About 45 mins ago, I read that a live-action Hollywood adaptation of Akira has been in the works for more than 20 years, and it was apparently about to move forward.

About 30 mins ago, I read that the rights have lapsed so it's pretty much dead in the water. However, it looks like there was always skepticism for an American version, long before anyone thought to put Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell.

About 15 mins ago, I learned that Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest is about to be released this weekend. It's apparently a "reinterpretation" of Kurosawa's High and Low, which I've been meaning to watch but never looked up the trailer to until 10 mins ago. That made me think about how inherent Japanese-ness might be to Kurosawa's work - the pacing, the emotional tension bubbling under the surface, the unspoken contexts - and how much of that is translatable or indeed replaceable. (Also it made me compare the track records of the Akira Kurosawa+Tohiro Mifune combo to Spike Lee+Denzel Washington)

All of that made me arrive at this question - how many worthwhile remakes have there ever really been, whether or not they crossed cultures? I suspect the ratio of bad/mediocre to good/great is weighted heavily to the former. I know of a few famous examples (The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars) but I'm counting on you film buffs to broaden my horizons here.

For the purpose of this thread, I want to exclude movies that are second-attempt adaptations of a previously existing IP (e.g. Dune 2021 vs. Dune 1984), unless you feel it specifically aimed to be a remake of the first movie.

The Setting

For the past two months I've been dealing with a lot of stress because I've been trying to balance two extremely challenging remote university classes at the same time as my work has been asking more hours of me. More work hours are usually good for me because my job doesn't pay all that well, but they can be challenging because sometimes I'm asked to teach classes that are just outside my area of experience, so I need to spend more time learning the details so I can answer student questions.

This is the last week of classes, so right now I'm extra stressed because I'm trying to finish the last week's worth of classwork. I've still got one assignment to do which I haven't really started because I can't make much sense of this week's material; it's due on Wednesday evening. So my plan was to wake up early, go to the gym to get my workout out of the way, and then go to the library to study until my class in the afternoon.

Last night I discovered the mask for my CPAP unit is broken, so I tried to go to sleep without it.

The Day

If you have sleep apnea then you already know what trying to sleep without a CPAP machine is like; it's a miserable experience. I woke up five times last night, and when I woke up I felt miserable. I took so long to get up because of that, even though I couldn't sleep past 6:30 or so, I didn't actually get to the gym until around 9:00. Today was supposed to be a cardio day to give my muscles a bit more time to rest from my more heavy resistance workouts, but even then I only managed to do 20 minutes of fairly light intensity before I was exhausted.

After that I took a seat to cool down and get the sweat dry before I went to do a massage chair session. I pulled up Tildes and saw that one thread that's making the rounds about being attractive. And I'll be real, it came at just the wrong time. I was super angry about it and I spent more than half an hour writing and deleting all the things I wanted to say. I'm legitimately happy for the poster, but every single word they said made me hate them in that moment. My theme for the past year or so has been learning to love myself, but reading that post made me legitimately feeling like I wasn't just terrifyingly ugly and unloveable, but permanently so. To give you the context for why I felt like that would take a novel's worth of text, so I'll omit the majority of that and just tell you that in spite of losing a great amount of weight, I am still grossly obese, and having been so fat before means that my body is permanently deformed in an extremely unattractive way that cannot be fixed without a series of surgeries that are far more money than I will realistically have within my lifetime given my career; heck, I've already given up on the possibility of retiring. if I had the body of someone who was always at my current weight, it wouldn't be that bad, but as things are my body looks like one of those novelty inflatable "sumo wrestler" costumes that have been half-deflated.

While I was spending that time processing my feelings, I finally decided to not respond to that topic at all and simply click on ignore so that I could get it out of my head. Unfortunately, there is no ignore buton in my head. But at that time I was filled with so much nervous energy I needed to find a way to get rid of those thoughts. It turns out the gym is a pretty perfect place to do that; I skipped the massage chair, took a caffeine tablet, and got on the elliptical again. I pulled up a video workout and worked out all of my anger ("60 RPM is moderate? Fuck you!"). Every time I made a wrong move and my arm fat slapped against my side fat, It gave me more fuel for the fire. It got me fired enough to get through the whole workout, another 25 minutes at a much higher intensity than before.

After cooling down and doing my recovery, I went into the locker room, stripped, and took a shower. Taking a shower in the gym is something that I do partially because I sweat a lot and don't want to make my car stink too much, but on a more personal level it's something that I do as a kind of personal therapy. To do so requires me to lose my self-consciousness and body issues, at least up to an extent. It makes me feel just a bit more normal.

Today someone else was taking a shower at roughly the same time, and they just so happen to have chosen a locker just a few feet away from me. When they finished, they took their clothes out of the locker and moved over to a different bench to change. The obvious assumptions would be that they were doing it because they were trying to respect our space, or it was their modesty or body shame. But let's just say that in the moment it didn't help me feel like I was normal.

After I got out of the gym I got a message from my employer saying I've got a new class scheduled. A good thing, I guess, since many of my other classes have run their course. I could really use the money, and with any luck the classes I'm taking next term are not going to be nearly as challenging.

The Rest of the Day

It hasn't even happened yet. It's not even noon. The title was a lie, I guess.

The question is, then, was this partial day representative of my life? For the most part, yes, it is. I think these thoughts and feel these feelings every day, and I go through the same affirmations and rationalizations to deal with them every day. Today was just a little bit more emotionally intense than normal.

So why did I decide to post it? To be honest, I don't entirely know. Maybe I'm still processing some of those feelings from reading that post that set me off today. Or maybe I just want to say something for people who are dealing with the same feelings. Maybe I'm even feeling a little bit guilty from the impostor syndrome given previous comments I wrote about self-love. But I'm not posting this because I want people to feel sorry for me, or because I need help coping with it. I'm a strong person, and I actually do have a good sense of self-worth and self-love even if it's constantly under threat of the other thoughts in my head. Maybe I'm just selfishly using this public space to process some of my own feelings, or I'm engaging in some twisted form of narcissism. I just hope that you, the one reading this now, have taken something from what I had to say.

Ok so I have a Google account for an organization. But when I have that account logged in on my phone some of the security restrictions impact all accounts on my phone. I have a pixel 7a with Android 16 if it matters.

I would love to have access to this gmail account, with notifications, on my phone without forwarding the emails to one of my personal accounts. Any way to do that within the Gmail app itself, or if I need a different app, any recommendations?

In my perfect world I'd have OneDrive access too, but I can use a browser window there if needed.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I saw that @Deimos had made a post about the history of Chex Quest about this game in 2019, and since it has been over 6 years since then, and I felt the urge to play it again, I figured I'd see if anyone else had any memories of this game.
Note: The video that was included in the original link appears to have been taken down, I found a re-upload here: https://youtu.be/pxu1cq_vRUw

My dad brought a copy of this home with him one day from work that he got from a coworker whose kids enjoyed it. My brother and I played it a solid amount and it was an awesome game, and also my first exposure to a game that ran in the Doom engine. I also had a distinct memory of seeing the game play of the original Doom for the first time and thinking "hey that looks like Chex Quest!".

Chex Quest is a shareware title so you're able to download the files and play the game for free. I can't remember where I got them, but I have the first three Chex Quest games as .wad files that I was playing with Chocolate Doom. There are also fan made .wad files in the Chex Quest style that I've yet to play, but maybe one day! I even remember there being a Doom randomizer that included the ability to generate random Chex Quest levels, but I can't seem to find it while doing some quick searching online.
Edit: I found the random level generator a few minutes after posting this: https://github.com/obsidian-level-maker/Obsidian

They also released a Chex Quest HD on Steam that I remember got me to go back and play the original game 5 years ago.

The concept of achievements in games has existed for quite a while now. According to Wikipedia's article on video game achievements, they were first programmed into some games in the 90s, and perhaps first made it big with the Xbox 360 in 2005. Steam achievements shortly followed in 2007.

Some of them are very easy - "Complete the tutorial" is a comment achievement. Some of them are silly - "Pet all the dogs in the game" has become a bit of a meme. But some require an incredible amount of patience, luck, and/or skill.

What are some achievements that you or others you know have put time into that felt significant? Or perhaps even ones that stand out for being a clever addition by the game developers.

I have a lot of stuff filtered such as tech and US politics. But I’ve noticed on several occasions that posts I see when I’m not logged in are inaccessible to me when I log in, even when I click the button to disable filters temporarily.

One example is this post about Just Buy Nothing https://tildes.net/~health.mental/1pke/just_buy_nothing_a_fake_online_store_to_combat_shopping_addiction

I can see it when I’m logged out, but the only way to access it is to copy the link while logged out and then paste in when logged in.

I’m happy for the devs to look at my account settings etc if it helps!

This is going to sound conceited, and it is. But I thought I would share my experiences regarding this. For context, I'm in year two of being considered conventionally attractive. I used to be morbidly obese, and I spent the years 17 to 23 being really big. In high school, I was only briefly considered attractive, but considering how short that was, I generally say I wasn't attractive in high school. Which is to say that the idea that I am attractive is still relatively new, and I'm still learning the ropes of my different life. I won't be sharing any photos, but I'm often told that I look like a young Mark Ruffalo.

I'm going to split this into parts.

Everyone is nicer

As soon as I lost the weight, I was treated a lot better. To be clear, I wasn't treated that terribly when I was overweight. In my experience, people were generally nice. But there were some times when people would just ignore me or try not to look like me. I recall one moment, in college, while I was walking across campus, this one girl was in front of me. She kept giving me the over-the-shoulder look and then ran off since she detected danger.

Those moments existed, but they weren't my overwhelming experience. What shifted was that people became overly nice towards me. People go out of their way to talk to me, to help me, or to make sure I'm okay. I haven't encountered an incident where a girl thinks I'm a creep or anything like that since.

Women approach men

I think there's this idea in the dating world that women never approach men. I've seen a lot of TikTok videos and Reddit posts where the gist is "no matter how handsome you are, women DO NOT approach men." And they will give anecdotes of "good-looking" friends who have also not been approached by women.

That's not true at all. I have been approached quite a bit, especially in the nightclub and bar setting. There are women who are not shy at all, or they are shy but they're trying something different. The one thing I've noticed, and this is going to sound mean, the women most likely to approach a guy tend to not be very attractive. The most attractive woman who approached me (and she was very pretty) approached me with the help of a friend.

Even if women don't outright approach you, they give signals as their way of making the first move. Often at the bar or club, it's a lot of staring. They stare, look away, look back again to make sure you're staring.

I work in a predominantly female workplace. So the signals in this are a little different. A lot of my co-workers go out of their way to chat with me. They often look for excuses to touch me or to get closer to me. They'll look at me when they don't think I'm looking. Recently, I had a higher-up worker start messaging me through the work chat we use and inviting me to her office for treats that she makes. They don't say anything out loud, it's just sort of obvious that they find me attractive.

Rejection stings, especially when they're not used to it

Going back to the workplace. We have cops at my work as security. It's kind of well-known that the male cops sleep with the staff. But none of the female cops really do that. I would chat with this one cop, she's quite a bit older than me (actually, she has a daughter that's exactly my age). But she is gorgeous. It started off slow; we just looked at each other for a while before I started talking to her. But we built up enough of a rapport that one day she gave me a big opening for me to ask her out. I didn't. Someone that pretty is not used to not being pursued, so she became more guarded and avoidant of me.

That was kind of a somber example. A more aggressive example was at a dance club. This woman gave me the eye contact signal, but I did not approach her. Flash forward a bit, I'm on the dance floor, and she pushes me. It wasn't an accident; it was very aggressive, and she was obviously drunk.

There are more examples that I can give, but the reaction is never that great. And I've learned that I hate making people feel that way. It's what I imagine a woman feels like when they rejects men, it's so much pressure. Especially when the woman is attractive herself, there's a sadder response from them because they're not used to that.

I was not prepared to be in a situation where I could hurt someone's feelings. Not just that, but I can hurt someone's feelings by not doing anything. It used to be simple. I didn't really have options or anything like that, so when the opposite came true, where I had to pick and choose between people, it was daunting. Almost paralyzing. At one point, I had three women interested in me at the same time, and I could not figure out how to pick one to escalate things with. At the time, I was not in the mental space to be in that situation anyway, and I think I made the overall best decision I could have (which was to not do anything with any of them) since I think things wouldn't have ended well for any of them. Even if all three of them felt a sting from that sort of soft rejection.

People assume the best in you

I don't know how many times I've been told that I seem like a nice guy. And that goes even after I've done something bad, or say some off-color stuff. I don't think I would be given that grace if I were maybe a little bit uglier.

People just assume the best of me now; they assume good intentions. One time when I was out, I had danced with a woman who was part of a group. I sat at their table, and they asked me to look after their drinks as they went to the bathroom. In my head, I thought, "Okay, they're leaving, they're not coming back, because what woman is going to trust their drink with a stranger?" They came back.

Not that I was going to do anything, nor do I intentionally try to make people feel bad (barring one time where I was testing the waters).

At the same time, people think you're sleeping around

I was a virgin until last year; it seemed like a shock whenever I would say that. When I did manage to finally lose it, the person I lost it to always thought I was sleeping with a lot of people. I've had many people think that I'm sleeping around, that I've had multiple sex partners, and somehow don't seem convinced when I try to tell them I'm not, and I don't.

I've tried different styles. When I keep to myself and when I'm overly chatty. People think the same either way.

I've been on dates where the other person assumes I'm "talking" to someone else. Like, if I use my phone for a bit, the assumption is I'm texting someone.

Conclusion

I seem to have more eyes on me now. The invisibility cloak I once had is gone and now everything I do or say carries more weight. I'm more at risk of hurting someone's feelings just by not being attracted to them. And having someone that you find attractive finding you attractive is a scary thing.

I've spoken to a very attractive woman who told me about her experiences, and while there are some similarities it's basically tenfold for women. Attractive women get gifts, people offering to buy stuff for her, just a lot more intensity. Especially since it's more socially acceptable for men to do that for women. It's not something I envy, and it fills her with anxiety and rage with how often she has to reject men.

I would say overall it's a much more positive life I'm living now, but there are times when I miss being the one nobody looked at and nobody had expectations for. I'd just eat and watch movies all day. There was a comfort to that over the healthy eating and workout regimen I do now.

PF2, Kingmaker tonight. Minor spoilers re: names of potential companions and side-quest details.

Party, Level 3

• Marisiel, Elf Witch
• Nok-Nok, Goblin Rogue
• Linzi, Halfling Bard
• Amiri, Human Barbarian
• Titus, Human Fighter
• Valerie, Human Fighter
• Stik, Kobold Monk

Variants in Play: Ancestry Paragon, Free Archetype, Gradual Ability Boosts, Slow Leveling, Stamina. I also allow Hero Points to adjust the degree of success on a check by one step rather than re-roll; this primarily gets used to either mitigate a crit fail or turn a failure into a success.

The group had set out at the end of last session with the intention of picking some radishes and hunting two local monsters of some renown, a boar called Tuskgutter and some tatzlwyrms. Amiri was especially excited about going after Tuskgutter.

They arrive at the radish patch to find four kobolds suffering from The Itis™ that quickly scramble to protect their patch, but the monk eases tensions and ends up receiving an entire basket of the spicy radishes.

They spend a few days following the edge of the forest, crossing a rickety old bridge, disturbing some hunting spiders but dispatching them quickly. One evening, just after a meal, several of the Stag Lord's bandits had managed to sneak up on them, which turned out to be the last thing any of them did. Another afternoon saw Stik, Amiri, and Valerie attacked by thylacines while out foraging for ingredients, but by now they're used to that kind of thing.

They get into the general area of where they expect Tuskgutter's lair to be and spend the day searching for it. They eventually find it and have themselves their third proper Solo encounter since starting the game; I took the base profile for Tuskgutter and scaled it to be a Creature 7, so as to make the anticipation set up by the bounty poster and Amiri's vibrating in place worth it. With some good use of debuffing actions/spells and Hero Points, they take it down within a couple of rounds, albeit Titus did fall to an attack routine. One lesser healing potion and a soothe later, along with a short breather, and he's fine.

Trophy in hand, they make camp. As they're breaking camp in the morning, a hunter approaches the group to warn them of the dangers of Tuskgutter, only to be offered bacon.

Next stop, the tatzlwyrm lair.

Let me preface with this: I know this is a hot topic, I’m not looking to have a fight about guns; I’m interested in discussing the practical aspect of the question in the current context. I hope we can have a discussion without dragging politics or name calling into it.

I’m not from the US so I don’t have a dog in that race. I’m very curious however about the perspective of people living there: ever since I can remember, one of the most common argument for the right to bear arms is that it keeps the government in check: if it ever oversteps its powers or becomes fascist/dictatorial then the people will have the means to defend themselves against it and overthrow it.

From abroad, it looks like the trump administration is pushing the limits further almost weekly, behaving in ways that are not democratic, enriching themselves personally through their government position/power, and dismantling the people’s rights.

There are so many guns in the US, kept by people to presumably prevent the above.

So what gives? Why aren’t people using these guns to take back control of the country when the man in charge looks (from my perspective abroad) like he is abusing his power like a despot would and breaking the social contract (if not the law)? And if not, what does it mean for the right to bear arms if they’re not being used to safeguard the people’s freedom given all the collateral damage they cause (regular school shootings, murders, etc)?

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

First, I am emphatically not talking about LLMs.

Just a shower thought kinda question. For most people, the primary issue is anthropomorphizing too much. But I think programmers see it differently.

Let's say someone comes up with something that seems to walk and talk like a self-aware, sentient, AGI duck. It has a "memories" db, it learns and adapts, it seems to understand cause and effect, actions and consequences, truth v falsehood, it passes Turing tests like they're tic-tac-toe, it recognizes itself in the mirror, yada.

But as a developer, you can "look behind the curtain" and see exactly how it works. (For argument's sake, let's say it's a FOSS duck, so you can actually look at the source code.)

Does it ever "feel" like a real, sentient being? Does it ever pass your litmus test?

For me, I think the answer is, "yes, eventually" ... but only looong after other people are having relationships with them, getting married, voting for them, etc.

My understanding of how large language models work is rooted in my knowledge of statistics. However a significant number of people have never been to college and statistics is a required course only for some degree programs.

How should chatgpt etc be explained to the public at large to avoid the worst problems that are emerging from widespread use?

I'm a member of a hacker space. In the last few months two different people have came in desperate for help because they have a relentless hacker after them. In each case they are a completely mundane person who would have little reason to earn the focus of a dedicated expert in device infiltration. They claim that no matter what they do, what device they use (new phone, new laptop, hardened security OS, even their blueray players) it will get hacked as though they have an aura about them. When pressed for any kind of evidence they have none. The previous events they claim as evidence are always shaky. Often their claim is just that something didn't work right on their computer - thus it is hacked. It's never anything concrete like their bank account getting emptied.

One is a middle-aged woman who thinks that her upstairs neighbor is seeking revenge after she put in a noise complaint. Another is a woman in her 20s who has no understanding of what initiated it. The older woman is at the point where she believes every TV has a camera in it that can get hacked to watch her. When we look up the model numbers and see they have no camera in the specs she waves it off - to her those were just exceptions. In both cases they've turned to technological solutions they don't understand in a blind hope for refuge. Secure DNS (like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1), GrapheneOS, stateless Linux laptops, etc.

I don't feel like these people are schizophrenic. We've had such people show up before and their delusions are on a different level. One guy thinks a well known actor stole his UFO designs and is trying to get him put in jail. These other people feel more like they're in self-imposed conspiracy theories, not unlike what happened to that ChatGPT user. At first I felt like this was a technological form of FDIS (to be clear I have no training in psychology). But there have been no attempts from either person to factitiously create devices that appear compromised. So I suppose this is more of a delusion, perhaps founded on a desire to be more important than they really are.

Does anyone know more about this kind of situation? I don't think there's much I can do for them. But I'd love to understand more about this topic if anyone has seen stuff like this before or has formal training.