Naw shucks haha, kind of you to say. I’m glad my ramble/vent was worth it!

Since ya played Edith Finch, in Until Then you form a much stronger connection with the characters, but the content and topics it faces are less extreme What is there will hit harder because of that connection I think.

I hope you enjoy any of the games I suggested! Also really, just get yourself Donut County. It’s a stupid cozy romp. Do racoon crimes.

Sorry to hear that, there’s been times where I’ve avoided certain bits of media for similar reasons, and that feeling of “should I invest myself in this?” while trying to keep yourself safe. I hope things improve for you.

I don’t want to say anything about Until Then really as I think the experience would be hampered knowing anything about it, but it’ll still be there for you in the future. There are heavier moments throughout the story however, I cried at both the beauty and the sadness at multiple points in the game.

Some comparable games that have some similar themes or vibes

• Night in the Woods - Has themes around mental health issues especially focusing on dissociation
• What Remains of Edith Finch - Covers topics around death of loved ones including issues you’re likely concerned about
• Life is Strange - Mental health and death along with suicidal discussion and events
• Firewatch

I think a lot of these kinda stories revolve around the sadder parts of life to elicit emotion that drives us towards connecting with characters in the same way that seeing hardship and struggle makes you care about your fellow human. To me it feels that through these experiences we’re able to see our humanity in a rawer form, perhaps its because there’s a cost to ourselves due to our emotional investment. There’s no need to take on that cost unless you have the emotional space to do so though, but that cost is often what’s made it so great. I didn’t play any games for just over 2 weeks after I finished Until Then, I just started playing the piano, went on walks/bike rides/runs, and decided to get more involved at a local board game cafe. But really, no need to force yourself into that, focus on yourself, do the things you need to do to improve your situation internally or externally, it’ll be there for you then.

If you want some story-esque games that feel much less soul-consuming, here’s a few of my favourites:

• Stray - it made me have wobbly emotions, but it doesn’t have quite the same “sting” as the games above
• Cloudpunk
• Metro Exodus - Bit of an oddball here, probably a few eyebrows raised, but I think it’s one of the only games I’ve seen actual intimacy (and not sexual intimacy), however that’s few and far between, the pew pew is great

And a couple of cozy games that are a bit adjacent to these

• Frog Detective - Quite how these haven’t won GOTY every year I don’t know… I loved them
• A Short Hike
• Donut County
• Maybe Sludge Life but that’s certainly on the more abstract end of things

Edit: Also sorry for the monologue haha, didn’t mean for that to get so long, just started rambling

I absolutely loved Oni. I didn’t own a copy for a while but I’d play it round a friends house once a week… Those fighting mechanics just felt so tight (for the time) and the gun play was weighty and responsive.

Shame to hear about the fate of Oni 2 from here, I had no idea

Until Then

More of a visual novel, but I had an amazing time with it. I cried. It was beautiful. I’ve been learning the piano since I finished it.

Go in completely blind if you do decide to play it!

Oh! This is just the year in review thing, not your steam gameplay recordings. I don’t want my family members to hear me demolishing a burger while I watch my factory grow

It probably depends where the cost increase is coming from. I know that the mini-wage spiral we had earlier this year has meant that labour is now more expensive than ever. If that human cost is the driving factor for these price increase, then private or public, that would likely still happen. Imagine if housing was socialized, or at least heavily regulated? Imagine if food was provided not for financial value, but to feed? No more dumping of perfectly fine crops just to prevent the devaluation of prices in the supermarkets to keep the profits flowing.

It always feels like a kick in the teeth while maintaining a life is so absurdly expensive, how can 1 worker produce that much value in order to sustain themselves in the modern world? Corpo-services like thames water are just a symptom. So yeah, like you, I’m crossing my fingers, but they’ve been crossed for so long already as things only slip further down

I don’t fully disagree, but let’s look at Thames Water as a casr study.

Their dividend payout accounted for 6% of total revenue. 5% was loan repayment, and 30% was operational expenditure. 59% was infrastructure investments.

Let’s look at the total dividend payout vs the tax they paid. They paid 133 million in business rates but they don’t pay corporation tax mostly because of both infrastructure reinvestment and the paying off of loans.

Dividend payouts were 195.8 million. Of that, 27.1 million was payouts to their internal pension contributions, and 37.5m was to Kemble Water Finance Ltd debt services. This means the non-pension and non-debt dividend payout was 131.2m. That results in an effective dividend payout of 3.35% of total revenue.

That’s still less than their business rates, which typically go to the local councils where the infrastructure is located, which given the measures of austerity, is quite a nice bump for locals.

I do think that the bypassing of corporate tax by paying off loans to be pretty shady,and I believe in the nationalisation of all services, but at 3.35% effective dividend rate, it’s not the most egregious in my opinion.

Even without the dividends, the cost to households would be dramatically rising due to external factors.

Now who owns the land and builsings that Thames water rents for some of their infrastructure, there’s a much spicier question…

I don’t know the details but this feels like such a specific attack vector. Most malware targets the easiest and most common payload delivery mechanism as possible. Having someone connected via hotspot and piggybacking ontop of a specific workflow such as Shizuku just seems super unlikely. Could absolutely be wrong about this though, just my gut feel

Yeah, after his body issues and annorexia, seeing him vibe with the hair and stash and overall body shape has been absolutely beautiful to see. Fuck anyone who tries to control someone else’s self expression.

I bought the original r4 just after release in 2013 and it’s still going. I’ve been wanting a new case but I just can’t justify it as this one’s still in great shape despite having had 4 builds run through it, handfuls of hard drives and it being used to test friends failing hardware.

Built a friends first PC with them a few months ago and used the define 7, its the same but with some nice minor tweaks to make building even easier.

What did gog say? I searched for it but all I could find was something about them using #wontbeerased? If that’s the one, then what’s transphobic about that?

Also is gog part owned by CD project red? What happened with cyberpunk 2077?

Ah that’s awesome, but now I’m wishing I could take a peak at the 3d versions running and explore them a bit.

It would also explain why they all have the same visual vibe of the ancient dancing baby gif haha

I personally disagree, I really love the dramatic sprite style they’ve gone with. Everything’s so hyper industrial with lovely details when you zoom in.

From memory, Tsunoda, Lawson, Hulk, Perez, Zhou, and I think there was 1 more. Their strategy was paying off with lap times 3s faster and that was just getting started. Sad to seen a great strategic choice like this turn to shit because teams know the race director will be overly cautious and protect teams from having to make risky strategy calls.

Gross

They’re bikes but I’m Marmite on them.

The people riding them are often inexperienced who can buy better performance without putting in the time to learn how to wield that. The number of mountain bikers I run into who pass closely on uphill sections only to slow down to a crawl at the slightest descent is infuriating.

Worse is the lime type bikes that allow complete cycling novices suddenly travel at 15mph on shared paths with absolutely no respect for anyone around them.

I don’t completely disagree but this is true for all the greats. Schumi crashing into people and forcing others off track, Vettel always pushing people to to very edges of the track and his insane fake outs into dive bombs, hell Senna has his famous “if you no longer to for a gap” quote that everyone loves but have somehow forgotten that he was saying it to justify an absolutely ludicrous and dangerous move.

Even Hamilton was always criticised for his aggressive style that he would shrug off saying it’s how he has to drive if he wants to win, he didn’t have the luxury of driving respectfully and carefully.

I think the thing that seems to separate a good driver and a great driver is their ability to walk on the very edge of the rules to gain every little bit of an advantage possible, otherwise why are you even there? I want reform but hate the game, not the players.

Uh oh, I’ve spent about $2,000 on my racing setup (moza r9 wheel base, SR-P pedals, RS V2 wheel, FSR Formula wheel, and ES wheel) and for me its been worth it, but it is ludicrously indulgent. Raced against (drove in the same race 3s slower a lap) a bunch of F2, F3 and F4 drivers and even Romain Grosjean. I was running on a cheap second hand G27 for 6 years before upgrading though, I would recommend going through that first to make sure you really want to race frequently enough to justify the cost.