kfwyre's recent activity

  1. Comment on Doechii - Anxiety (2025) in ~music

    kfwyre
    Link
    I'm a sucker for high concept music videos, as well as group dance sequences, so this is right up my alley. (Oh, and the song is great too!)

    I'm a sucker for high concept music videos, as well as group dance sequences, so this is right up my alley.

    (Oh, and the song is great too!)

    5 votes

  3. Comment on Cloud Cult - Journey of the Featherless (2008) in ~music

    kfwyre
    Link
    Well, this was a delightful throwback! Thanks, Merry! I somehow forgot all about Cloud Cult, but this album was one of my favorites when it came out. I loved the band's bright, earnest tone as...

    Well, this was a delightful throwback! Thanks, Merry!

    I somehow forgot all about Cloud Cult, but this album was one of my favorites when it came out. I loved the band's bright, earnest tone as well as their willingness to make odd lyrical and compositional choices.

    I ended up re-listening through the whole album for the first time in years upon seeing this post, and I think it holds up remarkably well! It's overflowing with 00s indie feel.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Awww, I bet it’s wonderful to have her back under your roof! And I, too, am jealous of sleeping in until 11:30. I consider myself lucky if I can make it to 6:30 these days. You’re very thoughtful...

    Awww, I bet it’s wonderful to have her back under your roof!

    And I, too, am jealous of sleeping in until 11:30. I consider myself lucky if I can make it to 6:30 these days. You’re very thoughtful to be quiet on her behalf.

    4 votes

  5. Comment on Insane and crazy recipe substitutions? in ~food

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    When making box mac and cheese (Kraft Dinner for the Canadians in the room), I swap out the milk and butter with plain yogurt. Not exactly a crazy substitution, and it’s one that I genuinely...

    When making box mac and cheese (Kraft Dinner for the Canadians in the room), I swap out the milk and butter with plain yogurt. Not exactly a crazy substitution, and it’s one that I genuinely recommend: the yogurt not only yields a better texture, but it also adds a flavorful tang to the dish. An overall improvement!

    Except for one time.

    My husband and I do grocery pickup, which means that if something’s out of stock, the picker simply substitutes the item for us.

    So, one time, my regular box mac and cheese got substituted for a kids’ version. More colorful box. Different pasta shape.

    I think: no big deal, right? It’s probably the same exact stuff, only I get to eat racecars instead of boring old tubes. An improvement, if anything!

    So I make the meal and my husband and I sit down to eat it. We each take a bite and, well, it’s… funny tasting. Definitely not like the normal mac and cheese. It has a different tasting note entirely, and it’s… sweet?

    It threw my brain for a loop, because I’ve eaten so much box mac and cheese in my life that I know the flavor intimately. This was close to it, but there was a mystery there too. Some familiar but ineffable taste hiding inside the kids’ version.

    We each take another bite, this time out of confusion rather than interest. My mind immediately leaps to “wow, they must load the kids’ version up with sugar” and I start to get angry at predatory food companies adding unnecessary sweetness to products aimed at children (a well-documented phenomenon). I might have started to soapbox to him about it, right at the dinner table.

    My husband is put off from the dish entirely, politely apologizing that he doesn’t want to eat what I’ve served him. Meanwhile, I’m now quizzically tasting small nibbles of it like I’m a contestant on Top Chef trying to sleuth out what, exactly, was in this dish. Why did they make it so sweet? And what’s that underlying flavor? I recognize it, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

    I grab the box to the mac and cheese and start checking the label. I look at ingredients and the sugar content. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

    It’s my husband who figures out the mystery: he checked the yogurt label.

    Turns out there was another substitution from the grocery store that I hadn’t noticed.

    My plain yogurt got subbed out.

    That tasting note I couldn’t identify? The sugar?

    It was vanilla yogurt.

    23 votes

  6. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Someone asked me about my dmesg output and then maybe deleted their comment? (I'm not seeing it anymore) I ran through three five minute lag cycles and checked dmesg after each. Nothing popped up...

    Someone asked me about my dmesg output and then maybe deleted their comment? (I'm not seeing it anymore)

    I ran through three five minute lag cycles and checked dmesg after each. Nothing popped up in it.

    1 vote

  7. What's something you were wrong about?

    ~talk Ask (survey)
    An idea, a perception, a feeling, an understanding, a concept, a framework, a belief, a response, a decision, etc. What were you wrong about? What changed your perception? What has been...

    An idea, a perception, a feeling, an understanding, a concept, a framework, a belief, a response, a decision, etc.

    What were you wrong about?
    What changed your perception?
    What has been gained/lost from your new understanding?

    Important: It takes a lot of courage and self-reflection for someone to admit when they're wrong. Please honor that in this topic.

    I do not want this topic to be a place where people have their previous wrongs used against them. I want this to be a place of honest, empathetic growth rather than a score-keeping battleground. Give hugs, not hurt.

    43 votes

  8. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Update to the Update: The five minute issue is back, happening on Fedora this time. It wasn't there initially, but now it's returned. At this point I'm thinking it's just a quirk of the hardware?...

    Update to the Update:

    The five minute issue is back, happening on Fedora this time. It wasn't there initially, but now it's returned. At this point I'm thinking it's just a quirk of the hardware? I've tried a bunch of different things, including some that are network based -- restarting my router, turning off other devices on the network, etc. I have no idea why it's happening.

    If I turn the bitrate down, then the frame drops aren't too noticeable when it happens. I also have my previous laptop which still works fine, so if it's massively interfering with my enjoyment in a game I can fall back to using that one instead. (which I had to do recently -- not because of the lag issue, but because a game was giving me motion sickness on the larger laptop and reducing the viewport helps with that)

    I'm not looking for a solution or anything, and I appreciate everyone who gave me pointers and helped me out. I just figured people might want to know the outcome, and I also need to publicly apologize for besmirching Linux Mint's good name! Turns out the distro is great, and it's my hardware that's the problem. Sorry Mint! You're wonderful.

    That said, I do think I'm going to stick with Fedora for now. I'm loving it. Very simple and very polished (which is what I also liked about Mint). You're also wonderful, Fedora.

    Linux in general is beautiful, and using a free operating system to stream a game nearly perfectly across my home is something that makes me feel like I'm living in the future.

    8 votes

  9. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I was not aware! Thanks. Also wow, they’ve got everything! Even COSMIC. That’s very cool — Fedora is continuing to impress me.

    I was not aware! Thanks.

    Also wow, they’ve got everything! Even COSMIC. That’s very cool — Fedora is continuing to impress me.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on What's a game that you feel like you missed out on? in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Reading that made my bald spot get bigger. And why is my back hurting? Also it was a TOONIE per play?! That's outrageous. I think mine was only 50 freedom cents for three songs (though the failure...

    Oh good heavens that was a quarter century ago??!!

    Reading that made my bald spot get bigger. And why is my back hurting?

    Also it was a TOONIE per play?! That's outrageous. I think mine was only 50 freedom cents for three songs (though the failure rate on the third was turned pretty high to get you off the machine sooner).

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Should public and visible allyship on the Internet be demanded? in ~society

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    No worries -- I appreciate the clarification. Sleep well!

    No worries -- I appreciate the clarification. Sleep well!

    4 votes

  12. Comment on What's a game that you feel like you missed out on? in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    That sounds lovely! My experience was, unfortunately, almost entirely the opposite. DDR was deeply uncool among the general population of my age group, and the people who did play it at the mall...

    Dance Dance Revolution DDR. In its hayday it was at every arcade, and people would watch, and even cheer for failed attempts or n00b efforts.

    That sounds lovely! My experience was, unfortunately, almost entirely the opposite. DDR was deeply uncool among the general population of my age group, and the people who did play it at the mall were sort of elitist about it and didn't look kindly on people who couldn't full combo Max 300 or whatever. I eventually got up to their level skill-wise (but refused to use the bar which still made me look worse at the game).

    I have fond memories of going to the mall on Saturday as soon as it opened so that I could play DDR without anyone knowing or seeing. The added benefit was that I got the machine all to myself and so I never had to wait and could just play track after track. It ate a LOT of my quarters!

    5 votes

  13. Comment on What's a game that you feel like you missed out on? in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    My husband "suffered" through the actual levels of the game just to be able to play with his Chao pals for hours. 😂

    My husband "suffered" through the actual levels of the game just to be able to play with his Chao pals for hours. 😂

    3 votes

  14. Comment on Should public and visible allyship on the Internet be demanded? in ~society

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I'm promise I'm not trying to be combative, but this is pretty inaccurate. LGBT coalition-building and advocacy in the US explicitly included trans people well prior to 2016 (I'm saying this as...
    • Exemplary

    The point is that on June 25, 2015, the Left was fighting for gay rights and it was largely accepted, if not always appreciated, to make gay jokes. Then, suddenly, on June 26, everyone had always loved gay people and the fight immediately moved to trans rights--something basically no one had talked about whatsoever in the public eye until just two months earlier when Caitlyn Jenner came out. It was all so sudden and it moved from one fight to another basically overnight. That's what was so disorienting for your average citizen who was politically indifferent and watched whichever news channel they remembered first.

    I'm promise I'm not trying to be combative, but this is pretty inaccurate.

    LGBT coalition-building and advocacy in the US explicitly included trans people well prior to 2016 (I'm saying this as someone who was involved in advocacy work in the late 00s and early 10s). See the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2009 and beyond:

    In 2009, following Democratic gains in the 2008 elections, and after the divisiveness of the 2007 debate, Rep. Barney Frank introduced a transgender-inclusive version of ENDA. He introduced it again in 2011, and Senator Jeff Merkley introduced it in the Senate. On November 7, 2013, Merkley's bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support by a vote of 64–32. President Barack Obama supported the bill's passage, but the House Rules Committee voted against it.

    Another example: the Human Rights Campaign, the leading queer advocacy organization of the time, underwent pretty heavy criticism from their own constitutents in the early 2010s for treating trans issues as ancillary or disposable. This article from 2013 has a good quote about the temperature of trans advocacy at the time:

    Increasingly, these activists, particularly those who are younger and have come into activism through more modern and forward-thinking organizations, consider trans support, inclusion and issues unquestionably intrinsic parts of the agenda that they want to pursue. As recently as just a decade ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of progressive civil rights organizations that considered trans inclusion and our rights important and something that they supported as a part of their larger mission, even if not a direct focus, but now it's much harder to find those that don't.

    Now, I'll temper what I'm about to say with the fact that I appreciate your presence here on Tildes, updawg, and I'm not attempting to put you or your perceptions down by any means. That said, I think you've been significantly misled on all of this.

    Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is not happening because the left went "too far" with pushing for things. Current anti-trans sentiment and legislation is happening specifically because it plays on people's prejudices. The idea that it's a sane reaction to an insane left is itself a right wing falsehood that attempts to mask their cruelty behind a veneer of reasonableness.

    Just this year there are already 857 bills across the US targeting trans people: hundreds of attempts to codify anti-trans beliefs into law. That is the real overreach: legislating away people's rights and dignity. Our pro-trans pushes look almost insignificant in comparison.

    The pivot you identified post-2015 wasn't the product of a strategic error on the part of LGBT activists. It was a product of people shifting the target of their discrimination. The anti-trans falsehoods I hear thrown about right now are nearly identical to the anti-gay ones I heard in the 90s -- straight out of the same playbook. They shifted from gay people to trans people because, as you identified, gay people's stars had risen pretty quickly in the preceding years and it became less politically salient to use them as a target of hate. They needed someone new to target.

    This targetting is buttressed by propaganda that causes everyday people to see the targets as subhuman or evil. This makes hatred of the targets come across not as cruel but as righteous and vindicated. It gives people engaging in cruelty the perception of having the moral high ground even as they directly engage in distinctly immoral acts (like hatred and denying people their rights). That's why anti-trans rhetoric is almost always couched in dishonest and inflammatory language about "saving children from mutilation" or whatnot. It gets everyday people fired up and scared, and it makes trans people sound like absolute monsters who would hurt little innocent children (which, again, is a direct echo of the "gays are pedophiles" umbrella I grew up under).

    We know that this is false, but it's making its way around the world all while we're still lacing up our shoes. We live in a media environment that pushes these messages constantly and consistently. Also, as I mentioned earlier, they also try to escape accountability by framing the issue as a "look what you made me do" situation. The lies are so egregious that it makes acting against them seem rational and sane.

    This is why so many people think "the left has gone too far!" It's part of the lie and acts as an accountability dodge for deliberate cruelty. When I said you've been misled earlier, this is what I'm talking about, and it's not a criticism of you in the slightest. Hearing that sort of messaging is, unfortunately, inescapable, and it's been going on for decades now. Conservative media in particular has perfected the art of it and is in fact so good at it that it spreads well beyond those circles. Here's an angry rundown of that phenomenon that I wrote in frustration after the election.

    I implore you to consider the reality that anti-trans forces are the big movers here. They're not happening because the left is going too far. In fact, the left is rather impotent on these issues at the moment. It's a very scary time to be trans or support trans people.

    16 votes

  15. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    So, I only ended up staying on MX Linux for like an hour. I got the distro hopping itch! 😂 I installed openSUSE Tumbleweed, found out it didn't work out of the box with my NVIDIA card, so then I...

    So, I only ended up staying on MX Linux for like an hour. I got the distro hopping itch! 😂

    I installed openSUSE Tumbleweed, found out it didn't work out of the box with my NVIDIA card, so then I installed Fedora Workstation, which I'm very impressed with (I feel like I'm one of the few people out there that loves GNOME). I like that it's primarily based around Flatpaks, as those are "easy" for a Linux noob like me.

    I did use MX Linux on my previous streaming computer, and I thought it was great. Perfect for older hardware. It's a little clunkier looking and less smooth than some other distros, but it also has some great QoL stuff built in (for example, I love their USB writer tool -- so simple!). I will say that I liked the KDE spin more than the XFCE one.

    I'll also qualify all of this with the idea that I'm like, the least demanding Linux user in the world. My streaming laptop literally needs to do three things and three things only: stream games via Moonlight, let me browse the internet with Firefox, and open my notes app (Standard Notes). That's it. Pretty much ANY distro will meet my needs, so trying out different ones is mostly about look-and-feel for me.

    With that said, I think I'm probably going to stay on Fedora rather than keep hopping because it's beautifully smooth.

    4 votes

  16. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Tales of Kenzera: ZAU This was in March’s Humble Choice. I had high expectations for this. I love metroidvanias, and the game starts out strong. Early on there's a very clear nod to Ori and the...

    Tales of Kenzera: ZAU

    This was in March’s Humble Choice. I had high expectations for this. I love metroidvanias, and the game starts out strong.

    Early on there's a very clear nod to Ori and the Blind Forest, which I interpreted as the devs honoring their inspiration for this game. The game, in narrative, has a sort of overall reverential feel to it. It takes its world and characters seriously in a way that feels earnest but not overdone. The game's color palette is bright and vibrant, and the environmental design is interesting. It's got full voice acting in Kiswahili, and it's got some genuinely interesting design choices.

    You have two different masks, Sun and Moon, that you can switch between, each giving you different combat abilities. Furthermore, you start with a double jump and a dash, which is a pretty bold choice for a metroidvania. The genre relies on increasing your traversal abilities over time in order to open up your access to more parts of the map, so giving you lots of movement options upfront (rather than having you unlock them over time) is surprising.

    I then unlocked the first ability, and I was impressed with how creative it was:

    Minor Ability Spoiler

    You can freeze running water.

    Unfortunately, this is where the game started to go south for me.

    Despite the cool potential of the ability, the game doesn't really do anything too exciting with it. Furthermore, it pretty much completely falls out of the picture by Act 2. There are whole sections of the game where you don't use it once after getting it. It then comes back in Act 3, but in a way that I would consider clumsy.

    "Clumsy," in fact, sort of captures the general feel of the game. Movement feels a little clunky. Combat isn't very smooth. The world design, despite looking quite cool visually, feels very uninspired.

    There are also lots of little small issues, no one of which is egregious, but altogether add up to significant marks against the game. When you enter a new region, most of it is automatically added to your map. Unfortunately, this means you can't tell which parts you have and haven't already visited (which is a nice quality-of-life feature for metroidvanias). Bafflingly, some of the areas of the zone aren't filled in, which spoils some secrets.

    Progression doesn't feel very exciting, as your talent points only increase your combat abilities. The enemies get more numerous and challenging as you go, effectively negating those boosts. Without getting too spoilery on what abilities you unlock, they tend to be more environmental rather than traversal-based. What this means is that you get to new areas not because you have new movement options, but you can now get past very obvious gates that you couldn't pass before.

    The game would occasionally eat my inputs. It wasn't often, but it was enough that it was noticeable. Given that metroidvanias are built around precise, fluid movement, even the slightest disruption to that kills the vibe.

    I played through the beginning of Act 3, approximately five hours, and I'm making the choice to stop playing. The game simply doesn't excite me, despite the fact that you get what I would consider to be two more (potentially) interesting abilities at the end of Act 2. I think some more polish would have helped make the game a bit nicer to play, but ultimately I think it suffers from being somewhat generically designed. It feels like a simple metroidvania-by-the-numbers and doesn't cash in on the most interesting choices it makes.

    I feel bad being this negative about it, because I feel like the game was made with heart. When it opened with the Ori nod, my heart was warmed because that's one of my favorite games of all time. Unfortunately, doing that also invites comparison, and this game doesn't come close to Ori's incredible heights.

    3 votes

  17. What's a game that you feel like you missed out on?

    ~games Ask (survey)
    Examples: A live service game that got shut down A multiplayer game that no longer has a live community A game whose cultural relevance has faded An older game that doesn't stand the test of time...

    Examples:

    • A live service game that got shut down
    • A multiplayer game that no longer has a live community
    • A game whose cultural relevance has faded
    • An older game that doesn't stand the test of time
    • A game you had spoiled for you
    • A game that got updated and went in a different direction
    • etc.

    Let us know what it is, and why you feel that you missed out on it.

    39 votes

  18. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link
    Update: I said goodbye to Linux Mint (despite really liking Cinnamon!) and hello to another spin of MX Linux (this time I installed the XFCE version instead of the KDE version, just to see what it...

    Update:

    I said goodbye to Linux Mint (despite really liking Cinnamon!) and hello to another spin of MX Linux (this time I installed the XFCE version instead of the KDE version, just to see what it was like). It's now working great! No stutters at all. I love that we have options with Linux.

    I'm changing the title to "resolved" rather than "solved" because I never actually figured out what's causing the issue, but it's also not an issue for me anymore.

    24 votes

  19. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I'm running the laptop normally, no docking station or anything. I also tried out three different kernels: two different 6.8 ones and the most recent 6.11. All had the same problem.

    I'm running the laptop normally, no docking station or anything. I also tried out three different kernels: two different 6.8 ones and the most recent 6.11. All had the same problem.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on [RESOLVED] Tech support request: my game stream is lagging every five minutes in ~tech

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Good pointers. I get the five-minute hiccups when on the Intel GPU regardless of the codec. When I try to run it under the NVIDIA GPU, I get an error message about no compatible codecs for...

    Good pointers.

    I get the five-minute hiccups when on the Intel GPU regardless of the codec.

    When I try to run it under the NVIDIA GPU, I get an error message about no compatible codecs for hardware decoding. This is the recommended help page, and I've tried the instructions for both the Flatpak and AppImage (and have run it separately in both). Despite that, I still can't get hardware acceleration going with the NVIDIA GPU.

    Software rendering for me was laggy enough by default that I wouldn't be able to tell if it was happening every five minutes, because it was pretty much consistent.

    3 votes