This is it right here, at least for me personally. I’m a huge Dragon Age fan (played through DAO and DA2 before Inquisition’s release) who has always been vaguely interested in Larian’s Divinity Original Sin games but never made them a priority in my backlog. Seeing the cinematic cutscenes and the 3rd-person voice acted dialog for BG3 made me immediately interested and now I’m 10-ish hours deep into Baldur’s Gate and loving it!

Also slowly resigning myself to DA4 not even coming close to matching BG3 in quality given the circumstances of its development.

I’ve had good success using it to write Python scripts for me. They’re simple enough I would be able to write them myself, but it would take a lot of time searching and reading StackOverflow/library docs/etc since I’m an amateur and not a pro. GPT lets me spend more time actually doing the things I need the scripts for.

sick! do you think you’ll ever print these physically? I’d love to pick up a copy if you ever do. :)

sick! do you think you’ll ever print these physically? I’d love to pick up a copy if you ever do. :)

degree in Visual Art, work in digital asset management for a marketing (blech) studio. I’d love to get into a DAM position at somewhere less ethically awful, like a symphony or museum or something, buuut my position pays really well relatively speaking to other similar similar jobs I’ve looked at, so that’ll have to wait until I feel more established in life.

took a couple basic comp-sci classes in college, though, and went to a coding bootcamp before I got my current position. running linux on my laptop, might switch to it on my desktop. I make use of bash for renaming files a lot at my job.

there’s a lot about tech-heavy areas that interests me, but it’d drive me crazy to be around too much of it. I think there’s a lot of good in the liberal arts that tends to get missed by the sort of hard rationalists that tend to hang out in tech spaces.

Thinking about reducing plastic fucks me up and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Noticing every single time we bring new plastic into the household, and how hard it is to avoid. Chicken comes in plastic wrap, and even if we got it at a butcher counter, they still toss it in a plastic bag before wrapping it in brown paper. Bags of potting soil, our toothpaste tubes, peanut butter jars… it’s endless.

At least the majority of my clothes are cotton or wool, but another source is carpet and there isn’t anything I can do about this apartment carpet.

I completed all of the shrines before I beat the game, and found it enjoyable. I also really enjoyed running around the depths collecting all the lightroots. I enjoy exploring caves and wells too, so that’s next on my list to complete. Grinding for armor sets is tedious to me so I’m skipping it…

My high school and college journals are filled with so much angst about crushes and “do they like me? don’t they like me?” that it’s physically difficult to re-read them now, hah.

I had a crush on a redhead from about 10 until I left for college (it was a small town), then crushed on the various guys in my dorm and friend group (and one hot artist girl in a philosophy class) until I decided I needed to practice dating in junior year and actually went on a few thanks to Tinder. Though I didn’t escape entirely as I had a couple crushes on regular customers when I worked in an art supply store after graduating.

Now I’m happily partnered and do not miss the mental anxiety of crushes, though there’s a twinge of excitement in the idea of having a crush that will always be nostalgic.

I purged my comments and deleted my main account on July 1st, which was surprisingly emotional for me. I use Alien Blue on mobile, which still works so far, but now that my main account is logged out, I’ll never be able to log another account in because authentication has been broken in Alien Blue for a while.

I’m keeping Alien Blue installed for two reasons: one, for checking on a friend who only posts updates on reddit, and two, I read r/games a couple times a week for headlines and discussion. Lemmy just doesn’t have the same level of engagement or discussion as r/games; even though there’s a certain brand of insufferable commenters there, the majority of people post thoughtful comments that are more than one or two sentences long and those are the kinds of threads I like reading. Lemmy threads seem to be more shallow; lots of replies to the parent, but very few threads that go more than one or two comments deep.

Ooo, Aldi had Musli lately but it was one of their “limited edition” aisle things and my store ran out recently. I got really used to it for breakfast, so I’ll have to look into Seitenbacher’s!

Are you interested in slightly more fantastical yet still clandestine agencies? You can’t go wrong with Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore! Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea also gives me these vibes but it’s less heavy on the secret society bits.

Yup, I loved not having the weight of glasses on my face with contacts, but every kind I’ve tried had led to dry eyes at the end of the day and that’s super unpleasant to me, so glasses it is.

I primarily sort by New, but there’s actually so much new content lately that I miss things that way. Memmy added Top 6 Hours, which I’m also using now - I like it better than Top Day, as it keeps me from seeing top posts I already saw in the morning when I browse at night, and vice versa.

When I used Reddit, I primarily visited subreddits individually - I might start doing that for the smaller lemmy communities that I want to make sure I don’t miss any posts on, too.

I’ve been looking for this kind of comment, because this was my first thought on reading the statement. Very PR speak implying that the state of subs like r/interestingasfuck meant that they didn’t want the brand risk that now comes with being on Reddit – not that they cared about or were protesting the API changes.

I do think it’s interesting because it shows that the mod protests on those subreddits - even if brief - triggered a big enough brand risk moment for MSFT/Minecraft to decide dropping Reddit completely (rather than temporarily or similar) was worth it. I don’t think we’ve seen any other brands officially do that yet.

You could always make a post on the general music communities and see if other folks want to chat in the comments? I think we just need to embrace making posts about specific things in communities that feel “not specific enough” but that have enough subscribers that at least one or two care about that subtopic of the larger whole.

There were rumors based on the Steam specs that the game would be always-online, but they moved “broadband internet connection” from Minimum to Recommended specs – so at least on PC, it’s highly likely not online only.

Gunbrella is made by the folks who did Gato Roboto, which is a short and snappy metroidvania - super stoked to see they’re working on a longer game with similar vibes!

Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought the audio mixing was a little sub-par on Stray Gods. I’m left wondering if the full release is going to be like that, or if it’s just that the demo was released before they’d done a polish pass on the audio. Hopefully that’s something reviews talk about!

Stray Gods — the demo did a great job of demonstrating what the gameplay will be like! the art is gorgeous and the voice acting is solid. I just have a few minor critiques: the soundscape of the VO felt weirdly empty and echo-y. I would have loved some additional room tone ambience, additional SFX like fabric swishes when characters turn their heads: imo it needs a little something to make it all feel cohesive. The demo was also structured so that you get a taste of later songs, but without clearly communicating that the new gameplay section was from a new part of the game, which confused me. It also made it harder to care about those choices because I’m missing the context.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood — I can’t believe they let us play for so long in the demo?! I kept thinking ok it’s going to end now but it didn’t! That’s always a nice surprise in a demo. The card design mechanic was enjoyable, and detailed enough to provide room for personalization but not too complex to be overwhelming. The mechanic also appeared in an interlude where I wasn’t expecting it (which also had a later influence on dialogue) - that was a delight, and I think is a good sign of further depth in the full game. I like that the main character has a distinct personality and isn’t a generic character or too self-insert-y. Can’t wait for the full release of the game!

Venba — the demo is short and sweet, but enough to let me know I’ll like the full game. the recipes-as-puzzles is fun, and a neat introduction to the world of Indian cooking. and ofc the art and animation is lovely - I especially loved the menu and options screens.

Saltsea Chronicles — there was clearly a lot of thought and care given to this demo. I really appreciated the initial context they provided around “here’s what’s happened in the story so far”, and the little glossary pop-ups when characters used new words was a great touch. Charming characters and world building. In dialogue choices, it wasn’t clear which character you’re making the dialogue choice for, but as I got further along I think it’s more about the vibe and not picking specific dialogue choices. Keeping my eye on this one for sure!

Slay The Princess — this is an older demo that I hadn’t tried yet. 10/10, this sucked me in for several hours. There are so many interesting options and paths to choose, and the voice acting and art is amazing. I’m very curious where this will go in the full game!

Reading the back of Dr. Bronners soap bottles is so fun, haha. Hadn’t thought that they sell bar soap too though. Definitely going to try it out, thanks!