I love the game’s potential, I will regularly log in just to walk around stations or planets or hang out in my ship and enjoy the aesthetic. I like to fiddle with things and see what’s new. I love the sense of scale and freedom, just knowing at any time you can get up out of your pilot’s seat and open your cargo hatch and yeet yourself out the back just makes me giddy.

All that said, I grow weary of the endless fuckery and delays and just uninstalled for the dozenth time to let the thing cook longer. The graphics, for all their beauty, require more power than my PC can put out so the frame-rates are almost unplayable in many areas. Quests and missions are still a complete dice-roll if they’re going to work or break at any moment. NPC’s in the ground missions are either dumber than rocks or clip through walls and you can never find them. The map/navigation system on your wrist computer is so janky that I dread having to use it, and that’s after several major overhauls.

Server meshing is an amazing technology, but you have to have all your servers working, so there is always at least one area of the solar system that just plain doesn’t work. Stations that don’t answer your landing hail, quest locations that don’t work, lagged out doors and ship systems.

The universe truly feels more vast than any other game, ever, because you feel like a tiny human in a huge expanse. Too bad that’s about it most of the time, there’s no sense of permanence, no bases you can build, no personalization you can do to your own apartment, no storage locker in your own room like every other game ever made, everything including accessing your personal gear has to be done through kiosks in lobbies. The lack of personal items and survival components other than eating and drinking once in a while leave a good 80% of every station or base useless.

Sure you can buy a few cheap ass toys to put in your cockpit, but since most likely your game will crash and you will have to file a claim on your ship, you will hardly want to do this more than once.

Ship interiors feel real, it’s highly convincing. It’s just too bad that they’re mostly useless. Other than moving cargo around a cargo hold, there’s very little else you can do on a ship.

And you know what… I would be okay with all of these shortcomings IF THE GAME HAD GOOD CONTROLS. Seriously, look at a game like SCUM, it’s a survival PvP MMO where the gameplay is so detailed you need to manage your protein levels to build muscle and you have to poop regularly, you can even die of a heart-attack. You can load your magazines with several types of bullets and it will fire them in order. You can adjust how deep of a crouch you’re in and you can craft a vast array of useful items to survive and fight.

And it does it all smoothly. Sure it takes getting used to, but it’s never tedious. You never fall through the floor. You never have to fiddle with a door panel, you don’t have to make sure you point your cursor to just the exact position to open a hatch, you can actually trust the line-of-sight from a hostile mech so you can avoid it.

And that’s a game that’s far, far from perfect but they make a better gameplay experience than Star Citizen which has made exponentially more money from its players.

I will still keep trying it out from time to time, but I really, really hope some new game comes along and takes all the best lessons from SC and makes a more polished game experience that keeps the scale and detail and freedom but gives you things to do.

(No, I know about No Man’s Sky, it’s like a muppet/minecraft version of a space sim and too silly and unrealistic, totally different experience.)

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Wouldn’t it be awesome if people cared about research and facts.

Conservatives want to take all our games away, they have hated video games for decades, they made it clear for years that they want to see games censored the same way as movies and television. They have pushed many major media platforms into censorship already, and are just getting started.

But what if I just pirate and use VPN’s? You tech-savvy kiddos might ask, getting a small thrill from feeling like anti-establishment pirates.

Well never fear, they have plans for that too! Do you all really think Palantir and associated social monitoring programs are just going to make drones to try to spy on what American citizens are masturbating to? Nope! Palantir is a broad-spectrum monitoring company, and they will have various manner of AI bots scanning the contents of your hard-drive and reporting your browsing and downloading habits to all kinds of agencies and institutions who would loooooove to have more “product” to sell to our for-profit prison industry!

It’s objectively a horrible thing to do to anyone, for any reason, and inhuman and condemnable.

That all said, if you’re reading this and you’re married to someone advocating or supporting the execution of students and teens via assault rifles in the street, and a lot of people are angry about it, you should probably fucking leave.

I don’t know anything about the ex-wife or her involvement with anything, but I know the Nepalese ruling class have been flaunting their wealth and the videos going around showing kids getting shot in the head and slumping over as blood pours out of their bodies and their friends crying and trying to pull their limp bodies out of the line of fire, have been circulating and it made MY blood boil and I’m on the other side of the world.

I think maybe our “ruling class” in all nations need a wake-up call that they are our servants, not our masters.

Very controversial, hot take in 2025. Hope you’re ready to defend your stance.

I’ve recently abandoned the idea that there’s a difference between stupidity and evil also. Our species has shown me too many times that there is no effective, discernable difference in outcome so we should start treating it the same way.

If they wanted to use the generational moniker to humanize the young people shot in the head, it’s fine, it’s better than how media sites usually water-down or downplay the most horrific things while amplifying the stupid shit to levels of global panic.

Same reason a horde of idiots stormed the capitol in the USA when Trump lost an election.

People who don’t have mental capacity for abstraction and cognitive thinking are creatures of emotion and reaction, this makes for a very strong desire for authoritarian leadership. Combine with things like sexual insecurity and gender insecurity and you have a ripe population for fascistic brainwashing.

It’s happening all over the world as companies who profit from fascist movements use algorithmic media to target people specifically and feed them all the programming they need to become the worst possible versions of themselves. And it’s not limited to illiterate conservatives, the left and liberals are also victim to algorithmic perception distortion, which is why we have people on the left protesting cartoons and scolding people over problematic language while there are literal concentration camps being built, and why our liberal population are so complacent and tuned-out entirely that nobody is even doing anything about our impending financial and societal collapse.

This entire state of decline, apathy and outrage at the wrong targets is artificial. Every time we turn on our phones and start scrolling, we are being targeted and made into victims even if you don’t feel like you are. Put the shiny toys and mindless content-seeking away. Read books. Save money. Starve the liches and oligarchs.

“He no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public “installations” are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall on which they were painted”

The latest articles have also stated that the art will be preserved for it’s “historic value” which is even more funny. They don’t want anyone to see it, they find it offensive and deeply troubling for calling out abuse of power… but they are going to spend a fortune to preserve it or resell it in some way.

Yah but they’re going to do it even harder now. They gonna dig up dead bodies and bomb them again.

They cordoned it off and covered it with tarps or sheets. They don’t want to paint over it or destroy it because it’s instantly worth a fortune and nobody knows exactly what to do, which is part of the genius of it.

I’m older also and am enjoying Hollow Knight a lot, it’s hard but I wouldn’t say frustrating, the game lets you say “Hmn this is not working out, I’m coming back here later after I get more skills or abilities” and it’s relatively non-linear for a metroidvania type game.

Part of why it was very popular is the difficulty straddled a good line between challenging and manageable enough to keep making progress. But every player has different experience levels, distractions or time-limits on how much we can dedicate to gaming so it should be standard to allow players to choose difficulty. However, in a game like Hollow Knight you might be able to adjust the difficulty of boss fights but that’s only part of the challenge, the rest of the challenge in inherent in the game’s layout and mechanics.

Rookie numbers. Crank that shit up. Choke the entire system across the entire country.

Something more like what Luigi does.

And by that, I mean Mario’s brother who can jump on turtles and mushrooms of course.

He is anti-humanity in all regards, he is one of the most openly psychopathic elites to have control over some fraction of the world.

But yeah Q-anon and conspiracy theorists, keep rummaging in pizza places and cement factory basements looking for the shadowy cabal who are hurting people. I’m sure you’ll find the real bad guys aaaannnny day now.

It’s wild that after so many thousands of years of rulers chasing the mystical arts and obscure kookery to gain immortality, we’re actually living in the age where we have an understanding of biology and physical processes on a deep enough level that we can actually conceive of real immortality as a possibility.

Which proves to me that these oligarchs and dictators are complete idiots. Because if they had several brain cells to rub together, they would be converting all that stolen wealth into science and research on moonshot scales to unlock biological immortality or anti-aging tech close to it. Sure they would still horde the tech as long as possible, but the point is they are like everyone else… incapable of investing in their own future over maintaining social status in the here and now.

They will swiftly be replaced by new, likely dumber dictators. I am not holding my breath for a good ending.

Yah, it’s corporations consolidating power and paving the way for AI getting all up in your ass.

Over the next several years a lot of tech companies are going to be restructuring everything based around AI and other new technological ideas none of us asked for.

Everyone has different types of interaction and connection with each other, and various levels of comfortable intimacy with people. But generally, when you do hit it off with someone, it usually starts off with prolonged eye-contact, deeper and more engaged conversations and a back-and-forth with light flirting, even if it’s just smiling and joking together.

That progresses to more physical contact, hand holding, sitting together/lap sitting, hair touching, usually followed by soft talk and close faces. This is where you can easily gauge your partner’s interest, if they’re reciprocating and seem equally enthusiastic you can quickly move to kissing and suggesting going somewhere more private where you can ask if they want to go somewhere to spend the night or if they rather take it slower. If you find yourself taking the lead, it’s always good to give an “out” and suggest an alternative to going direct to sex. Cuddling, talking in private, watching a movie together, etc. You might feel nervous, but the person you’re with might be even more nervous.

If you’re with the right person, you will reassure each other and find a comfortable pace to progress. If you’re already at this point of touching and kissing, it’s not going to be a deal-breaker at this point to be talk clearly about what you want and to ask if they want the same thing, or to even admit you’re nervous because you’re attracted to them. If you’re with the right person, it should feel fun, you should both start feeling nature take over as you want to get closer together.

If you’re having really good chemistry with someone, if you’re having fun together you both start to feel a thing that makes you feel very, very comfortable with them. Laughing together becomes sitting together, becomes holding each other, becomes eye contact, becomes more and more quiet time, next thing you know you’re tangled together and nature starts to take over. It’s not always, or even usually verbal.

That’s how some people do it, some people are more direct and just say “wanna go somewhere?” and they retreat somewhere private to either do the above, or go about getting intimate in their own way.

You can’t go wrong talking. If you don’t feel comfortable talking to the person you’re with on even the most basic level, if you’re at all unsure about enthusiastic consent, or what your partner really wants, you have to back up and either spend more time getting comfortable or admit you’re not feeling that chemistry together and move along.

Nerves are normal, you should feel nervous but more like the way you feel nervous about to get on a roller coaster. It should be exciting so make sure you understand if your anxiety isn’t crossed with your excitement responses. You shouldn’t feel scared you should feel heightened and aware. Your partner should also feel this way, it’s always okay to ask someone “Are you okay?” “Do you want to?” “Want to wait/go further?” and it’s not at all embarrassing or awkward to check with your partner. Unless, again, you’re with someone whom you’re not actually comfortable being intimate with.