• 6 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Exactly this. I don’t own any Steam hardware, nor do I expect to any time soon. However, I don’t know if I’d be running Linux as my main daily driver if not for how straightforward it is to game on Linux nowadays, thanks largely to Valve’s efforts in this area.

    I did dual boot with Windows for a while, but I found that the inertia of rebooting made me more likely to just use Windows. When I discovered that basically all of my games were runnable through Proton, I got rid of Windows entirely.

    I feel a lot of gratitude for the Steam Deck existing, because it makes things way easier. It’s not down to Valve’s efforts alone, but providing the solid starting point has lead to the coagulation of a lot of community efforts and resources. For instance, there have been a couple of times where I’ve had issues running games, but found the solution in adjusting the launch options, according to what helpful people on protondb suggest. I also remember struggling for a while to figure out how to mod Baldur’s Gate 3, until I found a super useful guide that was written by and for Steam Deck users. The informational infrastructure around gaming on Linux is so much better than it used to be.


  • I didn’t know about this, and I thank you for sharing it.

    I go to a weekly philosophy discussion group, and in a few weeks, a friend is running a session on the ethics of animal research. She is doing a PhD and recently did the animal handling training course because her research will involve mice, and she really enjoyed the seminar that covered the legal and ethical aspects of animal research — so much so that it inspired her to volunteer to run a session for the philosophy group.

    This is depressing to learn about, but might be an interesting case study for that discussion


  • Something that I’m disproportionately proud of is that my contributions to open source software are a few minor documentation improvements. One of those times, the docs were wrong and it took me ages to figure out how to do the thing I was trying to do. After I solved it, I was annoyed at the documentation being wrong, and fixed it before submitting a pull request.

    I’ve not yet made any code contributions to open source, but there have been a few people on Lemmy who helped me to realise I shouldn’t diminish my contribution because good documentation is essential, but often neglected.






  • I’ve recently been playing it and I’ve been blown away.

    I find the parry system not too bad actually. I’m more than half way through the game and I’ve only recently started properly learning how to parry, but I love how easy the game makes it to learn. Context for anyone who hasn’t played the game: when you successfully dodge, you see the words “dodge” rather than damage numbers. When you do a perfect dodge, you see the words “perfect dodge”. The window for parrying is smaller than for dodging, but this dodge system meant that when I started noticing I was somewhat consistently getting perfect dodges, I decided I should try parrying more often.

    I find the overall difficulty tuning to be excellent. Even on normal difficulty, it’s definitely challenging at points, but it feels extremely fair. You won’t be able to defeat all enemies that you’re able to access at any given time — there’s so many times that I’ve tried my chances with a big guy just hanging out on the map, only to get my team wiped in one hit. However, the open world and much to explore means I can go away and come back later. Upgrade materials are scattered all over, so exploration is super powerful.

    I agree with you that the highlight of the game is how beautiful it is. There have been a few times where I’ve had to stop for a moment and just take in the scenery when it was so soul achingly beautiful that I could scarcely think.



  • My impression (as someone who is not an economist) is that a lot of it is linked to not-too-distant history: the typical “go-to” strategies for deflation under the prevalent monetarist ideas (i.e. economic school of thought about influencing the economy by controlling the amount of money in circulation) weren’t effective in combatting deflation in a few cases in Japan and the US in the early 1990s and early 2000s.

    So perhaps it causes such panic because it exposes the weaknesses in the economic models that we see dominating modern politics. Inflation may be perceived as more manageable because it acts according to what the models say will happen, more or less, which makes it more controllable. It seems that may be less true for deflation.



  • Your comment fills me with a deep dread that causes me to feel like saying something to discourage you from this path. Alas, it’s not your preparation that is causing that feeling, but the grim circumstances that necessitate this kind of planning.

    It’s difficult being on the other side of the world and completely unable to do anything than just watch as America descends deeper into fascism. However, I’m glad that I am not in the impossible position of making the decisions you’re making. I’m sorry that you are.

    Good luck, I hope you don’t die. And I hope that people like you are able to claw back democracy from the fascists




  • A friend has extremely asymmetrical breasts, so a bra that fits their larger breast doesn’t fit their smaller one. They have a gel insert to put into that cup to account for this, but they also made a little pocket pouch in the same shape/size.

    A lot of pushup bras also have a little pocket for a smaller kind of gel insert. I know a couple people who find that pocket useful for hiding valuable and/or illicit things (e.g. drugs)