https://www.powercomposer.net/

I am not affiliated with this project, I just think it's awesome and deserves more publicity.

Power Composer is a piano-reel-style MIDI editor built in the Godot game engine (though it is a tool, not a game). It's intended to be lighter and more accessible than a DAW, but still quite powerful. The dev has been quietly working on it for a while now and just recently made a free early-access Windows build available!

I've been keeping an eye on it ever since it was featured in the Godot 2024 showreel, as I've wanted something like it for a while. Several years ago, I was playing around with Chrome Music Lab's "Song Maker" so I could use it in my classroom. I ended up having such a great time that I got incredibly sidetracked and spent a while just writing stuff. I know the grid-based sequencer isn't a novel concept, but something about that particular configuration just clicked with me.

Ever since then, I've been searching for something similar but more capable that still clicks in the same way. I tried Bosca Ceoil, LMMS, and a couple DAWs' MIDI editors, but nothing quite did it. Then I saw Power Composer. Now that I can actually try it, it's just as comfortable as I hoped! I'm a classically-trained music teacher and have been writing/arranging with software like Dorico for years, but something about sequencers (and Power Composer in particular) just feels more freeing to me than traditional notation.

It is not open-source nor is it planned to be, which is a bummer because I'd love to contribute, but I get it - being paid for your work is nice. No word on the release price or timeline yet.

The dev seems like a good guy. In addition to the website above, Power Composer has a Youtube channel and a Discord server, and he is actively taking feature requests and bug reports on the latter.

I've been exploring it a bit and I'd be happy to answer any questions people have about it! Really enjoying it so far.

Introduction

Deep in the Caribbean, the pirate haven of Mêlée Island is home to the deadliest brood of ne'er-do-wells what ever sailed the seven seas: the infamous scurvy seadog Meathook; the buccaneer Sword Master whose name is feared in every corner of the isle; and most horrifically, the spectral ghost pirate LeChuck. Onto these disreputable shores late one night arrives the hapless, clueless, and utterly guileless flooring inspector Guybrush Threepwood, with nothing to his name but the dream of somehow becoming a real pirate himself.

Discover a thrilling world of swordplay, thievery, and, er, treasure huntery in The Secret of Monkey Island. Insult your enemies, fire the cannons, find true love, concoct mysterious voodoo brews, poison guards, evade cannibals, traverse hellish catacombs, raise a pint of grog, and (maybe) discover the Secret for yourself!

The Secret of Monkey Island

Happy December! This month we're playing the legendary 1990 Lucasfilm Games point-and-click adventure from the minds of Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman.

You see, one of my favorite rides in Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean. You get on a little boat and it takes you through a pirate adventure… Your boat keeps you moving through the adventure, but I’ve always wished I could get off and wander around, learn more about the characters, and find a way onto those pirate ships.

• Ron Gilbert, from the Lucasfilm Adventurer, Fall 1990

I was sorting through some boxes today and I came across my copy of Tim Power's On Stranger Tides, which I read in the late 80's and was the inspiration for Monkey Island. Some people believe the inspiration for Monkey Island came from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride — probably because I said it several times during interviews — but that was really just for the ambiance. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were plagiarized derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game.

• Ron Gilbert, from Grumpy Gamer, 2004

The Secret of Monkey Island is renowned for its zany humor, great (and mostly fair) puzzle design, gorgeous pixel graphics, and memorable soundtrack. Unlike other adventure games of the era, SMI invites you to try anything and everything without worry — you can't die. It's chock full of goofy swashbuckling anachronisms and hilarious good times. Maybe a little frustration too. Hey, you can just look up the answers when you get stuck. We couldn't do that in the '90s. Respect the grind.

The game originally released for DOS, Amiga, Macintosh, Atari ST, FM Towns, and Sega CD. Those versions are no longer available for purchase in the usual places (you might try eBay but save up your pieces o' eight if you go that route). All the original versions are playable in ScummVM if you lack the necessary hardware. If you find yourself needing access to a Dial-A-Pirate wheel, the original has been helpfully digitized here for your convenience.

Different releases of the original game have different audio and graphics. Some people have opinions about which version is best. These are all valid. I prefer the version I grew up with, but no shade on the others. They all have their own charms.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a 2009 remaster that is the official recommended way to play today. It includes fully recreated high-resolution graphics, music, and voiced dialogue, with a modernized UI. It includes a quick toggle between classic and remastered modes, which is a nice touch. The Windows version is currently on sale for 50% off from GOG (DRM-free), and also available from Steam. It is reportedly playable on Steam Deck.

From what I can tell the Special Editions of SMI and its first sequel were also sold as a bundle for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and iOS. I can't speak to the current availability of any of those but they're probably all terrible ways to experience it anyway.

Limited Run Games has also issued a few re-releases of the original game in recent years. I don't know much about these, and good luck finding them for sale anywhere.

Genres: Adventure, Point-and-Click

Links: MobyGames, Wikipedia

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share which version of the game you're playing
• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

IMPORTANT: Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

IMPORTANT: Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

Closing Thoughts

How appropriate, you fight like a cow.

I stay current on tech for both personal and professional reasons but I also really hate hype. As a result I've been skeptical of AI claims throughout the historic hype cycle we're currently in. Note that I'm using AI here as shorthand for frontier LLMs.

So I'm sort of a late adopter when it comes to LLMs. At each new generation of models I've spent enough time playing with them to feel like I understand where the technology is and can speak about its viability for different applications. But I haven't really incorporated it into my own work/life in any serious way.

That changed recently when I decided to lean all the way in to agent assisted coding for a project after getting some impressive boilerplate out of one of the leading models (I don't remember which one). That AI can do a competent job on basic coding tasks like writing boilerplate code is nothing new, and that wasn't the part that impressed me. What impressed me was the process, especially the degree to which it modified its behavior in practical ways based on feedback. In previous tests it was a lot harder to get the model to go against patterns that featured heavily in the training data, and then get it to stay true to the new patterns for the rest of the session. That's not true anymore.

Long story short, add me to the long list of people whose minds have been blown by coding agents. You can find plenty of articles and posts about what that process looks like so I won't rehash all the details. I'll only say that the comparisons to having your own dedicated junior or intern who is at once highly educated and dumb are apt. Maybe an even better comparison would be to having a team of tireless, emotionless, junior developers willing to respond to your requests at warp speed 24/7 for the price of 1/100th of one developer. You need the team comparison to capture the speed.

You've probably read, or experienced, that AI is good at basic tasks, boilerplate, writing tests, finding bugs and so on. And that it gets progressively worse as things get more complicated and the LoCs start to stack up. That's all true but one part that has changed, in more recent models, is the definition of "basic".

The bit that's difficult to articulate, and I think leads to the "having a nearly free assistant" comparisons, is what it feels like to have AI as a coding companion. I'm not going to try to capture it here, I'll just say it's remarkable.

The usual caveats apply, if you rely on agents to do extensive coding, or handle complex problems, you'll end up regretting it unless you go over every line with a magnifying glass. They will cheerfully introduce subtle bugs that are hard to catch and harder to fix when you finally do stumble across them. And that's assuming they can do the thing you're asking then to do at all. Beyond the basics they still abjectly fail a lot of the time. They'll write humorously bad code, they'll break unrelated code for no apparent reason, they'll freak out and get stuck in loops (that one suprised me in 2025). We're still a long way from agents that can actually write software on their own, despite the hype.

But wow, it's liberating to have an assistant that can do 100's of basic tasks you'd rather not be distracted by, answer questions accurately and knowledgeably, scan and report clearly about code, find bugs you might have missed and otherwise soften the edges of countless engineering pain points. And brainstorming! A pseudo-intelligent partner with an incomprehensibly wide knowledge base and unparalled pattern matching abilities is guaranteed to surface things you wouldn't have considered.

AI coding agents are no joke.

I still agree with the perspectives of many skeptics. Execs and middle managers are still out of their minds when they convince themselves that they can fire 90% of their teams and just have a few seniors do all the work with AI. I will read gleefully about the failures of that strategy over the coming months and years. The failure of their short sightedness and the cost to their organizations won't make up for the human cost of their decisions, but at least there will be consequences.

When it comes to AI in general I have all the mixed feelings. As an artist, I feel the weight of what AI is doing, and will do, to creative work. As a human I'm concerned about AI becoming another tool to funnel ever more wealth to the top. I'm concerned about it ruining the livelihoods of huge swaths of people living in places where there aren't systems that can handle the load of taking care of them. Or aren't even really designed to try. There are a lot of legitimate dystopian outcomes to be worried about.

Despite all that, actually using the technology is pretty exciting, which is the ultimate point of this post: What's your experience? Are you using agents for coding in practical ways? What works and what doesn't? What's your setup? What does it feel like? What do you love/hate about it?

I've been learning Godot for the past few months and I'm happy to report that it's been going well. Little by little, things are clicking into place. (I hugely, highly, undoubtedly, recommend GDQuest courses)

I'm ready to start working on a small project to test out my skills, and it's going to be a top down pixel art game.

But to be completely honest, I suck at drawing. I suck at drawing as in, I can make stick figures at best. So forget any fancy software for drawing in general like gimp or photoshop.

What I'm looking for is a software meant for pixel art and that makes my life easy, in both drawing and animating. Bonus points if it allows me to trace (I'm not planning to copy/steal art, but I do need reference points, at least for now)

Do you guys have any recommendations? It can be free or paid. I don't mind paying as long the software is worth it.

October 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

I hope everyone is having a good day. After writing that plea to let Star Trek die and do nothing with it for a while, I decided to be a necromancer for a day. Not sure where to put it so I went with ~misc. In doing it, I know I'm probably forgetting some of the lore/timeline details. I haven't read a lot of wiki material, fan books, etc. I just watch old reruns now and then and had an idea rolling around in my mind.

For context, let's pretend everything after 2005 just didn't happen, that the TNG movies were mostly dreams, and it's 15 years later. We're relying mostly on TNG/VOY/DS9 for the setting. The show runs for four seasons, with each season being one big arc. I don't know what to call it. If you have a fun name we can do that, and if you want I can try to fill in spots where folks have questions.

ok, let's go (boldly)

I hope that was fun. Always happy to take feedback and hear what kinds of stuff ya'll think would make for a good show.

Edit: Guess I'm adding Babylon 5 to the storage drive. I don't know why I never saw it but I will happily follow ya'll's suggestion on that one, sounds good to me

Party

• Lee, Grey Elven Fighter 5, Magic-User 5, Thief 5 (~70k XP)
• Moya, Halfling Thief 7 (~47k XP)
• Oryn, High Elven Magic-User 5, Thief 6 (~73k XP)
  • Henchman Takeshi, Human Ranger 4 (~16k XP)
• Varda, Human Cleric 6 dual-classed into Magic-User 6 (~75k XP)
  • Henchman Rudy, Halfling Druid 3, Thief 4 (~12k XP)
• Vordt, Half-Ogre Cleric 4, Fighter 5 (~56k XP)

Looking over their map of the dungeon of the Temple, they realize there's a couple of rooms in the Water Cult's area that they never investigated, so they start by prioritizing those rooms. The first appears to be some kind of salon, for there are themed carpets, draperies, couches, serving dishes, and a... fishy-smelling incense burning. As they turn the room over, they find an embroidered cloak depicting a decapod sewn in with gold thread, among other things.

They entered from the east, and see a door heading south. Entering, they see a bedroom of sorts, with a writing desk, bronze chest, and an ornate trident hanging from the wall with a massive aquamarine set in it. Upon the desk is a tome that appears to be some rituals the Water Temple would engage in. Rudy notices and accidentally triggers a needle trap within the lock of the bronze chest, but is deftly able to avoid it (between being a druid, a halfling, having a ring of protection, and a high Dexterity, Rudy tends to pass poison saves on anything other than a 1). Well worth the risk, however, as in the chest was a coral box containing many small pearls.

Lee lifts the trident from the wall and then believes it to be a good idea to go for a swim. As a matter of fact, he must go submerge himself right now and begins to walk off. The party exchange quick glances and spring into action; Vordt blocks the door with his robust frame as Moya pulls out her rope of entanglement and commands it to hogtie Lee. After some discussion, the party resolves to finish exploring the last couple rooms and then leave to deal with Lee's presumed curse.

Back in the hall outside the first room, they move to the other door across from it, and it's locked. Moya is unable to pick it, but then Rudy comes along and gets it open. Within is a lounge furnished similarly to the salon, though (thankfully, some said) without the incense and with a desk covered in writing materials. They found a hidden compartment in the back of the desk's drawers containing a scroll with three cleric spells on it: resist fire, neutralize poison, and true seeing.

Similar to the salon, there is a door on the southern wall that they enter through, containing another bedroom. Flanking the bed are a couple of chests, which Moya and Rudy work on picking. Moya fails to pick her chest, while Rudy gets through theirs. Within Rudy's chest was a handful of platinum and a vial with liquid labeled as a potion of water breathing with two doses. Oryn attempted the chest Moya failed at, also failing. Rudy, confident in his ability to come in under the other two and succeed in their stead... also failed. Vordt approaches with a crowbar and pries the hinges off. Within are some books and miscellaneous treasure items.

Done exploring the second floor, they leave the Temple and drag Lee back to town to try and fix his curse. Most of the time he's spent tied up he's been begging the party to just let him take a quick swim, and he even suggested a few times they allow him to use the potion of water breathing. They tried a remove curse and dispel magic on him, but neither freed Lee from his compulsion to submerge himself in water, nor were they able to pry the trident from his hands. They try letting him enter a nearby pond and waiting a few moments before levitating him out, but this did not cure him either. Intending to enlist the help of more powerful clerics, the party packs up and gets ready to travel a couple of days to a nearby city; Vordt sits next to a hogtied Lee and begins to read the ritual tome they found in the Temple. By the end of the day, Vordt learned what the trident is, how the curse works, and how to remove it. It is a trident of yearning, and the curse is removed either via wish or by having some effect of water breathing put upon the affected while they are submerged.

The party reverses course back to town and, at about 2200, are standing near the pond, illuminated by many active continual lights. Varda enters the pond with Lee and allows him to submerge himself while supported. Varda quickly administers the potion of water breathing to Lee and then pulls him back above water as Lee roughly tosses the trident away from himself. They retrieve the trident with a grapnel and Rudy spends about a half hour carefully picking and prying at the gem with their tools, avoiding touching the trident itself, until they've pried the gem free. Oryn then tests whether the trident is still cursed. It is. Another dose later, Oryn is also fine. Unsure of how to dispose of the trident safely, they take it to the local temple of Rook (LG deity) and leave it with them.

All of that handled, the party returns to the Temple dungeon, intending to breach the third floor. They work their way down and enter into a room whose entire floor is coated in fertilizer and mushrooms of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. An armor-clad woman immediately calls out that they should stay still and check on their companions, as some of these fungal growths can cause insanity, and she begins making her way through a winding path towards Lee and Vordt, the ones who opened the door. Unbeknownst to them, Lee failed his resistance to charm, as well as the saving throw, against a charm person she wove into her words, though Vordt succeeded against a suggestion. The woman, glowing short sword drawn, attacks Lee from behind and lands a touch across his head, draining a point of Wisdom, breaking the charm on Lee. She then turns to Vordt and does the same, but between Vordt's retaliation and Moya's timely backstab, the true form of the lamia appears dead before them.

This is where we ended the session, with the date now being Rose 24; we'll pick back up there next week. Notable treasure: trident of yearning, potion of water breathing, a cleric scroll, and some miscellaneous high-value items. Gold shares were about 2.5k each.

I'm info dumping some links about open-source robotics. The rabbit hole runs deep and this barely scratches the surface.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried any of these yet. Based on a cursory search and following links from the great Open-source robotics Wikipedia page.

Robotics simulation on Godot

• https://github.com/flynneva/godot_ros - Proof-of-concept integrating ROS2 (Robot Operating System) with Godot, for a 3D robot simulation environment. (Updated 8 months ago)

• https://github.com/nordstream3/Godot-4-ROS2-integration - A fork(?) of the above. The readme is clearer with visual examples of what it's meant for. (Updated 12 months ago)

• https://github.com/plaans/gobot-sim - A top-down 2D factory simulation of packages being processed by machines. (Updated 3 months ago)

• https://lab.nexedi.com/nexedi/godot-modbus-demo - Exposing a modbus interface to control simulated industrial components. (Updated 5 years ago.) Comes with a blog post which might be more recent (a year ago?).

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18408 - "Exploring Flexible Scenario Generation in Godot Simulator" about generating simulated physical scenes for testing computer-controlled cars. Write-up only with no code. (Submitted 9 months ago)

Robotic car simulation on Unreal Engine and Unity

• https://github.com/carla-simulator/carla - "CARLA is an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research." They mostly target Unreal Engine. Regularly updated and popular with 13k stars on GitHub.

• https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim - Microsoft and IAMAI collaborated (plus DARPA funding?) to create an open source simulation platform for both flying drones and autonomous cars. Targets Unreal Engine and experimentally Unity also. Soon being sunset and replaced with a new project confusingly named "Project AirSim."

• https://github.com/iamaisim/ProjectAirSim - The successor to AirSim. The GitHub shows it's only at version 0.1.1 though.

Robot Operating System (ROS2)

• https://github.com/ros2/ros2

• https://docs.ros.org/en/kilted/Tutorials.html - Tutorials beginning with TurtleSim, a top-down 2D turtle scene where you control turtles. Looks like ROS2 uses familiar network messaging patterns like Publish-Subscribe.

• https://vimeo.com/osrfoundation/videos/sort:date - Presentation videos. Looks like the Open Robotics foundation just completed a developers' conference in Japan two days ago. The presentations from ROSCon JP are Japanese-language-only. Next one is coming very soon this October in Singapore.

How to get started?

That's a lot of links. I'd first figure out what I want to do. Humanoid robots seem popular lately—like the Berkeley 3d printed robot—so it'd be interesting to start there, although it doesn't map cleanly onto the projects I linked. So maybe if I imagined a robot with a human torso and arms, but with wheels and car-like locomotion. Then I could use a combination of the car simulators and probably ROS2 to deal with the upper body components? Or maybe there is another solution for the torso and arms that is a more direct fit than ROS2? Maybe iRobot/Roomba has a better solution for the car-like locomotion at this small scale?

Anyone used these before and have a story to share? Anyone curious to try one out and report back? I plan to, but no idea on my schedule.

AD&D 1e the other night. Two sessions being packed into one report.

Party

• Jeff, Half-Elven Druid 6, Fighter 4, Magus 4 (~50k XP)
• Lee, Grey Elven Fighter 5, Magic-User 4, Thief 5 (~46k XP)
• Moya, Halfling Thief 6 (30k XP)
• Oryn, High Elven Magic-User 5, Thief 6 (~58k XP)
  • Henchman Takeshi, Human Ranger 4 (~13k XP)
• Varda, Human Cleric 6 dual-classed into Magic-User 4 (~47k XP)
  • Henchman Rudy, Halfling Druid 2, Thief 3 (~8k XP)
• Vordt, Half-Ogre Cleric 4, Fighter 5 (~38k XP)

The party sets out on the 23rd, arriving at the Temple the night of the 24th. On an impulse, they decide to check out the Elemental Earth's main place of worship. It is a fairly massive room filled with dirt, the center containing a square pyramid with steps leading up to a stone pillar that has bronze manacles attached. As they enter the room, four Earth Elementals appear in the four corners, still and waiting. They discuss a game plan; Lee puts protection from evil on himself and then moves forward to the pyramid. On the other side of it is a stand with a small bronze box. Lee moves in to check the box for traps and the elementals move closer, to the four corners of the pyramid. He proceeds to check the box for traps, finding none, and his spell expires right as the elementals attack.

(1st round) Two are close enough to try and smash him immediately as the others move in, and he takes a heavy blow. Oryn, Moya, and Jeff let off bows and slings while Rudy prepares their staff of slinging to hurl a boulder and Varda prepares to levitate Lee, who is trying to withdraw as Takeshi charges in. Missiles bounce harmlessly off the elementals, though the boulder does a solid chunk of damage to the elemental. Takeshi ends his charge early, opting to keep the ones firing missiles and casting spells safe. Lee backs away, but is followed, and then levitate goes off, lifting Lee ten feet into the air. (2nd round) Oryn begins casting protection from evil on himself, Jeff casts magic missile, Varda lifts Lee another ten feet up, who is trying to cast mirror image on himself, and Rudy throws another boulder. One of the elementals manages to strike Lee, disrupting his spell, but then he is lifted to a safe height. (3rd Round) Oryn rushes towards the box, Lee is levitated a further ten feet, putting him in contact with the ceiling, at which point he maneuvers himself along towards the exit, Rudy throws another boulder, Jeff catches some in a web, and Takeshi begins ushering the other members out of the chamber. Turning their attention towards Oryn, a couple of the elementals try to smash him but are wholly prevented from making contact due to the protection from evil surrounding him. (4th Round) The elementals continue to fruitlessly whale on Oryn as he snatches the box and leaves with the rest of the party; the elementals do not follow beyond the limit of the chamber.

The party casts some curatives on Lee and decide to travel back to the second floor. They encounter some ghouls on their way but quickly dispatch them. They make their way into a large octagonal chamber with exits in each cardinal direction, some crystal braziers hanging from the ceiling, an altar with a crystal bowl and knives, and a shallow pit built almost like an inground pool. After some investigation, they locate a secret door in the southeast corner that they cannot find the mechanism for. Lee opens it with a knock, revealing what appears to be a wraith, but was actually a drelb. Either way, it gets hit with a barrage of magic missile, has amplify damage put upon it, and is put down in the first round. The hidden chamber it was in appeared to be empty, but after some further prodding, they find a loose bit of floor hiding a censer that they later learn is a censer of controlling air elementals. Moya takes the crystal knives and bowl. The party then comes up with a plan to remove the crystal braziers from the ceiling to bring home, albeit one at a time given their size and weight; worth 8k gold each if sold (they were). Though out of reach normally, Oryn having been polymorphed into a gargoyle hybrid by a curse helped out here. After the second brazier is brought out, they rest until dawn to reprepare spells and allow for some of Lee's health to regenerate through a magic item of his. Oryn throws an invisibility, 10' radius on everyone and they re-enter the dungeon.

They eventually find themselves in another chamber with a sheet of crystal embedded into the wall, which lights up to reveal Lawful Good-aligned outsiders that ask some questions about the party's purpose and suggests they leave their magic items near before leaving the room, as these celestials intend to bless the items, but their method will sear flesh and blind eyes; however, this must be done quickly, as their ability to peer through the window is short-lived. Between their own suspicions and Varda's patron tulani whispering in their ear that something seems off, the party moves on.

The party wanders into the living quarters of the Elemental Fire priests; the first thing they run into is a captain with a couple of bugbears, whom they surprised, partially due to the invisibility. Varda targets the captain with levitate and he fails the save, so up he goes. Between the surprise segment and their captain being immediately removed from the fight, the bugbears surrender, but are killed anyways for being bugbears. The captain begs for surrender and is told to drop his weapons. He does so, save for one sword that he claims is a family heirloom. One detect magic later, Rudy notes that his armor, sword, and a rope at his belt are radiating magic, so he's killed and looted. At this point, only Varda, Lee, and Takeshi are visible.

They move on into another chamber where a singular priest is lounging. Varda happens to be wearing older Elemental Fire regalia, so with a positive reaction roll, he considers Varda to be part of the faith, that Lee/Takeshi are his entourage, and has an exchange with him. Varda reveals that the army of Good being gathered some sixty miles away is ready to march and will descend upon the Temple soon, leading him to try and take Varda to the head priest. Before this can happen, however, Moya, Oryn, and others lead an attack on him and are able to cut him down before he can raise the alarm or get a spell off.

They're unable to move into the head priest's quarters without alerting him, however, but this ended up not mattering as initiative dictated the win goes to the party. One bout of looting later, they find a path they think will lead back to an area they've been to before, and lo, it does, albeit straight into the arms of a troll that they... kill quickly. A problem arises, however. They try to burn it, and it's not burning. Quick pat down in a mild panic reveals its wearing a ring. A dirty, filth-encrusted ring, but a ring nonetheless. One good pull later, it's off and they're able to burn it, and then they take their leave to head back to town. They decide to force themselves to march so that they can get back ASAP, and they arrive at dawn on the 27th.

Notable treasure: censer of controlling air elementals, flametongue, ring of fire resistance, rope of entanglement, along with some magic armor, couple scrolls, and another ring. Gold share was about 6k each.

Background: I started daily driving Linux (specifically Mint) several months ago and for the most part it's been great. Some weird hiccups occasionally but nothing I can't handle/deal with. When doing my research to set the system up for the first time, I decided to go with 30GB for the / partition and ~220GB for the /home partition (the other half of the drive is for Windows 11 and the various essential tiny partitions). For a while this seemed to be fine, but lately I've been starting to get warnings when performing software updates via the Update Manager that the / partition is running out of space. I think it peaked at maybe 90-95% full a few weeks ago, at which point I started doing some research and cleaning up a bit (apt autoremove, deleting old logs and kernels, etc). I was able to claw back ~4GB and kick the can down the road, but now the warnings have returned and I'd like to handle this properly. I'm working from the assumption that I simply made the / partition too small and intend to double it by giving it some of the Windows space.

My question: How do I know if this is expected or if I've been doing something wrong? Is 30GB indeed too small on modern Mint, or should that have been enough? I know it partially depends on what all I actually do with the computer, but I really don't have very many applications installed (aside from defaults of course) and only four of them are Flatpaks, which I read tend to be larger. If it helps, the Disk Usage Analyzer reports that within /, /usr is taking up 13.2GB (55%), /var accounts for 9.1GB (38%), /opt is 1GB (4%), and everything else is <1% each.

Thanks in advance!

A long, complicated story, summarized: (apart from Tildes, on which I lurk) I swore off all social media years ago. Then my job required that I have an account on LinkedIn. I reconsidered, and attempted to make the least disclosive account possible in an effort to protect my privacy. Things aren't going well. Despite logging in with the correct credentials, on the same device, using the same browser; and with access to my signup email, and access to the phone I used to enroll, LinkedIn has flagged my account the second time I tried using it and now requires me to upload images of myself and my government ID to regain access to their cesspool. Are you familiar with their protocols and can share insights, so that if I start again I don't face the same problem?

I have read what LinkedIn says and I have read discussions on Reddit on the topic. LinkedIn says you can opt to "use your work email" or mail them an affidavit. These options were not given to me. Everyone else I have seen reporting facing this seems to have triggered the system by losing their login credentials or moving countries; what brought this upon me and can I avoid it?

1. Is it that I use a VPN, and it may have routed through a different IP address on the second login?
2. I use an email alias. Is LinkedIn purging accounts with email domains that offer aliases?
3. Is it a result of clearing cookies?
4. Is it easier to maintain a Google account (!) which LinkedIn allows as login without this ID thing coming up?

Please be gentle with your advice as I am kind of panicking.

The Party

• Jeff, half-elf Druid 6 / Fighter 4 / Magus 4
• Lee, gray elf Fighter 4 / Magic-User 4 / Thief 5
• Oryn, high elf Magic-User 5 / Thief 6
• Rudy, halfling Druid 2 / Thief 3
• Takeshi, human Ranger 4
• Varda, human Cleric 6 / Magic-User 4
• Vordt, half-ogre Cleric 4 / Fighter 5

Ran the group through some werewolf hunting the other day. Thanks to the local army scouts, they knew where the hideout was; a chapel on a hill in the badlands, about ten miles from town. The party arrives, takes a look in one of the side windows, climbs the bell tower for a vantage point around the thing, including the graveyard and mausoleum, and then pushes their way into the building.

There's no light inside, but Takeshi has a broadsword with continual light on it, as well as a ring that increases the radius of light sources he commands, so the hall and sanctuary ahead are well lit through the 80' of luminescence in his hands. As they enter the sanctuary, three people materialize behind the altar, outlanders in appearance, claiming to be using this building as protection from the elements. Some players noted the lack of a "lived in" feeling here, no bedrolls or typical litter you'd expect of a temporary living space, and these people appeared well-fed and hale. Sensing that the party is about to lash out, the werewolves attack pre-emptively and gain surprise.

(Round 1) Takeshi and Lee ended up targets between these three werewolves. Four more tried to ambush from behind, but Vordt was in the back filling up the hallway, blocking their way. Oryn casts amplify damage at one while Varda fires magic missile and Jeff fills the hallway with web as Takeshi and Lee retaliate in melee; Rudy provides missile support with their sling. (R2) Oryn and Varda wait for an an opportunity to capitalize on while Takeshi and Lee continue trading blows, with Rudy continuing to provide missile support and Jeff casting a magic missile; Vordt is 5' deep in the web begins to leverage his obscene Strength to break free of them. One werewolf lies dead. (R3) Varda continues waiting, confident in their allies' abilities as Oryn charges in, Rudy provides missile support, Jeff supplies another magic missile, Takeshi and Lee continue trading blows with the two remaining werewolves, and Vordt is working himself free of the webs. Three werewolves lie dead.

Over the next couple of minutes, Vordt breaks free from the web. Not wanting to try and jump through windows, the party opts to wait for the spell to expire, as the remaining four werewolves trapped in it yell muffled requests for mercy. Their progress was much slower than Vordt's, and they had to go through 8' of web rather than 5', but after about an hour they'd all suffocated. During the wait, both Takeshi and Lee ate some belladonna to stave off potential infection.

The party finds a trap door to a cellar and checks it out. There's a wight hiding in the shadows, but it doesn't surprise them. It still slaps Lee and eats about 5k XP off his thief levels, but it dies by the end of the first round. In exchange, they found an iron chest, within which was 21k gold, 13 gems, a scroll of protection from magic, dwarf-sized field plate +1, and a pouch of dust of dryness.

Then Takeshi and Lee both vomit up their lunch and pass out on the floor. Lee is no longer breathing. Ingesting belladonna does a few things: (1) small chance of curing lycanthropy if taken quickly after infection, (2) incapacitates you for 1d4 days, (3) has a 1% chance of killing you. Lee is the 1%.

They get both of their bodies and the treasure out and back to town, then broker a deal with the local lordling MU to get Lee poked with a rod of resurrection, which drops him from 20 to 19 Constitution, removing his natural regeneration. Takeshi remains incapacitated for a day and Lee for a week, due to resurrection sickness.

Sydney Sweeney has been the subject of a lot of controversies as of late. But what I want to focus on is how media outlets have been covering the release of her two new films, Americana and Eden.

Some background:

Americana is a genre film. It was shot and screened in 2023 to relatively positive reviews. The company that financed it, Bron, went bankrupt shortly after the film's screening. Due to this bankruptcy Lionsgate was able to acquire the rights to the film for cheap. While the film was made on a nine million dollar budget, Lionsgate purchased it for three million, with two million of that coming from international rights sales. Meaning that Lionsgate only spent one million acquiring the domestic distribution rights. In order to get more VOD sales and streaming deals, Lionsgate gave the film a small theatrical release with next to nothing in marketing.

Eden premiered at TIFF in 2024. Directed by Ron Howard the film also stars Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Ana De Armas, and Daniel Bruhl along with Sweeney. The film was financed at a net cost of 35 million dollars. It received mixed to negative reviews and only Netflix was willing to purchase it. Ron Howard opted to go with a smaller distributor, Vertical (who are mostly known for straight-to-video trash but have been slowly building themselves as a more legitimate art-house distributor), due to wanting a theatrical release which no one wanted to give the film. Vertical made a deal for less than 20 million dollars for the film.

Now, each distributor had their reasons for acquiring each film. Lionsgate saw a cheap film with a rising star which was well-received. It was an easy profit for them and helps build up their library as they are looking to be sold off. Vertical, having released last year's acclaimed The Order, is trying to build a filmmaker friendly reputation. Buying a non-commercial film with a high profile cast and a high profile director gives them more exposure and allows them to be more in the conversation for prestige filmmaking.

The film's financiers, however, are the money losers in both situations. Whether or not the distributors lost money doesn't really matter. Money losers are money losers and these films should be described as such.

And this is where it gets weird.

In the wake of Americana's opening we got two different articles about the film's box office. One from Deadline and one from IndieWire. Covering for the film, arguing that they weren't money losers for the reasons I myself just gave earlier. This weekend, as Eden just released, Deadline releases yet another article defending the film's performance.

This is too much coverage for these films that no one saw. Comparable films never get articles like this. So what's going on?

Here's my conspiracy theory. Sydney Sweeney is friends with Jeff Bezos. She attended his wedding and a few months ago there were heavily circulated rumors about her being the new Bond girl a franchise that Bezos unfortunately owns.

The media outlets that cover the entertainment industry: Variety, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire are all owned by the same person: Jay Penske. Penske and Bezos run in the same circles, rich guy circles, and have attended philanthropic events at the same time. What I believe is happening is that Bezos is using his influence and connections for these outlets to write out positive headlines for Sweeney, due to her controversies, to create a more flattering image of her and her career.

It's odd, to say the least.

Kingmaker was last night. Some minor spoilers to follow.

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.

Realizing they had just under a week before the Stag Lord's bandits tried to strong-arm Oleg's Trading Post for goods again, the party stopped their trip towards the tatzlwyrm lair and immediately turned around to return to Oleg's to stock up and then head towards the fort.

On the way back, they encountered yet more bandits and, on one evening, an owlbear and its mate. Once at Oleg's, they spent a day turning in their quests and buying some of the goods available at the trading post. When ready, they set out. About twelve miles from the fort, they were about to start cooking dinner when some of the Stag Lord's bandits showed up in a neutral manner, presuming the party to be aspiring recruits. Linzi takes the opportunity to try and get some information out of them by indulging their fantasy.

Titus eventually gets bored and challenges one of the bandits to a duel. The bandit rightfully declines, but Titus begins pushing forward with intent to attack him anyways. Linzi threatened to force him to spend his night in a laughing fit to get him to back off, and he calmed down. Unfortunately, after dinner was taken care of, the bandits took their leave, not wanting to be shanked in the night by the crazy man.

The next morning they stop a few hundred feet from the fort and Marisiel sends her familiar, Youmu, forward to scout the hills since the bandits don't seem to be paying them much mind. Youmu returns shortly and informs Marisiel that something's off about the hill; he suspects undead. Armed with that information, the party decided to waltz up to the front door and just infiltrate by providing the password.

Once inside, introductions are made, stories are shared, and after the party learns that there's a late shipment of alcohol and the Stag Lord loves the stuff, Stik taps into their knowledge of alchemy (via dedication) to create a bottle of booze. The Stag Lord quickly comes out and snatches the bottle before returning to his chamber.

Stik is quickly inducted as the brewmeister, but instead of delivering alcohol to the other bandits, they deliver lightning. In a bottle. One Extreme encounter later (as they triggered the entire compound, including the Stag Lord, and the owlbear was let free at some point), the Stag Lord lies dead on the ground along with most of his lieutenants.

First of all, I want to say very big THANK YOU for all who contribute to various libre, open source etc. projects. I'm so happy that people love sharing knowledge, skills and fruits of their work.

But to the topic - how do you find time for it?
Whenever I update my Debian or Axpos or any other libre software I see soooo many updates/changes made by (probably soooo many) people. And I always ask myself a question - when did they do that? Where have they found time for contributing? For me full time work makes me so tired that it's the last thing I think about after work hours. Especially in the office job, after x hours of sitting before my monitor I truly hate every next minute after work. I would love to contribute some code, I would realllly love to. Sometimes I find some bugs and try to report them and that's all I am able to do. What frustrates me the most is that I have abilities to code because it's my daily job, but I don't have energy to do that.

So, could you tell me how do you find time and energy to contribute to libre projects?