Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
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User ID: 214
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
15d ago
Trump is on stage giving the speech now. AP has called Pennsylvania. Unless Alaska somehow doesn't turn out the electoral votes, it's over. What a ride this has been.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2mo ago
Your friends' scenario is probably my single biggest fear in life. My cousin is disabled in the same way, and it destroyed my aunt's marriage. She'll spend the rest of her life taking care of her, and then her oldest daughter will inherit the job once she dies. She is in her thirties and has the mental capacity of a third grader, has a host of health issues, and will never be independent. The whole situation is a nightmarish black hole that there is no escape from. It's hitting especially close to home as I'm nearing my late twenties and have been talking children with the woman I'll be marrying. If it were fully up to me, I would terminate a pregnancy if our child were to have some kind of developmental disability out the gate, but she has a Catholic upbringing and obviously does not feel the same way, so I'll just have to roll the dice when we have ours.
I do want to push back on the part about social opportunities, though. I recently went on a trip with with my parents, girlfriend, two of my friends, one of their girlfriends, and their parents. Our families are close, and we met by me becoming friends with one of the sons in middle school. As we became friends and hung out after school, my parents met his, and befriended them. Now, years and years later, my parents know dozens of people in the area purely through that initial connection. I think, if you live in the suburbs, one of the only ways to build a functioning social network in your middle years is by having kids and connecting with their peers' parents. Obviously this can only really happen once they get a bit older though. I know you're more of an urbanite, so I'm not sure how much this would apply to you or your brother.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2mo ago
I walk everywhere I can, and have gotten by without owning a car for the last several years. In the last four years, I've lived in both a spread-out suburb and a denser, quasi-urban area. In my experience as a dedicated pedestrian, the majority of motorists I encounter are very deferential and mindful, stopping when they don't need to or waiting much longer than is required at a stop sign when I am approaching a crossing in order to let me through. Almost every cyclist I encounter is the exact opposite, refusing to slow or turn for anyone. It's on you to get out of the way or have the cyclist shoot you a death glare for not showing them sufficient deference. They are a massive hazard and nuisance on the sidewalks. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to lack of dedicated biking lanes, but I think cyclists have a cultural problem that makes them extremely unlikable, and not just to motorists.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2mo ago
I’ve emulated Fire Emblem games from the SNES, GBA, and GameCube on PC and it was very smooth in all cases. You get access to save states if you’re interested in that, so it’s arguably a better experience. I recommend using a gamepad with a decent d-pad if you’re going to play the older games though, as it’s ergonomically preferable to doing it on your keyboard.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
3mo ago
Nintendo is overrated in the way Disney is overrated — brand power and nostalgia do a lot to sell and market their games. That said, look at the AAA gaming scene over the last 5 and what developers are left that haven't devolved into slop mills pushing out incomplete, buggy, soulless games? Nintendo, From Soft, maybe CD Projekt depending on how charitable you want to be towards Cyberpunk. Nintendo holding onto their reputation for this long speaks to something beyond nostalgia.
I share a lot of your criticisms of Breath of the Wild though. They spent so much time on the (admittedly amazing) world design and physics engine that dungeons, loot, enemy variety are all undercooked. Something I've noticed about it is that the non-gamers I know absolutely adore the game. They love the freedom and playing around with the cool physics system to see what you can do. More traditional gamers I know get tired of the copy-paste content after trying to play the game like a traditional Zelda and wind up much more negative on the game.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
4mo ago
Fantastic work, though the sections on how Gerard manipulates procedural outcomes on Wikipedia to turn supposedly neutral, fact-based articles into hit pieces fills me with dread. This same kind of malicious citogenesis was used in the Kiwi Farms deplatforming saga back in 2022/2023 to turn the Wikipedia narrative on them into a one-sided hit piece, with journalists citing conjecture and laundering it into a Reliable Source. I assume anything controversial on Wikipedia is written this way now, but I don't think the average person does.
You're on a roll with this niche you're carving out for yourself. I'm excited to read about the next bizarre rabbit hole you decide to post about in 4-6 months.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
4mo ago
2015 is Current Year, so we're in Current Year + 9 at the moment
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
5mo ago
I remember this post of yours where you floated psychoanalyzing the mindset of rational fiction after finishing Worth the Candle. I’d be interested in hearing what you had to say about the genre based on what you’re saying here.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
6mo ago
I largely agree, but he is currently facing a wrongful death lawsuit by Anthony Huber's father. I imagine he's going to be hounded by very well-funded civil suits for a long time as revenge for getting off. Still, this is a far shot from state prosecution or murder.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
6mo ago
I don’t believe it’s been covered here, at least not recently. I’d certainly be interested in hearing about it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
7mo ago
PF2e looks really fun. It seems like it was made by and for people tired of 5e's lack of crunch. What do you plan on playing?
We're all on Virtual Tabletop as well. I don't know if it'd be my first choice, but there are a lot of advantages to it over in person, like presentation, handling rolls, etc. If a campaign takes advantage of the online tools I think the switch is worthwhile, but when the GM doesn't do that it always feels worse than in person.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
7mo ago
Anyone playing any tabletop games?
I'm a year and a half into a heavily modified 5e campaign I've been running. It's going well, but I've been itching to be a player in something longer than a oneshot for a while now. Two of my players have talked about interest in running Traveller and Cyberpunk 2020, respectively. My fingers are crossed on at least one of these panning out, as I've been itching to play something that isn't 5e for ages.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
7mo ago
Very true. I didn't prioritize Kawakami and even skipped Chihaya in my first run because I was so peeved about getting scammed by her, and this time around knowing who to prioritize made things go much more smoothly for me. Jose and Ryuji's reworked instakill make it trivial to farm money and XP. I'm not complaining too much as I like having the money to fuck around with Persona crafting, but I wish there was a way to only get the money so I wasn't overleveling the content so much.
The scenes introducing the new characters could be awkward, but I can accept why they had to be inserted in like that. Maruki was handled much better than Yoshizawa so far, and I agree with you that her scene in the casino was goofy and makes zero sense. For me, all of the followup phone conversations tacked on to every confidant or how the Phantom Thieves start a new groupchat every day to gush about how evil their current target is wore very thin.
Makoto was one of my favorites originally, but she really gets on my nerves now. She becomes the main character once she joins, and I wish the game didn't feel obliged to pretend that Joker is the leader since she it's so clear that she is. The way the Phantom Thieves are so thoughtlessly cruel to Mishima rubs me the wrong way too, since the narrative never acknowledges how hypocritical it makes them look. I still love Haru, Ryuji, Yusuke, Akechi, and my favorites from the first time around though.
I have high hopes for the new semester. I was spoiled ahead of time on the direction it takes and it seems quite interesting. I did follow a guide to make sure I wasn't missing any of the triggers for it, though.
Haha, I fused Izanagi and Kaguya in the early game before I realized how busted all of the DLC personas were and dropped them. It's a shame, because they have cool designs, but it feels like cheating to use them for combat or itemization. If they were a bit weaker it'd feel better to use.
My main squad is Jack Frost, Pale Rider, Titania, Seth, Bugs, and Alice. I'll say that having the means to keep personas you like relevant past the dungeon you fuse them is a great mechanic. Theorycrafting their movesets to cover every situation and going through the steps to get the builds online scratches a certain itch. I'm thinking of adding Metatron or training up Kaguya now that her ability isn't gamebreaking, but they won't be necessary to finish.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
7mo ago
I'll have to see how Royal handles the original endgame content post-Shido to compare. I don't remember the original endgame being that bad, but the ideas in it definitely grabbed me so I could have overlooked any pacing flaws it had.
It's all the stuff Royal added to the original game that makes the pacing suffer for me. Like those pointless followup phone calls every confidant has where they repeat the ideas you just saw two minutes ago. The extra scenes for Kasumi, Akechi, and Maruki feel a bit out of place, but I like those characters enough that I don't mind too much.
Persona 5 Royal. I played the original game in 2019 and liked it quite a lot. This time around I find the writing much more laughable. The extra scenes and dialogue added by Royal probably don't help, as they bloat the game to its breaking point. So many conversations simply repeat what was just talked about in the last scene, or add absolutely nothing.
The game is also much, much easier. A lot of it comes from quality of life improvements — the game doesn't arbitrarily take as much time from you as in vanilla, so you have more opportunities to max out your social stats. The fusion alarm is straight up broken, though, and makes it trivial to snap the combat over your knee. A few trips to the gallows and your persona is going to be far stronger than anything you ever might fight. I'm having a lot of fun using all the mechanics to craft my optimized team though, so it's not all bad.
I'm nearing the endgame of the vanilla game, which I remember being excellent, with everything in Mementos being particularly haunting. Hopefully it holds up. And I am still coping that the brand new semester will be good, as I've yet to play that before.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
They often hamstring a good sucker punch twist by foreshadowing what's going to happen before you start the story. If they come packaged with a tagging system like on Archive of Our Own though, where you can search by the most granular of details to find the story you want, I can get behind that.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
Seeing as so much of the AI Safety field turned out to be, in practice, simply ensuring the AI Overlord agrees with progressive dogma, I'd prefer to just let it rip at this point. I'll throw in with the /acc types and take my chances with Clippy over having these ideas be enshrined in the AI that will mold the thoughts and lives of future generations.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
Try running Stable Diffusion. It's open source and you can find a specifically-trained model for whatever you want. If you can't run it locally, you can find a million services online that can do it for you. You don't need to deal with content restrictions or it adding diversity to all of your prompts. I use a site called NovelAI, which runs its own version of SD trained off of an anime booru. They recently put out a new version of the image gen and it's really good. The progress made since just the last year is astounding.
We could have easily been in the timeline where the big three image diffusion models (Dall E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney) all kept it locked down, but since one of them broke ranks and made it open source, it's opened up a world of potential for everyone to use image generation how they want.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
Usually 6 classes a semester, in addition to AP credits and 1-2 summer classes. I graduated in three years, which was bittersweet since college was a ton of fun and it took a while to get over missing that last year. On the other hand... tuition is expensive, and I'm glad to not have that year's worth of debt hanging over me.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
It’s kind of sad yet hilarious that it was somewhat of a plot twist and subversion of the current zeitgeist that the handsome cocky blonde guy was actually a loyal, genre-savvy, and courageous ally to the protagonists all along.
That really stood out to me. I remember hoping he would show up to help at the end and was quite pleased at how it turned out. It was notable because that kind of character is usually made the villain.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I plan on it, but I'm waiting a year or two for the unofficial patches, DLC, and good mods to get established. I'm hoping I enjoy or can at least stand the game design and writing, because it will be a big portent for how the next Elder Scrolls will turn out.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
Before going into Maverick I thought it would be a "legacy character passes the torch to the young, diverse successors" plot, as these sequels tend to be. The movie even teases this for a long time before surprising you with the opposite. One could say it... subverted expectations.
Tom Cruise movie trivia is always a hoot. In Mission Impossible: Fallout, he memorably broke his angle filming a stunt, but pushed through to finish the scene in absolute agony so as to not ruin the shot.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I'm certainly staying put even if they started taking recruits for the Mars colony tomorrow. But I don't mind taking the office job route you talked about, and I plan to get engaged soon. The pot is sweet enough in America that you can just coast if you're a certain type. That said:
all you need to do is study computer science and learn how to program (trivially easy) and you can make a comfortable living and essentially enjoy an easy and materially prosperous life. America is a place where trivial email jobs pay $100k a year. The young man doesn’t leave because, by being born an American, he has already won the lottery of life.
Come on. This is not trivially easy. It's easy if you have a high enough IQ and can put up with school and office life for 80% of your life. Even if we're talking about email jobs, that still selects for a certain level of agreeableness and conscientiousness. There are many people who simply lack the cognitive horsepower for this kind of work, and there's a large group of people for whom this is a living hell. I don't mind the work, but you must agree the modal office environment is very feminine.
My college friends are all capable of and okay with this route, but I have a lot of other friends from different backgrounds that this is not a viable path for. In any society, there will be people unhappy with the current order, but the rising trend in sexlessness and radicalism indicates that there are more unsatisfied people than normal right now. If there were a compelling alternative path, I think there'd be a lot less societal stress from men with unfulfilling lives.
Yeah that's a fantasy, and there are many good arguments for why space can't be the escape valve for those people, but my point was that such space aspirations were a frontier fantasy, not a utopian fantasy as OP was saying.
But very few Irish or German peasants in 1850 who emigrated to the US became wealthy or anything even close to it.
Their earnings potential was much better in America, no? That's why they came. They wouldn't die rich by the standards of landed European money, but they'd be wealthier than they ever would have been had they stayed in Europe. There was a legitimate reason to go, because there was a lot of "unclaimed" land and opportunity to die with some land and money, not a landless serf.
I have so many thoughts. Dana White taking the mic and thanking Adin Ross, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan felt surreal. Trump scooped up a lot of young men's influencers into his camp this time, while the Harris campaign didn't even seem to consider the option. Barron Trump has been advising his father to go on the podcast circuit before the election, and it seems to have paid off. Those memes about Barron secretly masterminding Trump's win in 2016 seem to have come true, eight years later.
How much did Elon, Rogan, RFK, etc. getting into his camp swing this for him? I'm thinking those were critical endgame winds for Trump. Hell, how much of this was made possible by Elon buying Twitter?
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