Okay sure, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. So yeah, feel shame for consuming all media, ethical or not. /s

Is that the broad statement you want me to say to avoid being picked apart because it’s “technically correct” which is the only type of correct I need to be to “win” this would be discussion turned argument?

Killer “gotcha” moment bud 🤣

If someone buys a game they know exploits workers, or is destroying the world by participating in the AI bubble, and feels shame for doing it, that’s between them and their conscience. Shame is an incredible motivator, particularly for social and political issues. There’s a reason it gets shouted at protests and at political figures. All I said was shaming people for being interested in sexually explicit content is bad. I did not say all shame is bad.

I could go on, but OH! Would you look at that. It’s block o’clock! Lovely chatting with you while it lasted.

I wouldn’t call it perverted because I think that word has been stigmatized and weaponized to shame people, but I do in fact shop for video games based on which studios seem to treat their workers the fairest.

Isn’t the issue the exploitation of sex workers, mostly women? Like if you’ve found ethical porn, by all means wack your shit to it. I just think the things people are able to explore with writing, or hell even animation if the artists aren’t exploited, are much more varied and interesting without exploiting actors. Like I’ve found a few queer porn projects that are like owned by the actors and stuff. Basically porn coops, which is fucking awesome.

I’m bad about reading usernames before the comment, and I literally thought I recognized your writing style, then looked at the name and said “ohhh Cowbee! I recognize that name! Always good takes”

The imperial boomerang is proving this an impossible balance to find. Welcome to the imperial core, where all the mil-tech testing we’ve done on the rest of the world is finally being turned around and pointed at citizens.

Well put. Ty for educating folks.

🫂

I mean one handing a bolter like that will do wild work for your forearm I’m sure.

My latest project is a NixOS based NAS, with the goal being to make something super reproducible I can help friends setup for themselves to build out a decentralized backup/media/adblock/fileshare/communication tool for me and my loved ones.

I understand the concept and use case of flakes and home manager but every time I have attempted to install these, down to just fully copying provided configs, something doesn’t work, and then uninstalling them is a bit of a nightmare. I’ve yet to find a truly accessible NixOS tutorial as someone coming from an Arch from scratch install and tinkering with some 6 other Linux based operating systems.

I’d love for either a fully flake free setup, that is just simple “default style” config files, OR an actually useful tutorial that discusses the generic process of installing these in a way that I can actually understand, because I clearly lack some important piece of knowledge to make it work as intended. So many pieces of software I’m interested in simply say “install the XYZ flake and you’re good to go”. People make Nix seem so simple (and when it works it feels that way) but there’s some disconnect between the author of every tutorial I’ve followed and me as a relatively new to Nix end user.

I tried to get my friend group into this and most of them bounced off. I tried to convince the “hardcore gamers” of the group that by the looks of it things get quite hard in the late game. Bummed I never really got to experience it to that point.

I’ve recently gotten into putting together sort of silly “party” mod packs for my friend group. Things that are meant to be played as a “one shot” with everyone online. Things like full loot randomizers, or shared health and inventory. Just silly and chaotic mods to shift the focus from exploration and sandbox-y things, to “let’s try to beat the ender dragon under very adverse conditions”. So far I’ve only gotten one friend to bite, but we’ve been doing one run a night for the last week or so. Takes between 20 to 60 minutes, maybe more if we really get into it.

Could also look into mods/modpacks that add quest books. That helps take the edge off the “open world, figure it out” paralysis and give some concrete things to work towards.

I’ve posted about this somewhere else too, maybe a different account idk.

But for games to play with people that aren’t really “gamers” I actually prefer single player games with light amounts of fast paced action or none at all. The “coop” comes from taking turns with the controller.

This works well with puzzle or logic games with generous reaction time requirements (again, or none at all), as well as story based games with light action. A lot of these games also come with natural pauses in the story that provide opportunities to either swap who is driving or put the game down for the day.

I’ve had a lot of success playing through many of these titles with partners. I’m sorting these roughly by category and then how strongly I recommend them. Some of these games I haven’t actually played yet, but I know them to fit the overall vibe.

Puzzle/Logic - no reaction time required

• Chants of Sennaar (HIGHLY recommend, requires decent notes and map making, so the person not using the controller still has a job)
• Strange Horticulture (HIGHLY recommend, also requires some light note taking to make life easier)
• Strange Antiquities (sequel to above, have not played yet, high expectations)
• Return of the Obra Din (have not played yet, high expectations)
• The Case of the Golden Idol + DLCs (STRONGLY recommend, got a bit burnt out by the end, but very fun, also light note taking)
• The Rise of the Golden Idol (sequel to above, have not played yet, moderate to high expectations)
• Baba is You (HIGHLY recommend, nice learning curve but becomes brutally difficult towards the end of the game)
• Myst (HUGE game, very good, but daunting and little to no hand holding, detailed notes required)

Kind of a category within a category, haven’t played these, but they’ve been referred to as 1.5 player games.

• Spiritfarer
• Chicory
• Child of Light

Puzzle/Logic - aim and reaction time needed

• Portal 1
• Portal 2 (and its coop if you have 2 devices)
• Portal Reloaded (community mod adding a portal through time with some seriously mind bending puzzles)
• Portal Revolutions (another mod, haven’t played yet but looks fun)
• Viewfinder (HIGHLY recommend, spiritual successor to Portal IMO and a very, very good game)
• Superliminal (HIGHLY recommend, a “Portal-like” that uses perspective as the core mechanic)

Story Based - some action sequences requiring aim and reaction time and some puzzling

• Stray (just a cute good time with some spooky, heart rate spiking moments where you really don’t want your kitty to get hurt)
• Alien Isolation (if you’re horror movie people at all this is like an interactive movie)
• Shadows of a Doubt (might be a miss for a lot of people, immersive detective sim)
• Firewatch (played this a long time ago, might not hold up)
• Dredge (spooky but cute fishing sim with good story)
• Summertime Madness (not much reaction time needed, but still some aim or speed based puzzles)

All of these that I’ve played were on either Arch (custom), Arch (Garuda), or NixOS based systems under Proton. Two of those systems were installed from scratch and they performed flawlessly, so if you’re on a system that handles all the audio and video driver installation for you things should be very smooth. The Garuda machine is a laptop from 2016 that is plugged into my TV and actually saw the most play time for these titles. It held up perfectly. The other two systems were back to back installs on my fairly beefy desktop, but installation and running the games was smooth after the initial effort to get the systems fully functional with drivers and controller support.

Maybe check out VintageStory or Elsewhere? I also wanted to pivot from Minecraft, due to both burnout and Microslop. Both games are based on relatively famous Minecraft mods/modpacks and recapture some of the nostalgia while also being a new experience. I’d probably recommend VintageStory a bit over Elsewhere, but that is mostly due to my particular playstyle and aesthetic interests.

Unfortunately can’t help with Ableton specifically, but I’ve been using Ardour for some audio tinkering and from what I can tell it’s free and pretty full featured…

Some mild hallucinations at the end. Mostly like tunnel vision though, not so much actual fully imagined visuals. It helped I genuinely liked the project and felt motivated to do a good job with it. I’m not a smoker, but I was kind of just operating cigarette to cigarette for those 4 days. Well that, weed and caffeine. There was a couple of us all working on our projects at the same time, so we all helped keep each other stay awake and getting stuff done.

96 hours for my arts thesis. Partly due to procrastination, but also my department kept ignoring my request for a particular material, so it wasn’t entirely my fault. I legitimately liked the project and it ended up being one of the better final products of my year. For other reasons I was not allowed to pursue an honors thesis, which would have let me keep refining the piece for another semester.

Is this loss? /s

I specifically like the term because I’m non-binary. It feels more like a descriptor of the way I interact in a relationship vs who I am interacting with. I’m a femme leaning trans person mostly interested in other femme folk, so that definitely contributes to why I prefer the term, but it does still feel very distinct from lesbian for me.

I rock a mixture. Depends on the look I’m going for. I was just looking at these myself! Any recommendations?

WAIT!! I found it! I found the site of the person that makes them. I figured it was an individual reselling at Wooden Shoe, so I did some digging and their site turned up!!

Toxic Femme “Too Punk To Tuck Patch”