Open Thread

Open Thread #295

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50 thoughts on “Open Thread #295

  1. Steam’s Summer sale event is here so I picked up Sekiro for half price. It’s the first time I’ve seen any of the Souls games marked down but I think I’m just going to skip the others.

    1. I was about to write that the discount does not seem to be active in Europe as Sekiro still sells for 29,99 — and then I saw that Activision normally charges 60 Euros for this game, four years after its release. You do not see this approach often.

    2. Yes, outside of Nintendo you don’t see it very often I’d say. In fact, Souls 1&3 are also pretty expensive on the platform. Fromsoft’s games must have some timeless magic to them.

    3. I have it installed and ready to go anytime. I might test it out tmrw in fact. I have actually not been gaming for at least a week since beating TotK and have just been watching some FFXVI “The Movie” here and there. Btw, I suppose you could say that Bahamut is canonically gay now. I felt the quality of the story took a turn for the worse pretty early on after they killed off both Benedikta and Cidolfus. There are still plenty of visually spectacular moments to witness, though.

    4. Did your opinion of TotK change after finishing it? I have finished watching the FF XVI gameplay movie. The story is heavily front-loaded. I would have liked to see Benedikta play a much bigger role, and there could have been a lot more political intrigue. The gay love story of Bahamut was shoe-horned in and cringe-worthy to watch but this is still a lot better than your character having gay sex as in the more recent installments of Assassin’s Creed.

    5. First impression if Sekiro—it’s badass. I love the setting, atmosphere and the art style. I kept the Japanese voices on which I think improves the overall vibe, or rather, that turning on English dubs would diminish the value of the game. Though I can tell there are probably going to be a ton of bullshit moments later on the combat and overall feel of the controls are pretty fluid, and the grapple hook sold me. So far, it seems pretty intuitive in the way that it’s easing you into the play style before completely unleashing 12 foot ninjas and mythical beasts on you. This is probably the most interesting game I’ve picked up in a good while. Also, I’d wager a guess that the RE4 team took some cues here from the parry system.

    6. I tend to play with Japanese voices whenever there is the option to do so. What struck me first when playing Sekiro was the game’s responsiveness. Considering how clunky Dark Souls is, this was a genuine surprise for me.

    7. Simply put, TotK is quantity over quality. The homosexuality in FFXVI compared to something like Game of Thrones is tame, opting for subtle implication versus raw make out sessions without proper warning that scar the average viewer.

      Also, I’m still not sure what happened in FFXVI. It seems as if some super powerful alien being that fancies himself a god seeded humanity in an attempt to counter this phenomenon known as the blight. The people used to worship him but he turned his back on them and fell asleep for a super long time, at which point humanity developed free will. So, Clive is supposed to be the culmination of the human project to serve as a vessel to cast some spell to do something or another. I’m still not sure what the blight is or why it happens, or if it’s conscious or even what Ultima is supposed to be. I just know that humanity prevails through sheer willpower despite all adversity and kills god, and thus eliminates the shackles of magic that binds all while cancelling out the blight.

    8. The nature of the Blight is probably explained in one of those fetch quests that were cut from the game movie, just as the explanation for why Clive gets rid of his face tattoo. Overall, compared to modern Final Fantasy lore, the story is almost pedestrian, yet still bizarre. There is a lot that is not explained well. Yet, the trailers lead you to believe that FF XVI is a game grounded in a fairly realistic world.

    9. Yes, I definitely agree that the story took a bizarre turn from a solid medieval type of setting to something more akin to sci-fi. There were no indication from the marketing materials that there would be such a drastic twist as such. It’s certainly not outside the realm of FF to do so, though. I remember FFVIII got so whacky that an entire fan theory popped up that the main protagonist had received a fatal wound at the end of disc 1 (of 4), and that the rest of the game was just some kind fantasy created by his dying mind (the devs have debunked this rather compelling theory).

    10. On the subject of TotK and your claims that the Switch is here to stay, apparently the Switch just enjoyed its best sales ever for the month of June in Japan. Presumably we have TotK to think for that. I believe the Switch may have even outpaced the PS5 again after the latter had been selling more units for a while. But don’t hold me to that last statement. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Switch eventually outsells the PS2.

  2. Guys, I’d like to pick up on the topic in the previous open thread that touched upon our looks scale criteria. I think it deserves its own post. So if you didn’t chime in, please do so here.

  3. Here’s mine:

    1: Either down syndrome, missing a limb, or born with a deformity.

    2: Extremely fat and extremely ugly.

    3. Either extremely fat and ugly, or extremely ugly and fat. They are both there but only one is in the extreme. Well, this pretty much covers any girl who is extremely fat, there faces are below average by default.

    4: Fat and ugly. Both are there, but nether in the extreme.

    5: Ugly or fat, but not both.

    6: Average. Average face and body.

    7: Cute. Above average face and body, but not hot. Could have a hot face and average body. Could have a hot body and average face.

    8: Hot. Hot face, hot body. Could have a gorgeous face and an above average body. Or a gorgeous body and above average face.

    9. Gorgeous. Gorgeous face, gorgeous body. Basically a top level bikini model.

    10. Perfection. I don’t give them out. Just the impossible standard of perfection.

    1. I’d definitely fuck a hot chick with her arm missing well before an “extremely fat and extremely ugly” bitch with all her appendages, especially assuming it’s not a birth defect and instead trauma related.

    2. Yeah, I would too. Didn’t consider that. But I also wouldn’t consider any girl who is missing a limb to be hot as her body is, at best , below average. Not sure where she would rank on my scale.

    3. I’d rather not go too much further into distinctions now that I think of it as it begins to get into blackpilled levels of mental masturbation. I think your initial assessment is objectively pretty good. My personal scale is kind of like a check list. Does the chick make my dick move? Is she at least sufferable to be around? If not, is she willing to put out with very little effort? If she’s of decent quality will chasing her likely pay off? Will being associated with her hurt my reputation in any way? If so, will I care?

    4. A lot of guys put average at six. That only leaves 3 grades/distinctions for girls above average. I think there are more distinctions than just 3. That’s just another reason I think 5 should be the average.

    5. Yeah, when I first thought up my scale I considered making 5/10 the average. However, in the US academic grading system a 5/10 is actually a failing grade. It might sound arbitrary, but it didn’t sit OK with me. 7/10 is considered an average grade here. This obviously appears a steep standard for an average looking girl. So I simply split the difference. Hence, 6/10.

    6. LOL, now that I think about it, I think even the Fahrenheit temperature scale in the US even has something to do with it (at least for a native southern Californian). 100 degrees being ridiculously hot weather. 90 being hot as fuck. 80 being hot but could be hotter. 70 being warm but could be better. 60 being not exactly cold but definitely not warm. 50 being cold.

  4. Hey Aaron, since you‘ve brought up Bitcoin in the past and also accept it as donation, will you post your thoughts on it? Sure, there already has been written a lot about that digital currency, but I would still be interested in reading your take about the current state of the Honey Badger amongst currencies.

    Also: Fuckin‘ A for your current top banner!

    1. I think that bitcoin is the only digital currency, perhaps with the exception of ETH, that is potentially suitable as a store of value. However, due to the high fluctuation, and the problem that Daddy Government can just declare bitcoin illegal overnight, it is still a pretty risky proposition.

    2. The only other thing I’d mention is that if you intend to hold BTC longterm then remember the SBF incident and store your coin off of an exchange. I’m sure you already probably get that but for anyone reading that doesn’t, beware. I actually know one dude that failed to do so and lost several thousand dollars after that debacle.

  5. Aaron,
    Have you seen the destruction all the doctors and engineers have done to France? It’s what the government wants… Chaos! I speculate that in about 20 years, France will become Islamic. The Ottoman Empire is once again trying to reconquer Europe, and perhaps this time they will be successful unless Europeans awake up and start fighting back.

    “There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades”. Muammar Gaddafi

    Unfortunately, that’s what they get for being too tolerant of diversity and unfettered mass illegal immigration. Culture will be erased and history will be rewritten. These doctors and engineers are popping out kids like copy machine.

    1. Reality is a lot worse than this 1930s propaganda poster. It says quite something that reality eclipses a pamphlet that was produced to stir up the population. Furthermore, it is remarkable that the author seems to assume that blacks will assimilate to French customs whereas the complete opposite has unfolded.

    2. @Pickernanny
      France is becoming a shit hole place like Libya is and its going to get worse. Macron hasn’t done anything about the Riots. Even Germany suffered terrorist attacks under the hand of Gaddafi in 86 when they bomb La Belle night club in Berlin.

    3. I will write an article on this soon. On a related note, I have been busier than usual these last few weeks, but the situation is improving. Expect more articles over the next days.

    4. “Furthermore, it is remarkable that the author seems to assume that blacks will assimilate to French customs whereas the complete opposite has unfolded.”

      Yeah, that’s true. He certainly didn’t go far enough. Perhaps at the time period it was unfathomable to portray what became the current day reality as it might have seemed too unbelievable to the average civilized German back then.

  6. Aaron,
    A few days ago, YouTube personality fitness and body builder Jo Linder known as Joesthetics passed away at the age of 30. I’m not sure if you have heard of him. I used to watch his YouTube channel on and off. According to his girlfriend, she claims that Linder died of an aneurysm and not the vaxx. In one of his interviews Linder notes that his doctors found high levels of metals in his blood and had to detox from the vaxx he took four times.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/german-bodybuilder-and-youtube-star-jo-lindner-dies-of-aneurysm
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHIoQeknRLAj54CMOzRZbaA

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYUcdmlojJ8
    At 14:40 where he talks about taking the vaxx

    1. I looked at some pics of this dude and he had cartoonish proportions at ridiculously low looking body fat levels. My first assumption is that his lifestyle in general caught up with him, ultimately suffering a similar fate to that of Zyzz. Dude just looks like a walking pharmacy.

    2. Did you watch his final interview? If not, then I encourage you to do so, as it seems that he got a vaxxed with a vial from one of the bad batches.

    3. The name sounded vaguely familiar to me, but before his death, I don’t think I ever watched any of his videos. His English is not particularly good but he seems to say that doctors pulled out those bizarre long fibrous clots from his veins. There is the stereotype that bodybuilders are insecure and crave the approval of others. Seeing that this guy got vaxxed just so that he would not stand out negatively in his peer group seems to corroborate this. Well, he should have looked into all those “conspiracy theories” before getting vaxxed to the maxx as he would most certainly still be alive today.

    4. Thanks for posting this link! This is exactly the kind of fibrous clots I was thinking of. The “final interview” I referred to is the one you posted. He died soon afterwards.

    1. This is an incredible story. It also illustrates the utter narcissism of women. The rational response would be to wonder why Brad Pitt would go for a random middle-aged woman but this is clearly too much to ask for.

  7. What is the image on top of the blog. An Asian woman drinks Budlight.

    It is a satire or something?

    1. Look up “Mulvaney” in combination with terms like “Bud Light”, “disaster”, “fiasco”, “market share loss”, etc. A marketing executive whose early-life section I definitely did not look up tried pushing a transgender influencer named Mulvaney as the new face of the Bud Light brand. The target audience was not impressed at all by this, and turned their back on this brand in droves. This is no longer a temporary boycott but a shift in consumer spending behavior. This is a textbook example on how to destroy billions in brand value in days.

      EDIT: Bud Light sells for less than bottled water. Retailers need to move their stock, but their stock is not moving. There were also instances of stores giving away six-packs of Bud Light for free, and people still did not take them.

    2. Assuming that a non-fat woman is Asian is a decent heuristic for the current year.

  8. Proof of concept for an AI girlfriend in a video game that you can have voice conversations with:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQq8M88s3BU
    She also seems to be able to follow certain commands. Her personality in this video is a bit too “boss bitch” for many mens’ tastes, but that can apparently be customized.

    People already obsess over waifus in asian games like Genshin Impact, Honkai Starrail, etc. Those character models are cuter than this Skyrim NPC. When a pleasant AI personality is combined with a cute character model the player exeperience will be like becoming the protagonist of an isekai anime.

    1. This mod seems pretty good. I don’t like the personality of the AI sidekick in this video either, but this is besides the point. Compared to the dialogue in Sony games, which often pair you up with an obnoxious AI partner, this already leave a far better impression. Well, if Sony adopted this technology, you would get lectured on wokism every minute of the game.

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