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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)XE
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988
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2 yr. ago

  • I don't upgrade my phone for fun, I upgrade when thirstier software and stuffed storage slow it down to unreasonable rates. Similarly, I'm still on a first gen Xbox One from 2015 and it keeps getting noticeably slower, though mostly from newer games being more demanding rather than storage. As devs are directed to focus on more volume and novelty of content without concern for efficiency because "power is cheap", this isn't going away. So over time, yes, more power is more better. It's not the only improvement, but it's required.

    As for future innovations? Nintendo being dead? Look at your list, then look at the list of all Nintendo gaming consoles. You've listed about 1/3 of what they made since 1990. Not every console gets to be a revolution. Sometimes they're just an improvement. Gameboy Color added mild color and smaller size to the Gameboy. While the disc system was not initially well received, the GameCube system and cohort of games was peak for many. The Wii U didn't do anything special that I can remember. The Switch Lite took away Switch features but is loved more as a Gameboy BigBoy. There's the NES and SNES home consoles that were leaps and bounds more powerful than prior options.

    As for your main point, there's really no telling what the next innovation will be. Look at the N64. You're missing the other huge update: 3D modeling. And, to an extent, it had a unique quality of the time with "round" models. Insert joke about Lara Croft ps1 boobs here... Or just a joke about how Nintendo's joysticks are actually awful with deadzones and drift. Looking at your point for the Switch, I'd say Nintendo didn't even drive that feature of being hybrid. It couldn't have happened without the general electronics industry creating sufficient batteries. Actually, similar point for your DS accolade: Nintendo didn't create the touch screen, they implemented it. The point is innovation is not predictable. It's often borderline unimaginable because it takes a combination of invention, implementation, and adoption. Maybe they'll make VR work for the masses. Maybe they'll figure out convincing pseudo-holograms like the Star Wars chess board. Maybe it'll be an even smaller console. Maybe it'll capitalize on mobility and travel. Who knows? I don't have a crystal ball.

    To call Nintendo dead for one cycle of status quo is short-sighted, in my opinion.

  • The walmartification description there applies to their suppliers, too. They offer a great purchase price (especially to food goods) and sell at a loss so both farmers and customers choose Walmart. Once competition is stifled, they slap the farmers with reduced offers (while no other chains have the total purchasing power anymore) while sale price can afford to come up a bit on the shelf.

    This type of move by Huy Fong led to the Sriracha sauce shortage when the chili farmers rejected the low bid and were willing to let the crop rot.

  • I would expect his voterbase to be slightly less radicalized. Sowing the doubt around the legitimacy of the 2020 vota tally gave a very specific item for his fans to stew over during the last 4 years.

    For his actions in office, I expect more damage from the gapped 2nd term because his cohorts have had those last 4 years to stew, as well. I don't beleive his politicians were nearly as fond of him by 2020, but now they've strategized around is 2024 campaign. They didn't need trump to win, they needed the party to win. He's just the current face because his momentum is like a steamroller filled with cheeseburgers. 2017 trump left Republicans scrambling to handle his Sasha Baron Cohen style aladeen commands as he played king of the castle. I'm sure they all expect it now and ate happy to let him make wild declarations while they move like roaches in his shadow.

    I'm not worried about 2024 trump nearly as much as 2025 Republicans. Assuming 2020 trump wouldn't extend past 2024, the party wouldn't have as much time to regroup.

  • One time on a red eye flight with my eyes closed behind a sleep mask, I swore I was getting that dark blue rainy grainy projection of my surroundings like Daredevil. I could see the seat in front of me, my wall, my window, and the aircraft walls ahead of me visible aboce the seats. There was even the passing of the ground outside the window. That's where I figured out it was a false image, not some super radiation sense. After toying with a few minutes, I looked out the window to find the ground moved at a fraction of the imaginary speed. However, I do beleive it was a generally accurate recreation of my surroundings.

    When you deprive yourself of a sense, your other senses can ramp up their sensitivity to compensate. Or your brain has less bandwidth than all 5 can provide at once. Either way, your perception is not as rigid as it may seem. You can remember a lot about locations in a familiar place and faint cues can clue you in. It doesn't mean it's accurate, though

  • I've played Far Cry 2 through most of 6. If you don't recognize particular references, there's nothing that makes them substantial otherwise in the sea of creative, humorous descriptions of everyone/everything else.

    I would say it's similar with assassin's creed, keeping it in the family of "ubisoft series gamers love to shit on". The references are in the same style as other database entries, so you're not missing anything if you're unfamiliar. I've played 4 through Odyssey.

    I'm trying to think of other series and keep landing on the same reasoning, actually. Yeah, I love having more basis for the lore in other series, but I don't feel I'm missing much without every reference. I mean, Ace Combat was my personality for a few months when 7 came out, prompting me to replay 4 and 5 and buy Zero and 6. As others have said, the main thing is if you do choose to go backwards, things get clunky for both general game and specific series development reasons. Assin 4 was my most recent AC (tried 3, beat Unity>Ody, then beat 4) and man, parkour is tough. I gave up on 3 because it was so awkward and I was too old to learn at the elder age of like 23.

    I gotta say though, Forza Horizon 1 remains my favorite. There's certainly some nostalgia tied to it because it set me up for impossible expectations in the car community (especially now in the post-covid takeover bullshit). It had a more concise campaign and had some story attached to it. I'm up to 4 and it just drops me in like "this is just what you do now" and every race unlocks 4 more races with no end in sight.

  • Care to cite these studies claiming human brains are intrinsically superior? The primary difference among mammals is the size and fold density. Koalas are famously smooth-brained, but other animals have greater memory and reasoning capability with larger, deeper folds. What they lack is language. Humans developed superior vocal cords, allowing great variation in speech patterns that jump started written language and, by effect, written history. Have you not seen the videos and reports of the incredible communication and logical capabilities of other animals such as dogs learning 300 commands and using 40+ speech buttons? Have you not heard the tales of octopus escape artists defeating locks?

    Survival is what your parents and local community can teach you. But innovation and invention? You are the product of thousands of years of written language passing on more information than any single person could remember and more then any single community could develop on its own. The biggest brain in the world would sound like an idiot without language. We are not above animals, we just talk like we are.

  • I counted 5 and then 7 steps across 2 breaths. Gotta be at least 50c per step for my to consider it any further. I probably wouldn't accept until $1. And even then, casual cardio like walking would ramp up breathing faster anyway.

  • That's a good point I overlooked because it's rare for me to have such polluted skies such as from massive wildfires. Pollution can definitely make the reds deeper, but it comes at the cost of muted colors overall. Human particulate pollution isn't really on the scale of what's needed to have a visible effect like that either, so wildfire smoke is the most common source of visible effects

  • Ah, I still haven't see that one from Studio Ghibli. Only the two I mentioned. I saw Spirited last year and Totoro last week. Honestly... I can't say I get them. I'm not sure if I'm too old to form nostalgia, too late to recognize the products of their eras, or too uninvolved with that realm of media to recognize how groundbreaking it was. I can appreciate the vibe and musical score, but it's not motivating enough to see more. So if anyone loves them and wants to give me pointers, I'm listening.

    I didn't really enjoy Akira, either. I went in relatively blind in 2020 and thought it was a motorcycle story, so I wasn't ready for the supernatural stuff. That was clearly not a children's movie though, so maybe I'm expecting too much depth in Studio Ghibli in my anime adventure route

  • In my experience as someone who rarely gets up for sunrise, they are not really different. I'm sure there is variation caused by rising vs diving temperature, humidity, cloud patterns caused directly by solar radiation, etc. But, functionally, pretty similar. And no, pollution does not make sunsets prettier. (will explain below)

    The main difference is my perception and my ability to predict what comes next. When the sun is setting, I have lots of warning because I can see the sun, obviously. With my spot at the beach, I can watch the sun go all the way down. I know exactly when it disappears and then I watch it a little while longer as the oranges turn even redder. I'm coming from my daytime perception of color and staring at the sun, further delaying my dark adaptation.

    Sunrise, on the other hand, is more of a surprise. The sky colors are morphing, but I can't quite tell when the sun will pop up. I'm in relative darkness so my color perception is different. Last one I watched I had my star app open to better predict the sun's appearance and it made it feel a little more like the sunsets I watch at the same spot. As the reds and oranges fade, I continue to normalize the white balance, so to speak, so it seems like a faster event as it approaches normal daylight color.

    Pollution. No, those pretty, dramatic sunsets are not caused by pollution. That's a myth you can look up, so here's my observations of why we perceive it as truth. I've spent a week at a time a few times a year for a decade watching just about every sunset on an ocean-like horizon over the rest of my country. The sun is creating a massive, flat rainbow of color. The reds get pulled down towards earth due to refraction in the atmosphere than the blue end. On cloudless evenings, the sky, being a poor reflector, turns a sort of yellow-orange hue while the sun itself is the only thing visibly turning red. That flat rainbow array still exists every time, but it's lost to space as it skims the atmosphere without hitting anything more solid. Think of the classic prism refraction rainbow being projected tangentially onto a basketball. But, if there's some spotty cloud cover between you and 1000 miles west, that rainbow will be blocked and reflected by some clouds instead of flying miles overhead and missing you. Just about all pretty sunset photos have clouds. The solid orange and Orange-yellow portion of the rainbow will be bouncing off the clouds in a patch of sky that still looks blue or pale white. That's where the drama comes from.

    I'd also add sunsets blocked at the final stages by very distant cloud banks have made what seem to be the reddest finales I've ever seen, a few minutes after sunset, because the light is still being refracted, reflected, and refracted again from even lower than before. I never pack up and go in for these, unlike most people at the beach. On the opposite end, I don't mind the boring cloudless sunsets because it means I'll have at least a few hours of clear night skies most times. Stargazing is what I'm really there for.

  • Any relation to the soots in My Neighbor Totoro? Their description made me think they were just eye floaters but since they also appear in Spirited Away with less introduction, I'm curious if they're rooted in a coal/wood burning era

  • Jerkoff

    Jump
  • It comes from "molon labe" (which you'll also sometimes see) which was what the Spartans said when told to lay down their arms or face certain defeat by the Persians at thermopylae. Spoiler: they came and took them.

  • For a while, it was full of pictures. Only pictures. That "lunch" thing was trendy but not at all the main content. Whatever you wanted, it was there. It was no different than any other platform. Some great content, some bullshit. Now it's shitty "reels", ads, and fraud. You'd have to sift through a lot of forced garbage to find your subscribed content.