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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2419 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 23, 2024

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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I finally broke in my new gaming table proper, and had my two oldest friends over for a proper game night. Drank beer all day (without spilling any on the upholstery), ate pretzels, and played Azul, Terraforming Mars, Pandemic: Fall of Rome and capped the night off with Chaos in the Old World.

I had been so long since I played Terraforming Mars, and there are so many expansions in the big box I got, I forgot which components I even needed to just play the base game again. So that took some sorting out, but once we got through that the game flowed as easy as it ever did.

Azul was some light fun, and Pandemic: Fall of Rome we lost in rather short order.

After dinner we delved into Chaos in the Old World. The guy who loves Khorne lucked out and pulled him. I ended up with Slaanesh, a god I haven't played very often, and the last player had Nurgle. Khorne came out hot, and got into an early lead, as he's wont to do. However, on the second turn an old world card put heroes all over the map which robbed him of board position for the entire rest of the game. He hung in there, but it was rough. At some point I squeaked out a turn with two dial ticks as Slaanesh, forgetting that he has the shortest victory dial. The same turn Nurgle crossed 50 VPs to win, I also turned my dial to it's victory position. Since the dial victory takes precedence over score, the victory was mine.

Chaos is one of our absolute favorite games that will never leave my collection. My buddy said he'd been looking for copies, but they all go for $200+ these days. And that's without the expansion. It's out of print, and the rights to the IP and the rights to the game design shall never be reunited again. I've seen Eric Lang say in interviews he doesn't regret Chaos being out of print, because he believes he's made much better games. But that's a bold faced lie, and IMHO Chaos in the Old World remains his greatest work to date.

Only released in 2009, what's with GW-related boardgames going out of print so fast? Even the stuff they must have spent a fortune on moulds for.

Well, this is a case of Fantasy Flight Games owning the design, but losing the license to the IP. It happens. It was in print for at least 5 years, which isnt terrible. Plenty of games, even best of all time games, end up out of print before that long.

A link stolen from DSL: http://www.francisheaney.com/holy-tango-of-literature/

A parody poetry collection, where an anagram of the poet’s name is chosen to examine in the poet’s style. Enjoyable even if you’re not well-read; I’m not.

Highlights: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Poe, and Larkin.

Brilliant. The Wilde one is so dead on.

Toilets is absolute kinography. Honorable mention to Likable Wilma.

A lot (most? all? I've not read some of the originals) of these seem to parody individual famous poems, not the poet's style in general. E.g. Blake "The Tyger", William Carlos Williams "This is just to say", Shakespeare "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day", Poe "Annabel Lee", Burns "To a Mouse", Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", Edward Lear "The Owl and the Pussycat", Dylan Thomas "Do not go gentle into that good night", Edna St Vincent Milay "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare", etc. etc.

They may go beyond. Coleridge’s is clearly based on “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” but throws in bits of “Kubla Khan” too.

These are very, very good.

Is Jon Stewart funny again? There's one laugh out loud moment here for sure, wait for it. https://x.com/ShrinkGov/status/1827083570420351377

I loved him during the Bush years, but once his team "won" he sort of just lost his mojo. Now he's ripping on the regime again. Love to see it.

He's been funny since he came back imo, starting with the COVID stuff, but the schtick is a bit old at this point.

Still, better an old tired routine than utterly wingcucked and sanitised garbage.

I don't mind political humor as long as it isn't laser-focused to sway my vote because of some misperceived social responsibility to be both funny and have the high ground. I think I'd like Steven Colbert as a man, like if I knew the actual guy, but he seems to be almost religiously democrat (unless he's changed recently) and that really prevents me from enjoying his comedy as I'm just waiting for his next hymn to Biden/Kamala (or whoever).

I remember Stewart in an interview chiding the later-year members of Crossfire (Tucker Carlson and I think Bob Novak) that their polarizing rhetoric was "destroying America" but then his own whole schtick became extremely partisan. My last straw was when he dialed back and accused his past self of "shitty and reductive" views on transgender issues, to wild applause. Know your audience, I guess.

I enjoyed the linked clip and once again feel like Twitter and its ability to raise my blood pressure (by reading responses) must in the end be a net negative for at least the Western world, maybe everybody.

I like the early years of The Daily Show well enough, but later on I think Stewart lost his way. He seemed to have forgotten that he was an entertainer, and prioritized political commentary above actually being funny. Early on the show was political yes, but it was funny first and foremost.

I think the difference between Tucker Carlson on Crossfire and Jon Stewart on Comedy Central is that CNN claimed (not sure they claim this anymore) to be a nonpartisan news source. The people who watched CNN watched it thinking that they were watching the news (a lively/inflamed version of the news, but the news nonetheless). Meanwhile, those who watched The Daily Show knew they were watching a comedy program. He makes this very point during his appearance on Crossfire.

Things are probably different now. I don’t think anyone turns on FoxNews, MSNBC, or CNN thinking they are getting nonpartisan unadulterated news.

I think Colbert's problem is that he's a sketch comic who kind of fell into political humour because of the Daily Show. He was doing a sort of Bill O'Reilly parody, but The O'Reilly Factor ended in 2017 and lost relevance long before that.

So fundamentally he's not big into thinking about politics and coming up with jokes based on that. He just goes along with whatever the current Dem talking points are and writes jokes around that.

Yeah, he built his reputation during the Bush years as a courageous comic speaking truth to power. Who can forget his appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner?

But Bush left office 16 years ago. Now, instead of speaking truth to power, Colbert is punching down against rubes and rednecks. And it just comes off as cringe.

Stewart seems to have more of his own voice and humanity, whereas Colbert was a monster with no empathy all along.

I think Stewart benefitted from stepping out of the spotlight right before everyone went insane. He was still in "fuck off I'm on vacation" mode during that first round of TDS, and I wonder if that partially inoculated him against the brain rot that hit most of the rest of the late night circuit.

I've never been a fan of his "clown nose on, clown nose off" shtick, but Stewart definitely seems like he's got a bit more perspective nowadays than the rest of his peers.

Are there any other countries like the US where the legal/political center (DC), financial center (NYC), technology center (Bay Area), and entertainment center (LA/NYC) are in separate cities? It seems that for most countries all of these are in the capital, but I'm not well-traveled enough to know.

Germany: political center (Berlin), legal center (Karlsruhe, weirdly), financial center (Frankfurt), tech hub (Munich)

Some of these are debatable because Germany is extremely decentral

Canada has its political center in Ottawa, financial center in Toronto and cultural center debatably in Montreal, but these are all in the same broad region of the country.

Well, in India:

The political center would be Delhi. The financial and entertainment center would be Mumbai, courtesy of the stock market and Bollywood. And the tech center is a tossup between Bangalore and Hyderabad.

South Africa seems to fit the bill, with Pretoria as the administrative capital, Johannesburg as the financial center, and Cape Town as the cultural center.

South Africa even has separate executive, legislative, and judicial (until 2013) capitals - Joburg, Cape Town, and Bloemfontein respectively.

I'm not sure if you could find 4 competing major cities in most countries but there are countries where the capital isn't the biggest city, for example Australia (Canberra), Brazil (Brasilia) Turkey (Ankara).

I don't know much about Spain and Germany but they're pretty decentralised so I'd expect Berlin and Madrid not to be the centre of everything.

The obvious one is China:

Political - Beijing

Financial - Shanghai

Tech - Shenzhen

Media - Dongyang or Shanghai

I think there is also a case to be made for Germany:

Political - Berlin

Financial - Frankfurt

"Tech" - There are arguments for both Berlin and Munich here

Media - Cologne or Hamburg

Germany has Berlin as the political, start-up tech and substantial cultural capital. Obviously with the state broadcasters, ZDF in Mainz etc it’s hard to be definitive, but in the arts world and certainly in terms of music / youth culture / the international image of German culture Berlin is the undisputed capital.

Couldn't the same can be said for America? The art center certainly isn't Hollywood. Neither is youth culture.

Televised media is in cologne/Mainz, print media is in Hamburg.

As for tech the "perception" certainly is that Berlin is the center but I'm not sure it's true. It is true that the primary start up scene is in Berlin but far more information technology workers are employed in Munich (SWEs etc., not mechanical engineers), which is why I said there is an argument for both Berlin and Munich.

Where does Hong Kong fit in there?

Used to be more important but is still a very important financial and media center. The undisputed nr 2.

DESTINY'S SCHIZO ARC - [KINO EDIT]

(Obligatory: am not a fan of Destiny)

Funny video. IMO some of the accounts he's identifying as fake are fake, but a lot of them are just real people who are kinda dumb and are imitating each others' weird writing styles. Seems probable that some things involving the Chilokian guy are fake, but that's not really that surprising imo, people sometimes make fake identities on the internet and photoshop videos and edit photos, and now that AI exists they use those too!

I’ve never taken LSD but legitimately that whole video felt like a trip. Honestly, having followed some of these cyber-chemtrails (way before AI bots) I fully empathize with Destiny’s schizo-ness. The web is weird.

(I often think of something an Irish writer called Kevin Barry once said. “The Internet is an infinitude: it contains the best and worst of everything.”)

This thing was fucking catnip for me. This gets way better then Destiny bothered digging into (though he touched on it), turns out the old white dude he was obsessing over is running a climate change doomsday cult, and now I'm digging through their stuff trying to figure out if they're relatively harmless and just fleecing the vulnerable, or did they manage to recruit some high-level people and are "penetrating ze cabinets". Ukraine got sick of their shit apparently, citing "pro-Russian messages" but even that feels odd, because I haven't seen anything all that pro-Russian about them. Shit's wild.

Not gonna lie, while I haven't gone off the deep end to quite that extent, I was feeling very similar recently.

Dead Internet theory: Confirmed.

I want a modern Idiocracy. Just with the premise changed slightly so that everything runs on engagement optimisation logic. Consumers can only purchase things via lootbox, everyone is sponsored (usually by NordVPN or Raids: Shadow Legends). School signage simply reads NOOB :( | PRO :). Road layouts are constantly being A/B tested. There is no money, only views and clicks. Edifices are haunted by Mr Beast's ghoulish face.

have you seen Black Mirror? There are a few episodes which brush up against this

I've definitely seen one episode that's in the same ballpark. I found it didn't scratch the itch partly due to tone, partly because the length of the episodes means the world can't be fleshed out like a feature length can.

Feels like an excellent collaborative project right there. Book format easier to deliver than full scale movie (unless you want to go down generative AI movie route. Which I guess you don’t.)

Haven't touched video games much these last few years but Civilization has had a special place in my heart since my parents got me Civ IV for my 8th birthday. Now the first looks at Civilization VII are out, and I'm sort of disappointed. The graphics are the best in the series so far (as you'd hope) but there are lots of baffling game design decisions being made here. The biggest change by far is that you no longer play with one civilization, the game is divided into thirds and each involves you playing as a different civ. Your cities (well, 'settlements', of which cities are only one type) and units carry over but other than that all the civs are reset to roughly the same development level and you choose a different civilization lead by the same leader. This is strange and immersion-breaking, especially when you can choose to transition from Egypt under Hatshepsut to Mongolia if you have enough horses. I actually think this model has some potential but they'd need a LOT of civs to make it work while also changing the player's leader and they'd have to limit you to civs that have actually controlled the same area through the ages. If they pull this off it could address the snowball effect that's plagued the late games of the previous entries. Also, the current UI is terrible and looks like a cheap mobile game. There's time for them to make adjustments and it could be a good game after an expansion pack or two but this might be the first time I don't preorder an entry.

But now I'm in the mood for some historical strategy and role-playing. How does Crusader Kings III work? Last time I tried it I'd get 10 years into a game and build up my economy at a snail's pace and then someone who had a claim on my land would invade me with an army twice the size of mine and I'd be dead.

Egypt was ruled by horse warriors from the Eurasian steppe during the Middle Ages, so saying “They are Mongols now” isn’t too egregious to me.

david attenborough should have performed the narration. i think that would be amazing. the cadence of the woman they have narrating in the video reminds me of attenborough.

How does Crusader Kings III work?

You need a web of alliances to protect yourself. But I don't like CK3. In many ways, it's a step back from CK2. In the old game, they had lots of custom rules that made playing as different religions and government types different. In CK3 they tried to make one system to rule them all, and it made everything play the same. I don't know if the DLCs made it any better.

EU4 is the most gamey Paradox game at the moment. The current meta is kinda ahistorical, with modifier stacking being the most rewarding type of gameplay, and mission trees being completely overpowered, but it's good mindless fun if you aren't achievement hunting.

I like CK3. Probably my biggest issue is that while mechanically it's worse than CK2, the UI is so much improved (and much more legible at high resolutions) I simply can't go back to CK2.

My recommendation is to start as a viking at the earliest start date (I'll usually go with a custom ruler in Norway); raiding is a fun and easy way to make lots of money and give you some breathing room to experiment with the game's systems. And since you're tribal, you get automatic casus bellis on your neighbors, so expanding is quick. Once you've consolidated some territory, you may want to swear allegiance to Sweden before they decide to conquer you: this will let you experiment with vassal gameplay and internal politics. Usually it's not too hard to usurp the kingdom yourself if you'd like, or you can stay as a vassal, expand through Scandinavia, hand out your new territorial gains to your family members, and build up your power base. Eventually you'll be tech gated on upgrades and rich enough that there's nothing left to spend your money on: around this time, you can launch an independence war (if you haven't already usurped the kingdom) and from there invade Britain or France (if you take Normandy, you can form Norman culture, which will boost your tech considerably).

Notably, the next major patch for CK3 will be introducing interesting new mechanics, like playing as an unlanded adventurer, so if you lose your last territory it's not 'game over', you get an opportunity to travel the world, take on contracts, possibly convince some ruler to help press your claim and retake your rightful land, etc, as well as the ability to choose different characters on succession, so if you ever grow too powerful, you can choose to play as a second or third son to keep things interesting. CK3 is really quite easy once you have a handle on it so I'm looking forward to that last addition.

I don’t know why, I just find the graphics unappealing. I know Civilization isn’t supposed to be Crysis, but it easily looks like something that could have come out 15 years ago. And the art style isn’t great either. Like do the chunky five polygon tanks really have to be the same size as a skyscraper?

The eras system reminds me of the Rhys and Fall mod for Civ IV. I was ambivalent about it then not sure how I feel about it now. I guess I'll wait and see what how it winds up playing. One rule of thumb about Civilization that I've followed since III: don't buy the game until the complete version is released. So I've got a year or so.

Does anybody here knows how to find old reddit posts from a specific subreddit? There is no search for oldest, no option for specific dates and even scrolling down for top of all time will not work because of 1000 listed posts limit. Previously there were a couple of api based solutions but they got bricked recently. It would be very strange if there wasn't a way of doing this considering that all the posts are there and are accessible through links to this day.

Posting this in Friday fun because I need this to autisticly read discussions of the game/book/film from when it released, not for anything useful.

This one isn't bricked yet

Thank you, it, while not ideally, does work.

Not that I'm aware of. I have wanted a time-based way to filter posts on Reddit many times, but have never found one.

How good of an experience is playing the Fire Emblem games via emulation on PC?

Generally very good, though I understand some of the FE5 patches are a little glitchy. You get save states as well, but I find they can actually undermine the experience a bit if not used sparingly.

the latest FE5 patches fixed the bugs and questionable translation choices of the earlier one, and even added a bunch of optional QoL features like showing hidden stats in the menu and allowing the player to change character deployment slots

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.

For the Switch games Fire Emblem Three Houses and Engage: Very good. On a half decent PC you can get 60 fps and much higher resolution than native.

It's my understanding that emulation of the GameCube and earlier consoles is essentially perfect, while emulation of the DS and later consoles is somewhat iffy but generally tolerable.

>>>/vg/emugen can answer questions as well.

A few years back the best performing DS emulator on PC would be outperformed by running an Android emulator and using the Drastic DS emulator inside of that, but I'm not sure that's the case anymore

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