Open Thread

Open Thread #278

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36 thoughts on “Open Thread #278

  1. Kind of a follow up I wanted to make on a previous comment of mine on your last open thread…

    If you’re the “buttmonkey” in a friend group. Do yourself a favor and leave/ghost that group. Here’s what “Buttmonkey” means for those who don’t know:

    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButtMonkey

    2 days ago,I spoke to somebody on discord who I very much got the impression suffered from general timidity. He’s pretty much said that he’s always used as the butt of the jokes. effectively the “clown” of the group.

    I told him he should do himself a massive favor and leave that group,spend some time being alone (get comfortable with it) while improving himself,then find himself a new group of friends in a hobby/niche of his choice when he’s hopefully cultivated a more respectable presentation of himself.

    We love to laugh at buttmonkeys in fiction. But its absolutely an unfortunate thing IRL. terrible for your self-esteem and overall mental health. to be honest though,once your position in the hierarchy of a group has been solidified,it will be like clawing through hell to change that status. (and those “friends” of yours are probably going to make an effort to sabotage your attempt to change. whether its intentional/malicious or not is irrelevant. People do not like it when you try to change the Status Quo)

    Its like being friendzoned. Leaving and returning (after a LOT of time has passed) as a completely changed man is ironically your only hope. and even that latter part is not necessarily recommended.

    I imagine you guys agree with me here. When I finished high school,I had no hesitation about fading out all my interactions with people who didn’t respect me. I frankly cannot understand folks who cling to people who are obviously only interested in having a laugh at their expense.

    1. I think this will be the 2nd time a comment of mine has influenced you to make a new article. considered me honored! Haha.

      Hope to read it soon! 🙂

  2. I just came across a pretty great YouTube channel with gaming criticism, Ptolemy. This guy is far more based than Synthetic Man who is already really based. I would recommend downloading all the videos because as soon as this as-of-now tiny channel grows a little bit, some people will develop an itch in their nose that will not go away until they have shut it down. Here are two great videos to start with:

    1) The Aesthetics of Demoralization:

    2) The Controlled Decline of Videogame Music:

  3. This thing about friendzoning is rather strange to me. I have not dated any white girl so I don’t know, but is Vietnam, we usually start with friendship and build up from there. Guess white girls are weirdo for separating boyfriend and friend into 2 categories.

    It seems that the first issue that leads to friendzoning is the lack of sexual attraction. If a girl is highly attracted to you, she is very frustrates if you just wana be her “friend”.

    1. AlekNovy had an interesting talk about all that in this conversation with Novicious in the comments:

      https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2017/01/09/minmaxing-wont-work-in-dating-either/

      My impression thus far is,that it is ok to be “Casual Friends” (Or as Alek callled them; “female accomplices in crashing parties” instead of “female friends” or “activity partners that happen to be female”) with chicks you want to bang. it may even be arguably advantageous to you if you want a regular FWB arrangement.

      Becoming “Close friends” with them though…is probably a bad idea. As I’ve said,people do not like messing with the status quo,but it seems to apply especially to women. If you’ve become a major fixture in her life (i.e. being her shoulder to cry on,problem solver,etc. basically things “Orbiters” do.),then she may not want to risk ruining the gravy train by making the relationship sexual,even if she is attracted to you.

      Mind you however,this is only based on the info I’ve read. I grew up in all-boys’ school (Serious Question for ya’ll: Do you guys feel this is bad for men’s development? not being exposed to women early on?),so to tell ya’ll the truth,I never really had the experience of being long-term friendzoned (I knew people who did though,and that’s why i can speak about it) and little experience with female friends in general.

      so if anything I have said above is false,please point it out.

      I’m planning to execute Aaron/Alek’s recommendation of finding my niche and trying to date from there,but part of the reason I haven’t gotten there yet is because I want to finish my weight loss first. Although aside from lifting,I’ll be getting into Boxing again next week. great way to get my cardio. I could probably opt to go into afternoon classes and potentially meet new people,but I value getting somewhat more skilled (and fitter) at the activity first before considering doing that,so I’m opting for the morning sessions so I essentially get private instruction.

    2. Sex-segregated education used to be very common until a few decades ago, and surely society was in a much better shape back then. In schools, girls pose a distraction for guys. The only downside I can see is that lack of interaction with girls can lead boys to form bizarre assumption about female nature. Yet, there are a lot men out there who had plenty of contact with women — their single mom, female teachers, female class mates — yet they still form utterly absurd notions about female nature.

    3. “Friendzoning” means that you can only ever be a supposed friend, but in reality this means that she will only view you as an exploitable resource. This has nothing to do with genuine friendship.

    4. I think if you find girls who constantly flirt with guys, yet friendzone them, then it is a very red flag, as red as the flag of Soviet Union, and you should run away from them.

    5. ,but part of the reason I haven’t gotten there yet is because I want to finish my weight loss first

      I made that mistake myself. You can start infiltrating a niche before you’re done with the weightloss.

  4. Aaron,
    What does it take for a relationship to work out and/or be successful in general long-term? What can a woman and a man do to be successful in a relationship? Would you say it was easier for couples to have a successful long-term relationship/marriage back in the 50s compared to our modern day degeneracy era?

    1. A proper answer to this question would require a book. In short, you need to be aligned on life goals and hope that neither your nor her goals change significantly in the long run. The best bet is to be financially comfortable, live in a place where there is not a lot of degeneracy, and have a bunch of children. This will keep her busy until she is in her mid to late 40s, and afterwards you can enjoy a few decades as empty nesters together.

      It was most certainly a lot easier in the past to have a successful relationship. First, promiscuity was heavily frowned upon and, second, one income was enough to support a family. Thus, women were able to fully focus on child-rearing, which caused them to be a lot happier than today’s women with their emotional baggage, habitual drinking, and diet of SSRI pills.

  5. The next bank after Silicon Valley Bank has fallen, Credit Suisse:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ubs-offers-buy-credit-suisse-1bn-025-share-takeunder-cs-balks-offer
    They also had a bunch of woke faggots in very senior positions, but part of the blame is to be put on the utterly faggy EU leadership. As you may know, the EU decided to freeze Russian assets. As a consequence, the ultra-wealthy from other countries got cold feed and started to pull assets out of Credit Suisse. A very good case can be made that there are absolutely no legal grounds for freezing the money of Russian private citizens, in particular in the most neutral country ever. But in order to “do the right thing” and to “end up on the right side of history”, sacrifices have to be made. In this case, this could very well be the end of high-finance in Switzerland.

  6. AI image generation took another step forward with the release of Midjourney v. 5:
    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/ai-imager-midjourney-v5-stuns-with-photorealistic-images-and-5-fingered-hands/

    You can browse sample images on the vendor’s website:
    https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/recent/

    Presumably creative 2D image generation can now be considered a solved problem. The applications of it are quite numerous: porn, vidya, advertising, manga, art. It seems that the labor market for baristas will soon experience significant downward pressure on wages.

  7. Have you ever played Postal 2,Aaron?

    Its probably one of the cheapest games available on Steam. on the biggest sales (and I bought it at that time),the price is like peanuts. Its probably one of the most..urm,”politically incorrect” video games ever released. (banned in multiple countries) You can literally piss in people’s mouths and make them puke in addition to the violence.

    There’s nothing deep to be had with this game,but if you want to have the opportunity to be a reprehensible human being (you can go pacifist route in this game,but its definitely not fun) as you can be in a video game,this is definitely a great way to have that kind of fun.

    1. I have never played Postal 2 but I am aware of this game. I think it was the first game that fully focussed on shock value. There were violent games before but there was still a proper game around it. In Postal 2, it seems that depictions of gore and violence game first, and creating a game was more of an afterthought.

  8. Here is a gameplay clip of the REmake 4 demo that shows a high skill level:
    https://twitter.com/tabs_mvc/status/1634225389202538498
    Now contrast this to the shoddy hit boxes in Souls games! The clip above hints at something else: you cannot really spoil a skill-based game. Even if you knew what happened in this demo, or even the entire game, its mechanics would still keep you entertained. You can spoil the typical triple-A slop by Sony but not a game like REmake 4.

    Speaking of Soy-ny slop: I recently came across a forum post in which someone briefly remarked that people have no nostalgia for Sony’s big games. They play them once and then they move on. I agree with this. Even the classic God of War games were one-and-done affairs for me, and it was the same with Uncharted 1 to 4 and The Last of Us. It’s almost as if you suffer through the gameplay just to make it to the next cut scene. Nobody will speedrun Uncharted 2 in 15 or 20 years whereas a lot of people speedrun old NES games to this day, with no end in sight.

    1. Now that you mention it, I don’t recall ever replaying a Sony game more than once. I intended to replay GoW 3 at some point, but my PS3 is out of service. I’m still a bit skeptical about how the dynamic between Leon and Ada is going to play out in REmake 4. However, in reference to that leaked Capcom inservice where they pointed to BotW about what not to do in terms of the male savior and vulnerable female trope, I’m surprised so far that they’ve seemingly gone in the direction of making Ashley Graham even more submissive than before and much less of a brat. I expect my inner white knight to be activated.

    2. Check out this 30 second REmake 4 clip demonstrating enemy AI learning. A guy decides to toy with an axe-throwing Ganado and duck under two consecutive projectiles, only to get faked out by the third before standing up and taking the real one to the face: https://youtu.be/nO7FGEuCsVA

    3. This is incredible, in particular compared to the usual braindead behavior of enemies in video games. Capcom seem to really focus on replayability.

    4. Did we have old school games with this kind of AI? I imagine it may not have been possible. every enemy and boss I remember fighting in old school games usually had a pattern to them,and once you figure them out,you can beat them whenever you want.

    5. In the past, enemy AI was not playing fair at all. You linked to TV Tropes the other day. They also have an article about this particular problem:
      https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard
      Part of the fun of classic videogames was in analyzing enemy patterns and exploiting them. Unfortunately, enemy AI is seen as an unimportant issue by most developers so there have not been many advancements. I recall that the first F.E.A.R. game was praised for its enemy AI, though.

      On a related note, I quite like that the enemies in Demon’s Souls seemingly play by the same rules. They have stamina bars that can get depleted and you also see them consume healing grass just as you do. Thus, you can have some fun jousting matches. What I dislike, though, is that enemy weapons clip through obstacles whereas your weapon does not.

    6. Maou, I don’t know exactly when adaptive difficulty first entered the scene, but the OG RE4 certainly had it. For example, enemies would get wise to the fact that your were consistently head-shotting them, and would eventually begin to duck as well as bob and weave should you take to long to aim at their noggins.

      Aaron, I’ve actually almost completed a full run in RE4. I’m just at the part where you fight Ramon’s insect-like bodyguard in the underground area, just after the cutscene where Leon is dropped into the spike pit. I’m aiming to have it done just in time for the remake, so I’ll try to give a spoiler-free analysis as to just how remarkable it supposedly truly is. And of course whether there’s some woke bullshit in it. I can already tell a lot of Leon’s “toxically masculine” lines will most likely be dropped. C’est la vie, I suppose.

    7. One of my favorite lines got cut from the RE4 remake:
      https://files.catbox.moe/gcpw86.jpg
      Back then, this line made me perk up and realize that I am playing a really unusual video game.

      I am looking forward to your analysis. My expectations on REmake 4 are that the gameplay is solid but that the characters are not nearly as edgy as in the original. I would not at all be surprised if all remotely non-pc lines got cut. The classic “bingo” line is not one of them.

    8. The original RE4 also has dynamic difficulty, at least if you do not play on the “professional” setting. This means that if you do well, you will get fewer ammunition pick-ups and have to fight more enemies, and vice versa. Most players did not even notice this during their first playthrough (I did’t either).

    9. “My expectations on REmake 4 are that the gameplay is solid but that the characters are not nearly as edgy as in the original.”

      This is probably spot on. I’m hearing complaints that Ada’s new voice actor is pretty flat. They replaced the one they had in the 2nd remake for some reason. I thought she was pretty good.

      I did not examine the female corpse on this play-through, but I now remember seeing that years ago. Btw, in REmake 2 at the very beginning of the game’s first cinematic, there’s a truck driver that makes a quip about his wife looking like a zombie: https://youtu.be/DWbu4DtRrtU

    10. I just finished my playthrough of RE4. Since I was barreling through it there were a few times where I would just let out a big sigh. Not because the game wasn’t fun or anything, it’s just so content packed for an action game. Something I actually had a lot of fun doing was lettings certain weapons drop to zero and forcing myself to utilize others, or use the environment to my advantage while also exhausting what would sometimes become a ridiculous reserve of grenades. The reason for doing so is that the merchant will simply upgrade your weapon capacity as well as refill your ammo reserves for that weapon upon upgrading it. Considering how huge this game is I think it was pretty well tested, however, there were some times when the camera would cuck me and I don’t think it was necessarily the developers intention to do so. Another bad idea they left in is that whenever you go to pick up an item, no matter how many times you’ve done so for that same type of item, the game asks you yes/no do you want it. Just let me swipe it up and if I decide that it was a mistake then allow me to discard it or drop it on the ground. Btw, I didn’t skip any cutscenes or anything so this experience will be full and fresh on my mind for the remake.

    11. Btw, I can’t even open up youtube today without someone posting a video with actual spoilers in the title.

    1. Hahha loved it. I didn’t realize that Sandman was serbian. But now I can totally see it in his voice. The signs were there all along.

      Btw the part where he calls madonna’s boyfriend “baboyebatz” – that’s serbian for “grandma fucker”.

      Yes, he does seem to not give a fuck. Though I’m seeing that as a trend nowadays since Rumble has gotten to the point where most mgtow (and similar) know that rumble is a viable alternative, and they no longer have to quake in fear in front of the YouTube gods.

    2. I was not even aware that he is still around. The memes of the week videos are indeed quite funny. I think that he does not care at all nowadays because his channel got throttled massively, and his channel has been demonetized, so it is not as if YouTube can hurt him financially anymore. His most recent videos get a few thousands views whereas he used to get view counts in the 200k+ region. Probably he is completely sandboxed, i.e. YouTube does not recommend his videos to anyone. The moment one of those faggy YouTube moderators spends just a few minutes listening to his recent videos, his channel will be gone, though, as his language is very triggering.

    3. I always thought he was Canadian (ethnically Polish). I’ve talked to him a couple of time via Skype. He charges like $45 and hour. He’s way far out there, bro. Like, you have no idea.

    4. This look is surprisingly common among older female actresses. Demi Moore and Sharon Stone — the latter was mentioned in one of the recent videos by Sandman — have the same collapsed-cheeks look. It is truly ghastly.

    5. There was a reason why I did not link to a picture of her. As it turns out there are only very few times where you can even look up pictured of those old Hollywood hags. The images are NSFW, you do not want to look them up before or after a meal, and in the late evening, you want to avoid triggering nightmares. It seems you need to take a day off or do intermittent fasting.

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