emnii's recent activity

  1. Comment on I want to hear about your unknown favorites! in ~books

    emnii
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    Armor rules. Everyone reads Starship Troopers. A lot of people read The Forever War and Old Man's War. God help the people who read Orphanage. But not enough people read Armor.

    Armor rules. Everyone reads Starship Troopers. A lot of people read The Forever War and Old Man's War. God help the people who read Orphanage. But not enough people read Armor.

    2 votes
  2. Comment on Notifications are ads in ~tech

    emnii
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    Yeah basically. You miss nothing by turning them off. They only serve to get you to use their app when you otherwise wouldn't. Turn them all off. Use the app when you want to use it, not when...

    Yeah basically. You miss nothing by turning them off. They only serve to get you to use their app when you otherwise wouldn't. Turn them all off. Use the app when you want to use it, not when you're prompted to by the app.

    If there's something you absolutely must respond to immediately, like you're tied to your work chat, sure, leave that on. Seek ways to mute it when you're not obligated to make immediate responses. But think real hard about whether or not you actually need to be tied to your email. Don't you check it often enough on your own? If you don't respond before the next time you purposefully check your email, is anyone going to complain?

    I know this sounds idealistic, but I've found that a lot of my own obligations were self-imposed. No one expected me to constantly watch my phone for notifications so I can instantly respond. No one would notice if I held off on responding to an email for the next time I felt like responding to emails. Neither of these things were furthering my career either. I still find myself flipping over to my work email off-hours for no particular reason, and it's a bad habit that I'm trying to break, but I've unloaded a healthy amount of mental baggage just by letting that stuff wait until I need to look at it.

    I'm already walking around with a phone attached to me all the time. If something's really serious, they can call me and talk to me like a human being.

    10 votes
  3. Comment on Do you ever "self filter" before making a post or comment and what is it based on? in ~talk

    emnii
    Link
    Constantly. Usually it is because I talk too much. I don't need to see my own words when I can upvote or thumbs up something someone else has said that's either my thoughts or close enough to my...

    Constantly. Usually it is because I talk too much. I don't need to see my own words when I can upvote or thumbs up something someone else has said that's either my thoughts or close enough to my thoughts.

    But more often I delete my comments or posts because the internet is full of idiots and trolls and the two are indistinguishable from each other. I have neither the patience nor will to argue with people whose sole form of entertainment is arguing on the internet. They don't know anything about that which they argue and they will not be convinced to change their mind because they have no position besides being a contrarian. Even if you catch one in a contradictory position, it is a meaningless victory. They're just having fun. They can waste other peoples' time.

    6 votes
  4. Comment on Steam Winter Sale 2023: Hidden gems in ~games

    emnii
    Link Parent
    The Solitaire Conspiracy by Bithell Games is fantastic. On its surface, it's a really pretty solitaire, but it adds some special abilities and throws in a storyline. I'm not a huge fan of...

    The Solitaire Conspiracy by Bithell Games is fantastic. On its surface, it's a really pretty solitaire, but it adds some special abilities and throws in a storyline. I'm not a huge fan of solitaire, but I love Bithell Games and this was no exception.

    BallisticNG is my perpetual anti-grav racing hidden gem. If you've played Wipeout, this is Wipeout right down to being given a choice of Wipeout physics models in the options. It's still getting free updates 5 years on, it's got Workshop support, and it rules.

    3 votes
  5. Comment on Reddit CEO pledges to not force subreddits to reopen. Admin team then immediately threatens moderators who closed their subreddits with removal. in ~tech

    emnii
    (edited )
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    Having read a majority of what spez and other admins have said since this whole debacle started, I don't understand why any moderator would continue volunteering their time to the benefit of...

    Having read a majority of what spez and other admins have said since this whole debacle started, I don't understand why any moderator would continue volunteering their time to the benefit of reddit. reddit hasn't been remotely truthful or honest in any of their communication. When I read their comments, I don't get the feeling reddit is coming to the community, hat in hand, asking for a little help with the hosting bills. What I read is that they have contempt for these damned moderators who built bots and third party apps to overcome the inadequacy of the moderation tools, mobile apps, and accessibility reddit provides. I get this feeling because reddit disingenuously lumps in moderation bots and third party apps (things people like) with big corps training LLM and "AI" chat bots (things people don't understand or don't like).

    The constant refrain from reddit of "we'll fix your bots if they break" falls on deaf ears given the actions of reddit's past. reddit has promised better mod tools over and over. reddit is constantly years behind moderator developed tools and they're not going to catch up in a month. Also, reddit has a well known problem in timely communication with moderators who bring them problems in good faith. They give the copy/paste "thanks for contacting us" and that's all, until an issue reaches a boiling point. If the bot you built to help moderate a subreddit with millions of members breaks, why should you have any faith that reddit will help you fix it, much less with the urgency you would give it if you broke it yourself?

    No, reddit is going to break the stuff you spent hours of your free time making to overcome the pains of moderating huge communities on reddit without their help, or pains you experienced using their mobile app, or pains you experienced because reddit is not as accessible as it should be. This downtime they will burden you with is something they expect you to overcome, consuming more of your time fixing the things they broke. This doesn't read as appreciation for the countless free time moderators and developers put into building things they love for the communities they serve on reddit. Based on this attitude, you are an annoyance to them and you can suck it up and accept that you owe them more work, or you can get replaced by the next mod team who don't know what they're getting into and will go through the same pains once again.

    11 votes
  6. Comment on Dungeons & Dragons’ new license tightens its grip on competition in ~games.tabletop

  7. Comment on Dungeons & Dragons’ new license tightens its grip on competition in ~games.tabletop

  8. Comment on What’s something about you that people don’t often believe is true? in ~talk

    emnii
    Link Parent
    I'm allergic to taco flavored Doritos. I was enlisted in the US Army. You cannot imagine how many times the question "any allergies?" comes up when you're enlisted. Every time I gave the answer...

    I'm allergic to taco flavored Doritos. I was enlisted in the US Army. You cannot imagine how many times the question "any allergies?" comes up when you're enlisted. Every time I gave the answer "taco flavored Doritos", I'd get confusion, curiosity, disbelief, and everything in between.

    8 votes
  9. Comment on Hulu offering Disney Plus addon for $2.99 in ~tv

    emnii
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    This pricing is very aggressive. If you're already a Hulu subscriber, this makes Disney+ cheaper than even the pre-launch three year deal, which totaled out to $4.30 monthly. I subscribe to a lot...

    This pricing is very aggressive. If you're already a Hulu subscriber, this makes Disney+ cheaper than even the pre-launch three year deal, which totaled out to $4.30 monthly. I subscribe to a lot of streaming services, usually opting for annual plans over monthly because annual is cheaper, and this is cheaper than every annual plan except for one. As far as big competitors, it's several dollars cheaper than Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, and HBO Max. Even my niche services can't compete with $3 monthly.

    2 votes
  10. Comment on itch.io Bundle for Ukraine in ~games

    emnii
    Link Parent
    thank you for this! Sometimes rooting through the pile of games/stuff is fun, but sometimes I'm just trying to get to something specific. this site is super helpful.

    thank you for this! Sometimes rooting through the pile of games/stuff is fun, but sometimes I'm just trying to get to something specific. this site is super helpful.

    5 votes
  11. Comment on Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Final Thread in ~games

    emnii
    Link
    Lost Planet 3 - Much like Alice: Madness Returns, I got into this and then quickly questioned why I would ever feel the need to see this through to the end. It's a pretty bog standard third person...
    • Lost Planet 3 - Much like Alice: Madness Returns, I got into this and then quickly questioned why I would ever feel the need to see this through to the end. It's a pretty bog standard third person action game. Even worse, it's packed full of boring cutscenes. So I'm not here for the story and the gameplay isn't very exciting and then I've talked myself out of continuing.

    • Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - Okay, the last of three RTS games I played. Despite skipping the tutorial, the first level of the actual campaign is a tutorial. That was sort of an odd choice. Why give me the option to skip the tutorial if you're just going to force it on me from the start? I have the assume the tutorial was even more basic. And then I got to the first real mission and wow. I am terrible at this game. I didn't get out of the first mission without getting my functional army wiped out. I was being pulled in every damn direction and it was bad. I could restart on easy. I just uninstalled.

    • Bonus: 2064: Read Only Memories - This is a game I've picked up and put down repeatedly, and I picked it up again and put a couple more hours into it. I sort of like what it's going for, but I also find some of the characters abrasive. I might push through this one to see it to the end. I'm more looking forward to ROM: Neurodiver, and I don't want to start it without finishing 2064.

    Wrap-up: I played nine backlogged games and I might actually finish two. I kind of enjoyed Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, and I want to get through 2064: Read Only Memories before playing Neurodiver. If I do finish them, it's because they're so easy that it's more or less a given that I will reach the end with just time invested in playing them. No frustration or beating my head against gameplay.

    The rest of them, however, validated my choice to keep these games backlogged for so long. None of them really spoke to me, though they're all fairly outside my wheelhouse. What I take away from this is that I'm not really compelled to play games that mildly interest me, and that translates to a real uphill struggle for them to keep my attention. While this was going on, I kept playing other games that I had more fun with, and checked out some really promising Steam NextFest demos that I'm excited about. It turns out I know what I like pretty well, and I don't really have to question that often.

    5 votes
  12. Comment on Steam Deck launch day megathread in ~games

    emnii
    Link Parent
    It's a marketing strategy. They want all the reviews and press to hit at the same time so they make a big splash and catch a lot of attention.

    It's a marketing strategy. They want all the reviews and press to hit at the same time so they make a big splash and catch a lot of attention.

    7 votes
  13. Comment on Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion Thread in ~games

    emnii
    Link
    The Sexy Brutale - This is fine. Only put 20 minutes into it, and I'm unlikely to play it much more, but that's just because it's not really my thing. Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter - I...
    • The Sexy Brutale - This is fine. Only put 20 minutes into it, and I'm unlikely to play it much more, but that's just because it's not really my thing.

    • Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter - I played The Sinking City to completion, and it disappointed me in several ways, but what it did right was the investigation parts. This is like The Sinking City minus a lot of the disappointment because it's all investigation parts, and they have more substance. Yeah, I got stuck in a silly "trail the suspect" sequence that went on too long, but I'm otherwise enjoying it. It's a bit ugly in the human face department though. In The Sinking City, everyone looked vaguely ill but that was consistent with the setting. Can't really explain why everyone in this game also look vaguely ill. I'll probably keep playing this.

    Remaining backlog: Lost Planet 3, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

    4 votes
  14. Comment on Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion Thread in ~games

  15. Comment on Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion Thread in ~games

    emnii
    Link
    This is why I have a backlog of games I want to play but don't. Last week, I didn't play any of my backlog games, during this month of backlog game-playing, because a new shiny game came out and I...

    This is why I have a backlog of games I want to play but don't. Last week, I didn't play any of my backlog games, during this month of backlog game-playing, because a new shiny game came out and I played that instead. It's great and I'm having a lot of fun playing it, but it's not what I had planned. I had never intended on only playing games from my backlog this month, but I'm shuffling around three, now four games, and none of them are what I intended.

    4 votes
  16. Comment on Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion Thread in ~games

    emnii
    Link Parent
    I loved the mystery of Return of the Obra Dinn. The process of working backwards through the disaster and piecing together what happened really captured my attention. I will admit to using a guide...

    I loved the mystery of Return of the Obra Dinn. The process of working backwards through the disaster and piecing together what happened really captured my attention. I will admit to using a guide to piece together a couple clues when I got stuck, but still loved it.

    Carrion is so cool. What I also love about it, beyond what you mentioned, is that it's a metroidvania with virtually no platforming. You just ooze and scoot wherever you want to go.

    5 votes
  17. Comment on Tildes' 2022 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion Thread in ~games

    emnii
    Link
    Gris - this sure is pretty. It's also pretty boring. I love the way it looks, and I don't need walls of text to get a story, but this is not really keeping me engaged. Too simple, too sparse....
    • Gris - this sure is pretty. It's also pretty boring. I love the way it looks, and I don't need walls of text to get a story, but this is not really keeping me engaged. Too simple, too sparse. Unlikely to finish.

    • Ancestors: Legacy - This was in my "unplayed AND single player" dynamic collection, even though it seemed familiar, and it turns out that I've played this before. I started the game and it already had saves on it. No idea where the gameplay time went in Steam, but I still put more into this. I appreciate the way it measures health for a RTS. Each person in a squad is a pip in a life bar, and each pip has its own health state. Each pip can degrade from green to red to gone, and I'm fairly certain "gone" is irreplaceable, while better state can be healed. I don't think I've ever seen this method of health tracking in an RTS, and it's certainly better than some alternatives. I played this with a controller, which is interesting for an RTS.

    • Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 3 - A lot of what I liked about Dawn of War 2 was the small scale, squad based combat. Dawn of War 3 goes back to the mass number of units of Dawn of War. It's fine. It's an RTS. I played the first mission. But it's really funny that their way of dealing with healing is to drop health packs on the map, and healing a unit doesn't restore individual unit health. If your unit is 90% dead, it'll have one space marine, and picking up the health pack will teleport in several more marines. I don't hate this game, but I don't know think I'll continue.

    • Alice: Madness Returns - This is a game I've wanted to finish for a long time, so I've added it to this endeavor. It's tough to get back into. I forgot how this game worked, and my save loaded right before a mini boss. I died a lot and it was fairly frustrating. Once I got past that, I managed to get stuck again in an optional arena fight. After getting past the first frustrating wave and finding it's followed by a second, more frustrating wave, I let this one go. I got back on track and now I'm just cruising through corrupt Wonderland. It's okay. I have some fond memories of American McGee's Alice. I think I'm just finishing this to cross it off the list.

    Remaining unplayed backlog games (so far): The Sexy Brutale, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, Lost Planet 3, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (newly added)

    6 votes
  18. Comment on What is your favorite game you'll never finish? in ~games

    emnii
    Link Parent
    This is the one. I don't regret not finishing a lot of games. Life is too short to force yourself to play something you don't enjoy. But I really enjoyed a lot of Hollow Knight. It's that 10% I...

    This is the one. I don't regret not finishing a lot of games. Life is too short to force yourself to play something you don't enjoy. But I really enjoyed a lot of Hollow Knight. It's that 10% I didn't enjoy that made me put it down. I'm not going to regret not finishing it, but I'll lament it. I wish this game were less punishing.

    3 votes