I got these pictures from this twitter thread, and am posting them here so they won’t be forgotten. They are truly powerful images that show just how messed up and truly dystopian things are now.
Welcome to the new world. Things have changed greatly in the last few years, and it hasn’t been for the better.
I love looking around at new, more privacy oriented and/or distributed social media sites. MeWe, Parler, Gab, Mastodon, Diaspora, Minds, Bastyon, Ruqqus, Odysee, etc. etc.
However, all these sites have a problem (well, Odysee seems to have gotten past it), and that problem is people don’t really go to these sites to socialize and share. They go to these places to vent. Usually about censorship and politics and to say/share things that would (or did) get them banned from the major social media sites. Users post all kinds of fringe news, conspiracy theories, and/or highly vitriolic memes.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t, or that such things should be disallowed (the entire point of most of these places is to allow free expression after all). The issue is, this is all they’re doing. And when a person loads up the site, for the first time, or after a while, they are inundated with nothing but this shouting into the void and ‘X DESTROYS Y’ or ‘Y PROVES Z’ style posts. Looking through all this constantly is absolutely exhausting. I can’t really help but wonder why people do this, especially on these sites which do a very good job (as all social media does) of creating perfect ideological bubbles, such that nobody on them is likely to be changing their views anytime soon, and most likely already completely agree with everything posted.
I don’t go to facebook or twitter to be inundated with politics, rants, and negative newspieces. I go there for the friends, family, cute pictures, pictures of interesting things, art, and monster doses of (nonpolitical) memes, puns, and dad jokes, interspersed with interesting nonpolitical articles. It just seems most people on these new sites… aren’t. I’m not saying Facebook and their like don’t have plenty of crazy posts (they absolutely do. Twitter is a hellhole and literally everyone knows it), but they tend to be at least mostly distributed among the more mundane things in the feed, and I even look forward to some of them.
That said, I currently really like MeWe as a replacement for facebook, and Odysee as a replacement for youtube, because they currently have the least of these problems.
I have no idea how this game slipped by me. I only just noticed it when it was on a Steam sale and picked it up on a whim (SCP feel, interesting combat system, and high production values? sounds like a good time to me).
I was absolutely blown away. It has everything I wanted from it. They manage to pull off that difficult always unsettling atmosphere, dropped in the straight up SCP style weirdness (seriously, it’s SCP in all but name), added in a massive dose of non-Cthulhu lovecraftian style horror and this thing made a straight up winner.
It also has a moment that was the equivalent to the Matrix Lobby scene for me. When a song by the (in universe) band Old Gods of Asgard starts playing it is on. After it finished, I said “That was AWESOME” out loud at the same time my character did.
All that said, it is definitely not for those who do not like exploring, backtracking, and searching for all the bits of lore and story scattered and hidden around. You only really get about half the story if you just hit the main mission and the smattering of obvious stuff and don’t look for all the files / documents / audio / videos.
I thoroughly enjoyed 100%ing this game and can’t say enough good things about it other than I hope they make more, and I wish I could play it through for the first time again.
I’ve been playing the Ratchet & Clank series since the first one came bundled in the PS2 my family bought in the early 2000s. It is one of those random constants in my life, because I’m not usually much of a fan of the genre, but I have played and completed every mainline R&C game that has come out, and have collected physical copies of most of them, and do thoroughly enjoy them all. Even the 2016 game-based-on-movie-based-on-game remake/reboot. There’s a certain charm to them, and while the biting humor of the original PS2 series has gone away, it still has a whimsical fun to it the series where you’re a small furry creature ripping the galaxy a new one with a massive variety of absurd (and absurdly fun) weaponry.
Rift Apart was the literal reason I bought a PS5, and having now played it through three times, I have to say it was totally worth it. I will need some more time to let the honeymoon phase of it to fade to decide where I put it among my favorites, but I’m guessing probably solid second favorite R&C game. I put way too much time + nostalgia into Going Commando for it to ever really lose its spot as my all time favorite.
The visuals for Rift Apart are absolutely jaw dropping. This is one of the most next-gen games I’ve seen, and I really, really hope they remake the old games at some point to look like this. The combat is fantastic, as usual, and the weapons all look and feel great. My only gripe with the weapons and combat is this game’s RYNO is probably the weakest one of the series. As fun as it is to open rifts and drop a giant monster onto an enemy, the damage is lackluster.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not. ~John Adams
I realized I never posted this commission I had made of Sibiliss back from the D&D campaign, which needed to be remedied immediately because I absolutely love it. I loved the concept of the character, a Medusa Sorceress turned Queen of the Pirates, and I feel she went over exceptionally well with the players as well. They did wind up working for her after all, despite my original intention for her to be a villain.
Snagged from a social media site.
“Scientifically speaking, a distinct human life exists from conception onward. Life, because it meets the biological criteria for life; human, because it contains the human genome and is at the beginning of a human lifecycle; distinct, because its genome is different from the mother’s and (barring accidents, disease, or malice) it will continue to exist even after its mother’s death.
Suggesting that natural miscarriage is the same as abortion is like suggesting that no-fault accidental deaths are the same as murder.
Suggesting that contraception is the same as abortion is like suggesting that parts of something are equal to the whole of something: Give separate sperm and eggs as much time, shelter, and nutrients as you want, even inside a woman’s womb, and they will continue neither to be human (they don’t have the full human genome) nor fully developed into a human. Separate sperm and eggs are not at the beginning of a human lifecycle. The human lifecycle begins when sperm and egg come together and are fertilized.
Suggesting that pro-lifers are anti-life because they don’t agree with specific policy positions is serious doublethink. First, because it’s completely consistent for pro-lifers to be extremely generous to groups for unwed mothers and women with distressed pregnancies — and they are — as well as to believe that the government will waste their money if it’s taxed from them and put into welfare programs. Second, because they focus on what happens after people are born and thus discount the distinct human lives that are taken before they’re born. It’s like saying that slavery is okay, while also maintaining that one can’t be anti-slavery if one doesn’t support their specific chosen list of welfare programs for freed slaves.”
I sprained my back last Sunday, and had to visit the doctor to make sure it wasn’t anything more serious like a spinal issue or something. Got sent to get an x-ray, was given some strong meds, and told to stay flat in bed for a couple days. I’m feeling much better now, aside from some slight soreness, and I’ll probably begin some limited exercise next week. Unfortunately I had planned on moving a bunch of stuff around the house and reorganizing things, and all that is going to have to wait.
Related to the planned reorganizing we had a company come out and grab a few things we don’t want anymore, namely a corner desk and barstools to donate to charity, and another company is moving the upright piano to a friend’s house today.
While bedridden, I spent a lot of time on my phone, and found a game that I think will finally replace Final Fantasy Brave Exvius as the gacha of choice: AFK Arena. Easy to get heroes, an absolutely absurd amount of content, and simple to learn, difficult to master mechanics. Also, you can play multiple games on the same account, using their server system so you’re never put in a “you cannot play this game for the rest of the day because you hit a wall” like most gacha games I’ve played.
I’ve also got a solid Latin curriculum for self-learning going, with Familia Romana and Wheelock’s Latin. I’m trying to use Dowling’s method, which requires a lot of rote memorization of Noun Declensions, but I think that kind of thing is necessary for my learning style.
I’m on the fence about trying to get a short story done for a fantasy short story contest that has a due date of the end of the month. I learned of it a bit late, and I’m not sure I can have something ready and polished in time. We’ll see.
This is the second day of my visit to Grand Junction, Colorado, and my hike through the Colorado National Monument. Today, I had crepes at the Dream Cafe. They were light, but filling. Perfect way to start the day on a long hike.
I chose to do the full route of the Monument Canyon Trail, which is 6 miles one way. I started on the east side and hiked in, but did not do the steep climb up to the road at the very end because I am woefully out of shape as it is and that probably would have done me in in terms of actually making it all the way back in any reasonable amount of time.
This trail is one of the most well known trails in the Park, because it has two iconic natural rock sculptures: Independence Monument and the Kissing Couple, and you walk right up to them. Below is the picture gallery for this hike. Of the two days, this was my favorite, and it was topped off by being able to see some longhorn sheep up close. I still need to figure out a way of getting that video uploaded here.
