My e-book reader (Tolino).

As I got older and had problems with my eyes, this was a game changer. I had basically stopped reading books and now I do it daily. I can choose the font and letter size, background color, and backlighting based on what works best for my eyes that day and the light where I am.

Being able to hold a very light device with a big screen when I would have to balance a heavy weight as a paper book is also great, and I take the reader with me everywhere, whereas a big book would stay at home most of the time.

The reader has a bigger screen than my phone and the battery lasts longer.

The reader works flawlessly with my library, so I don’t have to buy books, which keeps costs down, and I don’t have to leave the house to get a new book.

Calibre helps us share books in our family, which is one reason we’ve stayed away from Amazon’s Kindle, so we’ve all gone to “.epub”.

Indy games are art. Find an artist(s), pay them a living wage, and let them do their art largely undisturbed, guided by a vision of what the game should be, so they keep working towards the same goal. Let them learn from their mistakes and make their next game better. That leads to Baldur’s Gate 3.

CEO of an AAAAAAA+ game developer/publisher: “No games are a product. The most important thing is that the line goes up, so we check what the user feedback is and listen to the loudest crowd that wants the same old shit, only to complain that they always get the same old shit. Also, hire cheap, treat people terribly and get everyone out of the industry as quickly as possible, and none of that art nonsense - I mean, how am I going to sell that to the shareholders, they just want an estimate of how many skins we will sell in 2025 so they will agree to my pay rise?”

I tried to replace Twitter by Mastodon but, in the end, I just left Twitter and don’t use Mastodon at all.

This is me, I left Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. I reduced my online time a lot and it is better for my mental health and I have more time for my hobbies.

Mastodon made it clear to me how much algorithms steer me and keep me online, when I don’t need that, don’t profit from it. When I had to search for content on Mastodon that was for me it felt not worth the effort while being fed by an algorithm on Twitter /Facebook / Reddit kept me endlessly scrolling.

So I am very thankful to Mastodon for opening my eyes, but I will not use it anymore. Tchncs (world news, tech news and cat owl pictures) , Grouvee (gaming forum, keeping track of my games) and German Tagesschau ( tv news of my country) is enough to stay up to date and I feel freed from a burden that social media became for me.

Also my phone stays in my bag now and I am more in the moment wherever I am - I have used it 99% less than before and my next smart phone will be a cheap one with the only must haves being the newest Android version and a replacable battery so it will last me for long.

Wishing them all the best and that they take the time to make everything around legal stuff and ownership secure so that bad stuff can’t happen again. It is a shame that Kurviz and Rostov aren’t part of this, but DE had a lot of talent behind it and I trust everyone else too to be able to make something interesting. I also hope Kurvitz and Rostov will keep creating and sharing their creations in one way or the other with the world. It would be a shame if they retreated fully from making their art, because of what happened.

As long as they don’t do it on real humans nobody is hurt.

Living out the fantasy of having sex with children (or other harmful sexual practices and fantasies) wit AI or alike can strengthen the wish to actual do it in RL. It can weaken the strength to abstain. If you constantly have fantasies where for example “the child AI wanted it too” then it can desensitize you and making it harder and harder to push that thought aside when in a tempting situation. Instead of replacing the real thing with a fantasy you are preparing for the real thing. Some pedophiles already interpret children’s behavior as sexual that isn’t at all, but the AI might be told to act in that way and strengthen these beliefs.

This is still something that is and has to be studied more to fully understand it. Of course this is difficult because of the stigma. There might be differences between people who only are attracted to children and ones that are attracted to adults and children and there is just not enough data yet, but even the communities in which pedophiles who do not act on their attraction discuss coping strategies this is heavily discussed and controversial.

If you are interested in the subject a bit more, this is a start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8419289/

In the first region in the midst of the first small village two neighbors are arguing. They are not giving a quest, they just talk to each other and listening gives such an insight in how war can turn people against each other that have been living peacfully and been friends for years.

Do the side quests and take your time with the dialogue. Some of these stories are impactful, mostly sad and worth your time. If you are told that you should talk to people to find out more about your contract, do it. Some of these quests can be done with only talking to one person but you want to get the information from everyone and especially their side of the story.

Do not look up the outcome of decisions. Make your decisions and live with them at least at your first playthrough. Most decisions have impact and seeing the outcome unfold makes this game special and yes often there is no “good choice” - that’s war for you.

Last: Buy every Gwent card you can get your hands on and play with everyone you can. If you can’t win just come back later with better cards and obliterate them - it will feel goooood!

The DLC’s are a must.

Try out difficulty settings - there is a sweet spot for most people somewhere but what it will be for you no one can know, but it would be a shame if you play through the game not having found the difficulty that fits you best because you “always play on <insert difficulty>”.

Have fun, I wish I could play this game for the first time again.

Unhinged AI will solve anything human made by getting us killed. That will work very fast because there is no “human made” climate change when there is “no human”.

I also hate how they went from “human made climate change does not exist so we can keep everything as it is” to “we can’t meet the goals anyway so we can keep everything as it is” and how many people fall for it.

They want to keep their money and power at all cost and at this point I question more and more if we can take it from them peacfully. We have to take it to make a better world possible or even survival possible, because they will not be helpful ever.

That … could work.

My autism isn’t going away. Professional help resulted in the advice of: “Take time off from people when your social batteries are depleted, because otherwise you burn out and fall into a depression (that was the constant circle I was in until I got my diagnosis and started to accept what I can and can’t do).”

There is no solution that doesn’t deplete my social batteries, while neurotypical people load their batteries when being in contact with other people mine do not and never will. I still see friends and have conversations with a lot of people, I need that I am not a hermit but carefully planned and spread out and if possible online and not in person because that makes it less straining.

I would have to pull the lever late to save only the last 10 people, sorry for the others. /s

Years ago I had fun with “what if the US never actually went to the moon”. I did not believe it, it was just a nice plot idea, we even made a pen & paper oneshot about it. Nowadays I have no whatsoever fun in thought experiments like this, because the real threat of someone believing it to be true. I want to enjoy “birds aren’t real” or “giraffes do not exist” or … the worst is flat earth. It started out as a joke and now idiots try to proof the earth is flat, proof by accident it isn’t and then question rather their methods than their belief system. We just can’t have nice things.

I also love Ryukishi07’s VNs, “When They Cry” series. The art is admittedly ugly, but the stories are very intricate and convoluted in the best sense of the word.

The first of the “When They Cry” series are the only VNs I have ever played clicked through and it was surprisingly good, even for someone like me who isn’t into anime and kept me hooked through all the episodes. I highly recommend it.

Dear Mr. Sweeney, I fixed your words, thank me later:

A lot of games are released with CEOs earning more money than all developers of the game including outsourced work together, that makes the games too expensive. If the budget would actually go into the game we could have great games that sell.

Unfortunately you rather lay off your employees, pay them less, crunch them and burn them out, save on quality control, sell road-maps instead of a finished game and give your customers a lesser and lesser experience instead of accepting a pay cut.

And I have not mentioned the money you throw out of the window and burn because of your dreams of an “EPIC metaverse”.

F you Mr, Sweeney.

Russian “Mother’s Cross” when: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-institutes-the-mothers-cross

Also the fascists call everything an “ideology”, except fascism of course.

What do humans learn from the past: That humans don’t learn from the past: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/

But where is the lake?

Jokes aside, this will take a while to clean up and I doubt there is much fish left in that mess and the water quality is probably dangerous.

As someone who had a really bad infection after being in contact with water contaminated by a huge flood: Stay safe and stay away from water like this and wash and wash and then again wash your hands and everything.

Nice joke until reality comes along: https://winfuture.de/news,145540.html

German article translates to:

The Tesla plant in Grünheide had to accept a record number of sick days, at least in August: Around 17 percent of the 12,000 employees were affected. At the beginning of September, the figure had fallen to around 11 percent, according to a report in the Handelsblatt newspaper. However, this is still comparatively high.

As a result, the plant management had begun to visit employees on sick leave at home and check on them. Head of HR Erik Demmler was surprised that he was sometimes met with an aggressive attitude, as he explained to Handelsblatt. It had happened that the door had simply been slammed in his face. There were even instances of people threatening to call the police.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Patrick’s Parabox - Single developer, unique idea, mind bending - think outside and inside the boxes inside boxes.

Not if you have kids or cats or you will be always out of toilet paper.

deleted by creator

I hearby announce that I am also not buying Valve & Counter-Strike for £12 billion. You heard it here first!

Germany: https://www.bbk.bund.de/EN/Prepare-for-disasters/Personal-Preparedness/Stockpiling/stockpiling_node.html and that’s not new. It gets updated every few years. I thought every country in the world has this. If something can be said about it then that it is true that some families in Western countries, imcluding Germany, have a hard time to afford every day food and can’t stockpile and THAT’s something governments should address too but don’t.