I'm thinking of leaving, or at least deactivating my account here for the time being. There's a lot of digging going on in far-right circles at the moment, people looking for revenge for the last 30 years now that "they" are in power. I'm not that worried for my own sake, my name has never appeared in any court documents or police investigations that I know of, nor have I ever published anything under my real name. Besides, I think I've managed to keep hubski separate from the rest of my online presence and political activities. But for my own peace of mind, it might be for the best to disappear, at least for a bit. Just wanted to let y'all know before, so it doesn't get misinterpreted. Feel free to dm me if anyone wants to keep in touch by other means. Stay safe!
Chronic pain sucks and is abrasive to everything one tries to do. My cardiologist was semi-recently put on the pain medication I'm on for a long term tennis injury and she has expressed a loud sympathy for how bad gabapentin is for ones brain. I'm 31 and finding myself in need of basically an entirely new social circle. My supposed best friend has decided that he's going to take on the same social habits as his wife, meaning you see your 'best friends' twice a year, even though you purchased houses a 15 minute drive away from one another. I would really like to rejoin my old choir but I don't think I can keep the schedule OR physically manage standing while singing for 2.5 hours. This is going to sound pretentious and childish and I still think it's true. When I was happiest in my life I was surrounded by people pursuing intellectual pursuits of some kind, or just general excellence in what they did. I was working daily around people who were revolutionizing their fields and actively mentoring younger people. I was receiving mentorship at a high level and was contributing to the education and experience of others. My free time was spent in an auditioned musical group that has literally won grammies and regularly performs with international orchestras, performing pieces of music that hadn't been heard on stage in more than a decade because nobody could bring together a choir that could do it short notice. The lack of peers and people further along roads I wanted to travel is ruining me. My single effective cope in life has almost always been the idea that I will do whatever I can, as much as I can, to leave the world better than I found it. The inability to do so brings me to tears and frothing rage. If I have made any progress on the psychological front I no longer use a third of my waking hours harassing christians on social media and changing churches to garbage dumps on google maps. A side note, a high rating as a google guide will allow you to do fun stuff like that. For what its worth, things in my relationship have improved a lot with a lot of hard work and couples therapy. I still don't really feel heard on the issues of communication when things are heated, nor on the idea that I need routine for my basic health and her fighting me on meals and sleep regulation kills attraction. It's not somewhere we got overnight and it won't be fixed overnight but at least things are generally moving in a positive direction. I am able to ask her to cool down and use words maybe 70% of the time she gets heated with me for something stupid. I'm just gonna keep playing starfield every waking hour and continue my slow, painful gym journey. That's fun at least. I've heard every possible criticism of Starfield and I'm still not bothered by any of the complaints. It's a bethesda game, you like that flavor or you don't.
hahaha that's fucking awesome Not gonna lie - I hated the shit out of Fallout. Skyrim bored me after about 4 hours. Nothing about Deathloop even vaguely interested me. I have successfully talked myself out of Ghostwire Tokyo like four times. But if it were on PS5 I'd prolly give it a go.
1) PSVR2 is not backward compatible with existing PSVR titles. 2) PSVR2 is $550 3) Sony has not ported Wipeout to the PSVR2 4) NMS' endgame is still basically "farmville in space." I say that with 2-300 hours into it. 5) Every time NMS does a major upgrade it breaks everything that comes before and yeah - you can cook off a 100-hour save and come back but TWO 100-hour saves is a grind, particularly when what you get is mecha for some reason and I'd be at three. I mean it looks cool but once you've made me sit on top of a mountain watching for cool ships to come by for six hours you've done a good job of dissuading me from doing it again. Multiply times bases, mining, freighters, you name it - it's like investing in an economy that convinces you to become an apex capitalist and then throws out their old currency every eighteen months so you can start over. "What's that? You want to visit your base that you made three months ago? yeah sorry we redid our terrain generation so it's now in the middle of a mountain we'll let you teleport in but then you're going to be in the Upside Down and suffer massive damage every second until you die"
A while back, NMS had a bit of a resurgence in our gaming crew. We all hopped on and fucked about the stars, building bases and using terrain manipulators to make dirt-dick-monuments. I can't recall who it was that discovered it in our group, but we were soon following these simple instructions: 1. Go to a space station. 2. Swap your ship with an NPC in the landing pad area. 3. Immediately scrap your new ship for parts, and sell those parts for mad profit. 4. Sprint back to the NPC. 5. CLAIM YOUR SHIP BACK FOR FREE. 6. Rinse and repeat. The devs might have since patched it out, but at the end of it all I tapped out at a little over $4 billion which appears to be bang on for the in-game limit. I wonder if the money is still there or if they recognised people were abusing the absolute shit out of this and reset. Might login and find out. Anyway I feel the same, I've restarted a few times now and the allure has long gone. I'm pleased they turned the game around from such an awful launch, but it ain't for me these days.
That number has changed because the second time they fucked with the economy, the setup was to find a really hostile planet, find an activated indium deposit, find a strong magnetic field, and set up a farm. I had one that was making me $12b a day. I had another farm where I cooked circuit boards. Took a little longer but made like $60b a day. Which was a much more cheese-dick way to make money than salvaging busted ships, because you used to be able to look around for ships, swap them and sell them, basically shade-tree-mechanicing your way to success. The problem is? They crashed both of these options abruptly rather than tapering them off or whatever so you get the impression that whatever you're doing in one moment won't last until the next one. My wife stopped playing when she couldn't salvage ships any longer. As far as Farmville goes, Surviving Mars is more fun. No Man's Sky has a real pointlessness problem.
That was probably the best gameplay loop in the whole game. If I could play a game where I could just capture and salvage ships forever till I finally got so powerful I took over the galaxy that would be all I do. If they got rid of that gameplay I don’t think I would go back that was the most fun part of the game. Honestly wish you could fight enemies and then salvage ships that would be even better. The only games that really scratch that itch for me are endless sky and escape velocity nova. X3 had ok salvaging but it really needed mods to make it a more viable gameplay loop.
Job starts in a week and a half so I'm enjoying funemployment by making a beautiful loaf of bread today and waiting for the TV stand to arrive [Update: FedEx was like "we tried to drop it off" but the fact I've been on my couch all day shows that that is a lie] and set that up so we can really unpack the rest of the boxes and settle into our new apartment. I adopted a California Condor since I'll soon have a steady paycheck. It feels good to be supporting a good cause so I'm glad I'm able to do that again. Don't know what I'll support next but I'm going to try donating to some cause probably once a quarter or so. What causes do y'all donate to that I should explore? I think I found a tennis league to join which is also super exciting. It'll be nice to get moving for the first time in two years. Went and played around with my partner last night though and my knees hurt this morning likely due to moving in new ways for the first time in forever plus the extra weight I'm carrying thanks to two years of not moving, so I might not join until the second half fall league which starts sometime in October or November instead of the one starting next week. kantos a few weeks back you suggested spicing coffee beans to elevate the flavor. I've played around with cinnamon and cardamom and holy hell it really does raise the quality. I really enjoyed the cardamom addition. It was inspired by this turkish coffee cardamom ice cream recipe from a Philly restaurant. Having made that a few times, I would strongly recommend that if you're able to.
So I live in Seattle, home of Starbucks. It ain't quite San Francisco but I hate 3rd wave coffee with a passion anyway so that's fine. But boy howdy can we be pretentious with our beans. A few years back there was a guy in my CNC class. He was learning what he could before going back to Ethiopia to help out at his friend's machine shop. His family? His family had had several hundred acres around Irgachefe seized by Haile Sellasie. THAT GUY knew some coffee. I helped him out with stuff and he gave me a jar. It was tremendous. I had him give me the blend before he vanished; here's the breakdown for my morning brew: 1 T whole beans 1/4 star anise 1 cardamom pod 1 allspice berry 1/8 cinnamon stick (cinnamon, not that cassia shit) Grind. Make coffee. I generally run this blend from about... now until Easter or so. I think it's funny that the pretentious coffee people are about "you must lovingly pourover your burr-ground third wave bullshit", most of America is at "arabica, robusta, whatever, just sprinkle it with mouthwash and call it creme de menthe" and the Ethiopians, who invented the shit, are at "coffee is 75% coffee by volume".
