One time I was in the ER, and a doctor noted that my heart beat has a rather pronounced split s2 rythm which is something that doctors need to learn to discern when listening to a heartbeat, so for the next hour as I was waiting around, I had several other younger physicians stop by and say “hey I was told to come listen to your heartbeat.”
Made me feel a little special in a very peculiar way I haven’t known since.
“But we have plenty of food, it’s just not always in the same place as where the hungry people are. Can’t we solve that?”
“No, you see it’s a problem of logistics. There’s no realistic way to get the food to where those people are.”
“We’ve put people on the fucking moon before…”
Yeah that’s what I’m talking about. Like I know they explained it, but I was still sitting there thinking “When did that happen? Was it in Spider-Man or some other Marvel thing?” despite the fact that I did watch the previous movie. All the marvel stuff is really starting to bleed together and lose definition in my memory.
I have a bit of a reputation among my friends for missing pretty basic stuff in games. My best guess is that I replay a lot of older games that I already know everything about, so it’s kind of a reflex to just ignore text that pops up on the screen. This is how I end up several hours into a game being unaware that there is a block mechanic.
I did enjoy the new Spider-Man, but I’ll admit I couldn’t remember where the fuck we are in the timeline or whatever when it started. I definitely saw the relevant previous storylines, but at the beginning of the movie I was like “why doesn’t anyone remember who Spider-Man is?”
Almost like movies probably shouldn’t be constructed from required-viewing homework from dozens of other movies and TV shows.
As I insert a blank line before starting the fourth paragraph of a text message:
“Maybe I’m providing a bit too much detail… Should I take a few sentences to explain why?”
I can have a little delicious garbage, as a treat.
“Delicious garbage” is how I refer to ordered food to keep myself at least a little aware of the choice I’m making. I can’t rationalize delivery fees, so I still go get it myself, but it’s still just a little too often that I find myself saying “I think I’ll have some delicious garbage for dinner.”
I mean, it makes sense. The manosphere is above all else, a grift. If someone who’s listening to the podcasts and buying the online courses actually gets a girlfriend and realizes how stupid it all is, they’re not going to keep giving the grifters money. The point is to keep them single, angry, and blaming women.
My favorite part about Death Note is that the whole point of the series is “Nobody could be trusted with a power such as this and the existence of such a thing would only lead to ruin,” but every single person who watches it, including me, can only think “yeah, but if I had that power, I would weild it responsibly and only use it to fix things.”
Fascinating video from Technology Connections all about the color brown.
It’s not perfect, but as a huge fan of the game, it’s definitely close enough for me. I’ve played all the way through it like 3 times already and I just discovered how fun it is to play randomizer mode so I can keep playing again and again and it still feels fresh.
I have a higher tolerance for VR jank, but I’d say it’s like 90% of the way to being a proper VR port. I’ll list the most broken things:
All that said, everything bad I described takes less than 1% of the time you’ll spend playing, and for me it’s a dream come true to finally be in Hyrule experiencing everything I remember so fondly through my own eyes. The first time I stood under the Deku Tree, I just stood there for a few moments taking it all in and appreciating the true scale of it. Every time I’m crossing Hyrule field and hearing the incredible music, I always find myself thinking “I can’t believe I’m playing this right now.” I didn’t realize until typing this out just now, but it’s probably already one of my favorite VR games just because it was already one of my favorite games.
I play VR pretty regularly. The meta quest 3 is objectively a very good piece of tech, regardless of how much Zuckerberg sucks. It’s also a lot more open of a platform than many people realize. You can sideload apps easily and there are at least 3 ways to use it for PCVR without having any meta software on your PC at all. They’ve never come down on Beat Saber modding despite it being very clearly against the TOS of the platform. Ports of classic games have been dropping like crazy because AI is allowing non-programmers to build VR mods for existing games. I kid you not, I’ve learned of more VR mods for classic games in the past 2 weeks than in the past 2 years. It’s really popping off. Some ports still require a PC to play the game and other ports run natively on the headset, such as half life 2 and portal 1.
Lately, I’ve been hooked on playing Ocarina of Time in VR. Also, the Simpsons Hit and Run just got a pretty impressive VR port. I’ve got like 5 other mods in mind for games I want to check out next.
The native quest games are mostly fine with some standout bangers like Resident Evil 4 and Batman Arkham Shadow. My favorite multiplayer games are probably mini golf or table tennis. I think anyone who’s played table tennis in real life would be pretty impressed with how well we can simulate it in VR. If you’re good at table tennis, you can pick up VR table tennis and your skill immediately translates.
I guess Zuck’s focus has mostly shifted to the perv glasses now because the company doesn’t talk much about VR much anymore. The metaverse (or at least Zuck’s version of it) was pretty clearly a failure, so I assume that’s why they don’t like talking about VR anymore. It’s definitely a quiet time for the medium, but with the way mods of classic games are coming down the pipeline now, I’m pretty excited for what’s next.
Meta is still working on their next headset and it will likely be one of the lightest and most comfortable yet. The compute is getting moved to a separate puck which you won’t have to wear on your head. I’m hopeful that now the metaverse phase is basically dead, the medium will become more focused on games.
I once had a roommate who preferred to keep the peanut butter in the fridge for some reason. I didn’t really get it, but it was easy to accommodate so I did. Turns out they were just doing the same thing for me because they assumed that it was my preference. I have no idea which one of us originally stuck the peanut butter in the fridge.
Last time I went to use one of those stupid key kiosks, it was out of fucking keys. Not to worry though, some enterprising genius thought of a way for them to still make a sale in this case, and the best part is you never have to refill the blank keys!
When it’s out of keys, it instead asks you to just scan your key, enter your postal address, pay at the kiosk, and they’ll mail you the key simple as that!
Which means that somewhere out there, there’s a corporate database that knows exactly two things about you: what your house key looks like, and what your address is. We all know how careful corporations are with our personal data. I’d sooner make the key myself than give them that info.
Honestly I’d say it’s a pretty apt comparison. Pledging to defend your rights while avoiding using anything labeled “AI” because fascists use it is about as smart as pledging to defend your rights without using guns because fascists use them.
I was messing around with a steetview app one time and I was pretty fascinated by the fact that basically anywhere on the globe, clicked at random, looks incredibly similar to somewhere that I’ve been. Click randomly in Ukraine, “huh, I’ve definitely been on country back roads in the US that look basically just like this.” Click a spot in Kazakhstan, I’ve seen places in the Midwest that look pretty similar. Click something in a more tropical spot in search of something altogether different, “you know I’ve been to some coastal towns that look a lot like this.” Click a spot in a French mountain range, “This doesn’t look all that different from parts of the Rockies.”
It brings to mind one of my favorite quotes:
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
Trekkie friend of mine has a “Boldly Go” sticker in his bathroom. Always puts a smile on my face.