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_NetNomad

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FM Chiptune Musician | DX Complex Staff | SEGA, MSX and Retro Tech Dork | He/Him

Formerly [email protected]
Microblogging at [email protected]
https://netnomad.dxcomplex.com

On mbin, it's very easy to accidentally boost (retoot) posts, and mbin doesn't seem to propogate undoing that. any boosts you see from this account when viewing on mastodon et cetera are finger fudges, sorry!

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Meanwhile I'll never stop hearing about how perfect Michael Burnham apparently was, even if her series showed her to be a perennial fuck up.

THANK YOU. putting aside how many people weren't engaging with the show in good faith in the first place, you had to have been watching a completely different show to walk away with that impression. the whole point of her character in the early show is that she thought she was an infallible protagonist but learned over and over and over and over that she isn't. spock more or less looks into the camera and says as much in S2!

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would you rather fight 100 tribble-sized sehlats or one sehlat-sized tribble?

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it's wild how many early computer games were star trek games and yet seemingly all of them were shooty shooty pew pew, going all the way back to 1971. at least the arcade game had the tact to call it a simulation!

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i used to be a voracious reader, but as i grew up i slowed down. getting books and then lugging them around was less feasible with Stuff To Do, and this is gonna sound super stupid but i have a hard time getting comfortable reading a physical book. for whatever reason I hold it wildly different depending on if i'm reading the right or left page so i'm constantly moving around

i've started using libby and now i'm reading multiple books a month again. you need a physical library card but once you have it you havd access to all of your library's digital stuff. in the US you can also get a state library card in some states online, giving you access to even more books. you can also find lots of classics online for free through project gutenberg, and the internet archive has a mix of free and rental books. the latter needs a special app to open them, though, and the only one i could seem to get to work was in italian

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unfortunately age verification is now required to touch grass

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i personally find bananna audio the most appealing

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i am very happy with mbin. a lot of people are insisting there are no other alternatives in this thread but i am literally posting here from mbin lmao. the UI is very slick and it can also reply to microblog posts on platforms like mastodon, givinf you a full viee of the fedi. there are also non-federated alternatives like lobste.rs and i think digg is trying to stage a comeback

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there's a saying that goes something like "democracy is a fresh challenge for each generation." any trek show that shows what we can be without also exploring how we can (or can fail to) stay there is being overly optimistic at best and dishonest at worst. i agree that the execution often fails, especially in Picard and early Discovery, but later Discovery and Academy are shows not about a distopian future but about carving out a utopia within one. Discovery starts out in the SNW era and even in universe everyone can tell how messed up this crew is- note how Pike treats Disco with kid gloves versus how he treats the Enterprise like a ship of adults- but something very interesting happens when they make the jump to the post-Burn future, where suddenly the worst Starfleet has to offer are the best just because they remember how things could be. That offers them and the fallen federation (and the show) a mutual chance at redemption, and Academy is building off of that without Disco's baggage. Academy sees the same problems you do with the post-Burn galaxy and are working to turn it back into the one you remember. you could argue about the execution still, but the heart is there

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i didn't even realize illa meant to be cardassian. but i also didn't realize that was tawny newsome despite being very excited she was one of the writers so i might just be stupid

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it's funny to think that all of dax's hosts were mild-mannered before they were joined and then five minutes stuck with dax they start breaking any and every rule. their first thought together after joining is "aren't you tired of being nice? don't you just want to go apeshit?"

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hard to say for now other than they both coexisted for a bit, but out of fiction i have a feeling they're just going to ignore the last two seasons of Picard altogether until a hypothetical Lower Decks spiritual successor where they'll somehow fix it with a throwaway line. speaking of Lower Decks, that's probably how they'll handle it's finale too considering the multiverse wormhole thing is conspiciously absent from the 32nd century

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i can get behind this if and only if we also rename the band to Bill Eilmer and His Comets

My Linux distro tierlist

I labeled some of the lesser known logos. The criteria are arbitrary and I made this based on how much I liked using it. ...

Tierlist of Linux distros. S Tier has: Void Linux, Nix OS, Debian and Artix Linux. A Tier has: Arco Linux (RIP) and Arch Linux. B Tier has Linux Mint. C Tier has: Aurora Linux and KDE Neon. D Tier has Fedora Sway Atomic. F Tier is empty. There is an unranked tier at the bottom, with distros unranked due to not enough usage, these are Manjaro Linux, OpenSuse and standard Fedora Linux.
ALT
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no hannah montana linux??

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if it's the switch version of 3D World you're emulating, have you tried Bowser's Fury mode? imo 3D World is neat but Bowser's Fury is absolutely phenomenal

Penny's Big Breakaway is on Steam and it has movement options very similar to Oddessy paired with Sonic-style rolling gameplay. I think the bosses are a noticable weak point but the levels are fantastic. if you like the momentum stuff, Spark the Electric Jester 2 (cutscenes but you can skip 'em) and 3 and Rollin' Rascal (early access) are excellent as well

+1 for Kirby and the Forgotten World, magnificent game. if you feel particularly brave, the much maligned Balan Wonderworld is similar but with an emphasis on revisiting old levels with new powers ala LEGO Star Wars. i enjoyed it but most people did not so maybe save this one for a steep sale and a rainy day

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oh, and Mika and the Witcj's Mountain! it looks like a flying game but your flying is just double jumps boosted by gusts of winds- it's secretly a platformer and a very fun one. this is another with a lot of dialogue though

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i think what artyom is getting at is that showing google maps works the way we already knew it worked isn't much of a point, let alone a big one

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i just rolled credits on Forgotten World (the one where you can become a car) last night and i was blown away. Forgotten World is largely a 1:1 conversion of the 2D games into 3D with the notable exception that you can't float higher than your jump height, so that does raise the skill floor noticably. still, just getting to the end of any given level is easy-peasy, but some of the challenges and collectables are definitely tricky. the 3-star portal stages in particular can be a real challenge, and there's also a post-game world i haven't tried yet. i think the switch 2 version even has a post-post-game. ultimately, though, if challenge is an important factor for you, you'll probably be better served by another game

kirby and the amazing mirror deserves a shout-out for being difficult in it's own unique way. it's a metroidvania but many of the doors are one-way just like in regular kirby, so it's easy to fuck up and go the wrong way and have to restart. the platforming and combat are both still very easy but that does you a fat lot of good when you hit a dead end!

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"Perhaps, Mr. Bond, we can make a wager. Should you win our ultimate contest of wits, I will allow myself to be captured, but when I win, you shall be at my mercy. Mwahahahahahaha! so now only one question remains- Strategos, or Warhammer?"

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Part of it is that Voyager has the unenviable role of being one of TNG's two successor shows. The other was DS9, and everything looks bad sitting next to DS9. Part of why DS9 was able to do the wild things that it did was because the writing team had minimal supervision and were allowed to go buckwild- paramount were keeping a closer eye on first TNG, and then Voyager. Because of that, Voyager plays it safe and worships the status quo even when the fiction is begging to go in another direction, and the whole series has this feeling of having been written by committee. This even frustrated the writers, one of whom left the show out of frustration to go write the Battlestar Galactica reboot, which is essentially gritty, serialized Voyager

that said, I watched the whole thing and largely enjoyed it. you kind of have to meet it where it is, and accept that major plot details get glossed over and everyone takes turns holding the idiot ball. for me, the characters are what salvages the underwhelming plot. being a smaller ship, younger characters like Kim and Paris are able to be movers and shakers, giving the show a coming-of-age quality not found again until LDS and Progidy. Janeway is great when she's not holding the idiot ball, it was really awesome seeing a captain who came up through science instead of command. When the blue or gold shirts give most captains a solution to a problem, they're glad the problem it solved, but Janeway would get excited about the solution itself, sometimes even finishing Belana's sentences.

Neelix had never so much as heard of starfleet, and had none of the training or skills even a crewman would need, but his good nature and see-a-need, fill-a-need ethos arguably makes him the most starfleet person on the boat. Kes is similar, with the added twist of dedicating herself to a voyage she won't live to see the end of.

VOY spoilers

People say it was good that she left because there wasn't much to do with her character, but to me that's nonsense. Not being able to see her come to terms with her mortality and how that intersects with her psychic powers was easily the show's biggest missed opportunity.

the doctor is an interesting inversion of the good idea/meh execution pattern because his concept is unremarkable- essentially a rehash of Data learning to be human, just accidentally and with sarcasm- but the execution was incredible. later on when 7of9 joins the cast, she displaces him as The Data but he remains a main character and takes on a mentorship role which allows him to develop even further

all in all, it's a show full of then-new and brilliant ideas that regularly fumbles the execution. and that isn't for everyone, especially with the plethora of other great trek out there. but if you watch it and are able to forgive the not great scenario writing you might enjoy it nonetheless

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this is the kind of hard-hitting research i like to see! now i want to try a mont blanc...

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even if you like BSG, it definitely had it's ups and downs. when BSG started, it really sung, and then as it lost steam, it almost became a parody of itself at times. and the thing with Universe for me was that it skipped past the being good part and felt like a bad later season of a once good show

Why does everyone here think they're autistic or ADHD? The memes all describe normal human foibles.

I see this on Imgur and Bluesky as well. Here's a great example, and the one that prompted me to finally ask. My daughter has autism and ADHD. She takes speed to slow down. Best friend is ADHD, same deal. But they're basically "normal" people. I'm truly sorry is this comes off as insensitive. ...

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there's definitely a non-zero number of people who self-diagnose as something to feel "special," but for every one of them there are five people who are autistic or ADHD and need accomidations but won't get them because the people around them think they're doing them a favor by insisting they're not "broken." you don't want your kid to be the first thing, sure, but also make sure you aren't causing the second thing- if you're in doubt, the right person to ask is a psychologist or a psychiatrist. however, that can be very expensive, hence the whole self diagnosis to begin with

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it's interesting, with CR not using daggerheart for their next big campaign, i had assumed they just wanted to sweep it under and rug and forget it happened. and then you hear they sold 2500% more than their projections. i'm not too familiar with the comings and goings of CR but i feel like there's a story there, especially with them also bringing on a new DM when Matt Mercer basically is the brand. none of this is criticism, if they're seeing success with both the game and the show and are happy then more power to them. and it's always great to see anything else succeed in a market so thoroughly dominated by D&D. it's just... i dunno, curious

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Tech has hit a hard graphics plateau: raw generational updates are now nuanced upgrades measured in single-digit frame gains rather than evolutions anyone with eyes can appreciate

in my mind this happened a decade ago and people are only just now realizing that the emperor has no clothes

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shout out to the galloping ghost in chicago. massive, massive arcade full of vintage cabs, some of them super rare. they charge a door fee so no cards or coins, but if you make a day out of it you're plaging hundreds of dollars of games for like 20 bucks or something. they even have an R360 G-Loc cabinet, although you need to call ahead to make sure they have an extra hand on site to run it. i didn't know you needed to call and when they told me i could come back tomorrow and i mentioned i drove in from out of town, they gave me a free admission card for next time, so very nice people working there too!

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wild how far technology has marched on and yet we're still essentially using the same basic idea behind technicolor. but hey, if it works!

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the only integration i want between my phone and my car is a 3.5mm audio jack. i'm driving a 2016 right now and am dreading replacing it because i doubt i'll be able to find anything without this "infotainment" crap. i thought i had read that those were being phased out because consumers unilaterally hated them, so reading the opposite here is a huge bummer

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ooh duly noted thank you

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there is truly no higher art than replacing "art" or "heart" with "fart"

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you are a true fartist

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this is especially appropriate considering Donkey Kong was almost a licensed Popeye game

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god, the only thing worse than going to the ER with a glued butthole is getting there and seeing the "i feel a paper coming on" look in the doctor's eyes

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biblically accurate vee

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it's a shame ReactOs is only in alpha and FreeDOS is single-tasking. it's probably sacrelige to say this in a linux community but i wish we had foss os options that are to DOS and CP/M what modern linuxes are to Research Unix

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it's hard to compete with A Chtistmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, which has to me the definitive versions of a lot of the classics plus one of the all-time greatest tunes period in "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." if you like the kind of cheese that sprays out of a can, the Brian Setzer Orchestra does fun rockabilly takes on the classics, and Wizzard's originals "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" and the other one who's name i can't remember are great. for the nerds in the room, Urizen's "Autonomy" carries on the TSO spirit with a heavy heaping of chiptune, the soundtrack fo the Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams... demo has awesome renditions of the classics in 90s VGM fashion, and look up the demo song on the Yamaha SHS-10 keytar when you get a chance

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why would you post something so ominous

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east and eastn't

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Ann Leckie and Becky Chambers are definitely up there

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and traveling by locomotive takes the most preperation because you have to train

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a close cousin of the recorder is the tin whistle, and listening to a minute of mary bergin's whistling will quickly shatter any illusion that fipple flutes are toys

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you might wanna check out Knights of Guinivere next, only one episode out right now but it's by the same creator

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i'm suprised no one seems to have point-blank asked him who his parents were in court, or if they did why that wasn't the beginning and end of the case

Please help me under stand my spouse's gift and their hurt

For my birthday, my spouse got me a nicer newer expensive version of a thing I already have. The one I have is older and dented but works just fine. I use it weekly. I never complain about it. I've never asked for a newer one. The one I have was given to me by my mother in law, whom I adore. It's sentimental. ...

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I'm very suprised by a lot of these comments. it's very common advice that a gift giver should gift something that the reciever wants, not the giver. Not gifting someone they already know isn't common advice but it's already common sense. Common sense isn't always as common as the name suggests, though, and we all have blind spots. The other commenters may be right in that your wife's reaction might be a sign that your tone was harsher than you intended or thought, but that doesn't change the fact that you were hurt as well. if this was an aquiantance i might agree that you should have just accepted the gift graciously even if you were just gonna return it, but your partner should someone you can be honest with and someone who will appreciate that honesty

like most relationship problems, i think the best way to move forward is to talk it out. i'd apologize for the way you reacted whether or not you actually blew your lid as an olive branch. explain again calmly where you're coming from with this and emphasize gratitude that your wife was observant enough to get you a gift they thought you would use while also explaining- again, calmy- why your wife came to the wrong conclusion. try and zero in on the heart of the problem- was it specifically that you wanted to return it that was the issue? then you might be able to compromise that you keep it until your current one is broken beyond repair, for example. never ever ever say "i'm sorry you feel that way," that never goes well, but do show genuine concern and remorse for the way that they feel. after your wife blows off some steam, if you both approach this calmly and in good faith i'm sure you'll be able to find a compromise. that might look like your t-shirt rule, "no gifting things i already own," or deciding to always gift "experiences" instead like another commenter said, or maybe just no gifts moving forward if it really is always going to be a point of contention

good luck to you and i hope everything works out well for the both of you

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i think you replied to the wrong comment?

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i agree with you that insincere apologies are wrong. OP structured their post looking to understand their wife's POV, rather than to get a bunch of strangers to agree with them like on an AITA post. if that were the case i definitely wouldn't suggest apologizing. OP acknowledges that they hurt their wife, even if they didn't mean to, much like their wife hurt them, even if they didn't mean to. i just think sitting down and actually expressing that, saying "hey, i wouldn't have said that or said it the way i said it if i knew it would upset you, i'm sorry" establishes empathy and good faith, and often times doing that is enough to get the other person to do the same thing. if OP didn't seem sorry i wouldn't have suggested apologizing

i think my wording was the problem here in hindsight. "i'd apologize for the way you reacted whether or not you actually blew your lid" does sound like i'm saying to apologize for being angry even if you weren't angry. what i was trying to say was that apologizing for hurting them, even if their reaction seemed way out of proportion to what OP said or how OP said it, would be a good first step to reconciliation

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perhaps Trip playing "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" whenever T'Pol came to do Vulcan accupressure was in hindsight a bad idea

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it's fascinating, the game gear itself actually has a "TV Mode" that's activated by holding down a certain signal on the cartridge bus which bypasses the z80 and VDP and chucks a
digital RGB signal and some kind of custom timing information straight to the screen

https://www.smspower.org/Development/TVTunerAdaptor