• 0 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle
  • I’m of two minds on this. I agree that fewer safe spaces for bigots is fantastic and pushes back against the normalization of some really vile things as “just an opinion”, “just joking”, “voicing all sides”, “making up funny stories about famous people”, “just boys being boys”, or other means of “criticizing” those in power.

    However, we are ACTIVELY sliding down the slippery slope that people have been calling a fallacy for over a decade, and watching the same arguments used to create spaces free from the most hateful people on the internet get twisted and co-opted by those same people to ban and punish genuine criticism of atrocities and voices against abuses of power.

    There are sacrifices with either choice more akin to a check in chess than an opportunity to choose a truly better outcome. Seeing all the good other Minecraft communities have done in making libraries and humanitarian resources available in creative ways gives me hope, but watching a government bedbuddy of a company like Microsoft start with the easy win of banning Nazis and bigots makes me really hope that thats truly their focus and not an opening to take out some of the amazing and creative workarounds people have done to combat censorship and human rights abuses in their own Minecraft way.











  • I beat Hyper Light Drifter for the first time. And I think I spent some time on the new Mario kart levels, though that might have been last week.

    HLP is a fascinating game with a novel approach to gameplay and world building. A few controls issues annoyed me, but they were growing pains and not fully learning the system. I love games that use that particular art style. I think I’m doing Mario Galaxy next.

    I’m trying to figure out my second Voucher game to get.

    My top choices are: Arceus - I enjoy pokemon, but it sounds like a lot of “research” busy work. Pikmin 4 - I haven’t clicked with Pikmin demos previously, but the idea has always seemed pretty interesting if I’d let it go farther. Mario Wonder - feels shorter, and more peripheral to my interest, but I’ve heard great things. Xenoblade 3 - I’ve only played XBX before and not all the way through. RPGs aren’t completely my thing, but I’ve heard great things.

    None of them are THE game I’m after with pros and cons to each. The decision paralysis is rough and I don’t see anything worth waiting for before May.





  • For me, my “misery is the point” game was This War of Mine. I got it just before Ukraine, but still couldn’t stomach it. My first character had a kid that was constantly crying and whimpering and I just couldn’t do it. I was bad at it—if you can be good. I couldn’t help others in the ways that I wanted to. I couldn’t stop the whimpering. Then I went out as someone else and came back and the dad and kid left. And I had to stop there for a bit.

    I set it down to come back later, then Ukraine happened. Where it was hard to stomach while I knew this was hypothetical and the Euro-setting was pretty abstracted from the current reality there—though still very present elsewhere—knowing that people on the ground were looking and sounding similar to what was happening in game and seeing that in news daily just cut off any desire I had to play. It’s powerful and DEEPLY empathetic, but that spiral of misery and failure was the point and it made it in spades.



  • It’s less the repaired retail market (which they control on Amazon at least) and more the “I could repair this for cheaper than half of a new phone” lost sales. They’ve been quietly letting that group slip by for years of progressively more expensive to “repair” (read, “swap modules”) while people who could get a basic repair done for cheap are pushed to buy new phones instead.


  • What are the holes that can be poked into this as written? I firmly believe Apple is still against repair that would eat into their new sales. So where does this, as written, give them the room to keep that going?

    Is it just that they can continue to make their “screen issue = replace whole top shell of laptop” and similar the default and draw the line there, standardizing high-cost repairs even if it’s just a wire or small component replacement? If they don’t allow ANY standard repairs more granular than swap module for module, they don’t have to provide more granular resources than that. I’m not fully up on what repairs Apple authorizes.

    This is definitely a win to some degree, though. But when your opponent goes to your side and draws a line, that always gives me the chills.



  • I’m sampling lots of different apps and have noticed that, while I prefer a massive chunk of Mlem’s features and style, I often find myself using others like Memmy because they have an option for images to show the whole image while scrolling rather than merely a square preview of it.

    I get lots of cut off heads, spoiled meme punchlines, and just all around unclear content while scrolling on Mlem due to this missing option. I absolutely see a rationale or two for it, both on the side of an app encouraging engagement and user preference, so I was curious if:

    A. I’m missing something and didn’t have any reason to cheat on my beloved Mlem for unspoiled memes, or B. There are any plans for this as an option in the future.

    I’m pleased to see the existing advancements with image viewing, though! And so much else! Thanks for all your hard work!