fefellama's recent activity
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Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
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Comment on SAG-AFTRA calls strike against major video game companies after nearly two years of contract talks in ~games
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Comment on Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle now available in ~tv
fefellama Link ParentAgree on all counts, and just wanted to add that sports are like this too. Changing streaming contracts each year so if you want to watch your favorite team (legally) that season then you need to...Agree on all counts, and just wanted to add that sports are like this too. Changing streaming contracts each year so if you want to watch your favorite team (legally) that season then you need to subscribe to whichever service bought the rights. Not the worst for American sports where there's really just one main league per sport, but for soccer/football this is a nightmare. A team in the Premier League might play in like five different competitions in one year, each with different contracts and streaming rights. So if you want to watch all games that season you literally need five different subscriptions. Which is absurd.
Have a second favorite team from a different country? Add even more streaming services to the mix.
Want to watch international games? Ha! Yet another streaming service.
It's a joke and a prime example of the hypermonetization of modern sports.
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Comment on What is a non-professional situation, area or activity in which you are uniquely experienced or skilled? in ~talk
fefellama (edited )Link ParentAlso a lot of it just comes down to personal preference and whatever feels best to you. I was taught by my grandfather (and then had to relearn it ten years later when I actually got a stick shift...Also a lot of it just comes down to personal preference and whatever feels best to you. I was taught by my grandfather (and then had to relearn it ten years later when I actually got a stick shift car) and it was a lot of trial and error to figure out exactly what felt comfortable to me personally. There aren't too many hills by where I live, so the few times I would have to go up/down one I experimented with different ways of starting and stopping to see which felt more natural to me.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
fefellama Link ParentI will agree that there are a lot of puzzles in the game, but I also feel like there are plenty of opportunities for deckbuilding just like in regular Gwent. How far in the game did you get? I...I will agree that there are a lot of puzzles in the game, but I also feel like there are plenty of opportunities for deckbuilding just like in regular Gwent. How far in the game did you get? I noticed that early on there are more puzzles and shortened battles, but towards the end of the game there were more full battles (which are basically just Gwent matches same as you would find in the standalone version). Obviously Gwent came first, but to me it feels as if standalone Gwent is the sandbox and online modes of Thronebreaker.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
fefellama (edited )Link ParentYES, can't recommend it enough if you like card games. I think it helps that I set the game to the highest difficulty setting. It's not super difficult or anything, but it makes the deckbuilding...Wait... this is the Gwent game you're talking about?
YES, can't recommend it enough if you like card games. I think it helps that I set the game to the highest difficulty setting. It's not super difficult or anything, but it makes the deckbuilding parts of the game super interesting, like I'm constantly tweaking my deck as new cards become available in the story. Having played a ton of Gwent (in the Witcher 3 and then the standalone game since the beta version) I worried that it might be too simplistic and that once I found a winning formula I would have no more real need for tweaking my deck, or possibly that it would go the other direction and FORCE you to change your deck because some foes would be impossible to beat with/without certain cards.
But I'm happy to report that neither is the case. The deckbuilding feels fluid and I constantly find myself wanting to tweak things further, rather than feeling like I'm being forced to change things because the game made me. There are various points in the game where certain cards come and go from your possession, but they are related to the plot and make perfect sense. Like if you get rid of one of your followers in the story, they naturally won't be in your deck any more. Or if you suddenly find a new group of allies willing to help out your cause, you then get access to new units and cards from that group. It all works pretty seamlessly and fits the story pretty nicely.
Edit: I'll give you an example that I just thought of that really highlights the weight of decisions in this game. Towards the middle of the game I had made a deck that was super powerful and it was centered around this one card. That card was an npc that followed my character in the game. Well during the story, this npc goes and does something super heinous that causes a huge rift with my other followers and I'm presented with the decision of keeping them in my party (and keeping the card in my deck), or rightfully banishing them from my party (and losing my most powerful card). It's a story-based decision, but it perfectly ties in with the deckbuilding side of the game, where your decisions have ramifications on both. I ended up getting rid of that character and then had to spend the next twenty minutes rejiggering my deck now that my strongest card was gone. Super impactful stuff.
To be honest I'm not really sure why it's taken me this long to get the game. I love the Witcher universe, the games, the Netflix show, and especially Gwent, so it's always been in the back of my mind but I never took the plunge until last week and boy have I been missing out.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
fefellama (edited )LinkPosted a bit about it last week but have been playing even more of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and holy crap it is fantastic. 10/10 game seriously incredible storytelling and art and...Posted a bit about it last week but have been playing even more of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and holy crap it is fantastic. 10/10 game seriously incredible storytelling and art and worldbuilding and game mechanics. Absolutely love the characters, the setting, the plot twists, the little tiny details in the world that make it that much more believable, and pretty much everything else about it. Feels like I'm in a (well-directed) movie.
Oh and one more thing: never before in a game have I felt the weight of my choices like I do in this game. Like the game hits you with some legitimately difficult choices and doesn't shy away from things like genocide, discrimination, starvation, politics, etc. (after all, you are in the midst of a major war). So decisions aren't just "this guy's an asshole, do you want to kill him or let him live?" like how it would be in most other games. In this game, the guy may be an asshole, but you might need to put up with him in order to appease a certain leader whose help you desperately need. So you put up with one small war crime to prevent further war crimes. Pretty deep stuff that most games don't even scratch the surface of. I've been betrayed by characters I thought I could trust, pleasantly surprised by characters I thought were pieces of shit, and straight up horrified at some of the decisions that some of the npcs have made. Reminds me of the early seasons of GoT where no character was safe and literally any minute your favorite character could either die or just casually commit some war crimes.
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Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
fefellama Link ParentFuck me that's gotta be a terrifying 19 hours. Fall asleep, then wake up and literally nothing around you but ocean. I can't even begin to imagine what I'd be thinking during those few hours.Fuck me that's gotta be a terrifying 19 hours. Fall asleep, then wake up and literally nothing around you but ocean. I can't even begin to imagine what I'd be thinking during those few hours.
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Comment on Enzo Fernandez in ~sports.football
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Comment on How to take care of a new cutting board? in ~food
fefellama LinkSome good advice in this thread, but I just want to add something that I haven't seen mentioned and impacts a lot of the stuff you read about cutting boards online: wood grain orientation. image...Some good advice in this thread, but I just want to add something that I haven't seen mentioned and impacts a lot of the stuff you read about cutting boards online: wood grain orientation.
The classic example is to think of wood like a bunch of straws clumped together. If you lay those straws side-by-side, it's a lot easier to build a cutting board, but with time you'll start seeing some minor scratches as the knife you use nicks the sides of the straws. There's not really much you can do to avoid this, that's just a feature of boards that are glued up that way.
The more expensive option is an end-grain cutting board, where instead of the straws being glued flat lengthwise, they are cut into much smaller pieces and glued up in such a way that the open mouths of the straws (the end grain) is what makes up the actual surface of the cutting board. This is more expensive because it takes more work and materials, but the result is that your cutting board will not get those tiny scratches as it gets older, because the knife sort of glides in between the ends of the straws.
The key takeaway here is that they are two completely different styles of boards and thus differ in how they are kept and maintained. A lot of what you read online about taking care of cutting boards assumes you're talking about a high-end end-grain cutting board. The end-grain surface soaks up a lot of finish (whether that be mineral oil (aka paraffin), tung oil, wax, or something else), which means it has to be reapplied more often and in higher quantities since it soaks into the board, and you want to ensure that the board is saturated in your preferred finish so that the juices from your food don't penetrate deep into the wood. On a side-grain cutting board, the straw ends are at the edges, so you're not going to need as much of your desired finish and will not need to reapply as often (since it's a lot harder to get liquids into the side of a straw than through its mouth).
However, neither one should be put in a dishwasher (or washed under really hot water for long periods of time, like being left soaking in a sink) because A) that gives water more time to seep into the wood, which is what you don't want, hence the entire purpose of applying the finish, and B) because the high heat can undo the glue holding the board together, might not happen right away but could weaken it with time.
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Comment on The best games of 2024 so far, picked by the NPR staff in ~games
fefellama LinkSome great games on that list, and plenty others that I had not heard of before, so thanks!Some great games on that list, and plenty others that I had not heard of before, so thanks!
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Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of July 14 in ~games
fefellama Link ParentWow didn't that Suicide Squad game release recently? (Just checked, released January of 2024!) Wonder why it's going for free so soon. Thanks for the heads up!Wow didn't that Suicide Squad game release recently? (Just checked, released January of 2024!) Wonder why it's going for free so soon.
Thanks for the heads up!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
fefellama Link ParentGreat website! And yeah I love the little details like that too. Rockslide event means a bunch of rock cards moving towards you that you have to take out. A monster attacking a farm means a bunch...Great website! And yeah I love the little details like that too. Rockslide event means a bunch of rock cards moving towards you that you have to take out. A monster attacking a farm means a bunch of cow cards you need to prevent from dying. Capturing enemy caravans means a couple of caravan cards that you need to bring to your side of the board. All very creative puzzles that perfectly mesh with the mechanics of Gwent.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
fefellama LinkPicked up Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales in the recent summer sale and started playing a couple of hours yesterday. It had been on my radar for a few years now, given that I absolutely loved...Picked up Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales in the recent summer sale and started playing a couple of hours yesterday. It had been on my radar for a few years now, given that I absolutely loved Gwent back in the beta and early release days (and in the Witcher 3!), but somehow never got around to trying Thronebreaker. And holy crap what an amazing game! Extremely polished, incredible art, good voice acting, gripping story, fun puzzles, just an all-around great game. And set in the Witcher universe too which I love. Highly recommend for anyone who likes the Witcher games, or Gwent, or just fantasy/medieval/historical rpgs and great storytelling in general. You can play it with one hand, too, which is always nice for accessibility.
Also picked up Rogue Mage in the sale and am excited to try that after Thronebreaker.
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Comment on DuckDuckGo seems like a significantly worse search engine than Google despite SEO bloat, and I think community discussions mislead people by omitting that in ~tech
fefellama (edited )Link ParentI have no skin in this game, but just wanted to add for anyone that might benefit from it that I do a similar thing by saving specific google queries and other search urls as bookmarks on firefox,...I have no skin in this game, but just wanted to add for anyone that might benefit from it that I do a similar thing by saving specific google queries and other search urls as bookmarks on firefox, e.g. https://www.homedepot.com/s/%s
Then I set a keyword for that bookmark and I can just type "h screws" or "h paint" at the top bar and it will automatically search home depot for screws or paint. I have a bunch of them saved and use them all the time when researching something or shopping for something in a specific store:
a - amazon
r - reddit (not reddit search, mind you, just a google search that starts with 'inurl:reddit' so it only gives me results from there)
h - homedepot
l - lowes
f - harborfreight
s - google scholar
c - craigslist
m - fb marketplace
and a couple of other niche ones for my day-to-day
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Comment on Escape from the box: new technology and old tactics have made buying a car a death march of deception in ~transport
fefellama LinkI've purchased two cars in the last five years, plus helped my dad and another friend purchase their cars as well. All four of these cars were different makes. So I've been to, called, and emailed...I've purchased two cars in the last five years, plus helped my dad and another friend purchase their cars as well. All four of these cars were different makes. So I've been to, called, and emailed a lot of dealerships and salespeople. And this article is spot on. The shit that dealerships say and do to try and get your money is ridiculous.
A couple of random thoughts about the subject that came to mind when reading that article, in no particular order:
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At least half of the dealerships I talked to said they had a dealer fee. Usually $1000, $1500, or $2000. Every single one of them said this dealership fee was non-negotiable and they couldn't take it off. Then when I showed them a better offer from a nearby dealership with no dealer fee, about half of them were willing to take off the dealership fee.
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While helping my friend buy his car, a Subaru, he was presented with one MSRP when speaking with the salesman. When it came time to actually sign the documents an hour later, I noticed that the monthly payments were based on an MSRP that was about $4,000 higher. Pointed out the 'mistake' to them which prompted a manager to get involved and say they would have never offered that first price because it was below their profit line. So either it was an honest mistake on the salesman's part to offer such a low price, or we were lying about the lower price. Well when we got up to leave, suddenly that price wasn't so bad for them and maybe they could figure out a way to make it work (i.e. give us the price they had originally offered).
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Every fucking car salesperson I have talked to in the last few years has opened with the same "how much do you want your monthly payment to be?" bullshit line. The article mentions it too, but I find it such a duplicitous practice for salespeople to open up with that. The monthly payment is based on a ton of factors, like length of contract, downpayment, and oh yeah the actual fucking price of the car. Every time I hear that line I reply with "I don't care about the monthly payment, I want to know the total price of the car". You can figure out the financial details after you know how much the car you're paying for actually costs.
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I am a STRONG believer in shopping around for most things, but especially for a large purchase like a new car. I literally called 20 Toyota dealerships before buying my Tacoma (all were within 1.5 hours driving radius). Around five of them didn't have the exact model I wanted in stock. Another ten or so weren't willing to come down on price or additional fees. And then the last five or so kept matching and lowering each other's offers until I settled on one that offered the best deal and financing. Had to drive to a town 1 hour away to get it, but saved me a few thousand dollars which was more than worth it. I didn't walk into a single one of these dealerships other than the one closest to me to test drive the car. Just cold called them with a scripted "Hi my name is ___ and I'm looking to purchase a _____ with _____ options. I'm going to be purchasing the car in the next few days and am calling around to find the cheapest price and best incentives." (Side note: At the very last minute, right before making the purchase, I called the dealership closest to me and explained that I was about to drive 1 hour away to purchase this car and was wondering if they could match that deal so that I didn't have to drive all that way. The manager essentially told me to pound sand, so I said thanks, hung up, and saved myself a few grand just by driving an hour there and another hour back.)
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As a former salesperson (not cars though), any salesperson that makes you feel pressured is not worth listening to. I've told many salespeople to please back off and give me space to breathe and think things through at my own pace. If your gut tells you something is off, then either something is indeed wrong or you just don't know enough about the deal you are making and are thus nervous. In both cases you should stop what you're doing and either walk away entirely or probe further to investigate what is causing you hesitation.
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One more I just thought of: never take the first trade-in offer you get. Price your car out on Carmax.com first, ask other dealerships, look up used models very similar in year/mileage/condition as yours on places like Cargurus.com or Carfax.com to get a good understanding on how much your car is actually worth before even contemplating a dealership's trade-in offer. I've been lowballed by nearly every dealership I asked.
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Comment on What is your favorite Final Fantasy game? in ~games
fefellama Link ParentAgreed! I didn't know it was not well liked. In my small group of friends we all love it since we used to play it together at school. So maybe we are all just nostalgic for it. But like you said,...Agreed! I didn't know it was not well liked. In my small group of friends we all love it since we used to play it together at school. So maybe we are all just nostalgic for it. But like you said, the story, setting, music, art, and pretty much everything else in the game was fantastic.
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Comment on What is your favorite Final Fantasy game? in ~games
fefellama (edited )Link2-way tie between FF Tactics Advance for the GBA and FFXII for the PS2 which has been remastered into FFXII: The Zodiac Age Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: just hooked me on the story of Ivalice....2-way tie between FF Tactics Advance for the GBA and FFXII for the PS2 which has been remastered into FFXII: The Zodiac Age
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: just hooked me on the story of Ivalice. The kids playing with snowballs. The little kid who was bullied IRL but then wakes up in a whole new world where he can do anything. It was an isekai before I even knew what an isekai even was. Pure nostalgia for me at this point and I still boot up a ROM of it from time to time. Endless customizations and options for characters and classes and jobs and missions and you even create your own map. I've tried the original tactics before but the story never gripped me like the GBA game did.
FFXII: I'll never pass up an opportunity to talk up that magnificent gambit system. Nowadays I'm sure there are plenty of games that do similar things, but like twenty years ago that shit blew my mind. It's basically programming in an RPG world. You have characters in your parties, and can use different abilities and weapons and skills and whatever, just like other FF games. But the gambit system allowed you to set certain rules for how those party members would interact with each other, enemies, and everything else. For example, on a very basic level you can set things like 'IF [enemy, any] IS WEAK TO [fire] -> CAST [firaga]' or 'IF [ally, any] HIT POINTS [<60%] -> CAST [curaga]'. But you could have tons of these for each party member, and the level of granularity you could get with this system was incredible. Endless hours of customizing my team's gambits to make use of everyone's skills in a way that ensured as little input from me as possible.
Oh and the gambits weren't just like options that you could just set from the get-go. They were items in the game that you had to find, buy, and unlock. So being able to craft the perfect team was just part of the fun and progression of the game, not just some menu that you set once and forget about. You are constantly editing your gambit loadout as you find new and better gambits that allow for an even more finely tuned and tailored system for your team.
Like I'd have one guy dual-wielding a katana slashing the shit out of everyone he could see and the rest of the team just standing back and perpetually casting things like berserk and haste on him while healing and protecting him from damage. My proudest accomplishment in that game was managing to create an endless loop of gambits when I realized that there was this one slime enemy that regenerated, so I set my team to only target that slime until it broke off into smaller slimes, but then only attack some of the pieces until the rest healed back up, thus gaining xp while allowing the main slime to regenerate from the leftover pieces and then rinse and repeat, then leaving my PS2 going while I went to school (I was like twelve at the time) and coming home 8+ hours later to find a massively boosted party that had gained many levels without me having to lift a finger.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
fefellama Link ParentWell you've convinced me, just borrowed The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall on audiobook to listen to once I'm done with my current book. That all sounds super interesting, thank you for such a...Well you've convinced me, just borrowed The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall on audiobook to listen to once I'm done with my current book. That all sounds super interesting, thank you for such a detailed answer!
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
fefellama Link ParentHate to tell you this, but yer a W3 veteran, Harry. Haha but yeah I totally agree. Death March is difficult, but it makes me interact with parts of the game that I otherwise completely ignore,...I'm not W3 veteran or anything like that, but I played (just as I did on Switch Lite) on highest difficulty called "Death march" and I strongly advise everyone to do the same.
Hate to tell you this, but yer a W3 veteran, Harry.
Haha but yeah I totally agree. Death March is difficult, but it makes me interact with parts of the game that I otherwise completely ignore, namely the bombs and oils, but also things like the magic system and even the bestiary. In the more normal difficulties, you can hack and slash your way through almost anything, but on Death March you really need to be methodical about your gear, who/what you'll likely be facing, your level, the paths you take, etc.
Whole different experience to regular W3 for anyone that hasn't tried it. Way more time-consuming but also way more satisfying. Even just clearing a few wolves or drowners on DM makes you feel like a baddass.
Thirteen Sharks Test Positive for Cocaine Off the Coast of Brazil
Very interesting article that honestly leaves me with more questions than answers.