• 1 Post
  • 17 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 15th, 2023
  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoMusic@lemmy.world•What are the bands that didn't get international recognition but still are absolute legends where you're from?English
    5·
    10 months ago

    Canada (or at least Ontario): The Barenaked Ladies.

    I recently learned Americans consider them a One Hit Wonder for “One Week”, but I could probably name like 9 hits just based off the radio, I never bought any of their albums or anything.

    1. If I had a million dollars
    2. Lovers in a dangerous time
    3. Pinch me
    4. Old apartment
    5. Call and answer
    6. Brian Wilson (only a live version for some reason)
    7. Jane
    8. It’s all been done
    9. Falling for the first time

    Oh wow, it was actually nine! I swear I didn’t go back and edit that, and also that I didn’t look up a list online. There may even be others I forgot. That was just from me trying to remember songs or music videos of theirs!

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyz•shrimp colour dramaEnglish
    8·
    10 months ago

    To be fair, we don’t see like reverse engineered printing. Printing is reverse engineered seeing. If we saw like this post is claiming shrimp see, and blue was blue and green was green and yellow was yellow, we wouldn’t be able to print by mixing three colours. We’d need one pigment per photoreceptor, same as we do now.

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyz•It's trueEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Small extra rant:

    minor spoilers

    And just to be clear, ten thousand years is a long time. Ancient Egypt was, like 5 - 6 thousand years ago. So almost double that. The last ice age was about 12 thousand years ago. 10 thousand years ago was, like, the invention of farming as a concept. No culture on Earth has history that far back.

    So to be making references to today’s pop culture that far in the future just feels nuts. I mean, sure, it’s the same one guy. And I know he’s not supposed to feel like God. But still, when humans as a species first planted seeds in the ground you heard a song, and now today you’re going to casually bring it up to a room full of babies? Whatever.

    But it just so happens that it’s a reference that’s relevant to us the reader in my personal nostalgia? My eyes rolled so hard I fell straight out of the narrative…

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyz•It's trueEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    I read it a while ago, let’s see if I remember…

    Hopefully I’ve hidden this behind a spoiler tag properly, but if not, please don’t read this unless you’ve read the books!

    hopefully spoiler tag

    I liked the mystery of what truly happened, and I liked the alternative memory around the time in the first house. Seeing that alternative and opposite version of events was neat, and then having that actually be even more impactful when it become clear what’s going on was great. The bits with True Ortis being actually really emotional at the end were good. I was onboard up until that.

    I was quite happy until we all confront John at the end, because this is where it’s going to coming together. There’s a few things I remember disliking here. The first thing, and most trivial, is that John says a few things here that feel like very now memes, and that took me way out of the tone the chapters otherwise were in. I think one was a “hi blank I’m dad” line or something. I get it, he’s not very Godly, and later it seems like he’s even alive during our present day. But I still feel like that format is a bit tired already, and this is ten thousand years from now. I think the other was a reference to a song that was all the rage in, like, 2005 or something. Which again, I don’t feel like even the youth of today would pull that reference, so John is I guess exactly my age. And ten thousand years from now is quoting a thing that no one else in the room would get; that’s meaningless to the person he’s talking to, but also his other lyctors. I dunno, it just felt like John was talking to me, the reader, and it felt very cheap. So that kinda put me in a mood already.

    The second thing that bothered me is the revelations at that point are all a bunch of things all the lyctors think are big news, but that our protagonist, and thus we, don’t know anything about. Like being a kid at a family reunion and listening to the adults talk, they’re having their minds blown talking about schemes and plans and shit that we don’t know anything about. I’m not saying the answers had to be handed to me necessarily, but it just felt like all the meat was coming fully out of left field, and there’s no way any of the things I’ve learned so far this book could possibly have lead me to these discoveries. Isn’t this, like, a mystery book? You don’t want to find out at the end that the murder was actually committed by Richard the repairman we didn’t introduce to you, but anyway let me tell you how this guy you’ve never heard of did the thing you’ve been wondering about.

    Which leads me into the third and biggest thing I didn’t like, which was that throughout the entire climax of the story, our protagonist is passive bordering on insignificant. Gideon wakes up and fights her way to the exposition room, Harrow (our protagonist up until this) is obviously gone. So that’s a bit weird, but we love Gideon so it’s okay. So what does our protagonist do? They hide behind a door and listen to the grown ups talk at each other. Just spilling answers and tying up ends, and having revelations. And our protagonist isn’t even in the room, they’re not talking to her. They’re just chatting amongst themselves, unaware we’re even listening, while they wrap everything up for us. Then even when our protagonist does enter the room, she still just stands there while people talk around her and about her, but she does nothing.

    And then finally Mercy puts her plan into action, John responds, Augustine responds, River, etc. But here’s the thing; this plan is, like, a hundred years old or whatever. The plan was hatched before either of our protagonists were born, and doesn’t involve them at all. Nothing we’re been party to in either book has anything to do with Mercy’s plan, John’s response, Augustine, etc. None of it. It happens around Gideon, but if Gideon and Harrow had never gone to the first house, and none of these books had happened, the plan would have gone exactly the same way. Mercy would have taken her shot. John would have survived. Augustine would have taken his shot. Ianthe changed history by saving John, but Gideon watched that part while being trapped a long way away behind glass, and neither John nor Ianthe knew or cared we were even there. And Ianthe is close to us, but is not our protagonist. So basically nothing in either this book nor the first mattered at all to the big climax. Gideon was just confused, ineffectual, and out of the way for all of it. So that was kind of a let down.

    The closest thing we had to being involved in the climax was that Gideon has John’s eyes. Mercy seems to say something that makes it seem like she was pretty sure anyway, so she was probably going to do her plan that she started before Gideon was conceived in either case, but it did give her confidence. But she even says something like “damn, if only I’d looked at the body’s eyes earlier” or something, making it clear that if she’d done that one thing, even Gideon’s eyes at the end wouldn’t have been a surprise or relevant.

    So that was the biggest sin, in my opinion. But one more thing that annoyed me while I was annoyed anyway, was the stack of twists. Mercy kills God, holy shit! Nevermind, no she didn’t. He’s back. They’re talking. Now Mercy is dead. John wants Augustine to pledge to him. He seems like he might. Now Augustine tries to kill God. Oh, he seems like he’s going to do it. Nope, that didn’t happen either. Augustine is dead. In the end none of their long plan mattered in the slightest, and if they’d been killed by a beast a hundred years ago we’d be in nearly the same place. But the whiplash of attempts and failure back to back to back was just tiring when all my suspension of disbelief had already been spent by the last three issues. I was just like “please let someone kill God so we can move on”

    So at this point I just felt like: given this outcome, what was the point of any of this? There was a plan constructed long before our protagonist was born that did not involve her at all. And we had various struggles. But then the culmination of this plan we didn’t know about has arrived, and it has nothing to do with us or our struggles we’ve just spent hours and hours reading about. And on top of that the plan doesn’t even work or accomplish much of anything. So this big long plan that we didn’t know about and doesn’t involve us also didn’t change the status quo from where it would have been had it not been hatched and executed.

    Cool…that was… fulfilling…

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyz•It's trueEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    I loved the first one. I liked 7/8th of the second one. It was a tricky puzzle, trying to figure out what is real and what isn’t, and what’s truly going on. But I trusted the author because of how much I liked the first one.

    Then the ending of the book was terrible and made me angry at the entire second book as a result.

    But I read the third anyway, just in case. I didn’t much care for it. It was okay enough to keep reading. But it was very different in tone from the first two, for plot reasons. I dunno, maybe 6 out of 10?

    I know I have to read the 4th for sunk cost reasons, but I’m not excited about it…

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catopolitics @lemmy.world•White Rural Trump Supporters Are a Threat to Democracy
    6·
    11 months ago

    Nah, I mean, I was around when George Bush was the guy. I didn’t like him, I didn’t feel he was a good leader, or fit for the office. I would try to convince people not to support him or the war(s) in the middle east. But he was not a threat to democracy. Except maybe through The Patriot Act…

    There was a lot of things I didn’t agree with that Mitt Romney believes. I think voting him in would have been regressive and bad for gay people, etc, who I care about. I think he is wrong about things. But he’s not a threat to democracy. I belive that he believes the things he claims to believe, and that he believes in his heart that he’s doing the right thing. I just disagree with him.

    John McCain seemed like an honorable man. Again, I felt that his priorities and mine didn’t line up, but he was nowhere near a threat to democracy.

    The reason this dude is a threat to democracy is because he has openly and repeatedly disregarded voting and the function of government, which is kinda democracy’s whole thing. If the votes don’t count, and the results don’t follow the will of the voters, then it’s not a democratic system. If you systematically choose to make it so some segment of your citizens cannot vote, or their voices are not heard, then it’s not a democratic system.

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Just how the f*CK did Nintendo developed tears of the kingdom?
    131·
    11 months ago

    I agree with OP. If there’s a puzzle in a game that’s clearly some kind of water puzzle, but I can make a boat to solve it in 15 seconds and bypass the obvious intent of the puzzle, maybe I feel a bit clever. But if I can solve every puzzle with effectively the same boat… what’s the point of doing the puzzles? I guess because I wanted puzzles? But on the other hand, if I know I can solve every puzzle with a 15 second boat, it feels kinda weird to pretend I don’t have an answer and struggle through anyway. Like, the victory is hollow when I know I could have solved it faster the dumb way.

    The number of times in that game I thought “oh, maybe I have to jump up through the floor here to get through this door” and then I peeked through the floor and was like “oh, nope. It’s the damn final boss room again. Not supposed to be here yet, better go back through the floor and try another way to open this door” felt like I was babysitting the game so as to not entirely ruin the experience… and it kinda ruined the experience…

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoBaldur's Gate 3@lemmy.world•Ending my honor run in shameEnglish
    45·
    1 year ago

    Similar to other people, I think you should own it. Try to think of it not as “I betrayed my character” but rather “my character gave in to temptation and regrets it but has to live with the consequences”, then use that. Play the character as though they are unhappy with the changes, they regret it, but they must soldier on.

    People aren’t all perfect archetypes, and characters can have flaws and nuances. And the best part is, if your character up until now had no reason to make the choice you made, maybe it’s time for an out of game flashback. Work backwards… what thing could have happened in their backstory that would explain why they made this seemingly incongruous choice? Why did this tempt them when so many other things did not, and why does this cause them so much shame now. That kind of stuff.

    Or don’t! Just some suggestions, since it sounds like you’ve got nothing to lose, may as well try some character development!

  • psycotica0@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.world•Apple is now banned from selling its latest Apple Watches in the USEnglish
    747·
    1 year ago

    Well… That’s actually probably fair as stated.

    BestBuy etc don’t sell Apple’s products on commission, they bought them from Apple for a wholesale price, they’ve got them in a warehouse and on shelves right now on their dime, and the only way they make that money back is by selling them.

    And the only way Apple makes money from a product being sold at Best Buy is that Best Buy will likely buy more stock to replace the stuff they sold, and they’ll buy that from Apple.

    So if it was banned everywhere it would be unfair to the retailers that already paid Apple for a product they now can’t recoup, and it wouldn’t impact Apple at all because they already made their money from Best Buy.

    This way the retailers can get their money back, but can’t get any more, which means only Apple is impacted.

    The only other way that’s semi-fair (but would be extreme) would be for Apple to be forced to do a recall or something and reimburse all the retailers the money they had already spent. Doable, and definitely more of a punishment for Apple, but a lot of extra work for everyone if the outcome of this is that Apple settles and then everyone can just go back to ordering more again.

  • psycotica0@lemmy.cato196@lemmy.blahaj.zone•Monthly Rule
    3·
    1 year ago

    I think that’s too much thinking, I’m pretty sure it’s simpler than that. North Americans say “December Twelfth” or “May Forth” or “March Fourteenth” rather than “The Fourteenth of March”.

    So they go “March -> 3”, “Fourteenth -> 14”, and you get “3/14” that you can read from left to right as “March Fourteenth”. That’s about it, I’m pretty sure.

    And so long as everyone agrees which one comes first it’s not ambiguous. Of course, everyone doesn’t agree, and there are logical reasons to pick the others, but this one is simply in reading order.