I just finished Breaking Bad, second run-through. I had first started watching it when Season 4 had just started; binging seasons 1-3 and followed it episode-by-episode after.

I was surprised to notice that the content I binged stayed with me much better than the seasons I watched one-episode-at-a-time.
Also… Holy shit. Breaking Bad gets dark towards the end (Jesse getting imprisoned and forced to cook for months; his ex-girlfriend getting shot). I had forgotten all about that. I had forgotten almost everything about the last … 4-5 episodes.

The scenes that had stayed with me the most from my first watch: Box Cutter's throat-slicing scene, the Prison Shankings, Hank vs. the Cousins, Hank's death scene, Gus's death scene.

But, seriously, rewatching it reminded me how good of a series Breaking Bad is. I couldn't help but binge the entire rewatch marathon. It's an incredibly intense experience.

In the context of what happened to Game of Thrones I'm also very happy to see the consistent quality and execution in Breaking Bad's storytelling. It's a series that set out to tell a story. The story makes sense from beginning to end, and gets resolved nice and tidy.

I'm a little disappointed we don't get to see more of what happens to the family while Walt is gone. The trial etc, that all seems like potentially interesting stuff.

On rewatch, I noticed my sympathies changing. I have a lot less sympathy towards Walt, even very early on. Knowing some things in advanced completely changed my view on him; whereas on first watch I rooted for him quite a bit.

My sympathy towards Skyler also flipped. On my first watch, I disliked her a lot at first, but grew to like her when she "went dark". On this rewatch, I disliked her less and sympathized more with her, though her behaviour beyond season 4 became incomprehensible to me.
I like Marie a lot more this time around as well. She's still pretty unbearable when it comes to shoplifting and generally the way she talks to people; but I hadn't realized just how much she loves Hank. How much she supports him through his PT (despite how atrocious Hank is specifically to her). Knowing Hank's death was coming, my heart broke into pieces when I heard their last phone call end in "I love you. // I love you too.". Hearing her say "He isn't picking up, probably because he's in the thick of it".

I don't think I even noticed anyone's grief the first time around, most likely because I was dealing with my own. Hank's death was a shock then. This time, I knew it was coming, and I had a lot more time to process how people felt about Hank before and their reactions to the news.

Just a bunch of random thoughts about that series. I usually only rewatch "comfort series" such as comedies, animated series, etc; I very rarely rewatch epics (except that I used to re-marathon GoT before a new season). But I don't regret giving Breaking Bad a full rerun. It is such an intense experience; during Seasons 3&4 I yelled in my pillows a few times on credit roll, just from the adrenaline.

You too should give it a shot.

I don't have nearly as much time to game as I used to, and as such, I tend to prioritize games that are quick to finish over those that want my attention for a long time. Thus, I'm curious to know: what are the best short games you've played?

I'm going to arbitrarily set "short" at a threshhold of 3 hours or less.

Furthermore, I'm referring to games that have a defined start and end, rather than potentially infinite play sessions. That means a game like The Binding of Isaac wouldn't count despite the average play session being much less than 3 hours, but a game like Gone Home would.

If you're not sure about a game's length, check HowLongToBeat for crowdsourced runtime data.

Here's a table of recommendations mentioned in the thread, and their approximate time to complete from HowLongToBeat (using the "Main Story" category).

Hey there,

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Someone suggested I add this here, hope you enjoy my collection of music. Been collecting/doing write ups about my favourite tracks since 2013 (~4.5k posts) and last year I started re-thinking how to organize music + putting together playlists on the major streaming platforms.

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Chill Beats | lofi hip hop, chillhop & jazzhop

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud | YouTube

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Groovy Beats | instrumental hip hop, soul, funk & bossa nova

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud | YouTube

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Funky Flavors | electro funk, break beats, hip hop & electro soul

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

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Soulful Hip Hop | hip hop, neo soul, jazz & r&b

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

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Acoustic Escape | indie, acoustic, folk & folktronica

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

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Dance Vibes | nu disco, electro, funky house, indie dance, french house

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

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Ambient Space | downtempo, chillstep & trip hop beats

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

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Bass Waves | future beats, future bass, electronic dance and trap

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

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Lush Vibes | r&b, soul & future beats

Spotify | Apple Music | SoundCloud

Here's a list of a things that came out in this past week, up through Friday. Of course, there's no way to be completely comprehensive with this and we avoided including things where information was too lacking, so feel free to mention anything that isn't on here that you think is worth mentioning. Beyond that, if you have any thoughts of any of these albums, it would be great to hear them :)

Notes:
If you spot any mistakes, let us know.
Parental Advisory version of all albums linked, so expect NSFW.

G-Eazy - B-Sides, says Single but it's actually an EP.
Novelist - Reload King | No Song.link, linked Soundcloud instead.
Peggy Gou / Hiver / I:Cube - DJ-Kicks | Linked DJ Mix and EP version.

Thank you to @Cleb, @cfabbro, and @Bauke

I'm not sure how many people here are into board games, but I figured I'd make a post about it. I'm going to be at dice tower con this week. I'm hoping to get a game of Blood on the Clocktower going. If you see a guy trying to gather people for a game of botc, that'll be me. Come say hi.

When I refer to social media, I'm talking about the main platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. rather than those on the cusp (reddit? tildes?).

I'm personally not on any of those platforms. That is not to say I haven't used them in the past - Facebook in particular I've had an account a number of times, my longest time away from facebook was around a year and a half and I relented and signed up for an account. I'm now about six months away from Facebook and think that "this is probably it" in that I cannot foresee myself signing up again.

I have had a Twitter account up until around three months ago, which I had for roughly a year. Instagram I had a brief flirtation with for a few weeks and decided it wasn't for me so killed that off.

My main reasoning for killing my social media accounts is the absolute toxicity of those communities. Of course you can avoid the toxic elements but I find it fairly easy for it to creep up on you when you're not expecting. My second reasoning is privacy issues. I'm not a massive tin foil hat/privacy advocate however it is certainly a concern of mine. There are certain aspects to privacy issues I'm willing to overlook for convenience sake, but I feel like Facebook et al have got it entirely wrong and I'm simply not interested in providing them with any more of my data than they already have.

I do feel that I am missing out, that it is far more difficult to keep in the loop of what friends/family are doing but I'm reasonably happy to make that sacrifice. It does highlight how absolutely reliant people are on Facebook (certainly within my social group) for communication. That's also quite a concern of mine that Facebook does control (I think that is fair) the means of communication between so many people. I feel like nothing good will come of this.

How about you guys? Am I being ridiculous? Am I missing out on something? Do you side with me?

it's that time of the month again, now hopefully aided by the changes in sort which will give this thread a bit of a longer half-life. here you can share/provide updates on some of the projects that you're working on. they can be of any kind--digital, physical, work related, passion project, whatever. pretty straightforward, i think.

november thread • february thread • march thread • april thread • may thread • june thread

Given a movie with ambiguous story, you have multiple options to base your interpretation upon: you have the movie itself, the screenplay if available, what the author said in interviews or books, etc... Now, if we take a video game, you also have additional tools: the source code, the installed file names, unused resources, etc. There are of course a few games that expect the player to check these files but that isn't what I want to focus on.

Would you say that all these files have the same authority as the game itself when it comes to interpretations?

I'd like to take an example with SPOILERS FOR LIFE IS STRANGE 1, as this is the game that sparked this topic for me:

The blue butterfly has a special place in this game, it is what starts the whole journey when Max takes a picture of it and Chloe gets shot. It also shown again in the 'Sacrifice Chloe' ending during that same scene. And later during Chloe's burial that butterfly is shown to land on the coffin in front of Max and fly away. There are some scenes that imply that spirit animals are a thing in the in-game universe. After finishing the game my interpretation was that the blue butterfly was Chloe's spirit animal. Now what a surprise to see in the game wiki that the texture file for that butterfly is named 'Spirit_animal_Chloe' !

Is there any room left for interpretation when the source makes it explicit text? Or can the source be reasonably be pushed aside?

Consider the life you want to live, from the essentials to the luxuries. House, car, food, tech, kids, etc. Furthermore, consider where you want to live. Rural France? Downtown Tokyo?

For the purposes of the question I don't want you to think of the life of your wildest dreams (e.g. private jet, personal island, etc.), but I don't want you to think bare minimum either. Focus instead on "comfortable and fulfilling" according entirely to your own standards--a life that lets you live well and follow your aspirations with a sense of financial safety. Do not feel obligated to give a low, reasonable answer if your aspirations are higher, and don't feel obligated to shoot high if you're fine with a lower-cost lifestyle. Set your number entirely based around the desired archetypal life you want, rather than what you think is necessarily achievable based on your current financial situation.

Furthermore, don't anchor your hypothetical income to real-world standards. If you want to, for example, teach kindergarteners for a living and live in downtown San Francisco, and your desired income is $200,000 USD a year, that's perfectly fine for the purposes of this discussion despite the fact that you would be hard pressed to find a school there in real life that pays that much. I'm much more interested in the hypotheticals of the costs in your life rather than the feasibility of the income. Think of this less as a real-world budget and more of a thought experiment/personal reflection.

With all that in mind:

• What are the details of the life you want to live?
• Where do you want to live it?
• How much money would you need each year to make that feasible for you, and why?

I'm not interested in anything exact--just a ballpark estimate. And you don't need to give a full budget or anything. This should loose napkin math at best.

Also, to make things easier for everyone:

• Give your money as an amount per year.
• Give the currency you're using.
• Use combined income if your desired life involves multiple people.
• Do not judge someone else's desired life nor income.

Also, please specify which currency you are reporting in so that people can convert it to their local currency if needed to get a better sense of it.

Hi there, I've started a new public server on Discord for music discussion, recommendations, etc. I've seen a number of these go down in flames or completely lose the appeal for their core audience, so I've borrowed some principles from Tildes, adapted for the somewhat different but related issues this kind of Discord server typically runs into. I thought this may be of interest to some users here, so you're all welcome as long as you play by our rules!

If you'd like to see our rules and goals first, check the paste here. They'll be pretty familiar to anyone here, though they are subject to change depending on our needs. This should go without saying, but to be clear, this server is not officially connected to Tildes, nor is it exclusive to Tildes users. There just might be some overlap in ideas :)

Here's our permanent invite link if you'd like to join: https://discord.gg/kC4sSQq

I don't understand what makes the game appealing. It looks like it takes forever to make a level, and why would I want to play levels from random people on the internet?

I like games that you build stuff like KSP but just wondering what the appeal of SMM2 is.