Haha! I started up DS3 DLC once a lot time ago, and I was rusty from having not played in a while. I got invaded in less than a minute, got whacked, quit the game and never went back. Sometimes I’m just not in the mood for self-flagellation. DS2 DLC almost did me in, but I’m glad I pushed through there.

Crosscode. It’s not required, but they do encourage you to race against NPCs in the puzzle-heavy dungeons. I thought I had finally won one when the boss of the dungeon smoked me three times, and then I got mocked for being the last out of the dungeon. Also, I’m 27 hours in, and the plot that everyone raves about has gone absolutely nowhere. I put the game down a few months back and haven’t gone back. Maybe I’ll pick it up again since it seems a lot of people love something about it, but aside from some interesting combat, I wasn’t feeling it at all.

You can’t absolve “us” of all the responsibility. We wouldn’t be in this situation if the masses weren’t so easy to manipulate into supporting corruption. The vast majority of us would take the quick-and-easy-yet-destructive path over the long-and-hard-productive one most of the time. Remove those 100-or-whatever by violent revolution tomorrow, and someone else will rise to the top of the stink heap the next day. Real change requires sacrifice at all levels of society.

I too choose this guy’s dead wife.

Sistine Chapel was alright, but really our spare room growing up. Old toys, a bunch of games’ consoles, TRS80 Color Computer, a janky old 20" CRT, and a raggedy old couch. Many of my fondest childhood memories happened there.

I would look at that, but I bounced off VIM hard, so probably not for me.

the death of Atom

I’m still in mourning.

Not to mention the disregard for proper usage of “fewer” and “less”.

Often, all this music software is used in solitude

Beethoven composed in solitude, too.

Yes, there’s something about a live performance that can’t exactly be reproduced jamming with yourself in your bedroom, but that doesn’t mean that great music can’t come out of both processes.

Beato is definitely channeling a little “git offa mah lawwn!” vibes. The reason we don’t get any more Led Zeppelins or Pink Floyds or whichever brand of classic rock he worships at the altar of isn’t because there aren’t talented musicians making music. It’s because the circumstances that those artists thrived under no longer exist, and likely never will again.

Synthesizers and music technology in general.

I could write an essay or two about how much has changed in the past fifty years. Most of it for the better.

Yeah, and if you went past the mode you wanted, selection was one-way. You had to flip that select switch down over and over and hope you didn’t go past it the next time around.

Combat on Atari 2600. It was the game that came with the system.

I moved to a smaller city in South Korea in 2004 to teach English. A short while after I got there, I met a couple who were from a small town down the road from the small town I grew up in in Eastern Canada. Apparently we even went to the same small university (3000 students total) together and I somehow managed to never see them there.

Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga of the Seven Suns. I started reading it a long time ago, got about twenty pages in and gave up. Much later, I forgot I had tried, and tried again, and got even fewer pages in when I remembered how it is chock full of the most inane pandering exposition I have ever read. Just a torrent of trite, hackneyed, cliché. I can’t understand how it got published, let alone warranted 7 books. Maybe it gets better. I will never find out. I haven’t heard much good about the Dune books he co-authored, either.

I should add that I’ve read Battlefield Earth, and actually enjoyed it. I generally do not have super high standards. If something is entertaining, I’ll give it a chance.

Nope. Gotta wait for a sale. It’s hard though. Great game!

I have blown so many hours on Towers.

I’m creeping up on 50. I finished Elden Ring a little while back.

Korea has the usual international suspects, but as far as local chains go, there is one: Lotteria. Their burgers are OK. Somewhere between Rotten Ronnie’s and BK’s. There are quite a few smaller, non-chain places that make decent burgers, though.

Ahh, but with a billion, you would be important enough.

I also have no clue whether Ethiopians need any rice

The Ethiopian famine was 30 years ago. Not that they haven’t had troubles off-and-on since then.