domain:sotonye.substack.com
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
I think FF8 is a great game. Yeah parts of it are a fever dream that make no sense, but the same is true of FF9 as well (Necron). And I think gameplay wise it is one of the most fun character building systems they turned out. It really rewards mastery of the mechanics in a way not many other FFs do, and on top of that it gives you multiple ways to become strong (e.g. while many favor low-level runs where you junction high level magic, I myself enjoy a high level run where you level up with the stat bonus abilities). And it has the greatest minigame ever, bar none.
He mentions the primary source and gives keywords in the description: the MKUltra subproject guidebook. I'd agree that I'd like him to show more of his work in where he's drawing his elaborations from.
WhiningCoil
1hr ago
Man, different strokes, different folks. I positively loathed Final Fantasy 10. I hated it's VO, I hated it's world, numerous boss fights sent me through the roof with frustration (Yunalesca in particular). I think what frustrated me most, especially towards the end game, was how insanely wasteful with my time the game got. You die in a boss fight, and you are committed to 5-15 minutes of unskippable cutscenes every attempt. It was excruciating. I found Tidus an infinitely more annoying character than Vaan, but that could have had more to do with the VO.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
Climate data (expand the table)
4 - The best gameplay in the series. Characters were uniquely distinct from each other, with a mix of magic types and unique abilities that gave them deep flavor without being gimmicky, much in the way 1's class system and upgrades had worked. This worked with the linear story to regularly remix your party and keep things fresh from a gameplay perspective; a character dying or leaving the party meant the flavor of the fights changed significantly, and these mechanical changes underlined the story beats. Exploration was significant, because you could find hidden fights and treasures that noticeably spiked the power of your party, especially in the endgame. The characters were awesome, and the story hit hard. Coming from FF1 and from the Dragon Warrior games, it was a complete revelation.
6 - The best story in the series. Kefka had far more depth and menace as a villain, and many of the character set-pieces and story beats were delightful. Amazing mood, amazing music. In terms of gameplay, though, I felt like it was a step down. You had much more control over which characters you used through the game, and every character could learn every spell through the esper system; this was a huge upgrade in terms of player freedom, but a huge downgrade in terms of focused gameplay, because it made the characters feel much more generic and made the gameplay much more open-ended and flabby. They tried to compensate by giving every character a unique skill, but there were so many of them and they all competed with universal magic/Espers, and the end result often just felt gimmicky and pointless; combined with the much longer intended playtime, the gameplay felt much more monotonous by the end.
...The other games I played were downhill from those two. 7 and 8 felt like elaborations on the theme of 6, but each felt flabbier than the last. I never played 9. 10 felt like they were trying to pull things back in the direction of 4, but by that point the bloat seemed terminal. I gave up somewhere in the second disc, and haven't played an FF since.
The series as a whole seems like a monument to the truth of "less is more". FF was the series where I realized "100 hours of gameplay" wasn't necessarily a good thing, like a bit of butter spread over too much toast.
...I've often wondered how much of the above might just be the "nothing will ever be as good as that thing you liked when you were 14" effect, though.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1hr ago
24 is pretty low. Does it ever get warm there?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
TBH for whatever reason evangelicals tend to have nearly blind support for Israel, and that’s long been the GOP base of support. I believe this is why Israel is seen as the one country to support here. It’s more pander than anything, and not too bad so long as it doesn’t have to many negative effects on security.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
How can one like sunny weather. It cross 50 degree centigrade, the warm winds kill you and you are unable to do anything in the open at any point during the day until the seasons change.
I think your perspective is warped here because India is hot as fuck. If you live in a more temperate region of the world sunny weather is pleasant because that's generally somewhere in the region of 60-80F (about 15-27C). I don't know of anyone who would be happy with sunny weather if that meant it was 50C/122F outside.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1hr ago
15 is jacket weather. I like 30-35 degrees as it's not too hot. 45 and up is unbearable.
yunyun333
2hr ago
"What's so bad about murder? Everything happens according to God's plan, therefore if someone commits murder that must be God's plan."
Don't Christians say this all the time? When good or bad things happen, it's "all part of God's plan". Either God exerts agency in this world or he does not.
Culture war - bro podcast edition.
Sam Hyde was recently on Bradley Marty's podcast where he brought former mma fighter Jason Mayhem Muller. Two whacko wierdos I love who fell off came together after a new resurgence, Mayhem has a history of drugs and likely has severe adhd like me because he wouldn't stop interrupting.
Sam Hyde accepted the anti semite, admitted he was a Christian for the first time and started the podcast with jokes like "Bradley was telling us about 14 this, 88 that". Miller acted like a total dunce, a ie collar democrat stuck in the early 2000s. I was surprised that the podcaster got a quarter million views. Recently Joe Rogan acknowledged his existence after having denied it for close to a decade.
It's nice seeing Sam be famous. He seems a little bitter, yet he was one of the only ones who didn't cuck out back when his show got canceled. Just surprised to find him on a popular podcast. This was unthinkable 4 years ago. He gets Moores Law wrong but hey, Scott and lesswrong gets tech wrong too so won't say much.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
My keyboard is set for English/spanish/french.
I keep it to make it harder for artificial stupidity to imitate me- probably a paranoid worry, but c’est la vie.
gattsuru
2hr ago
I'm pretty explicitly spelling out why the alternative wouldn't be judged much better, given the background and details available.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
What is ideal weather like where you are from?
New York–Philadelphia corridor: 70–75 °F (21–24 °C) and sunny
What times of the year do you like the most weather-wise?
The aforementioned temperatures prevail around May and September.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Kinda wish he put up his notes and sources in the video.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
Which university professors and medical doctors willingly participated in...
No_one
2hr ago
What is ideal weather like where you are from?
Scattered clouds, 15°C and intermittent light breeze is the perfect weather. Not hot enough to sweat when walking, not cold enough to need a jacket, just perfect.
veqq
2hr ago
So you don't mean that Dewey talked to a small, wealthy, and unrepresentative set and made some mistake? Do you mean that the reporter, Arthur Sears Henning or the newspaper made this error? Or sample bias in early-available data?
Thoroughlygruntled
2hr ago
I actually think Vanderstok is an example of the same phenomenon. From Gorsuch's perspective, the GCA's definition of "firearm" may be absurdly broad, but that's not his fault. Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard, and all that. Just as in Bostock, the context the words of the statute were written are irrelevant to his analysis.
Maybe I'm insufficiently cynical, but I just don't get the same sense of insincerity from Gorsuch as I get from someone like Roberts. Then again, I don't think Gorsuch is much of a gun guy, so I can't completely rule out that he's just conforming to his peers' opinion that "ghost guns" are scary tools of insurrection undeserving of constitutional protection. He could just be an old school "I don't know why my old hunting rifle isn't good enough for the kids these days" NRA types.
No_one
2hr ago
There was a treatise and also some horribly smug memoir.
The clown part is that it took years for people to surface that crap even though half a day of effort would have found it back then. But that'd mean someone out there would have to be proactive.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
My other thought was some kind of foreign language keyboard that makes such slipups easy but IIRC this guy is in Texas.
thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, sometimes abbreviated to TTS
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