I’m surprised at your age you can hear anything. 🧓

I’m trying really hard not to comment something like “Welcome to one of many, many joys of living with an immature teenage child.”

Kicking the ice under the fridge is actually one of the least aggravating of the shitty things to do in the kitchen, but so indicative of what type of person they are. Other well-known classics include leaving a microscopically small portion of milk in the carton to avoid having to rinse the thing out and place it in the recycle bin and using the last clean cup in the cabinet so that you don’t have to bring one of the dozen+ dirty cups you’ve accumulated in your room to the kitchen to be cleaned for reuse. Oh, and let’s not forget drop a spoon of peanut butter the floor and leave it for the dog to clean up even though you know she’s allergic to it so it makes her throw up and then later on causes a bunch of skin issues for her.

No, I’m not the least bit bitter. Why do you ask?

30 years ago, I was dating a guy whose family’s love language was mean, spiteful shouting at the top of their lungs at each other. His mom and his sister, in particular, seemed to despise me right from the start of our relationship. My boyfriend insisted that they both liked me, though, and had a special place in their heart for me. The sister and mother both made it clear that they believed I was not good enough for him but also acted like I was too good for him.

Towards the end of our relationship, my boyfriend’s brother-in-law passed away suddenly and tragically due to a drug overdose. I was on a trip out of town when it happened, but I was able to get back home the morning of the funeral. Because I’d been out of town, I hadn’t actually gotten a chance to talk to my boyfriend’s sister or any of the family before hand.

We get to the funeral and there’s a line of friends and family going in, each person stopping to talk to the widow. While in line my boyfriend told me that his sister was maintaining her composure well, but that she’s probably going to break down when she sees me because she didn’t think I was going to be there, and how it was going to mean so much to her that I was able to make it. Really talking it up.

Finally we get up there to her, and I said something like “I’m so sorry, how are you holding up?”

The sister’s whole demeanor just flipped. She immediately went into rage mode, “How the fuck do you think I’m holding up? My husband just died.” She didn’t quite yell it, but she said it loudly enough that everyone there could hear it. Awkward. To be honest, she was a hateful person in general and lashed out in pain, but come on.

Anyway, I know it’s not fair to judge, but she did move on to a new man (her dead husband’s drug dealer) in a matter of weeks after the funeral. I mean, good for her, of course, but it does make people talk.

Looking at the game’s minimum requirements, I’m not sure I how well my available hardware will work. Granted, it’ll probably be some time before I play the game unless there’s a free demo available. I’m more of a patient gamer type and I still haven’t played through Eternal yet (and may not).

Honestly, from the descriptions and reviews I’ve seen, Dark Ages game play style sounds like it’s a sharp turn away from Eternal, which means it might be more my thing. Granted, I’m also seeing a lot of folks saying it’s super heavy into story telling and cut scenes. Not that I have a big problem with those things, but I enjoy that they’re kind of light in earlier entries of this series.

I need to bookmark this for when I have time to read it.

Not going to lie, there’s something persuasive, almost like the call of the void, with this for me. There are days when I wish I could just get lost in AI fueled fantasy worlds. I’m not even sure how that would work or what it would look like. I feel like it’s akin to going to church as a kid, when all the other children my age were supposedly talking to Jesus and feeling his presence, but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t experience any of that. Made me feel like I’m either deficient or they’re delusional. And sometimes, I honestly fully believe it would be better if I could live in some kind of delusion like that where I feel special as though I have a direct line to the divine. If an AI were trying to convince me of some spiritual awakening, I honestly believe I’d just continue seeing through it, knowing that this is just a computer running algorithms and nothing deeper to it than that.

This makes sense and would explain the mainline windows versioning and probably the xbox versioning too!

Microsoft to AI: List all the integers from one to eleven.

AI: 3. 95. 98. 2000. XP. Vista. 7. 8. 10. 11.

So much of social media (and online in general) is just ads in disguise and people shilling products, intentionally or otherwise, and it ultimately spills over into real life conversations. So I agree with you completely.

You might have given a thumbs up to your aunt Gina’s photo of her and her friends at the office party celebrating her promotion. Ad networks see it as you interacting with a photo that contains a bottle of Schmudd soda, even if that’s a detail you didn’t even notice.

You have dinner with your dad that night and the topic of Schmudd comes up due to the latest forced controversy (ermagerd the trans) so naturally when you start seeing Schmudd commercials the next day, you might assume your phone was listening to that conversation. But actually the reason you’re seeing the ads is because of the thumbs up to aunt Gina’s post.

And yes, the tracking and analytics tools find those types of patterns and relationships, and so much more. And they’ve been able to do that for over a decade. No telling how good it’s gotten since I was last working adjacent to that field.

On the other hand, it’s amazingly easy for advertisers to figure out what topics / products you’re talking about without the need for constantly recording via your microphone. In most instances, it doesn’t even really make sense to constantly record audio via the mic to monitor folks, other means are much more cost efficient while being just as effective. That’s not to say that some app isn’t or hasn’t done it, just that historically speaking, it hasn’t been as ubiquitous as a lot of people seem to think or imply.

Sometimes with these things, you have to apply Occam’s Razor.

I stayed with some family during the holidays a few years ago and they are conspiracy theory fanatics unfortunately. The type that swear their phones are listening to everything they say. They get ads for things they’ve only ever talked about in person. That sort of thing.

As proof, they pointed out how the prior night the topic of old timey candy from our childhoods came up and all of a sudden they were getting news stories and facebook ads about those liquid filled wax bottle candies. To them, the only plausible explanation is that our phones were listening to us.

Except, as I pointed out, I specifically looked those wax bottle candies up later that night because I was curious if they were still for sale. They live way out in the country and there’s limited cellular data, so basically everybody there that night was using the same wifi connection. Which means, our internet activity is all linked because to the outside world, we’re all on the same network/IP address. Even more curious, though, nobody got ads for any of the other candy that we talked about and which I didn’t specifically look up. So, if our phones were actually recording us and serving up ads based on the things we talked about, then why didn’t we get ads for Blackjack gum, wax lips, and Brach’s? Only the very specific one I happened to search for.

I live in a part of the USA where, decades later, I still hear brand new and seemingly made-up idioms on a fairly regular basis. This skill set, making sense of otherwise fake sounding idioms based on limited context, is practically a necessity 'round these parts. After all, you can’t feed a cow a carrot and expect it to shit you out a cake.

My opinion is subject to change, since I do plan to eventually give Eternal another attempt, but I know why I like 2016 better. It’s because I can go at my own pace and have the freedom to play the battle scenarios out how I want to (for the most part).

Eternal basically tells you early on, you have to go, go, go, go, go. Keep moving or you die. I find that kind of annoying.

But then the fact that you’re almost constantly being forced to use every single button, skill, weapon, etc on-demand, in very specific ways with a fair amount of precision basically kills the joy for me. I don’t get to play games much, sometimes it’s weeks or months between sessions. I can’t keep up with all that bullshit and it sucks nearly every last drop of fun out of the game if I have to waste my limited fun time having to relearn all the mechanics.

I just want to casually rip and tear for fun. Eternal felt like a micromanaging boss constantly telling me that I’m doing things wrong and behind on my unrealistic deadlines.

MY new Tesla? Doubt it. Considering I’m unemployed due to this clown administration and I don’t tend to upgrade much of anything, let alone a vehicle, unless/until the old one no longer functions.

The tape is a lie.

Mark my words, Big Minge will never let this technology see the light of day.

Point of clarification: I believe there’s a good chance of “aliens” in the universe (i.e. life on Earth isn’t the only life in the universe). When I used that term, I was referring to people who think aliens are visiting the earth.

Regardless of what I need to do, I’m going to do it. I do lots of things I don’t need to do.

On the one hand, yes, yes, yes, absolutely.

On the other hand, way too often people are absolutely vile here and nobody sticks up for themselves or for others. Really a shame that r-word-it bullshit behavior is often times totally accepted and approved and even rewarded here.

One of my most embarrassing habits is that I sometimes go to the R-word site and read through the comment section there. Way too often, there are askr-word (or other sub r-word) posts where the comment section ends up being a bunch of bullshit supernatural responses. This one kind of reminds me of that. If you believe in ghosts or extraterrestrial aliens, I think less of you. You are dumb. Sorry, but it is what is is. I still drink alcohol sometimes, even knowing it causes cancer, so I’m not claiming I’m better than you. We can both/all be stupid. But if you believe in that supernatural crap, you’re stupid, too.

The real question is: Do I care? And the answer is no. No I do not.

For me, Hollow Knight started out a bit rough, got fun and interesting, but ultimately, I lost interest in trying to finish. There were parts which were a lot of fun, but eventually it became nothing more than a chore. And I’ve got too many other REAL chores to let a game like this stress me out. So I set it aside without finishing it.

Despite that, I’m looking forward to this sequel. I likely won’t be a day one buyer (but who knows???), but I’m still pretty sure I will eventually play it. I’m hoping there are some nice game play and story improvements, but even more of the same could be nice.

Thanks, Obama.

A number of years ago, I was walking past a cow pasture when I heard a ruckus. The cows were mooing up a storm and there was a flock of geese in the pasture honking back in agitation. By the time I got to the top of the hill and could clearly see what was going on, I witnessed a good ole fashioned standoff.

Perhaps triggered by my sudden appearance in the distance, the geese spooked first. The honking intensified and they started retreating in a hurry as they prepared to take flight, cows charging towards them at full bovine speed.

As the last goose just lifted off the ground, one of the cows managed to catch up and stomp it out of the air mid-flight. Poor bird came crashing down underneath a barrage of hooves flailing on top of it. It tried to lift its head off the ground a time or two, but within moments of its body being crumpled, it was dead.

Everybody acts like Canada geese are bad-asses, not to be trifled with. A goose will leave you broken, but alive. Cows, on the other hand, are blood-thirsty, cold-blooded killers. Watch your back.