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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Dragon’s Dogma 2 really has me like that now. I’ve waited years for this, and for the most part it’s everything I expected. I love the new playable race, and I’m excited to try out the new vocations. I have a lot of fun just hunting monsters for other players’ followers’ quests, and finding things for them to potentially tell their own players about. In some ways it feels better than traditional multiplayer.

    Also loving Helldivers 2, but now that I’ve unlocked almost everything it’s no longer all I think about all day.



  • One application I’ve seen for this is recording your brushing patterns for your review and to recommend ways to improve your process. This is pretty useful right now considering dental hygiene literacy is criminally undertaught and uncommon even among adults.

    IoT is great, it’s just that companies right now are abusing it and our lack of data protection laws to extract as much personal information as physically possible. The question shouldn’t be “why is my toothbrush connected to a network”, it should be “why does my toothbrush need to be connected to the Internet”.









  • It’s bad faith to argue that companies should be allowed to do things because they’re already allowed to do those things. I see a little bit of that creeping in even here with the concept of “rights”, as if corporations were humans. Laws can change.

    It’s good faith to ask if companies have too much power over what has become our default mode of communication. It’s also good faith to challenge this question with non-circular logic.

    Your assumption that I’m defending racism and bigotry is exactly why I think this stuff is important. You’ve implied I’m an insidious alt-rightist trying to dog whistle, and now I’m terrified of getting banned or otherwise censored. I’m interested in expressing myself. I do not want to express bigotry. But if one person decides what I said is even linked to bigotry, suddenly I’m a target, and I can lose a decades-old social account and all of its connections. And if that happens I just have to accept it because it’s currently legal. It’s so fucking stressful to say anything online anymore.


  • I think this is an underrated point. A lot of people are quick to say “private companies aren’t covered by free speech”, but I’m sure everyone agrees legal ≠ moral. We rely on these platforms so much that they’ve effectively become our public squares. Our government even uses them in official capacities, e.g. the president announcing things on Twitter.

    When being censored on a private platform is effectively social and informational murder, I think it’s time for us to revisit our centuries-old definitions. Whether you agree or disagree that these instances should be covered by free speech laws, this is becoming an important discussion that I never see brought up, but instead I keep seeing the same bad faith argument that companies are allowed to do this because they’re allowed to do it.



  • This was the main thing that made me switch to another engine, too. It’s very obvious that Google hides certain results in addition to sponsoring others, and I don’t want a profit-driven corporation deciding what I can and can’t see (or anyone, if I can help it). On a larger scale, it’s terrifying how much power over our culture via access to information this gives Google. I’m just glad there are still better options for me to choose from.




  • As somebody that doesn’t play a lot of racing games or flight sims or anything, a basic gamepad will go a long way. A lot of games that feel bad on keyboard were simply made primarily for console. Dark Souls was an infamous example of this, but this can apply to a surprising amount of things - I find it’s hard to reach for numbers in MMOs, and macro keyboards/mice are too busy, but FFXIV actually handles incredibly well on a controller because it was designed with the PS4 in mind. Even with recent games, Armored Core 6, Resident Evil remakes, Elden Ring, Jedi Survivor, I’m sure these all play fine on keyboard and mouse but they’re much more comfortable on a gamepad.