Yeah, extremely saddening. I watch his father’s videos sometimes and they can be difficult.

Techno’s death was a lot harder to hear about than I expected. I heard about it from a friend that I’d shared a video with and felt genuinely sad. I didn’t even know the guy or watch that many of his videos. I’ve watched dozens of them in the time since when I have nothing else to do and honestly, it’s the celebrity death I’ve cared about most.

He was so young too. Probably younger than 90+% of this site. Such a tragic death.

I see it the other way, 8 was an alright movie if it was standalone and not part of SW. The things most people disliked are fine if it was some generic sci-fi action movie. “Jake Skywalker” is a nonissue if you don’t think he’s supposed to be Luke, the quippy lines were common, the weird bits like the Mary Poppins scene or the Holdo maneuver are acceptable in some other sci-fi movie. Wouldn’t have been a masterpiece, but it’s still relatively put together.

9 struggled to be a film. Remove it from SW and it’s almost worse— 8 could feasibly be greenlit and released by lazy execs, but 9 would’ve been cancelled in production. Pacing was jarring to the point of feeling unfinished, plot was one of the least coherent in a mega blockbuster, and story conveniences were nauseatingly poor even if it wasn’t Star Wars. It feels like they just put something together real quick without the editors and it got leaked. None of it was serviceable. And god, not to repeat myself, but the pacing and story were horrid.

Add it back to SW, and the Sith life transfer/dyad nonsense is as much an affront to Lucas’s story as TLJ Luke. Possibly more: sure, doing that to Luke was shit, but TRoS butchered basic Force principles. It’s like a bad DM fucking up a pivotal NPC vs fucking up the entire game system.

I dislike both of them nearly equally, but I could probably watch 8 again. 9 is like an indecisive amateur’s attempt at Lego Star Wars machinima, down to poor editing and an inability to order scenes. Didn’t see another movie so sloppy until Thor: Love and Thunder.

I’m not a YouTube guy; I only follow one channel I found during the Covid lockdowns, this kid called Technoblade who was low key while being really good at the game Minecraft. They worked together sometimes. Didn’t make Mr Beast seem very cool.

From what I’ve seen, he just inserts his loud personality into things by throwing money at people. It was never “hanging out with Mr Beast”, but “Mr Beast is giving out money”. Those guys are generally bad people, I cannot think of an exception.

Apple needs a toggle for “I’m not a total noob” to disable some of these things. Well, Microsoft does too but for different things.

This will probably be a large net benefit since most users are not, uh, proficient and likely grant permissions a little too often. I guess I’d rather click yes repeatedly if it means depriving some corpo from monetizing user screen content. But if they’re adding it, they may as well make it optional.

Yeah, the famous religion of veganism lmao

About to finish that one after several years, so I picked up that dev’s latest game. I’ve heard it’s even better, so I’m quite excited. DOSin2 is one of the best games I’ve played.

At least it’s at the end and not in the middle, those are just gratuitous

Ton Cruise is incredibly successful, vastly more successful than better people with no baggage. It’s kind of weird because Cruise’s cult is way, way worse than the slap. But Cruise also seems to be more talented and outwardly likable and his cult is pretty good at staying hidden.

If you’re willing to deal with a bit of bulk there are adapters. They look silly but I hear they work fine. Or even better, you could get a portable amp like the Qudelix 5k and just mount it to the headband. This is max silliness and adds a significant amount of bulk, but the 5k also allows for EQ.

Anyway I agree, stick with budget. I fucked up and got way into it and I don’t think it’s improved my life. It’s way less convenient as well. Like with most things in life, better to not stray from accessible options, especially for taste-based things that you might accidentally like too much.

There’s a wireless Ananda. Probably the best sounding wireless headphones, but I’ve been out of the scene for at least a year so there may have been advancements since. Focal Bathys is decent too but not open back iirc

It wasn’t that bad.

I mean, I’d give it like a 3/10, but it wasn’t memorable enough to be fetid to me. Neither was Ahsoka, which despite (in my eyes) character assassinating Thrawn, just didn’t interest enough to have staying power. And I really like Thrawn so I should be more upset at the complete disrespect Filoni showed Zahn.

Hm, the more I think about it, the more fetid it does feel. What a waste of McGregor. Disney could really use some fresh blood.

It’s not even that big of a sacrifice honestly. Wearing a mask is pretty trivial. Restaurants have outdoor tables. The indoor-only ones that don’t but are still worth going to tend to seat less than 15 people so I occasionally deem it worth the risk.

Long Covid seems way, way worse than a mask. When we have a cure for that I’ll drop it, but until then it’s not even that inconvenient.

Plus, you don’t even have to get the worst symptoms for it to affect you. A couple people I know lost their taste and smell in 2020/2021 and have yet to regain it. That, I think, ruins restaurants more than sitting outside.

Sorry for late response, one of the other commenters got it but if you didn’t look it up after you probably don’t know the scale of the search. There are a ton of Easter eggs and a few UFOs hanging around in the game, leading many to think there is a large scale mystery that can be solved. Also hard to describe the Easter eggs— there was a mural on a mountain, an ingame serial killer, a ghost and her daughter, a cult, ingame rumors of UFOs, an alien frozen in ice, three UFOs hovering and one crashed, and a lot more that I probably can’t remember.

So for years people scoured through the game and decompiled code hoping to find it. The search is actually vaguely still ongoing apparently, even after the leak since it takes time to parse through.

While there is still stuff undiscovered, it’s most likely that this was part of the cancelled single player DLCs. Which does suck because it was a genuinely interesting idea and it would’ve been cool if R* had managed to hide a real massive subplot in the game.

Not the best summary cause it’s been a while and I was never that invested, but it was pretty interesting in the first few years.

Maybe we can finally end all the hopes for that UFO thing. The people who spent years on it deserve closure, even if it was just hints towards a cancelled DLC

There are commercial medical/dental lasers but they’re decently more expensive. Still worth it but as a laser hobbyist I’m comfortable with the things. You can find them by searching for an 808nm dental laser.

Oh, they’re kind of big, which is the other downside. Make sure to still use the appropriate glasses

There’s also a device that uses red light instead, I think called luminance red. Not as effective but way cheaper than everything but a DIY with your own diode, and still reduces sore length for most people

I had one custom made to avoid the cost of medical grade/dental lasers. You can make your own pretty easily with a diode and some other parts but I wanted a good shape for reaching the affected areas and my metalwork skills are nonexistent. I had it specced at 810nm, 600mW.

Be sure not to do this without knowledge of high powered lasers! At that wavelength and wattage it’s pretty weak for lasers, but still >100x the wattage of a typical laser pointer. It won’t burn through things like other similar lasers, but it will blind you with no warning and no room for error if you’re not careful and using the right glasses. Lasers are not actually very fun at all since you have to be very cautious.

I hate these sores with a passion. You can fix them instantly with Oralmedic from the internet (possibly currently undergoing supply chain issues but that is temporary). It is agonizing— you are cauterizing the sore— but provides immediate and permanent relief. You can also get a laser for it, which does not hurt but is way higher effort and costs a ton more. I am passionate about my sore hatred so I have done this.

If you don’t want to do either, Canker Shield is available on Amazon and reduces sore lifespan to around 24-48hr. Also painful to use but nothing is as bad as Oralmedic or debacterol. Combine that with supplements (not one size fits all, lysine seems to have high success rate though) and you can deal with these while away from home.

Anyway this tip actually reminded me to check my travel toothpastes which naturally do have SLS. So thank you. I had noticed an uptick to a sore every couple months since Covid “ended” but that cause slipped my mind

Lysine helps too for prevention and healing

I carry a pair of earplugs because mine block 10dB, much less than most. It’s the most general use sound reduction and is rare, so I find it worth carrying. Before that I didn’t, because:

Most hotels have earplugs and eye masks that they’ll provide for free. So I only bring my own eye mask for long flights. If you’re only concerned about sleep quality in bed, that’s not a bad option

1 just needs a graphics remaster while 2 does need some more work. Even TSLRCM isn’t enough, but it probably wouldn’t need too much time to really integrate the content a little more coherently.

But yeah, K1 is basically perfect as is and K2 would be with a bit more development time. The remake looked good visually in the five seconds we saw but I have a weird feeling that the actual game would’ve been worse.

Strangely tho I’d prioritize remastering K1 and 2 over making a 3. It would be good to get new generations of players on it before beginning a third