. But assuming the chain and cassette are good, most people assume the derailleur is out of alignment, and start dicking around with set screws to try to adjust it so it shifts smoothly. In most cases, this makes sense, since it's really easy for a derailleur to go out of alignment. The problem is that if you're not a pro who does this every day (and especially if you're a beginner at this), it's really easy to throw a perfectly good derailleur out of adjustment while trying to fix a problem that's elsewhere. So if you do decide to let it ride, replace them first thing if you start having shifting problems and don't touch the derailleur unless that doesn't fix the problem.

As for cables, again, nothing I'd lose sleep over, but after a dozen years they've probably had it. Check the cables and housings for obvious damage and replace them if anything doesn't look right. I wouldn't touch the shifter cables unless there's a problem, though, since swapping them out involves adjusting the derailleur.

I'd guess that a Trek hybrid from 2012 is running an 8-speed Shimano Altus cassette

Damn, you're good.

So that might be the cause of the occasional missed shifts that are driving me nuts.

It's like expecting to get a decent new car for $10,000.

We don't allow Chinese branded bicycles to be sold in the US either, huh?

We do, but there aren't any Chinese brands with American equivalents that are sold for a fraction of the price. The "Chinese brands" are relatively obscure and are built to compete with American internet direct brands. You can't get anything basic from them like OP is looking for. There are also cheap Chinese bikes available on Ali Express but the listings don't mention any of the specs, which means they are likely the equivalent of the bikes you can get for $200 at big box stores that use extreme cost-cutting measures to get the price that low and aren't recommended for use as anything other than toys that you're willing to toss if they break—getting these repaired means paying more than the bike is worth to fix something that is likely to break again in the near future.

Chinese cars aren't this bad quality-wise, but I think the idea that Chinese EVs would dominate the US market but for tariffs is overblown. Yes, the BYD Seagull only costs $10,000 in China. No, it isn't anything an American would ever buy. It doesn't meet American safety standards without substantial modification, but that aside, the small size, 75 hp motor, and 150 mile range are nonstarters here. The bare-bones Mitsubishi Mirage is only $16,000 (and was $10,000 not that long ago), and it isn't exactly flying off the lot. the BYD Dolphin, essentially a Seagull modified to meet first-world safety standards, costs more like $25,000 and isn't exactly popular in markets where it's sold. I know this is a substantial digression but I hear this a lot about Chinese cars, but I'm just not buying it.

The bare-bones Mitsubishi Mirage is only $16,000 (and was $10,000 not that long ago), and it isn't exactly flying off the lot.

It was dropped from the US market last year.

All I will say is that if you're biking exclusively on roads, then you should look exclusively at road bikes. They are, I will concede, slightly less comfortable than road-ish or hybrid bikes, but much more fun to ride, and you can both go faster and do so at greater efficiency.

One thing you can also do is to stop by a bike shop, don't buy anything necessarily, but ask them to walk you through how to evaluate bike size and where to adjust the seat. A lot of people end up for example putting the seat at the wrong height and it does make a difference.

If it's not road biking, I have no idea.

As for comfort and road bike - while they’re a bit sharp edged off the shelf, road bikes are very sensitive to setup, fit and sizing and can be quite comfortable once dialed in. You also want to not have all your weight on your ass - when pedaling efficiently some of your weight is distributed to your hands and feet.

Saddle choice makes a big difference too. Squishy saddles are less comfortable over long distances for example. I and many others favor tensioned leather saddles like Brooks - heavier than what you can get if you’re weight obsessed but worth it for the long distance comfort

found myself with a menagerie of old bikes that had been sitting in garages for years or decades now sitting in my garage and being fixed up and ridden around my neighborhood.

Based.

Sounds like he took up a bike mechanic hobby.

Pretty much. It's like a lower stakes version of fixing up an old car, there's something satisfying about getting it rolling, but without the specialization. This is actually one of my first experiments in using chatgpt to educate myself on something, which I guess is really part of the fun of the experience, and appropriate given the low stakes involved.

Beware - Bike Wrenching has completely supplanted doing work on my car. It was the same sense of pride and accomplishment with 1/10 the cost, risk, and mess. I even wax my chains now which almost eliminates the sort of hyper-staining gunk that's inherent to most shade-tree hobbies.

This is actually one of my first experiments in using chatgpt to educate myself on something,

If you haven't run across it yet, the late Sheldon Brown's website comes highly recommended.

Wow, that is something. I have not come across it yet! Bookmarked.

What types of cycling have you done? Which is your favorite?

For a do it all machine you pick something in the middle of the bike gradient, so hard tail/hybrid/gravel. The latter is my preference but is also popular and thus more expensive.

My strong opinions are: Shimano group set or bust (though SRAM owns most the MTB market). Buy once cry once (modifying a bike is way more expensive than getting what you want). Getting a used one from a bike charity in your city is your best bet for <=$300, new for $300-$600, and then used again beyond that.

Getting a used one from a bike charity in your city is your best bet for <=$300, new for $300-$600, and then used again beyond that.

Why that dip in the middle? What brands should one be looking at in each price range?

The dip is strange but not ironclad. People who are serious about bikes don't spend less than that on them so there's almost no bikes in that range. People getting started buy a $600 bike then abuse it and sell it for $200. Those end up being in worse shape than the older bikes tuned up at a shop run by fanatics.

Ok one more hot take: Brands in cycling barely matter, they really only do the frame (if they do!) and then assemble parts from suppliers. So pick PARTS not brand.

After that you have local store and network presence which is really Giant, Specialized, and Trek in the US. All the bike shops around me are good enough there.

Specialized is a "premium" brand and focused on tech but also means less compatibility. The apple of bikes?

Trek and Giant all have virtually the same bikes for the same price tag. Just go off of sales and aesthetics.

The DTC guys are sometimes interesting. Canyon was an insane deal before tariffs, Obed was a great decision for me, and there's bikes direct which is often selling slightly less attractive and older-component bikes for very cheap from a hilarious website.

Salsa has bike nerd cache and good resale value. There's a dozen of these little boutique brands like that if you go that route.

Ok one more hot take: Brands in cycling barely matter, they really only do the frame (if they do!) and then assemble parts from suppliers. So pick PARTS not brand.

Yeah, what's annoying to me as an outsider is that I thought "Shimano" was a brand name like an Edelbrock engine, only to realize they make EVERYTHING, so they're not really any indicator of quality.

They sell product at every tier, but even their entry-level/cheap stuff (Turney, Altera, Acera) works well enough to ride around. If you buy a used bike for $200 and it has Shimano gearset and Shimano disk brakes, you don't even need to open google. It's going to be fine if it's new-ish, and it's going to be easy to replace components if they're EOL.

And if you spend more money or if you start comparing bikes, you can quickly figure out which component families are entry-tier and which are mid-tier.

The apple of bikes?

Surely this would be Cannondale.

The DTC guys are sometimes interesting.

There's also Aliexpress if OP feels like a real adventure.

I see where you're coming from, but Specialized's focus on slick branding, digital tech, and a dedicated retail presence makes them the clear winner in this comparison.

Mainline DTC brands are lightyears away from Aliexpress. Obed sent a guy in a sprinter van to my house to put the bike together and make sure it was still tuned up from the assembly plant, and it was $1,000 less than anything else with that spec I can find. LBS is important, etc. etc. but that big of a price difference can't be ignored. Especially when at least one shop near my charged my wife $38 for an 8-speed KMC chain when I wasn't looking. I'm a consumer, not a donation service.

All that said for a novice it's absolutely better to wait for a sale and buy from a local store. They offer a ton of perks to make it worth it, and if they have good mechanics they're a lifesaver.

Surely this would be Cannondale.

There is in fact an entire youtube channel that is at lest 50% dedicated to roasting Cannondale's Bottom Bracket system BB30. What a world we live in where such a hyper niche topic can have 120K subs.

I basically only ride a hard-tail 29r XC MTB on local trails now. It's at the level of cheapest bike that I do not consider a piece of shit. For where I live, the best combo of: low maintenance, getting out and exploring a bit, and not risking being killed by a motor vehicle. It's also cheap enough I don't feel compelled to baby it.

I have an old road bike that needs a bit of work, and an oooold road bike that needs a lot of work.

In my ideal setup I would live somewhere where there are miles and miles of open road and good bike infrastructure in the city. In that case, my imagined lineup would be:

  • E-cargo bike, for beer runs or taking the kids to the park
  • Dutch style city bike for the café run
  • Decent road bike for group rides
  • Gravel bike for shit weather or shit roads
  • Hard-tail for XC
  • Full-squish for the trail
  • Touring bike, Ti or steel with couplers, so you could break it down and fit it in a suitcase. You can never get a rental to fit exactly right. I do want to do some more of the major international cycle routs some day.

If someone just wanted "a bike," the suggestion would depend on location. But assuming generic suburban US middle age adult, an alloy hard-tail 29r XC MTB for local trails is probably the most accessible "real" biking. E-bike for those over the age of 70 with money.

Borrowing a bunch of bikes was a great idea, and sounds like fun.

I think I've mentioned here before, the number of bikes you'll want is N+1, where N is the number of bike you currently own. The optimal number to in fact own is M - 1, where M is the number of bikes where your spouse threatens to divorce you.

Borrowing a bunch of bikes was a great idea, and sounds like fun.

It was! There's something fun about inflating the tires, adjusting the brakes and shifters, lubricating everything, and getting an old bike out on the road. It's like an easier lower stakes version of the barn find car. It was also the best education in bike brands for me, virtually every house around me has a bike in the garage, 90% of them are trash that the owner thinks is a really high end bike and the other 10% are really expensive bikes that the owner thinks is just old trash.

I think I've mentioned here before, the number of bikes you'll want is N+1, where N is the number of bike you currently own. The optimal number to in fact own is M - 1, where M is the number of bikes where your spouse threatens to divorce you.

It's amazing how quickly one finds oneself wanting all kinds of specialized varieties of bike, while simultaneously secure in the knowledge that others are doing more with less.

I basically only ride a hard-tail 29r XC MTB on local trails now. It's at the level of cheapest bike that I do not consider a piece of shit. For where I live, the best combo of: low maintenance, getting out and exploring a bit, and not risking being killed by a motor vehicle. It's also cheap enough I don't feel compelled to baby it.

I find myself riding on public roads much more than I thought I would. I had a vision or stereotype in my mind that this was fairly dangerous, but upon really thinking about it and doing it more, I just need to be choosy about time and route and I can avoid most traffic pretty easily, make no left turns at speed, and have minimal problems. Route A is good for weekday evenings with minimal traffic after 6pm but bad during the day, Route B is through a neighborhood and good during the workday but terrible at rush hour, Route C runs through an industrial park and is perfect and completely empty on weekends but impossible on weekdays.

It's interesting, to me, how riding a bike changed my interaction with roads and traffic relative to walking the dog, going for a run, driving for utilitarian and recreational reasons. Hills are fairly irrelevant to driving, annoying but ultimately meaningless outside of split time for running, a major obstacle for a bicycle requiring serious route planning. As I walk or run on the left hand side facing traffic, turning left is the inside lane, and anyway crossing traffic is no big deal anywhere I go for a run. On a bike, I really try to avoid left turns unless it's at a stop sign, as that presents the worst risk of a car coming up behind me hitting me while trying to pass. Going for a run, if I need to stop and rest or walk for a bit after a hard effort or halfway up a hill, it doesn't matter and no one cares. When I fail on a hill climb on a bike, I feel like a public failure walking my bike up the hill, like wow I really suck at biking, and occasionally even get motorists slowing down to ask if I'm ok or if the bike broke down.

I'm still kind of figuring out what exactly I like/want/need in a bike

Do you want a road bike (or the bastard cousin, a tri bike, which you won't be able to use in many group rides if you want to join a club), a hybrid, a mountain bike, or a casual cruiser?

how to go about finding it.

If you want a semi high-end road bike from a few years ago at a discounted price, CL/FB marketplace/etc. are the places to look. If you are still fairly new to the cycling world, you won't even believe the amount of money some cyclists pour into a bike every 2-4 years to have the newest, latest, greatest, most hyped bike. Some of them will then dump their older bikes for far less than new. Obviously many miles on some, but generally well-maintained.

or the bastard cousin, a tri bike, which you won't be able to use in many group rides if you want to join a club

Why not? That seems an odd rule.

I'm still figuring out what kind of bike I want, hence attempting to try out a variety of bikes. The old Jamis Quest road bike rides really nicely, but besides being the wrong size I don't entirely love the uncomfortable forward seating position, and it makes me nervous on actual roads because I feel like I can't keep track of what is going on around me the way I can on a more upright hybrid bike. I'm not super worked up about speed, but I imagine if I stick with it I will be, so one doesn't want to spend on something that will later be limiting. Probably not interested in a true mountain biking experience, in that I find the idea of seeking out mountain biking trails kind of annoying. Mostly I guess I'm looking at 3-10 mile fitness/relaxation rides on hilly suburban/rural roads around me, plus at some point I'd like to plan a longer distance ride.

Tri bikes aren't really made for riding around town; they're made for riding hard in races where you can't draft. They don't have traditional handlebars but "aero bars" where you lean so far forward your forearms sit on rests. The aggressive aerodynamic design means they aren't comfortable, don't climb well, and don't descend well since you don't have easy access to the brakes. They're made for getting an extra 5% speed advantage on closed race courses, not casual rides on roads with traffic where you're going to have to stop fairly regularly, not once at the end of the ride. In addition to the weight problem noted below, their disadvantages are numerous enough that some tri riders will use regular road bikes, especially if the course involves significant elevation change. On a group ride they would be annoying at best and dangerous at worst.

Why not tri bikes (or sometimes no aero handlebars at all)?

Road riders are accustomed to riding in pace lines. The aero qualities of a triathlon bike, which is specifically designed for solo riding, are less suited to close quarters cooperative riding styles. Both the geometry/handling and the body position are quite different.

Typically tri or aero bikes are also much heavier than road bikes at least given the same materials. Although that’s more of an issue when climbing.

Video game thread.

I played return to moria this past two weeks. It's a survival crafting game. Gameplay wise it is fairly standard for the genre. The setting of middle earth is fun. I'm not a massive LOTR nerd, so I'm sure I missed some subtleties.

There are some mechanics that definitely make the game better suited for co-op. I played it alone and felt like I was missing out. Storage sizes always felt too small, there were legendary gear items that you could only carry one of, and you could be picked up upon death by a comrade if you had one. I eventually downloaded a mod to fix the first two issues. It expanded storage and allowed carrying multiple legendary items.

Progression happens entirely through gear. And gear drops on death. Corpse runs were not as brutal as I feared. The game seemed to handle agro and grave placement in a way that helped corpse runs.

Resource collecting was generally pretty standard but sometimes I'd find myself making fun little mining platforms to get higher.

The map is procedurally generated, but it's more like pre-made rooms that are stuck together in an odd assortment rather than fully new terrain each time.

Navigation was tricky with the map not helping much except to provide general directions. I ended memorizing a lot of tunnel layouts in order to get where I needed to go.

Replayability felt low. I didn't want to totally start from scratch after getting used to all my awesome gear. The next update is supposedly adding NPCs for bases, I'll probably replay the game when that comes out.

Apropos of nothing, your comment triggered something and I did a dive back into the original Moria roguelike. Oh boy... the memories. How does a casual ASCII game from the early 80's provoke that kind of emotion. How could a modern developer recapture it?

Meta-gaming question I have is: what are some game stories that can only function in the form of a game. Archetypal games that were bound to happen at some point.

Games have art, music, story as components. The unique part is the interactive component with the player. A game like SpecOps:TheLine could function as a book. Spitballing a few famous tropes.

  • game has no story. pure skill expression.

    • tetris.

  • gameplay making sure the player understands the story.

    • Detective games sort-of?

  • games that setup difficulty as an exclusive club:

    • trophies and achievements in general. getting over it summit experience.

  • games where the entire main story is a lie that the player can optionally uncover

    • dark souls has a major one, and it's old enough not to be a spoiler

  • morality where being evil makes the game easier

    • bioshock sacrificing littler-sisters. PapersPlease sort-of. Requires interactive medium to make it Easier for the player not just the protagonist

EDIT: actually, I'm going to generalize this a bit: "Science Sandbox" is a unique video game genre. Kerbal Space Program is the obvious one, but it also works for the soft sciences, as below.

It would be really difficult to do something like "The Interstate Anarchy model of international relations is true. Discover (or blindly follow) the constraints this places on a country and win, or miss (or defy) those constraints and lose.", as described in the Teaching Paradox series of blog posts.

Choose your own adventure books exist, but I think that whole genre just fits way better with a game. Multiple ending options based on how you played just makes sense within a game.

Any stories that play off the actions of the player are going to be more powerful in game form. Bioshock is a good example here, but far from the only one in the genre. Dishonored is another one where choosing to be non-violent, or staying completely hidden will change minor details in the following levels.

More power and game changes depending on choices is the thing I'm pointing at. Because choose-your-own-adventure books can't change the experience depending on the choices.

Dishonored is a great example too. The game offers the player all these fun powers to brutally murder enemies, which makes the decision to endure a stealth low-revenge play-though aligns the player-as-human and player-as-morality-in-game decision making. Someone playing blind might not realize that the action-fight at the end is a consequence of their actions in the game.

Dishonored also has a unique video-game feature of choices that take creativity to recognize as a choice at all. Like the mission in Dishonored where Corvo signs up to duel a party-goer, and first to death wins. But the player can use sleep-darts instead of lethal-darts to win the duel without killing the other person.

games where the entire main story is a lie that the player can optionally uncover

You can do this in a book, like Pale Fire - many postmodern authors have tried with varying degrees of success. What makes Dark Souls unique is the minimal information you get and the diegetic storytelling (Silksong take inspiration from the latter and really ramps it up).

I think the question of difficulty and slogging-through as an emotional experience is closer to the core of the question, but that's also in books and films - look at Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Seiobo There Below or Bela Tarr's adaptation of his novel Satantango, or Twin Peaks: The Return for TV. IMO the slam-dunk in this list is branching paths, like morality choices changing the game.

A notable difference I see between Pale Fire and Dark Souls is that there's a real possibility for a reader to miss the content of the underlying story as a medium.

When reading a poem like Pale Fire the reader can experience the story differently depending on order they read the poem and the footnote-narrative. But because the medium of the book presents all the story in the same up front manner there's no opportunity (at a medium level) to hide a second story underneath such that someone exploring every nook and cranny is going to find a new character that they couldn't even perceive without some skill/knowledge/exploration checks in the interactive domain.

A novice reader can simply open up page 140 of Pale Fire and plainly observe the words of Kinbote's commentary, whereas a novice Dark Souls cannot observe Gwyndolin's story or even know it's there ahead of time.

question of difficulty and slogging-through as an emotional experience [....] look at

I probably should, but cheeky answer is that I probably won't go the first-hand experience. While I enjoy the idea of it I probably won't walk the walk in this kind of thing.

branching paths, like morality choices changing the game

I full agree on changing the game itself, the way of interaction, more than the branching morality paths.

Choose-your-own-advence books have branching paths based on choice to experience, but because of the medium can't give a difference experience depending on the choice, only different words.

But there is a second story! Who is Kinbote, really? Did he kill Shade? Where are the jewels? Are the index cards of the poem actually in the right order? Is Zembla even real? I recommend this frankly brilliant and insane paper to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, and it's not at all apparent from simply opening the book any more than Gwyndolin's story is from looking up the description of his crown.

You're welcome to avoid that, I honestly wouldn't ever consider watching Satantango again, but for anybody interested in Seiobo, the first chapter is available free here and has bitten quite a few of my friends with the bug.

Choose-your-own-adventure books have some similarities but are too limited. You could, in theory, write one that kept track of variables, had branches that intertwine deeply, etc., but nobody actually would. It's a huge difference, I'd say bigger than that between a comic book and a movie. I'm not sure what you mean by "experience" - if you mean words aren't an experience, I recall people experimenting with choose-your-own adventure DVDs, but those have even worse capability issues than the books.

But because the medium of the book presents all the story in the same up front manner there's no opportunity (at a medium level) to hide a second story underneath such that someone exploring every nook and cranny is going to find a new character that they couldn't even perceive without some skill/knowledge/exploration checks in the interactive domain.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean here, but isn’t that just the entire field of literary criticism? A reader who isn’t perceptive enough or doesn’t put enough thought into what they read won’t be able to fully uncover all of the implications of what was written on the page. For a non-academic example, consider the painstaking work that Gwern put in in order to show that a certain enigmatic short story by Gene Wolfe is actually about a town in which vampires “won”. And that’s just the most literal example of how new information or “lore” can be discovered in written stories by those who have superior “skill” in reading, to say nothing about higher-level concerns (i.e. rather than merely understanding what the work is saying, can I understand what the consequences of what it’s saying are, and whether or not I agree with them, and why?)

I was thinking that a game could present more author Text, while literary criticism can only offer alternatives through ambiguity.

I've had trouble understanding literary criticism before, so I intuitively see the additional text of a video game as more real (and therefore different) from literary implications. On reflection seems there's less difference than I thought

I've started Clair Obscur. I like how you can tell it's French even without a giant mangled Eiffel Tower. I also like how it's not another generic fantasy/sci-fi/post-apoc rehash, but something completely original. I haven't seen a setting this weird since... Death Stranding, I guess.

What I can't enjoy is the combat. The controls are all weird, the QTEs are annoying (even though I didn't mind similar QTEs in The Stick of Truth). I would seriously pay for a mod that adds a generic Final Fantasy/RPG Maker menu.

I find something about the...Frenchness?... off-putting. Uncanny. It's hard to describe entirely, but a lot of it is in the characters' facial expressions. Sometimes they smile and give each other weird looks and it feels very weird given the setting and the tone of people dying and the apocalypse and what not. But here they are rolling their eyes and giving each other weird French smiles like they're on vacation in Paris.

Reported for racism.</joke>

What's your beef with the controls? Maybe I'm just comfortable with the Persona 5 layout, or are you using keyboard controls instead of a gamepad?

Of course I am using KB&M controls, do I look like a console peasant?

Inventory management is a pain, worse that Skyrim without SkyUI: there's a perfectly fine character screen for managing your materia, but no, there's a separate screen for this and you can't just drag it into a free slot.

The confirm button in dialogue and combat is "move right", not "interact", so if you want to switch your target, you have to cancel the skill, select it and select the skill again.

You can have six active skills per character, but you have to split them into three banks.

If FF/RPGM Attack/Skill/Item arrows/confirm/cancel menu is bad because you want the player to keep one hand on the mouse for free aim and jump counters, why not use a radial menu that can be controlled from the mouse alone?

Wtf. Get a controller. You don't play third person games with kbm.

I hate controllers. I tried to play Hades with a controller and realized that I couldn't. With KB&M I can dash and attack without adjusting my fingers instead of having to move my thumb between A and X every 250 milliseconds.

I also can't adapt to controlling the camera with a thumbstick. I find FPS-style (forward is up) unintuitive, but flight sim style (forward is down) is even worse, as both regular and inverted X-axis feel wrong to me.

I hate controllers.

I also can't adapt to controlling the camera with a thumbstick.

I picked up this habit back when you had to enable mouselook in Quake console.

Very interesting.

I see that Quake was released in 1996. Personally, I was first introduced to keyboard/mouse-controlled action-focused video games by Claw maybe around year 2003, and quickly adapted to gamepads when my father bought a GameCube with Bush II's 2008 stimulus check. But I guess different people have different preferences.

I bought my first gamepad a couple years ago to play BotW and hated it. My son uses it to play Dead Cells now, so it doesn't feel like wasted money.

Input Deviceus 20:3-5:

Thou shalt have no other Input Devices before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any gamepad schema, or any input of any thing that is in joystick above, or that is in d-pad beneath, or that is in the console under the telly.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to developer's recommendations, nor serve them, for I the Keyboard thy Input am a jealous Input, visiting the iniquity of the peasants upon the controllers of the third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth console generation of them that hate me.

And lo, PCsus spoke, and asked:

Didst thou play Dark Souls with KB/M? If so, hatest thou thyself? Let him who is without joystick sin among you cast the first controller down. Also play Persona.

Okay, silliness aside.

The confirm button in dialogue and combat is "move right", not "interact", so if you want to switch your target, you have to cancel the skill, select it and select the skill again.

No it isn't? I've got it pulled up right now, confirm is F, QTE is space, and you can switch targets with A and D while you have a skill selected.

You can have six active skills per character, but you have to split them into three banks.

Not really new to me since I'm familiar with skill management from Persona and Clair Obscur's skills have more stuff going on, so it makes sense to me to break your skill view into pages for easier reading.

If FF/RPGM Attack/Skill/Item arrows/confirm/cancel menu is bad because you want the player to keep one hand on the mouse for free aim and jump counters, why not use a radial menu that can be controlled from the mouse alone?

I haven't hadn't used the KB/M controls until a minute ago but this sounds reasonable to me. That said, I don't know what the deal is with your confirm button issue but it's not part of the default KB/M controls. What keyboard layout do you use?

While I've got you, how do you feel about the diagonal party interface?

Pics related.

No it isn't? I've got it pulled up right now, confirm is F, QTE is space, and you can switch targets with A and D while you have a skill selected.

Yes it is. I play with ESDF, and there's no key binding that maps confirm to F that I can rebind.

Why hast thou strayed from WASD orthodoxy?

Because I picked up this habit back when you had to enable mouselook in Quake console and WASD wasn't a standard it has become.

I dunno, it feels like shifting your hand 1 key column to the left would feel better than coping with the nightmare of a control scheme you currently ended up with. When I played Dota 2, I used SZXC to move the camera rather than my usual WASD, and Clair Obscur is not so demanding on the precise execution of movement.

Started it this weekend too. I like the weird, but I am very disappointed with how mediocre the writing is. Pacing problems, basic facts (~known by the heroes) obfuscated likely only because they had no confidence in filling it out properly.

Bodies of previous expedition members all share same uniforms (so far) and the numbers on their armbands are missing - how do you screw this up so hard? Predecessors you are expected to feel camaraderie with, reduced to very liberally sprinkled props, literally denied their place in the history of the expeditions.

Still, I will definitely finish it.

Maelle is a bae, though. She's one of these heroines that promises to marry you when she's a kid and everyone dismisses it as a childhood crush and then she turns legal and proves everyone wrong.

No no no, she's like a sister, she would never.

I was rather glad you get that outfit from the intro so early for her.

I played return to moria this past two weeks. It's a survival crafting game. Gameplay wise it is fairly standard for the genre. The setting of middle earth is fun. I'm not a massive LOTR nerd, so I'm sure I missed some subtleties.

Yeah I played it alone and it was kind of lame. Idk I got stuck at the part with the orcs in moria and just got super bored.

I picked up Return to Moria a while ago for free on Epic Games Store (who are still giving away free games weekly btw).

I first played it a bit solo (up until the tentacled lake lurker or whatever it was) and then restarted to play with a friend. While it was kind of fun to explore Moria alone and gave me a feeling of isolation, the game seems to be designed for Multiplayer. I eventually dropped the game because it didn't hold my interest. I don't think I'd go back unless I could play it with friends as the content itself feels kind of samey after a while.

Steamrolled Fixfox, a moderately clever take on the standard adventure game. A little less on the endless pixel-bitching, a bit more puzzler. Downside's that your AI helper makes Navi look like a latchkey parent, the pacing's a little slower than it needs to be, and the writing aimed for cozy and hit twee-as-fuck instead. I kinda wish it had leaned into the main gimmick a little harder -- there's a real strong theme about "you can just do things" that the game just barely grazes before swerving into You Must Identify This Toothbrush Before Use -- but it was still decently fun.

Been playing Valheim (colonialism simulator)

Super fun base builder, decently challenging combat, tons of biomes ahead of us.

Very much recommend.

People are salty about what seems to be very slow development, but I just started playing (I've learned you always want to be a patient gamer with flavor of the month early access games) and it isn't an issue for me

(I've learned you always want to be a patient gamer with flavor of the month early access games)

This is probably good advice. I hate ruining EA games for myself by coming to the end of the content, and not feeling motivated enough to ever return to the game in it's final form.

I've done it many times myself!

I always wanted to do a kerbal space program story run but got bored long before they added research and funding and missions

Maybe I'll fire it up this winter

My Steam library is like an Elephant's Graveyard where EA games go to die.

With my girlfriend

Alone would be a grind

I played that one! Very pretty, but the grind put me to sleep.

Yeah realizing there was a setting to be able to bring metal through portals was huge

Also realizing I could turn loot up to 1.5x (I'll probably go up to 2x, I'm so sick of mining) has been a huge win too

I found that multiplying the resource drop to x1.5-2 from all sources struck the right balance between grind and gameplay. It didn't trivialize everything, I absolutely needed to go dungeon delving on the regular for iron, but not an absurd number of times.

I think iron actually isn't effected by that setting lol, due to how is generated

I played that a little while back, definitely enjoyable game. Can't remember if I even got to all the biomes they had released at the time.

I might have eventually gotten a mod that allowed portaling metals. I remember travel just sucking up a bunch of my time in the game.

Portal-ing metals is a world setting now thankfully, I get the idea behind the tension of having to get the mine home (or build more established bases to smelt on site) but it's just all so tedious

I'm already doing so many chores to keep us alive, let alone all that travel with such a terrible carry weight

Copper+tin is the worst too because you lose metal at a 3:1 ratio on the way to bronze

I've still mostly been playing Silksong. It is fantastic. It is a great followup to Hollow Knight, a great example of a sequel: more content with just enough of a new spin to keep things fresh while still staying true to all the things that made the first one great.

The thing that most confuses me is: why aren't more games like this? At this price point. It was made by 3 people. Yes, it took 7 years and probably re-used a lot of development assets from Hollow Knight but... why aren't more games like this? This level of quality to price ratio. Why can't more studios make similar games on similar budgets? You wouldn't need to charge $60 for your game if you only needed to pay 3 salaries. And on the other side, there are lots of cheap indie games that are crap in comparison. Why can't all of the 3 people studios produce games of this quality?

Obviously there's talent and inspiration and stuff that varies and this might just be an outlier of 3 geniuses who are disproportionately skilled at what they do. But what are they actually doing differently that all of the other indie studios haven't been doing?

Lucky thing for us is that Slay the Spire 2 and Hades 2 are going to come out this year too.

It does seem crazy that Silksong is $20, which seems to me like it is mainly a reflection of Team Cherry becoming fabulously wealthy (surely, right?) and not caring at all about money anymore.

Slay the Spire 2 got delayed. 😕

It could be. It could also just be economics and consumer psychology. They have a lot of good will from how high quality Hollow Knight was at $15. If they bumped Silksong up to $30 it might have generated a lot of backlash at the perceived greed of a price doubling, and halved their expected number of sales, especially after factoring in the number of people who are discovering and buying Hollowing Knight for the first time as they see everyone else getting excited about Silksong.

It could also be a combination of both. Maybe they could have had 60% as many sales at double the price and earned 20% more total profit, but didn't care enough to squeeze out that last extra bit.

Yes, it took 7 years and probably re-used a lot of development assets from Hollow Knight but... why aren't more games like this?

Lifestyle business vs MBA business on one side: there are overhead costs to managing a business. It's easier to have one massive company (or a group of companies) that you put money in and it spits out a sequel each year than it is to manage 100 companies that produce a good game once every 5 to 10 years.

Indie life is hard on the other side: you need at least three roles to make a good game (sound and music are often done as a commission):

  • game designer
  • programmer
  • artist

That's up to three people that have to dedicate a lot of time and effort to developing a game. You can combine some of the roles, but then you really need to quit your day job to work on the game full-time. And if you succeed, your success won't scale: you'll be able to make another game in 5 years, but you won't really be able to make games faster or make two of them in parallel. If anything, you'll hurt other indie studios by earning all this money.

I hope you value information over good writing, for I only have the former.

I'm quite sure that the product of Silksong was the goal, and not the money it made. A lot of old games were made by intelligent people who loved video games. Many newer games are made by soulless corporations who only want money, and I bet only the programmers that said company hire likes video games. The managers and CEOs probably don't know much about games at all. I'm also very confident that these programmers aren't given a lot of freedom over the product, nor time to make it. If the end product is chosen by somebody who doesn't know video games and who wants to make lots of money, then it will be a generic copy of something which has been proven to work. It will deliver the minimum gameplay, and be designed to use every exploit to get players hooked to it (gambling, log-in rewards, loot-boxes) and make money (always-online-model, selling user data, requiring an account, DLC), and minimizing moderation costs (bad servers, no voice chat, strict rules, no user-created content, no mods, no private servers, rootkit anticheats, poor support). Such a game will never be great, for it will would be released before it could ever be polished to that degree; past the minimum viable product, ever new update would be dedicated not to add additional value, but to milk the current value. I'm not sure how Candy Crush and Angry birds squeezed billions of dollars out of two games which are actually clones of old, free flash games (which didn't even become all that popular, look up Crush the Castle and Bejeweled), but a lot of companies seem to think that they can do it too.

Arjin is correct, too, programming is pretty hard. And programming has this interesting property where bad code makes all the future programming vastly harder.

So, why don't we have more good indie games? From what I can tell, people who make Indies aren't doing anything wrong, they just stop too early. Most games I have on steam can be completed in 10 hours or less. It feels like I'm buying demos. All the legendary games which has existed so far (TF2, Garry's mod, Warcraft 3, Terraria, Minecraft, Factorio, Diablo 2, Roblox, and The Sims come to mind) are ones you can play for 1000+ hours. Notice how all these games have communities and user-created content? They have custom servers and modpacks. They basically allow the users to create more content, and content created by users has soul. Games which are merely good or great still have 100+ hours of content or a lot of replayability (Pokemon, older GTA), and multiplayer (Monster Hunter, Fortnite, newer GTA). By the way, if your mix all the traits of a popular game but lack programming ability, you get games like 7 Days To Die :P 11 years of early access! And despite being "released", it's clearly not finished.

You wouldn't need to charge $60 for your game if you only needed to pay 3 salaries. And on the other side, there are lots of cheap indie games that are crap in comparison. Why can't all of the 3 people studios produce games of this quality?

I'm not in the industry so my impression might be off, but there's a few reasons I can think of:

  • Programming is hard. For as long as I remember there was some gray-suit asshole that tried to come up with a paradigm that would make it work like all other forms of engineering - you get one guy that sits at the drawing board for a while, you pay him relatively well, and when he's done you send off the blueprint to an army of worker ants, that get paid peanuts. This had several manifestations like trying to ship IT jobs to India, or trying to ship India into the west, I think now they're hoping they can hand it off to AI. For whatever reason this has always been a disaster. I can't explain why, there's just something whimsical about the entire field, that makes it resist cookie-cutter solutions, and ends up requiring talented people who are quick on their feet. It's actually counter-intuitive for me, I'd expect IRL engineering would be the thing that would keep falling flat on it's face, due to the inherent dirtiness of the physical realm, but somehow it's the opposite.
  • Programming games is even harder. All the things I said apply to your run-of-the-mill, boring-ass, web applications. Games are insanely complex systems where a tonne of stuff is interacting with a tonne of other stuff in unpredictable ways (and that's before the user input is taken into account), in real-time. Every paradigm that was invented to make the boring forms of software engineering a little bit more legible, go right out the window in game programming - at least if the code from games that ended up open sourced is any indication. This makes it even more resistant to standardization.
  • You know what else games need? Art. That other thing that doesn't go quite well with soulless, standardized, production pipelines.
  • You know what big organizations really like? Soulless, standardized, production pipelines. This one is the actual core of your question, and I now realize I don't actually have a good answer. Why? I don't know, but companies will literally eat massive costs if it buys them a sliver of predictability. In theory it should make no difference, if you have a lot of money, you can just throw it on thousands of creators, and more than make up for the money with the few good hits you get. Maybe it's because the good ones start acting like divas? Once they make a name for themselves, you need them more than they need you. No self-respecting industrialist wants to be in that position, so they prefer to throw half a billion dollars at a game with a list of credits longer than a Holocaust memorial, and get a billion dollars back, and rely on a million mindless drones, than to get the same amount of profit for a fraction of the investment, and risk your drones getting uppity.
  • Why do all the other indies suck? Well, see all the "this shit is hard" points. Yeah, this one might have been made by 3 people, but I'll bet blindly that each of them is in the top <= 0.1% of their respective field. On top of that, finding 3 talented people is not enough. You need to find 3 talented people that get along well, and can work with each other.

For whatever reason this has always been a disaster. I can't explain why, there's just something whimsical about the entire field, that makes it resist cookie-cutter solutions, and ends up requiring talented people who are quick on their feet. It's actually counter-intuitive for me, I'd expect IRL engineering would be the thing that would keep falling flat on it's face, due to the inherent dirtiness of the physical realm, but somehow it's the opposite

I think it's the thing where, if you have a cookie cutter solution to a problem, that problem is now solved and your engineers should no longer be spending an appreciable amount of time on it. If you're a civil engineer, and you get really good at determining how to design supports for a bridge on certain kinds of soil, you can (I think) make a career out of it. If you're a software engineer, and you write substantially the same code more than twice, you have almost certainly done something wrong.

Yeah this is a good point. From a certain perspective, the computer takes the place of the grunt worker and does its job for free. Programmers are the guy at the drawing board designing something brand new, and then bam you copy/paste it to a million different people's computers across the internet without having to hire thousands of grunt workers to physically build a million copies in a factory. So we're comparing different levels across industries and then wondering why the hard to automate level (design) is hard to automate.

It took me until the last paragraph to figure out you're talking about a recent game, and not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(1983_video_game)

Summer 2010 I decided that after done with everything for the day, I'd to listen to two new-to-me metal albums a day, drink yuengling, play 2-3 hours of Angband until I got good. I didn't get good, but I don't regret that wind down ritual.

Funny idea for a Victoria 3 mod:

  • Change the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence from nonnavigable lakes/rivers to a navigable sea zone. Change the Mississippi and the Illinois from nonnavigable rivers to a navigable sea zone. Add to Chicago a canal connecting the two new sea zones.

  • Change the Rhine from a nonnavigable river to a navigable sea zone. Change the Danube from a nonnavigable river to a navigable sea zone. Add to Neumarkt a canal connecting the two new sea zones.

Even funnier idea for a Victoria 3 mod:

  • Problem: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland overshadows the entire game as the world's sole superpower.

  • Solution: Recreate the empire of Charles V as an ahistorical balancing force. Make Nederland, Spain, Sardinia, and the Two Sicilies into <del>personal unions</del><ins>crown lands</ins> of Austria.

Having never played Victoria, what effects do you think this would have?

I actually haven't played much Victoria 3 either—I've just made mods and observed what the AI-controlled countries do with them in "hands-off" campaigns. But, from watching YouTubers play Victoria 3, I imagine that adding sea access to the interiors of North America and Europe would significantly increase those regions' economic output by alleviating infrastructure bottlenecks that otherwise cannot be overcome until railroads are constructed and expensively (due to the high cost of engines) maintained.

In the vanilla game, these navigable inland water bodies are represented with a flat +15 or +20 bonus to infrastructure. This is equivalent to getting a blockade-immune level 5 or level 7 port building for free, which IMO is a bit extreme.

Two things off the top of my head: that would result in AI Great Britain now teleporting 100k regulars (plus their endless tide of Indian peasants) into Missouri or Budapest every war.

And if anything, the +20 infrastructure bonus currently in game is laughably underpowered. That's one basic railroad, and says more about how little infrastructure ports provide, which off the top of my head i believe is 3. It also does nothing during a blockade. Blockades only have to block market capitals off from the world market to fuck over the whole country. I think it can try to reroute, but even the US or China only have two or three nodes to block anyways. The Brits start with like 5 fleets each bigger than anyone else save France anyways.

I agree with the great lakes canal, but I don't believe you can actually close canals you control like Panama during war. I could be wrong though, I despise the Vic3 war system and avoid anything resembling a fair fight if I can.

Ludicrous little laptop malfunction question. It’s my daughter’s, for schoolwork, Minecraft and Discord, not much else.

  • Dell Inspiron 16 5635
  • Windows 11 Home (x64)
  • 2.00 gigahertz AMD Ryzen 5 Processor
  • 850GB storage, 4GB integrated RAM
  • Less than two year old, malware clean, no other issues.

Few months ago started making swarm-of-bees buzzing sound, making it effectively unusable. Brought to repair shop for some expertise. They said fan was dusty, cleaned it, nothing else required. Got it home - buzzing started within few minutes again. Back to repair shop, they’re mystified. THE BUZZING NEVER HAPPENS IN THE SHOP. I recorded a video of the sound, so they believe me, but they can’t find anything wrong. Took the back off in the shop, powered it up, left for 20 minutes - fan running no issues, no abnormal sounds.

Took it home, and a few minutes after booting, swarm-of-bees buzzing starts again.

Software is fine, hardware seems fine, everything seems fine, and technicians have no clue.

Any motherboard nerds have any ideas?

Does the sound come from the speakers or laptop itself? Does it happen when plugged or on battery or on both? Usually those kinds of sounds could be just coil whine, or your outlets in the house are not properly grounded.

Happens when plugged in and on battery.

Weird possibility is EMI on the speakers turning the cables into wire antenna. Can eliminate it as an option by playing something normal at a very low volume; if the problem persists even when other things are driving the speakers, it's either not EMI or you're in the path of an active radar system.

Software-wise, I'd also spin up a Linux Mint LiveUSB, make sure the same issue happens from a completely different environment. There are non-malware Weird Driver Problems that can happen, including sporadically.

But the most likely problem's just the mainboard fan bearing. They're supposed to be good for five years MTBF, but especially in dirty environments they can get pretty bad pretty quick, and you'll hear a very characteristic buzzing sound. You can replace the bearing itself for about five bucks, but it's really annoying to do, so I'd just grab a spare fan module off amazon. Should have options under 20 USD. It's a pretty straightforward replacement once you pop the bottom shell off, though would recommend picking up a couple guitar picks to more cleanly pry the shell. Do be careful when unplugging or plugging anything in -- these tiny cable connectors will break off hilariously easy.

If you want to completely be sure that it's the fan module that's the problem, pry the bottom shell off, power up the laptop (on a clean, non-conductive surface), and then gently press down on the top of the fan's middle. A small amount of pressure will usually cause the noise to go away temporarily, and pressing down hard enough to make the fan stop entirely should definitely cause the noise to stop. Obviously not a fix, but great way to be sure before putting in an amazon order.

But the most likely problem's just the mainboard fan bearing.

Yeah -- did the, um, repair shop try replacing the fan at all? I could see just blowing it out on the first visit, but they cost like ten bucks -- just throw one in and see is what I'd do, but @striker gattsuru's test plan sounds good if you can make it buzz with the case off.

Yes that’s the next step with them - their expert opinion is that the fan is fine, but they’re also out of ideas and they want to replace fan next. I just wanted to try to make my own diagnosis, as I’m not sure I’m fully faithful in their advice right now.

Are you placing it on a different surface/angle when it's at home vs at the shop?

Buzzing a few mins after boot sounds like the fans (or a fan) kicking up as the laptop heats up, and then starts smacking into something in the case.

If your daughter has an angled laptop stand or something that may be causing the case to deform slightly in such a way that nudges something into the fan area and then pings off the fan as it spins.

Does the buzzing sound only happen with Minecraft? I had a laptop back in the day with a CPU fan and a GPU fan. So maybe the shop running the laptop at idle to see if the noise showed up never triggered the GPU fan.

I’m fairly clueless, but I think it only has one fan, and it seems to be spinning fine (including at different angles).

We’ve had it at multiple different angles, stand and flat. In the shop the guy had it on its side for five minutes.

It seems to happen in the house with almost nothing running (we disabled all boot apps) and with RAM and CPU under no pressure.

Shop guy said extremely unlikely but possible is some sort of speaker interference in the house, but I just can’t believe that’s a possibility. Will keep investigating and observing here.

For what it's worth, I threw this into some LLMs

Both ChatGPT and Gemini also think it's environmental. Both seem to think you should be running it at home on battery only, because if that fixes it your problem is the laptop AC adaptor or your electrical circuits.

Are you using your laptop cord at the shop, or theirs?

You could also disable the speakers in device manager, which will eliminate the speaker cause.

Try booting into BIOS and see if it happens there. If it's just happening in windows it might be from power settings.

"4. Fan resonance check.

Does the pitch change when you: lightly press near the left palm rest/vents, lift a corner, or place it on a folded towel? If yes, that's resonance at a specific RPM. Ask the shop to replace the fan module; cleaning won't fix a bearing or blade imbalance."

Try different wall outlets, and if possible, different chargers.

I'm so curious!

Cheers for the curiosity. Will aim to report back on progress. It also happens when not plugged in, so I don’t think it’s the circuits. Environmental issues - will be interested to try to triage those. Radar path, that would be a wow!

Best way to rule out speaker interference would be to take it to a cafe or something and do something on it (taxes? Minecraft? Watch a movie?)

If it happens in a different environment you'll rule out a weird EM field in your house (lol)

Sounds like you've ruled out fan noise. I guess you could try messing with the fan curves (you can in bios, but it's better to do it with an app that allows you to do it real time) when it makes the sound and see if the sound changes (when it's happening) with different fan speeds.

I am not an electrical engineer, but I cannot think of anything that could generate sound in a computer that isn't a fan or its speaker. I don't think solid state electronics can make noise?

I am not an electrical engineer, but I cannot think of anything that could generate sound in a computer that isn't a fan or its speaker. I don't think solid state electronics can make noise?

I think power supply components can generate coil whine. Lots of laptops do this but it tends to be fairly quiet and not a swarm of bees.

Will do the cafe test tomorrow. Worth a shot to see if the issue can be raised outside these four walls.

I once read a sci-fi novella that was a sort of anti-Lena: a dude has his brain scanned, becomes the first AGIs and they lead the humanity into the Singularity.

ChatGPT has no idea. Neither does /r/TOMT. Which means I must've read it here. It starts with the dude geting out of the scanner and realizing the lab is floating high above the ground.

UPD: if anyone wants to read it, it's https://sifter.org/%7Esimon/AfterLife/index.html

UPD: if anyone wants to read it, it's https://sifter.org/%7Esimon/AfterLife/index.html

Great story, thought-provoking, thanks for the recommendation! Nice contrast to Lena, and I like the context being implanted in dreams. Personally, I think Lena has the more realistic picture of how the entire mind upload affair would turn out...

Did it feature the people doing the uploading being secretive about it bc they lived in some paranoid future USA ?

I read such a novel once, written by some non-writer. It wasn't entirely bad. Basically bunch of researchers clandestinely mind upload, then optimize the copies to run fast, develop some nifty tech and then all die when gov't figures out what has happened, logically sees them as a threat and blows them out of the sky as they were trying to run away to the moon using some novel-physics abusing engine creating antimatter for itself.

No, I am not familiar with these things. No aliens in the story either. I remember the cabal of the protagonist's digital instances selling combat androids and AI to every government through shell companies, obsoleting human soldiers. And then refusing to wage war.

Ok, that rules it out.

Sounds familiar, check with /r/rational ? Also, aside from spacebattles or sufficientvelocity it could have fanfiction- any chance this guy was a pony, ninja or wizard? Might want to slog through https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSingularity

Was it on Space Battles or Sufficient Velocity? I recall a similar concept, humanity got wiped out by aliens, I think, leaving just a single mind upload inside an asteroid. Can't recall the name at the moment.

That would be Chrysalis of /r/HFY, strong first half, too much of vomit-inducing kumbaya sugar in the second half.

No, I am not familiar with these things. No aliens in the story either. I remember the cabal of the protagonist's digital instances selling combat androids and AI to every government through shell companies, obsoleting human soldiers. And then refusing to wage war.

We Are Legion, from the Bobiverse?

Or somesuch. A friend mentioned it to me many years ago, and I don't remember the particulars. Never read it myself.

I've checked the synopsis, and unfortunately, that's a different book.

People have been complaining that normies are dumb for at least 2,400 years:

STRANGER: Should we not say that the division according to classes, which neither makes the same other, nor makes other the same, is the business of the dialectical science?

THEAETETUS: That is what we should say.

STRANGER: Then, surely, he who can divide rightly is able to see clearly one form pervading a scattered multitude, and many different forms contained under one higher form; and again, one form knit together into a single whole and pervading many such wholes, and many forms, existing only in separation and isolation. This is the knowledge of classes which determines where they can have communion with one another and where not.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And the art of dialectic would be attributed by you only to the philosopher pure and true?

THEAETETUS: Who but he can be worthy?

STRANGER: In this region we shall always discover the philosopher, if we look for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discovered, but for a different reason.

THEAETETUS: For what reason?

STRANGER: Because the Sophist runs away into the darkness of not-being, in which he has learned by habit to feel about, and cannot be discovered because of the darkness of the place. Is not that true?

THEAETETUS: It seems to be so.

STRANGER: And the philosopher, always holding converse through reason with the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light; for the souls of the many have no eye which can endure the vision of the divine.

THEAETETUS: Yes; that seems to be quite as true as the other.

STRANGER: Well, the philosopher may hereafter be more fully considered by us, if we are disposed; but the Sophist must clearly not be allowed to escape until we have had a good look at him.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

I love socratic dialogues written by people who clearly don't understand the point of a socratic dialogue.

I've never perceived the Socratic dialogue to have much of a point at all. It's mostly one of the following (or a combination), depending on how kind we are being to the writer:

1: Attempting to get away with strawmanning an opponent by presenting someone who starts disagreeing with you but then immediately caves and agrees with all of your counterarguments as soon as you present them.

2: Attempting to leverage pathos to trick the audience into agreeing with you more than your logical arguments alone would by building them a character who starts in their position (opposition or ignorance) and build empathy with them before the character switches to agreeing with you (causing the audience who identifies with them to subconsciously follow suit).

3: Trying to explain something in a way that's less boring than a monologue, by simulating characters and counterpoints and a skeleton of a narrative to the explanation so the explanation is presented in a more engaging way.

Theoretically if your characters are intelligent and aren't just strawmen meant to prop up the MC in the most shallow way this can work, but basically the only example I've ever seen of something like this is in some of Scott Alexander's works. The vast majority, including and especially the classics like this one, are shallow and pointless.

I've never perceived the Socratic dialogue to have much of a point at all.

If we're confining ourselves specifically to the works of Plato, then the point is to explore a particular philosophical problem, and typically, to outline a solution to it. The dialogue I quoted from, The Sophist, attempts to explore and solve a series of paradoxes related to the concept of non-existence. See here for a gloss on the dialogue's central arguments.

As for why Plato chose to present his works in dialogue form rather than a more traditional "scholarly" form, the reasons are multifaceted. I would point out, for example, that we would have never seen the beautiful drama of Callicles's accusations against Socrates (that he was wasting his life on philosophy) if Plato had not chosen the dialogue form.

The vast majority, including and especially the classics like this one, are shallow and pointless.

You're going to look me in the eyes and tell me that this is shallow and pointless?

Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may be a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just, profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends. But I hear someone exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is often difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path along which we should proceed. With a view to concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods and political clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art of persuading courts and assemblies; and so, partly by persuasion and partly by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished. Still I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can they be compelled. But what if there are no gods? Or, suppose them to have no care of human things -- why in either case should we mind about concealment? And even if there are gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets; and these are the very persons who say that they may be influenced and turned by 'sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.' Let us be consistent then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of injustice; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust, we shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be punished. 'But there is a world below in which either we or our posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.' ‘Yes, my friend’, will be the reflection, but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these have great power. That is what mighty cities declare; and the children of the gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony.

On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than the worst injustice? When, if we only unite the latter with a deceitful regard to appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with gods and men, in life and after death, as the most numerous and the highest authorities tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man who has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears justice praised? And even if there should be someone who is able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just of their own free will; unless, peradventure, there be someone whom the divinity within him may have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has attained knowledge of the truth -- but no other man. He only blames injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.

The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning of the argument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we were to find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice -- beginning with the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has been preserved to us, and ending with the men of our own time -- no one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except with a view to the glories, honours, and benefits which flow from them. No one has ever adequately described either in verse or prose the true essential nature of either of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the universal strain, had you sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we should not have been on the watch to keep one another from doing wrong, but everyone would have been his own watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong, of harbouring in himself the greatest of evils. I dare say that Thrasymachus and others would seriously hold the language which I have been merely repeating, and words even stronger than these about justice and injustice, grossly, as I conceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement manner, as I must frankly confess to you, because I want to hear from you the opposite side; and I would ask you to show not only the superiority which justice has over injustice, but what effect they have on the possessor of them which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil to him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, to exclude reputations; for unless you take away from each of them his true reputation and add on the false, we shall say that you do not praise justice, but the appearance of it; we shall think that you are only exhorting us to keep injustice dark, and that you really agree with Thrasymachus in thinking that justice is another's good and the interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a man's own profit and interest, though injurious to the weaker. Now as you have admitted that justice is one of that highest class of goods which are desired indeed for their results, but in a far greater degree for their own sakes -- like sight or hearing or knowledge or health, or any other real and natural and not merely conventional good -- I would ask you in your praise of justice to regard one point only: I mean the essential good and evil which justice and injustice work in the possessors of them. Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards and honours of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of arguing which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who have spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And therefore, I say, not only prove to us that justice is better than injustice, but show what they either of them do to the possessor of them, which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men.

They still usually at least attempt to build a strawman to take down. I'm not sure I've ever seen one before that didnt even pretend to go through the motions.

The dialogue I quoted from was written by Plato...

Everybody has off days

It’s pretty characteristic of Plato’s style in general.

There is a lot of back-and-forth debate in the Platonic dialogues, no doubt. But also there are a lot of times where Socrates is just monologuing while the other person interjects with “yes, quite, it is as you say, Socrates”.

You might say that it's the platonic Socratic dialogue?

Death of the author?

Not on my watch.

Seeing that phrase written instead of spoken and I imagine you checking your wrist.

Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is the greatest Mechwarrior game ever

So I finished the Shadow of Kerensky DLC, and have been puttering around in the clan invasion corridor having fun. From the top, this campaign was their best campaign yet. From the first terrifying mission where you go from hunting pirates to running for your life, to the last. It didn't seem to have the difficulty spikes previous campaigns had, and which often had patches or hotfixes to adjust the difficulty. Some sections were on rails as prior DLC campaigns had been, but it actually went open world for a bit too giving you some freedom to harvest more Clan tech or rest and refit. That was new for them.

Clan tech feels amazing to play with. Sometimes it feels better retrofitted onto an Inner Sphere mech than it does on a Clan mech. I failed to appreciate just how much better Clan tech was. Their ER Small Lasers are better than Inner Sphere Medium Lasers in every facet. More damage, better range, less head, half the weight. After I started replacing my weapons with Clan variants, I ended up with more free weight than I knew how to fill on most my IS mechs.

Fighting the Clans is terrifying, though I'm still figuring out what the deal with some of the missions is. I think they all have 400T limits, and difficulty ratings ranging from 100 to 120? Sometimes I'll drop into a mission loaded for (ghost) bear, and only encounter a half dozen light mechs and a medium. Other times I drop in and a full star of assault mechs chews me up and spits me out. I think I'm not paying enough attention to the difficulty rating versus the drop tonnage.

The economy around Clan tech is absurdly tight. I've been conducting raids into the invasion corridor, and then fleeing back to industrial worlds to earn cash in Arena missions while my mechs get repaired. Clan tech is preposterously expensive, and a single Clan ER Large Laser is like 12 salvage shares. Your only shot at salvaging a clan assault chassis are having maxed out reputation and probably taking a multiple operation contract for the bonus it provides. So far I really struggle to trust the AI pilots with my good clan tech, but the enemy AI seems to prioritize the player, so they tend to generally take almost no damage while I limp back to the evac point.

Still, when you return to the Inner Sphere and take a Clam mech out on a normal mission, you are suddenly a god amongst mortals. Even taking an Adder out for a spin in a 35T free for all, equipped with 4 C-ER MLasers and a C-Gauss, it just chews up IS Lights like they are nothing, despite being fairly beefy itself.

This is the Mechwarrior game I've always wanted. It's also likely the best Mechwarrior game we are ever likely to get in my lifetime. Whenever Piranha loses the license, Microsoft is going to throw it into a vault guarded by rabid IP Lawyers, to be largely forgotten about. Won't even be worth MS's time to entertain request for the license, not without it being some cloud based, AI powered eldritch horror.

Their ER Small Lasers are better than Inner Sphere Medium Lasers in every facet. More damage, better range, less head, half the weight.

In the tabletop game it's equal damage, 2/3 the range, better heat, half the weight. Does the video game mess with game balance that strongly? Skimming forums it sounds like the answer may be "yes", because smaller lasers fire more frequently and all beam weapons hit the same target at the same time and the AI tries to close range rapidly regardless of loadout so you just want to spam builds with as many little lasers as possible ... but if it's the greatest Mechwarrior game ever (I haven't played since 3 but I loved 2) maybe they're exaggerating the severity?

I might have to double check my numbers.

So, by tabletop, IS MLasers have a range breakdown of 3/6/9, 1T, 3 heat, 5 damage. Clan ER Small lasers have 2/4/6, 0.5T, 2 heat, 5 damage. So yeah, same damage, 1/3rd less heat, 2/3rd the range.

Now in MW5 things get slightly confused by equipment qualities. So we have

MLaser Tier 0: 5 dmg, 324 range, 2.7 heat MLaser Tier 5: 6.5 dmg, 506 range, 1.688 heat C-ER SLaser: 6 dmg, 562.5 range, 1.312 heat

So yeah, it looks like the differences were exaggerated a bit. Compared to the lowest tier MLaser is 20% more damage, 50% more range, 50% less heat. To the highest tier MLaser it's actually less damage, but more range, and slightly less heat.

Court opinion:

  • Around 2 AM in Philadelphia, a 12-passenger van rear-ends a car at low speed, causing the car to spin out and the car's driver to receive a minor injury. The van flees the scene, but the car follows. After a 12-block chase at 50 miles per hour through several stop signs and red lights, the van turns into a parking lot from which it is unable to exit. The responding police officer observes that the van driver appears drunk. The municipal judge acquits the van driver of drunk driving, but convicts him of reckless endangerment, and imposes a sentence of 18 months of probation.

  • The appeals panel reverses. There is no evidence that the rear-end crash with the car was the result of recklessness rather than of negligence. (Drunk driving is not inherently reckless, especially when it was not even proved that the van driver was intoxicated beyond the legal limit.) And there is no evidence that, during this early-morning chase, any other vehicles or pedestrians were on the street in front of the van to be endangered in the first place.

Fun fact: It may be legal for you to design a house even if you are not a licensed architect.

NJ Statutes tit. 45 ch. 3 § 10:

No person except an architect licensed in the State of New Jersey shall engage in the practice of architecture in this State.

Nothing herein contained shall prohibit any person in this State from acting as designer of a dwelling and all appurtenances thereto that are to be constructed by himself solely as a residence for himself or for a member or members of his immediate family.

PA Architects Licensure Law ch. 5 §§ 8 and 11:

No individual shall engage in the practice of architecture in this State unless such individual holds a currently valid license issued pursuant to this act.

Nothing contained in this act shall be construed to prohibit the preparation of any drawings or other design documents for detached one-family or two-family dwellings not more than three stories in height and their accessory structures.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/twynu9/ops_driveway_connects_two_public_roads_using_it/

Purchased 30 acres of land and built a house several years back in central Florida, had a driveway installed that cuts across the center of my property allowing me to exit on either of two main roads.

I now have traffic using my driveway as a shortcut between the two roads up to and including 18 wheelers and other large vehicles since using my driveway cuts off nearly half an hour of travel time between two cities.

He should have added a toll gate.

Fun fact: It may be legal for you to design a house even if you are not a licensed architect.

Will you be able to sell the house later if you design it yourself?

Legally: The cited New Jersey law does not define "solely as a residence for himself". However, if you live in the house for two years before selling it, the federal IRS will refrain from taxing the first 250 k$ of profit that you make from the sale, and presumably the state authorities would use the same guideline. (Pennsylvania has no restriction at all.)

Practically: Even if the plans are not "signed and sealed" by an architect, you still have to abide by the building code in order to get a building permit from the municipality, so insurance and mortgage companies should still be perfectly willing to deal with the house.

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