I like to play devil’s advocate and am interested in sharing knowledge about my hobbies! I like gaming and VR, AI, herbal vaporizers, media analysis and philosophy!

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I use lib-redirect for everything if I really need to get to a reddit link. It’s rare, but there are certain types of communities where I’d like to get a “average laymans” perspective and unfortunately just due to the size here on the fediverse there is rarely wide-spread availability. As you mentioned, specific games. Lots of hobbies. Even the opportunity for consumer tech talk, if I’m interested in replacing something that’s 8+ years old there’s just not a lot of existing content to search through here and that leaves blog posts and… Reddit.

    I’ve had plenty of time recognizing what astroturfing looks like, so I rarely feel like I’m left out of options to search. All that said, I’ve been doing this a lot less since the whole shift happened. Maybe an endeavor every few months, rather than few days/weeks.




  • I think there’s a wide spread. I’d say that there’s westerns like Brokeback Mountain and Dances With Wolves, where the suspense is more from the dire circumstances and grit that they have to work through in order to survive – few times are their lives gravely endangered. Similarly, there’s the Clint Eastwood westerns where you don’t really expect anything to be happening to that main character, yet they’re still well received. The “True Grit” style Western – someone to protect while you rough it through the hard life.

    And then there’s the westerns you’re talking about, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, nearly Magnificent Seven style western where the characters present an archetype and have a fatal flaw that leads to their downfall.

    The Mandalorian is more like a Western of the Week TV show where you have the drama of the grit, an undercurrent of hope that’s played off the main characters hardships.

    Idk. Din being invincible in the show is seemingly irrelevant to me, and not even supported in the content of the show. The first two seasons definitely have space Western episodes though, even if they might not be the more typical main character on the verge of death style ones.


  • Eh. I think characters dying as the only stakes is weak writing anyway. If I were using that as a judgement, all of Star Wars is terrible, especially the Clone Wars. Obviously, that’s not the case. Besides, clearly the armor rating is meaningless given the events of the S2 finale – clearly the armor isn’t protecting him from impacts what with his head injury.

    We if look to Ming Na Wen’s character I’d even argue that being hit by blasters in New Star Wars is just an opportunity to visit the medic anyway, so Din wearing beskar doesn’t really remove any of the suspense for me.


  • Maybe he was worried that Luke would go down the same path his father would, so he kept things vague. That was always my take on Old Ben – he wasn’t really guiding Luke to do anything, it was the Force. “Luke, your father was actually a dangerous madman who slew younglings. In fact, is the right hand man, that academy you were joining? It’s Space Fascism, so definitely don’t go and join it to be with your father.” lol

    On the topic of the other two – Personally, I liked Kenobi. It has some sillier bits, but nothing IMO that isn’t easily explained (as an example, there’s a scene where young Leia is chased by mercenaries and she kinda dunks on them. People hate it. I think it was a clear example of her Force Sensitivity, so I don’t mind it at all.) Its main shortcoming for me was the villains could have been better and Reva was a bit predictable. I didn’t think she was as bad as the Internet did.

    Ahsoka… I wanted to like. It had a lot of potential, most of my issues were that it seemed like they were filming a video game, but since we’re not playing Ahsoka we end up just watching her interact with things we have no meaning for. Other than that, it was decent save for what they did to Sabine, which was just a disgrace to her character. Sabine was disappointing, over and over again. Overall, I think it has been my least favorite of the Star Wars shows as it has had the most visible quirks and awkward shots.

    As a continuation of that story it’s pretty decent and I’m excited for S2. But as a continuation of that story, the characters were not as strong as I felt they could have been. Time passed and people change, that’s fine. This wasn’t quite that though.





  • At this point digitally downloading things needs to just stop being called piracy and start being called digital archival. WiFi went down, luckily I have my digital archive.

    All the people who made the content already got paid for their hours in large media. If you’re pirating from a studio that is 1 to 10 people you probably know that and probably know it’s lame. The money we’re paying to view/listen is literally just the corporation trying to “make money back”, even though the CEO and execs are probably a few tonnes richer than the rest of us, and the regular working class is getting paid hourly.

    We’ve really got to be moving away from restricting knowledge, honestly even the idea of a $/hr type thing. Imaging being charged 15c every time you heard 40 seconds of a song or TV show. I like the idea of artists being paid royalties but our current system is such a scam with us, the core creator, getting hardly anything after the corporations get their cut. FFS, audiobook producers get more share of royalties than musicians do (most audiobooks are ~40% royalty share and musicians are lucky to get 25%.

    It’s hard as an artist. I want to be able to make money off my music, and be able to live from just that. The very real reality is that piracy (digital archival) would have almost ZERO affect on me due to the scale of it. People would be more likely to hear about me through its word of mouth than they are currently trying to buy my music with my advertising (none). I’m also not making music for money, but so that it can be listened to. Making money from it is more of a benefit than the goal, despite how nice it would be to do nothing but make music.

    So, really, if I am hardly affected by people archiving my work, why in the fuck would HBO be? And if it were true, why would they remove hundreds of movies and shows from their service, lost forever. How are the royalties from those being lost when I archive it?

    No, there is none.

    There is only one reason to not digitally archive something. One alone.

    Metrics.

    If you like something and you want it to survive, fucking pay to watch it. I love It’s Always Sunny. I have all of it archived, and mostly watch it there. But I will put money into Hulu once in a while just to stream Sunny, for the new season, for whatever. Because those guys have more hours of my life than any other show, and I want them to be able to continue making it, and they can only do that if FX sees that enough people watch them to justify continuing. I don’t agree with everything Hulu does, like their showing ads for networks even on the “Ad free” tier (the network contracted for it, which leads me to wonder when other networks won’t leverage for the same deal), and something else that I had on my mind but just escaped me due to the late hour. Those guys all already got paid, the crew and teams, everything is taken care of. But for another season to happen enough people have to have seen it on a platform that matters to them, so the only thing that really matters is the metrics.

    Of course, if you’re HBO even that doesn’t matter and it can be all thrown out anyway… so…

    to digital archival I go







  • There’s a lot of disappointing comments on here, like no shit you would use a different vehicle if you had access.

    First, someone mentioned any cop has the right to check for insurance/etc, so being prepared for that and being amicable, as bright-eyed as you can be. Those marks usually get noted I think though. And another mentioned a sob story, harder in some circumstances but you can get pretty creative from Moms colonoscopy to funeral road trip (from the colonoscopy ofc).

    However, I would like to add - do you have any way to meet creative people willing to turn your ghetto van into a painted art car? I was wondering what region you’re around (don’t need to mention it no worries) and you’ve mentioned a lot of small towns which makes me think mid-south or west. Either way, going over the car with some primer and a theme may help turn it from ghetto to art-van.

    I would try hitting up craigslist or posting on local pages, if funds are an issue I would maybe just mention the situation, doing it in sections. A for sure place you can get it done though for free? Pretty much anywhere in the PNW (OR/WA at least) there are all kinds of weird parties and gatherings and I’ve seen tons of “paint me” vans, and honestly most of the time they look freaking sick. They’re always a mix of hand paint and airbrush.

    If you are able to save some over time, you could technically apply these yourself for just barely cheaper than an auto-shop, but it would be some work. You’d need 1 - 1 1/2 of grey primer to cover the van - anywhere from $35 (check dates then shake really, really well) to $85. And then probably the spray/air gun.

    Either way, you’ll want to follow the proper care for treating the car before you paint it - clean, sand, primer, (maybe sand, maybe not if art car), then the hard part is the clear coat. That part I’m not as familiar with unfortunately.

    Last random idea, there are these like rental camper vans, probably a bunch of companies but faking one of those. Same idea as the art car just dumber lol.

    Anyways, good luck and I hope in the future you have better reception to questions like this - and that you’re able to relax wherever you’re staying.