I did not read the article. Nobody does anyway, right? So I figure I’d mention that Nepenthes is a pretty famous genus of carnivorous plant, they are the tropical vining pitcher plants. The more you know. Unless you didn’t read this and weren’t already aware.

A lot of people are saying that the US government banned TikTok, but from what I’m understanding, that’s not really what happened and what’s happening. Or have I misinterpreted things? From what I understand, they were told they had to divest and sell, but they fought that and now are opting to shutdown rather than comply. Is that not the case?

Either way, I’m gonna go all “I walked to school uphill both ways barefoot in a meter of snow” on this and say that my very little experience with TikTok users seems to suggest that its not much more than pure, unadulterated brain rot. So regardless of the fact(s) (i.e. shutdown / banned / etc), there’s maybe the tiniest sliver of a net positive here. Or not. It doesn’t affect me one way or the other and given where this country is politically (as well as where it is headed), I don’t give a rat poopoo.

Neck tie, but I’d love to see it comically long or at least more proportional and realistically sized. Right now it just doesn’t take up enough space, in my opinion.

That being said, if we’re “stuck” with these two options exactly as they are, the bow tie works better because it’s a more fitting size and better proportions. For me, it makes the design a little unbalanced with too much going on above the neck, too little going on below. Coincidentally, if you made it comically small, that might actually work out better, but I’d have to see it before I could be certain. However, that’s a fairly minor drawback.

Truth is, we cannot be certain Mark Zuckerberg fucked an ostrich. The only thing we can be certain of is that his mother very clearly fucked an ostrich and/or was herself an ostrich.

Have you tried the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate game? I have not played it much at this point, but what little I piddled with it seemed enjoyable. For what it’s worth, I’ve played Hades and Cult of the Lamb and really enjoyed them both. I have not played Slay the Spire, though.

What do you mean by tempting? Like are you asking about brand new games that don’t qualify for “patient” or just games in general? I’m not what most would call a gamer (I’m just an old dude that plays games sometimes) so I don’t know that a “Civ 7” gives me much context as to what’s being asked.

No. To each their own, but I think that’d be a ridiculous stipulation to place on myself and it’s hard to imagine why anybody would want to do it outside of super niche reasons.

Still playing through 2016 Doom. In my defense, this hasn’t been a great year for carving out time for gaming. I realized a couple days ago that I hadn’t even played anything in over a week (Dec 30th was the last day I’d played a game). Sad times being an adult with responsibilities.

Anyway, I’m hoping I finish the game soon. I don’t know if it qualifies as “patient gaming”, but I bought the Castlevania Dominus collection in 2024, which is the PC/Steam collection of DS Metroidvania Castlevania games. I played these games on the DS back in the day, still have them and my old DS, but I’m looking forward to playing them again. I mostly game on the Steam Deck these days and I think these games are a good fit for that hardware. They’re all really fun games that I look back on fondly, so here’s hoping I can get started on at least one of them in the next few weeks or so before my gaming season comes to an end.

I started playing one of these on the Wii many, many years ago. I think it was the original. It was a lot of fun. I don’t think I beat it, nor was I heavily invested enough to remember names and strategies, but it was cool to play an RPG that I didn’t get to play when it originally came out.

They don’t make cats like they used to. Used to have a cat named Smokey. For some reason my uncle would call it Smokey Brown. The cat wasn’t brown at all. It was solid gray except it had white tips on the ends of its paws, a tiny white chin patch, a white patch on its chest, and white tip of its tail. The inside of its ears was also white. Almost to the point that it might’ve been easier to call it an all white cat except it was grey in the middle, and on its head, and along its belly except for that white patch on its chest. Anyway, called that cat Chester at first after its chest patch but then we found out he was a she so we opted to alter the name and go with Smokey. Surprisingly Smokey didn’t seem to have a problem understanding the name change, almost like she hated the name Chester and was eager for something new and exciting and which truly captured her spirit or if not that at least her appearance. Meow.

You see the real secret to a happy life are the blue bins we pass along the way.

The older I get the more I wish I was one of those people who are able to completely ignore what’s going on around them and completely invent an alternative for themselves. Those are some of the happiest people I know.

Sounds like Eternal might not be my thing, but who knows. One of the reasons I choose Doom over Eternal initially is because Doom lets me take my time and explore when I want to. Eternal seemed like it was go, go, go cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. And that was well above my limit.

Several fossils from the congress of the USA were probably around to witness the development of these revolutionary tools.

Build them as connectable hexagons. Learn from the insects, they’ve had a half billion years to figure out what shit works and what shit don’t.

I think it’s possible, but it needs to strike lightning to be at the right place and the right time in a proverbial sense, for it to be successful longer term. Everybody’s trying to meet a metric in this world where clicks and views and conversions are easy to measure but something like quality is difficult to define at its best and impossibly subjective at its worst.

During the few months of the year I consider to be my “gaming season”, I mostly stick to 1 game at a time as my primary focus, but I’ll often have a game or few on the back burner that I’ll work into the schedule now and then.

This year I’m focusing on the Doom remake (Doom 2016) as my main game. To be honest, the game is stressful for me, so even though it’s been an absolute blast for me to play, it’s nice to have some alternative games to switch over to after I’m done with Doom.

I agree, it’s very hard to keep up with the stories when juggling multiple games at the same time. Almost as hard for me, if not harder, is keeping up with the controls. Every game is different. Games in the same genre can and will have vastly different control set-ups. Even games in the same franchise / series can have different controls from game to game. Yuck.

So, the control aspect and the story aspect are part of my inspiration for my secondary games. Right now I’m playing Halls of Torment. I guess there’s a story? But it doesn’t seem super relevant or necessary to keep up with. This game is in the same genre as another secondary game I play (and the main one from last year) called Vampire Survivors. Controls for both of these games is super basic. As I mentioned, if there’s even a story line to them, it’s irrelevant to my enjoyment of them.

I also have the Castlevania Dominus Collection which is includes all the metroidvania-style Castlevania games from the Nintendo DS. I played all of them back in the day on original hardware, so there’s a great deal of “recall” in terms of controls and story. And this is probably one of my favorite genres of game.

Well I think I’m a robot. Couldn’t do the things that it’s asking me to do. So I guess I’m a robot. Beeboo beeboo boop beeboo beeboo bee boop.

I’m still trying to finish 2016 Doom, but life has been literally Deck blocking me for the past few months, so it’s been slow going.

If i finish that game in the next few weeks, I’m going to go back and give Doom Eternal another second chance again once more. I’ve given it a try a number of times, just like I gave 2016 Doom a try numerous times with no luck. However, this year Doom suddenly clicked for me, and I’ve been playing it every chance I get (which is not much or often), so I’m thinking that may translate into finding a bit of love for Doom Eternal, even though I know they are very different games with different approaches to game play.

If that doesn’t work out, then I’ve got a few games that I’ve technically “started”, but I haven’t gotten very far in. So, if and when I decide to pick them up again, I’ll either restart them because I’m not far along enough for it to make much difference OR I’ll continue playing but it’s so early in the game that it’s basically the same as starting from the beginning.

One game I’ve just recently been dabbling with is a slightly older game called “Halls of Torment”. Similarish in game play to one of my other favorites “Vampire Survivors”, it seems like a lot of fun. I’ve also recently purchased the Resident Evil 4 remake and it’s a nice dose of nostalgia even though I much prefer the wiimote controls of the Wii version that I first played it on.

I’m going to be honest, Hades II hasn’t really clicked for me yet and I’ve given it lots of tries. The first game had me hooked almost instantly, so I was hoping to find that same connection with the sequel. So far, it’s not happened. Having said that, I saw that there’s a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in a similar style as Hades, so I got that to play. So far I like the game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Splintered Fate, but I’m not far enough along in it to have a strong opinion.

And my trusty, reliable back-up plan if nothing else works out? Castlevania Dominus Collection. The Castlevania “Metroidvanias” are my favorites. I’ve played all of these DS games on the original hardware, but it’s been so long since I played them, it will be like starting anew. Except in this case, there will be no question as to whether I will enjoy the game or not since I played them all before and loved them.

It’s okay, I’m 99% sure Musk’s species sheds its skin on a regular schedule to begin with, that being the lizardpeople way.