@fell@ma.fellr.net2025-11-30 23:12:46
I just finished Guild Wars: Prophecies. It took me 19.5 years.
I created my first character way back when the game was new, but I never finished the campaign. The upcoming Reforged update got me interested again. Together with a friend and 3 very friendly strangers we played through the remaining 3 missions.
From boss tactics to tounge-in-cheek comments about the dated cutscenes It was just the perfect MMO game night for me.
@grumpybozo@toad.social2025-12-28 00:08:11
For the past week or so I’ve been following @… posts about the events at this years “Ashes” cricket series.
I am enjoying being quite mystified by the terminology. I know very little about the game beyond it being a distant relative of baseball with a much harder ball and wickets with little baubles on top instead of a strike zone judged by an umpire. I have concluded that …
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-26 00:09:14
The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC)
names Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino directly in a statement:
"In the hours following the shooting, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino held a press conference
asserting that the operation was targeting an individual named Jose Huerta-Chuma
and characterized him as having a significant criminal history.
Because federal statements have repeatedly included inaccurate information about Minnesota custody an…
@castarco@hachyderm.io2025-11-16 12:05:17
I have the distinct impression that we could use most American "sci-fi" TV series (which seem to have a kink for post-apocalyptical scenographies) as a diagnostic tool for the autism spectrum.
For a moment, let's leave aside the tons of right-wing propaganda "hidden" in plain sight, and their excessive reliance on boring & worn out tropes (religious & cultish bullshit, irrational lack of communication & excess of anti-social behaviour, all vs all, ultra-low-iq characters*, psychotic & irrationally treacherous characters*, ultra-inconsistent character development used to justify "unexpected" plot twists, rampant anti-intellectualism...).
What could be used as a diagnosis tool is the incredible amount of strong inconsistencies that we can find in them**. It throws me out of the story every single time; and I suspect that it takes a certain kind of "uncommon personality" to feel that way about it, because otherwise these series wouldn't be so popular without real widespread criticism beyond cliches like "too slow", "it loses steam towards the end of the season", etc.
Many of those plots start in a gold mine of potentially powerful ideas... yet they consistently provide us with dirt & clay instead, while side-lining the "good stuff" as if it was too complicated for the populace.
Do you feel strongly about it? Do you feel like you can't verbalize it without being criticised as "too negative", or "too picky", or an "unbearable snob"? Do you wonder why it seems like nobody around shares your discomfort with these stories?
* : I feel this is a bit like the chicken & egg problem. Has the media conditioned part of American society to behave like dumb psychopaths as if it was something "natural", or is the media reflecting what was already there? Also, could we use other societies as models for these stories... just for a change? Please?
** : Just a tiny example: a "brilliant" engineer who builds a bridge out of fence parts and who doesn't bother to perform the most basic tests before trying it in a real setting and suffer the consequences: the bridge failing and her falling into the void. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.
@pre@boing.world2025-12-22 17:18:37
The mechanics sorted out filling the adblue tank.
The warnings have stopped beeping and the 10 l bottle that was in the back is gone, so presumably I can trust it's in the tank now.
Sounds like much of what I have paid for was for them doing what I did: Looking all around the car for an ad-blue tank hole and taking things apart trying to find it.
But none of that is the correct solution, which is to put it up on the ramp and clamber underneath to find the tank which has some sort of lowering mechanism, to then lower it and fill it and raise it again.
Not a job for me then. Next time it'll maybe be cheaper coz of them knowing what to do now and not spending half a day trying to figure it out.
Apparently there is a second emissions reduction mechanism which doesn't take a wattery bottle of urea, but instead needs a pouch of oily tar stuff.
This is more likely to empty and need replacing next, rather than the piss bottle.
And even for normal cars that haven't been screwed up for wheelchair access this is a mechanics job anyway. And the garage will have to order in the tar pouch especially.
Back in the 90s, my first car cost about 200 quid. Today I paid 200 quid to get someone to fill it up with purified piss for emissions reduction. Oh how things change. 😆
@brichapman@mastodon.social2025-12-26 01:00:31
What if real executive presence wasn't about how you look or sound?
The leaders who inspire us aren't following scripts. They're living four qualities:
Care - paying real attention
Clarity - seeing what matters
Curiosity - asking deeper questions
Courage - facing hard truths
Read more:
@jackie@social.linux.pizza2025-11-25 00:17:35
the "woke games detector"'s ULTRAKILL problem: there are some games they don't like just because the developer is vaguely progressive and the fandom is largely queer and makes a lot gay fanart of the characters but they have to come up with some 4d chess problem with the game itself
like ah yes the game about robot killing demons in hell and extracting their blood is woke because there's a blahaj easter egg and not because there's shitload of V1 x Gabriel yao…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2025-12-17 20:50:51
Filing: Comcast's offer to merge NBCUniversal with WBD valued Comcast's media and theme-park assets at about $81B; Comcast's overall valuation is about $111B (Christopher Palmeri/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-19 16:56:20
Trump promised Iranians the U.S. would rescue them.
They were betrayed.
Reeling from a crackdown on protesters in Iran that left thousands dead,
Iranians are now grappling with feelings of betrayal, confusion and uncertainty
after Donald Trump repeatedly promised to intervene on their behalf
and then declined to do so.
Some Iranians said in interviews that Trump’s words of support had added to their determination to resist the Iranian government
aft…
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-04 21:16:52
This summer, Mikhail Loshchinin set out for Russia on a motorcycle with German plates, reaching the border in Latvia on July 1.
At the Ubylinka checkpoint on the Russian side, he presented his Russian passport.
According to his mother, Olga, he didn’t use his Belgian passport because of the urgency of the trip and to avoid needing a visa.
Russian border guards examined Loshchinin’s phone and likely discovered his many contacts in Ukraine.
After holding him for several…
