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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • I never played BioShock 2 or Infinite, but I watched full playthroughs of each, and I thought infinite was great! Different to be sure in most ways, but it was a neat expansion of the world and themes hinted at in the first two games.

    I seem to remember a lot of sideline criticism when it came out that boiled down to “NPC sidekick not love interest but hot so I don’t like game”. I thought, and think that is ridiculous, and fortunately I think that criticism has faded with time because Elizabeth is such a positive part of the game, from my view.

    I should play through the BioShock games…




  • I made the leap a few years ago now, and since getting a (slightly) newer AMD GPU I haven’t had a single problem that I didn’t create by messing around with things without knowing what I was doing. I use steam and the Glorious Egroll version of proton and every game I have wanted to play has worked, even ones that are brand new. No tinkering past the initial steam setup. I don’t really play competitive online games with anti cheat so you may encounter problems that I haven’t if you do.

    I use the advanced hardware support version of MX Linux, if that really matters. I had bad experiences with Ubuntu, but haven’t tried it with this machine so I don’t know if it was the OS or the hardware.

    I’d say give it another shot on its own drive when Microsoft frustrates you again, you can always swap windows back in if you don’t like it.




  • I had a very similar experience but just kinda glumly stuck with the broken experience in that in between, and just played what I could get to work. But now with proton, specifically the ge version, there’s isn’t a game that I can’t play (that I have wanted to play). It’s pretty amazing how quickly the changes and improvements to gaming on Linux have come.

    I also have an AMD system now, which might be a big part of why it’s so painless now.


  • Second for guild wars 2, the world is huge when you first start playing, and though the initial levelling experience can feel like it takes a while, once you have hit the cap you can go pretty much anywhere. The story is pretty linear, though, so if you want a deep and complex story it might be better to look for a single player game.

    I’d also say the combat system in Guild wars is fantastic, it’s simple enough to pick up and not have to stress about playing the game, but if you want to engage and get better there is so much to learn about and improve.


  • I am not traveling to go see this one, but did for the one that went across the US a few years ago. I thought it was really cool and would go again if it weren’t so far away. The way the hot Tennessee day got so much cooler, the way the evening bugs came out, the birds stopped singing, the shadows looking like they had a bite out of them, all together with being able to see the suns corona for a couple minutes made for a really really cool experience for me. It was also a big party/camping trip with friends so that helped too.

    I could see it not having that impact for everyone, but I figured I’d share.


  • I’d argue that, while reductive, “it’s bad” is probably a pretty safe takeaway from this, given that the article says if you are of a healthy weight and activity level that you can get away with eating a less balanced diet. Most people in the areas interacting with this post aren’t probably doing that exercise and weight thing, so the carefully balanced diet it is for us. Based on North American red meat consumption this is likely much less than the reader currently eats, so they should probably cut back.

    Internet translation of that resoning: “it’s bad don’t eat it”.


  • I don’t think that the last part is true. Community justice (even) in our broken society doesn’t really favor the powerful. The gut reaction I see is to help the underdog in a situation, not the oppressor. Sometimes an individual read of a situation can be complicated, leading to mistaken outcomes, but the intent is to end the negative situation.

    Tangentially that makes me think about the difference in intent. A group of people expelling a bigot from a train is that group trying to fix a bad situation, let the oppressed person know they are not alone, and to let the oppressor know that are not welcome there with that behavior. The police may also kick someone off the train but their actions are punative, they exist to enforce a heiarchy and punish, they aren’t there to help the oppressed feel like they aren’t alone, and they are only letting the oppressor know that they aren’t welcome there, but as long as the cops aren’t nearby it’s ok.

    As for structuring a more just society, we could imagine one without the implicit power imbalances, one without an arbitrary heiarchy of authority figures dictating right vs wrong. I know it sounds like I’m describing anarchy (I am) but also kinda a democracy? Like everyone gets a say to make decisions, and a group of equals decide together how to live their lives. Breaking down our current heiarchies to get there is the hard part, obviously, and I think it’s a generations long societal struggle. Hopefully we all live more justly than our parents until we arrive somewhere better than where we left.

    Sorry this was very stream of conciousness, I hope my thoughts came across somewhat effectively.



  • The Americas are, as a continent, the site of mass genocide at the hands of Europeans. The intent was to eliminate the native peoples and their cultures, and this intent is both clear and the genocide is ongoing.

    This is the big stick philosophy you say you support, it commits atrocities on other human beings in the name of expansion, extraction, and recognition, and unfortunately the philosophy dominates many of our ways of life.

    That doesn’t mean it’s good, or right, or that it is the only way. We should hold ourselves to the standard we want to live by so we can break the cycles of abuse, and we should talk to each other and educate one another so we can deliver the best version of ourselves.

    Consider that not all people have always lived with modern ideas of property, nations, and hierarchy. These are, in the grand scheme of human history, pretty insignificant when faced with the vast array of societies and beliefs shared by people over thousands of years. All that is to say domination is not inevitable or necessary, we can choose to do otherwise and all be better off for it.



  • But it is often additionally used as a software package distribution platform, so it would be helpful for some developers to reach their users by having a clearer path to the most current release.

    I can personally do without a special button, and the op is obviously making a joke, but why not improve the UX for some users? It’s certainly possible to do this without impacting the smelly nerds who wouldn’t use the button.


  • We had a mold issue stemming from a shower vent not connecting to the roof and just dumping humid air into the attic so we wanted to fix that. Found rotten newspaper from the late 40s as insulation mixed with vermiculite under a thin layer of cellulose, which we treated as asbestos and had that professionally removed. Under that found a whole spiderweb of live knob and tube which wasn’t connected to any devices, was disconnected from many of its knobs, and was missing insulation in many places while it was draped loosely over some metal plumbing up there.

    The project started as a disconnected shower vent causing mold, and ended up with a whole rewire of the lighting and outlet circuits in the house. Wild stuff.

    We were also swapping out the breakers for ones up to code since we had messed with the circuits, and one a/gfci breaker just kept tripping. Found a light fixture that had evidentially been sparking away up there for who knows how long.

    Feels really good to have had eyes on every box in the house and know that what’s there now is leagues safer than what was there before.


  • Their coffee tastes the way it does because of how they roast it, it’s a purposeful style thing (that tastes terrible and is horribly overpriced imo).

    Their roasts are also darker than they say. Everything they have is dark roast, with their ‘blond’ coming in closer to a medium.

    People go nuts over the sugar, caffeine and perceived status, it has nothing to do with the taste of the coffee. As a fellow black coffee drinker, my recommendation is to avoid Starbucks unless you happen to be near a union store where the coffee is guaranteed to taste more like freedom, but still like ashes soaked in oil.

    In case you want more details: The way coffee roasting works is you move beans around in a real hot container, and you try to keep them to a specific point on a temperature graph at each moment as they roast. A different roaster would roast them a bit slower, but Starbucks just blasts those beans with everything they have, then they don’t stop until the beans are burnt. This gives them their “signature taste”. This is largely because of Howard Shultz, the guy who drove the company to be a cafe, and until recently the CEO. That’s his preferred coffee taste and that’s what he demands the company makes.


  • I just installed Fedora with KDE plasma and Wayland last weekend using the surface kernel. Was pretty painless, after abandoning a couple other distros that did not play nice.

    The instructions on the GitHub are also very good, though obviously every years surface has its challenges I’m sure.


  • Our ebike takes about the same amount of time as driving for most of our trips and nearly halves public transit time to some places we go. It was about 2k, and for that price it has been an actual steal. I think we put about 1.5k miles on it in the first year, and cost wise I think it’ll break even at about double that.

    It doesn’t sound like ebikes are overpriced, it sounds like you don’t find value in what an ebike does. And that’s totally ok, especially if you’re advocating for making your community more healthy and doing your best to live that way too.

    It is a real shame that ebikes weren’t subsidized like electric cars are, that would have changed the equation a lot for folks who are more on the fence and could have started a shift where more people want safer places to use their new bikes.

    Edit: just read your reply to the other folks, you get it. I gotta wake up more before I start commenting


  • You might have fixtures that overheat the bulbs. LEDs run cool compared to other bulbs but they are very sensitive to heat (that’s why the old ones had fins on them). If your fixture is enclosed, LEDs in there will have a much shorter life span.

    One common fixture in these parts are those silly domes with the screw in the middle, they regularly killed bulbs at my old place. I even had one come out that had discoloration from the heat.

    CFLs and incandescents didn’t like those fixtures or heat either, but I don’t know as much about how their life span was impacted.