I once got to do a tour of a historic fort, and when we visited the magazine the guide told us that garrisoned soldiers were issued wooden button fly trousers. They couldn’t use a zipper because a spark might set off the gunpowder, and also they hadn’t been invented yet.

I’m gonna keep it real with you, chief. I don’t like what you said and I wouldn’t love you anymore. Your girlfriend is probably a better person than me.

She needs compassionate care. Not to be threatened with eternal torture. You can’t fix suffering with the promise of more suffering, that’s just pouring gas on the fire.

3 hours of debugging can save you 30 minutes of reading the documentation

I suppose people will always do what they think is easiest

It wouldn’t surprise me if reviewers have the budget for top of the line computers. Sadly, that does little to soothe my frustration that my computer - which meets the advertised recommended specs - falls short

Frickin Dead Space remake. I’m playing through it now and even on the lowest settings it was pretty bad. My computer crashed while the shuttle was crashing, which honestly felt kind of apt

I’ve never beat the original, but my wife wanted to see the game and has never played it. Even after tweaking things to get them running on my computer it’s still not super stable. We might have to switch to 2008

The game looks super tense, gross, and scary. Personally, I think it’d be scarier if it was buttery smooth, but I guess there’s a certain amount of anxiety to be had wondering if walking through a door is going to freeze the game while I’m being chased by xeno horrors

TTRPGs are quite diverse, but generally speaking they follow a similar formula. Traditionally, play takes place around a table, but even that’s negotiable. Many people play exclusively online these days.

Depending on the system you choose to play, accessories such as minis and battlemats could be optional. However, if you favour a tactical game and want to engage with all the combat rules, they do become more important.

There’s always alternatives though. I don’t keep minis for all my creatures - as a DM, who could afford to? Personally I use paper tokens because they’re easy to whip up and doodle on. Many people use coins, legos, or colored blocks. Anything can stand as a proxy of it’s the right size. There are tales of people who use candy so players can eat what they kill.

Another option, particularly if you go for the online option, is to use a Virtual Tabeletop (VTT). This is software that simulates your table, battlemat, minis, and generally facilitates play. I find them complicated and kind of fiddly, but a lot of people like them.

At the end of the day, you don’t need all that. There’s a concept of play called the Theater of the Mind where players use their shared imagination instead of any accessories. It’s easier when there aren’t a lot of moving parts to keep track of, but if you prefer a narratively focused game then it’s a good way to play.

As far as how to play the game, that’s up to the individual system. However generally speaking you play by having a conversation. The DM describes a situation and then asks “What do you do?” Players then describe their actions. Turn-taking can be more or less rigid depending on the situation. In D&D in particular, turns become much more formal during combat where players take turns in Initiative Order.

Generally speaking, near the start of the rule book (if you have one) there will be an Example of Play. This is usually styled as a transcript of a conversation between players. I always thought those were neat, and they dona pretty good job of showing how a game might play

Getting into the hobby can be intimidating because there are a lot of rules in certain systems, and it can be hard to keep track of them all.

Almost all systems include (or should include) Rule Zero, or Have Fun - the most important rule of all.

If you’re running the game then all rules are optional. As long as everyone is having fun then you can play however you want.

Anyway, I ramble a lot, but I’ve been playing these games for a long time. You’re in for a fun new hobby, good luck getting your group together!

I use a thumbs up reaction as “I acknowledge I’ve read and understood this, but don’t think you require a push notification” so I guess your mileage may vary

Since this is advice given to a monarch by a person who otherwise has no impact on the rich and powerful, I’d argue you could call this a case of Jester’s Privilege

We should bring that back. If nothing I do matters, then nothing I say matters, right?

I’m not in healthcare, so I’m not sure how valuable my opinion is

If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s a cost associated with a patient refusing care, particularly if the condition is going to be aggravated.

This cost might be financial. It might also mean that the patient returns to the healthcare system and requires more intense care. It probably also means that the patient will suffer more while outside the system.

I don’t know what your healthcare system looks like, but mine is stretched to the breaking point. If someone discharged themselves against the advice of doctors and then later worsened and returned to the hospital, they might die waiting for triage. It’s an extremely bad look for the hospital and erodes the public’s opinion of healthcare. And while the hospital is being raked over the coals for allowing someone to die in the waiting room, the media will conveniently ignore that the patient previously discharged themselves against the advice of their doctor.

Another scenario to think about: just because a patient is cognizant doesn’t mean they’re behaving rationally. While the patient is in care they could be heavily medicated and not realize how bad their situation would be without care: until the meds wear off and their suffering returns. If they got a particularly bad prognosis, then the panicky ape brain could take over and they just want to get out of their, damn the consequences.

Does all that add up to being more important than the patient’s autonomy? Opinions will probably be divided. I don’t personally think so, if I was restrained against my will I’d be pretty angry about it. But I understand the rationale behind the people who want to keep their patient in the system.

Does that mean YOU have to care? Probably not. People should be free to make their own decisions, and you can’t and shouldn’t take responsibility for the decisions that they make.

You can’t teach a computer to feel because computers lack the hardware for emotion.

You might be able to emulate a feeling in a convincing way. This means that computers will always be somewhat sociopathic.

So to your question, I think that means they can mirror their inputs or fake feelings according to their programming

Well of course the victim is going to play the victim. That’s just good marketing - and what is marketing if not propaganda?

Your comment reads as though the invading state’s actions aren’t propaganda. This is the whole reason why I came here to warn people to be skeptical of what they read online.

In an ironic twist, here’s an online source about the Russian disinformation campaign telling citizens that if you play Stalker 2 you’ll be drafted to fight in Ukraine against Russia.

Again, you should be skeptical of what you read online. In a vacuum, I’m inclined to believe the victim of invasion. In reality, I know that the situation is more nuanced - although the credibility of the aggressor is extremely suspect.

For what it’s worth, my impression on the game is that it’s yet another over-hyped game that couldn’t possibly live up to its expectations. The developers are financially incentivized to deflect that criticism through any means available to them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge that malicious actors are also trying to discredit the game.

They’ll pay you peanuts to protect their gold. The only gold trickling down is a shower

I haven’t played Stalker 2 so I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but it’s very politically charged and has Russian state sponsored disinformation campaigns running against it. I’m not sure that you can get a truly accurate read of it online.

The developers are Ukrainian, and development had to be paused because their office literally turned into a warzone. The fact that the game came out at all is extremely based, and that certainly adds to the mythology around the game. But again, I haven’t played it, and gameplay-wise that doesn’t actually indicate anything about the game.

I want the game to succeed because of the developers’ existential struggle. The people causing that existential struggle want the game to fail. Neither of us have actually played the game, so again, there’s all this bias around it and we haven’t even looked at gameplay yet.

Be skeptical of anything you read online

Spotify has vaguely attributed the need for the API changes to improving security:

• In its blog post, Spotify says that it rolled out the changes with “the aim of creating a more secure platform.”
• In a community forum post, a Spotify employee says that “we want to reiterate the main message from the blog that we’re committed to providing a safe and secure environment for all Spotify stakeholders.” The post has many pages of replies from frustrated developers.
• In a statement to The Verge, Spotify spokesperson Brittney Le Roy says that “as part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies navigate today, we’re making changes to our public APIs.”

This is fairly disingenuous. The affected endpoints are all GET requests, which are read-only requests that provide some data about the track/artist/playlist/etc. There isn’t really very much potential to do anything insecure here.

The only thing they’re securing is their hegemony.

That’s crazy, how can somebody not know what brand of laptop they…

HOLY SHIT ME TOO

I feel like a maker space with a tool library attached would be the best of both worlds.

I don’t have any major power tools because they’re a huge investment, and even if I did I wouldn’t have space to house them.

Some projects you can’t take to the maker space though. Most home improvement projects would require you to bring the tool to the site.

So anyway, I guess I want the best of both worlds.

I’m still not an expert, but I like to speculate and dream of a better world

I have no disagreement with point 1, I’ve heard that before. But gosh, it’s a tough pill to swallow when you’re not food secure. I think maybe it’s easier for people to accept “there isn’t enough food” than “there is food, but I can’t have any.”

Point 2: I imagine we’d probably grow different food there. I suppose there might be some concern for biodiversity loss, but if we were suddenly gifted a ton of arable land to grow food on we could probably get better variety.

Point 3 is a tough one, it’s something I haven’t really considered before. However, I suppose that raising animals for fertilizer could potentially be more humane and lower impact than raising animals for flesh. For instance, you’re no longer incentivized to slaughter the animals at a young age, and older animals might actually have a lower caloric requirement. Plus you wouldn’t need to raise the mega polluters like cows, you just want whatever gives good fertilizer.

I learned it by watching you, dad!

I’m not the expert, but I believe we’re currently growing that food for the animals.

If demand for meat decreased then there’d be more food in the supply chain for humans.

Admittedly I stopped working in food service well before the Beyond came out, but I definitely had people order the veggie burger because “they were trying to be healthier” that day.

And I guess that means different things for different people, and I don’t think Beyond is actively marketing specifically as a health food or anything. But my lizard brain is always going to assume that the plant is healthier than the meat.