Bullmaestro's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on What is something you're holding together? in ~talk
Bullmaestro LinkA Thursday karaoke night at my local-ish pub. The previous host, a guy in his late-forties, used to do it every week but took a step back and decided to only host it monthly due to health reasons....A Thursday karaoke night at my local-ish pub.
The previous host, a guy in his late-forties, used to do it every week but took a step back and decided to only host it monthly due to health reasons. For years, he had been balancing a full time career in civil engineering, parental duties, karaoke DJing as a side hustle, and chemotherapy (he has stage 4 non-Hodgkins lymphoma), so I'm not surprised that doing Thursday nights specifically were taking a toll on him.
Another KJ has stepped in to host the other Thursdays, but many of the regulars who followed the previous host aren't coming to these nights. It's usually just me and one other regular holding the fort and without business, the worry is that Thursday karaoke will eventually be cancelled.
I get along with the new host and she has regulars of her own who sometimes come to this pub, but the others in my group aren't so keen on her. Her setup is inferior, she uses Karafun (which isn't a bad app, but it's missing features, songs and even support for externally downloaded tracks compared to VirtualDJ, Singa and other platforms.)
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Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk
Bullmaestro LinkSaw Galliano and The Brand New Heavies last night. Amazing gig that was absolutely worth the money.Saw Galliano and The Brand New Heavies last night. Amazing gig that was absolutely worth the money.
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Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt
Bullmaestro LinkI'm guessing the IOC announcement means that Imane Khelif won't be able to compete in the 2028 Olympics? She has confirmed in an interview that she has the SRY gene, which is a common mutation in...I'm guessing the IOC announcement means that Imane Khelif won't be able to compete in the 2028 Olympics? She has confirmed in an interview that she has the SRY gene, which is a common mutation in DSD patients.
So this ruling potentially means you could have a condition like Swyer Syndrome, be born with functional female genitalia, a vagina, uterus and fallopian tubes (you'd need HRT in order to go through puberty and can only conceive via egg donation) but because you have XY chromosomes, you're not biologically deemed a woman in the eyes of the IOC.
This really does feel like TERFs and transphobes moving the goalposts in spectacular fashion just to hurt a very small minority of athletes, and the IOC blatantly ignoring the science and pandering towards Donald Trump...
And this is absolutely not a Laurel Hubbard situation, with an athlete who transitioned well into adulthood (she started transitioning in 2012 at the age of 34.) Khelif was born as a woman with the SRY gene.
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Comment on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | Teaser in ~tv
Bullmaestro (edited )Link ParentI really don't get why Imane Khelif has drawn so much controversy when it is very plausible that a medical condition that gives her high levels of testosterone got her flagged on IBA testing,...I really don't get why Imane Khelif has drawn so much controversy when it is very plausible that a medical condition that gives her high levels of testosterone got her flagged on IBA testing, contrary to the right-wing belief that she transitioned.
Do you think a trans athlete would be born in and represent a predominantly Muslim nation with harsh anti-LGBTQ laws like Algeria?
She has stated that she's willing to undergo genetic testing for the 2028 Olympics if the IOC does it, and that's probably because she doesn't trust the IBA or its competitor. I feel like the outcome of that is going to make JK Rowling look incredibly stupid.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkBeen trying to find another action roguelike to scratch that Megabonk itch, so I've bought three this week. Grind Survivors is like the lovechild of Vampire Survivors and Diablo, and it was good,...Been trying to find another action roguelike to scratch that Megabonk itch, so I've bought three this week.
Grind Survivors is like the lovechild of Vampire Survivors and Diablo, and it was good, until I got to Burned Forest on Dark 2, the second available difficulty of the first stage in the game. Then I found enemy spawn rates were heavily increased and they became a lot tankier to the point where I could barely survive 2 to 3 minutes in a run. It turns out that weapon tiers dropped in later stages effectively add a x10 stat multiplier compared to the previous tier, making the game's gearing system effectively zone-locked around a ridiculous grind to get a decent epic/legendary weapon for your tier with the right affixes. The game also runs like shit on the Steam Deck (only has playable status) and was making my device roar like a jet engine.
If they work out the glaring balance and performance issues, then I can see this game doing very, very well.
NIMRODS is only slightly better. I am greatly struggling with the almost complete lack of ability to regenerate health, and I don't know if this is down to me playing a bugged build of the game, or the developers being complete and utter morons.
Sometimes I can go entire minutes in a run without an apple (restores 5HP) or medkit (restores ~30HP) spawning. For perspective, you start with 100 HP baseline before weapon upgrades and gene mutations apply, so having an item that can only restore 5% of your base HP barely spawn is already bad enough.
The only weapon part I've seen which has anything even approaching lifesteal is Piercing Ammo. For every enemy penetrated by a bullet, except for the first and last one, you recover 0.003 health. This means that you'd have to land about 33,000 penetrations just to recover 99 hitpoints. And that upgrade is basically worthless unless you're running a slow fire rate weapon like a shotgun or 50. Cal that can penetrate multiple enemies baseline.
Passive health regen on weapon upgrades is somehow ever-so-slightly worse. Minor upgrades seem to offer 0.026 regen per second, whilst one of the tropies which drops from a boss lowers your max health by 50 but regens at a rate of 0.25 per second.
Apparently there are health regeneration genes and lifesteal upgrades which can be unlocked which do greatly boost survivability, but I have not been able to find these at all. And if I venture beyond the Chaos Grove into another area, I basically die either because I get swarmed with enemies (Hive Warrens is really bad because the moment you disturb a hive, your screen gets swarmed by bees) or have to deal with zones designed around narrow corridors and chokepoints.
What doesn't help is how woefully outdated the game's wiki and any other online resources of it are. And the subreddit is basically dead, with only two posts.
Risk of Rain 2 is the one I've played least, only putting about 33 minutes into. The jellyfish boss from the first zone kinda pisses me off because of how devastating its ultimate AoE attack is, but other than that I like the design.
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Comment on Michael Hafftka releases all of his ~3800 paintings as Creative Commons, explicitly for use in training AI in ~arts
Bullmaestro LinkWill be interesting to see if this poisons the AI well in any way; much like how their attempts to replicate Studio Ghibli artwork led to that yellow piss filter you see in a lot of generated images.Will be interesting to see if this poisons the AI well in any way; much like how their attempts to replicate Studio Ghibli artwork led to that yellow piss filter you see in a lot of generated images.
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Comment on Saturday Night Live UK is here - but can it make you laugh? in ~tv
Bullmaestro LinkI had low hopes for SNL UK but when I saw them absolutely nail Keir Starmer I realized I need to give this series a chance. The Gen Z adviser almost ruined this sketch but they were definitely on...I had low hopes for SNL UK but when I saw them absolutely nail Keir Starmer I realized I need to give this series a chance.
The Gen Z adviser almost ruined this sketch but they were definitely on to something.
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Comment on Elon Musk found liable to Twitter shareholders in fraud lawsuit over $44 billion takeover in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkCompletely forgot that his buyout of Twitter ended up being forced through, making his offer one of the most expensive shitposts in history.Completely forgot that his buyout of Twitter ended up being forced through, making his offer one of the most expensive shitposts in history.
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Comment on Job hunting absolutely sucks right now in ~life
Bullmaestro LinkI don't work in software development and I'd argue that my profession got hit even harder by the rise of agentic AI, post-COVID mass layoffs and the global economic shocks of having a warmongering...I don't work in software development and I'd argue that my profession got hit even harder by the rise of agentic AI, post-COVID mass layoffs and the global economic shocks of having a warmongering human-sized cheeto as US president.
There are hardly any accountancy jobs now, which means this is the second time I've gone into higher/further education and ended up with worse job prospects. Firstly it was graduating from university with a History degree on the lie that I could "walk into a job" once I graduate only to end up unemployed for nearly two years, and now it's not even being able to find low-paid accounts admin work despite having full AAT qualifications and being ACCA part-qualified.
I recently quit a temp purchase ledger role which paid like shit and involved a two hour commute. On days where I had to wake up at 5AM and get ready for an 8AM start, I kept asking in my head why I was torturing myself with that shitty job. But apparently this is what you have to do if you want money in your bank account.
My brother is a software engineer working for a FAANG company. His entire field has been hit with wave after wave of redundancies and RTO mandates. I genuinely worry how he'll manage if they decide to give him the axe.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro Link ParentI found the cave more annoying when I played it years ago on my now-RS3 account. But then again, I did it without protection prayers.I found the cave more annoying when I played it years ago on my now-RS3 account. But then again, I did it without protection prayers.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro Link ParentIt's a very grindy game. Getting a single skill to 99 can take well over a hundred hours, even using the most efficient training methods and pathway. Some skills such as Agility, Slayer and...It's a very grindy game. Getting a single skill to 99 can take well over a hundred hours, even using the most efficient training methods and pathway.
Some skills such as Agility, Slayer and Runecrafting are notoriously slow. Even the best Agility training method which is Hallowed Sepulchre's 5th floor, which is quite click-intensive and unlocked at 92 Agility, gives just 90k experience per hour. For perspective, you would need 6,517,178 XP to go from 92 to 99, and that would take over 72 hours alone.
Some methods are slow purely due to dated game design decisions, but can be sped up by engine exploits. Fishing is a very good example of a skill which is very slow unless you use click-intensive tick manipulation methods.
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Comment on Queering the Map in ~lgbt
Bullmaestro LinkI'm surprised at how few pins there are in Bristol, despite the city probably being one of the most LGBTQ-friendly in the country and having a massive student population. Even around Frogmore...I'm surprised at how few pins there are in Bristol, despite the city probably being one of the most LGBTQ-friendly in the country and having a massive student population.
Even around Frogmore Street (OMG Bar, Queenshilling and OMG, three gay bars within a few metres of each other), St Nicholas Market (Seamus O'Donnells, an Irish pub which has been turned into a gay bar), Old Market (Bristol Bear Bar) and the Lloyds Amphitheatre (where our annual Pride festival is held each year) I've seen very few pins.
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Comment on Tom Scott: England — Official teaser for Nebula in ~travel
Bullmaestro LinkYou know the planet is starting to heal when Tom Scott comes out of retirement...You know the planet is starting to heal when Tom Scott comes out of retirement...
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI finally managed to beat Desert 3 on Megabonk. Juge Anubis is debatably an easier fight than Bark Vader because there's less crap to dodge and less crap that will knock you back when deactivating...I finally managed to beat Desert 3 on Megabonk. Juge Anubis is debatably an easier fight than Bark Vader because there's less crap to dodge and less crap that will knock you back when deactivating shrines in each intermission phase. But the real difficulty is in even getting to this boss encounter in the first place. Desert is a much worse stage than Forest with Scorpions that have larger collision boxes and will geniuinely flood the map during swarm phases if you have any sizeable increases to difficulty percentage.
Also managed to unlock Chaos Tome (activate all shrines in a tier 3 run without leaving the shrine radius once, which is much harder said than done), this time with a Robinette Forest run where I scaled so hard that I practically 2-shot the boss and forced it into just one intermission phase, and managed to get top 1500 on the leaderboards with ~110k kills.
Other than that, my time has gone into Old School RuneScape, where my focus has been to unlock the Piety prayer, which for me involved completing One Small Favour, Holy Grail, Murder Mystery, King's Ransom, then the training waves miniquest at the end. The most tedious quest was easily the first one...
My next goal is to (eventually) return to Monkey Madness and get that quest done. The last time I attempted it, I quit out of frustration because I couldn't figure out the timing to even leave the Ape Atoll prison, even though the game operates on a tick-based system where game ticks are every 0.6 seconds. This isn't trying to pull off some frame-perfect trick, it's more like a 36 frame timing assuming a 60fps framerate. It's just that the gorilla guards have some bullshit patrol mechanics.
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Comment on All the Eurovision songs are out. Let's talk about them! in ~music
Bullmaestro LinkI couldn't even make it a minute into my country's song. Look Mum No Computer deserves nil points just for dipping a biscuit into a cup of baked beans alone. And I haven't even gone into how bad...I couldn't even make it a minute into my country's song.
Look Mum No Computer deserves nil points just for dipping a biscuit into a cup of baked beans alone. And I haven't even gone into how bad the actual song is.
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Comment on Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster released on Steam in ~games
Bullmaestro LinkI know this is meant to be a remaster of a Nintendo 3DS game but damn, some of these character models, environment objects and maps look bad. I wouldn't have even minded if they did what the FFIX...I know this is meant to be a remaster of a Nintendo 3DS game but damn, some of these character models, environment objects and maps look bad. I wouldn't have even minded if they did what the FFIX Moguri Mod developer did, put some of the textures and background environments through stable diffusion algorithms and manually redrew inconsistent areas and layer edges.
Makes me wonder just how weak Nintendo's handheld system really was.
I remember a reason why the Ice Climbers were cut from Super Smash Bros 4's roster was because Sakurai's team couldn't get them to work properly on the 3DS (they wanted roster parity between the 3DS and Wii U versions for some reason, despite neither platform having crossplay.) And that has me questioning how they couldn't get a character from a then-13 year old game to function. My only guess is that the 3DS has an inferior clock speed and VRAM compared to the Gamecube, and has the additional stress of needing to render double the frames just to achieve the system's stereoscopic 3D effect.
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Comment on Digg has shutdown (again) in ~tech
Bullmaestro LinkOh the irony. Digg were the ones who were trying to innovate with AI slop and ultimately created a dead platform with only a few dozen active users. I think it was AI overviews being pushed upon a...Oh the irony. Digg were the ones who were trying to innovate with AI slop and ultimately created a dead platform with only a few dozen active users. I think it was AI overviews being pushed upon a Reddit clone that had no competitive edge and fewer features compared to it, Lemmy, Snapzu, even Tildes.
I kinda feel bad for Kevin Rose. He became the poster-child for Silicon Valley during Digg's peak, and part of me thinks this led to him making bad decision after bad decision, like rejecting buyout proposals from bigger tech firms, or trying to innovate with new platforms like Revision3, TechTV and my persional favourite Pownce - a Twitter clone focused around filesharing which had worse filesize limitations than a certain technology that had existed for nearly two decades at that point called email.
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
Bullmaestro Link ParentI agree that we could easily provide for both. But that would involve electing a government that is willing to embark upon a massive housebuilding programme. With how many MPs are landlords...First, I think that you are drawing a conclusion here that providing support to immigrants and citizens is not inherently compatible, and that it can only be 'one or the other.' I think that there exists a form of government policy that can simultaneously provide for both refugees and citizens with their needs. I think that it is in the interests of people in Power, regardless of political alignment, to not provide that. That's not even factoring in, say, the treaty obligations of the UK towards refugees.
I agree that we could easily provide for both. But that would involve electing a government that is willing to embark upon a massive housebuilding programme. With how many MPs are landlords (especially in the Labour and Conservative parties) with an obvious conflict-of-interest in doing something that would lower their property values and rental incomes, it's clear to see why we've never addressed this after Thatcher abolished Right to Buy.
Finally, I think that you are dehumanizing refugees, and I personally would like to evaluate that. Have you personally interacted or spent time in your community with refugees and immigrants?
Refugees? Apart from one or two Ukrainians who fled over Russia's invasion, I haven't.
To my knowledge, there is a Britannia Hotel in my city where asylum seekers have been housed temporarily since COVID pending application review. That hotel is pretty much closed off to the public for understandable safety reasons, especially as Bristol has been the site of a few right-wing protests.
Immigrants? Absolutely. I've met a lot of people not originally from the UK from all over the place, including Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Germany, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, China, Hong Kong, Slovakia, the Philippines, Hungary, Poland, Cyprus, Qatar, Lebanon, the USA, Canada and a few other places.
But they won't. The labour party isn't going to fix the economic problems. Kier Starmer has long since abandoned any political ideals he had. Having a political football like immigration is ultimately just a part of neoliberalism. I agree that something needs to be done, but this is as much an issue of distraction from actual issues and rhetoric than an actual problem with immigration.
I don't think any party has a particualrly great solution, especially not Reform UK, Advance UK or Restore Britain.
The best is probably the Green Party, but I think their open border policy is going to lead to skyrocketing international competition for an already stretched job market. Their foreign policy of denuclearisation is also unthinkable when we're in the midst of a proxy war with Russia.
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
Bullmaestro (edited )LinkI wouldn't say radicalized but my views on immigration have changed substantially due to the current situation in my country. Firstly, a bit of a history lesson. In 2016, we voted (by a 52% to 48%...I wouldn't say radicalized but my views on immigration have changed substantially due to the current situation in my country.
Firstly, a bit of a history lesson. In 2016, we voted (by a 52% to 48% vote) via referendum to leave the European Union, but we didn't actually leave until 31st January 2020. The vote was largely fuelled by immigration, especially when you look at the spike in hate crimes against Poles and Eastern Europeans that occurred after the result came out.
The Tories won a huge electoral landslide in late 2019, in large part because Boris Johnson promised to "get Brexit done", which he did. The thing is, Boris was never anti-immigration. Millions of new arrivals came into the country in what has been dubbed the Boriswave. We've seen net migration figures far higher than at any time where we've been in the EU.
Another thing Boris Johnson did was use hotels as temporary accommodation to house asylum seekers, with one of the main benefactors of this being Britannia Hotels. The use of asylum hotels has cost us billions each year, which could have gone into building more social housing instead. They are now slowly being phased out, but now seekers are being housed in newly-built council homes. The government denies this but multiple news sources have found that this is a lie.
Fast-forward to 2026 nearly two years into Keir Starmer's tenure. We have an employment crisis (especially with entry and graduate level roles), a housing crisis, a cost of living crisis, and Starmer, being the cosplay-Tory that he is, has not put in the changes needed to improve things.
Is it fair that we roll out the red carpet for anybody here arriving on a small dinghy whilst we fail to look after our own citizens? This is where Labour and the Conservatives have failed, and what has people split between the far left (do the humanitarian thing and build more homes for everyone) and far right (shut the borders.)
While I do feel for the plight of those fleeing famine, poverty, persecution and war, we need to fix our economic problems first, otherwise we run the serious risk of voting in a right-wing populist government. And that would be a horrible thing.
Unfortunately, the only parties here endorsing left-wing and socialist policies are also the ones who want open borders.
Picked Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred back up after finding out the new season was well underway and to prep for Lord of Hatred's release over the next month. Had to make a new character to take part, but decided to start with VoH this time around, because I was given the option to for some reason despite not fully finishing the original campaign. My first character was a Spiritborn but I went with a Mage this time around, going with a burn build.
Based on my experience going through half of the Vessel of Hatred campaign, it feels a lot different. Enemies swarm the absolute shit out of you, to the point where this is the first time I've genuinely amassed huge killstreaks from running through a dungeon, even approaching a near-1000 one in an instance. But the difficulty feels a lot lower than base Diablo IV.
In Old School RuneScape, I completed the Dorgeshuun quest line, excluding Land of the Goblins which I plan to do next. Revisiting it felt surprisingly nostalgic, especially when I hardly remembered it the first time around. All I really remember about RuneScape lore was that it became something of a poorly written clusterfuck by the early-2010s when the main devs decided that killing off Guthix, sparking a new God War with the Sixth Age, pandering to crap forum suggestions with contrived updates like the Queen Black Dragon and Kalphite King, adding action bar combat, loading their game with microtransactions, and then rebranding the main game "RuneScape 3" was their way to go. Yes, they're slowly fixing a lot of this stuff and yes, I may revisit RS3 soon for Havenhythe, but I don't see how it'll even remotely hold a candle to the world built around OSRS.
The difference in quality between the two games really shows when you look at RS3's world map and it looks incredibly blurry, like much of it had a Gaussian filter put over it, whereas the OSRS one is clean, incredibly clear, very detailed, and about 150% larger...