u/Sb5tCm8t

Hey, I've been a fan for about a year, not because I agree with him on everything but because I think 1) he wants people to do well and 2) he will tell the truth as he sees it.

I used to be a hard-core Ayn Rand fan so I dont mind him going on and on about how the answer to our current problems is even less regulation. It did annoy me how he always acted like he was first to call out this administration for silly stuff like genocide, insider trading, kidnapping, murder, but it was kind of funny that he thinks he really thinks he's ahead of the curve on all that. Maybe in libertarian circles, he is.

Lately he's going extra hard on a particular prescription for our country's problems. This idea (this "notion", if you will) is that America's best ideas came from its white Christian founders and the only way to preserve the American way of life is to restore a white majority. His belief that non-white Americans are a net drain on American values. And by "values" he means laissez-faire capitalism. His belief that dark people bring socialism, white people bring capitalism. This is his conclusion.

If he went into even a little bit of detail about how Capitalist political organization is going to spring from white hegemony...well, that would be something at least. But he doesnt. In fact, he very rarely backs up anything he says when he has a prescription for our country's economic or spiritual problems. In today's episode, he went on a tear about how it would be "more honest" to have a black 20 yo on welfare than a white 20 yo, when whites receive more welfare than blacks do and have for a long time. Dave's views on race seem backed up by nothing but unexamined assumptions and are completely at odds with the everyman intellectual presentation he seems to be going for.

At least twice (at least two different shows), Dave swerved into the position that Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani haven't been grandfathered in far back enough ("I'm just saying, it's still pretty weird") to make their political positions public, much less run for public office. These guys are about the same age as Dave (and me). Mamdani's lived in the US since he was 7 years old. Abdul El-Sayed was born here.

I do want Dave to know that I appreciate his honesty. I wish that he would have more humility and not talk trash about race, especially when he has his point BACKWARDS and can't back up what he's saying about whether another American has EARNED the right he says he has to speak (really gross round-about way to say a guy with rights has less rights than you do).

I agree we should only let in the immigrants we need. I think family of the Americans who are here should have priority. I dont see any point at all in H1B Visas when we have so many post-grads out of work. I agree we should only regulate corporations as much as we need to, but clearly I think we should much more and DOING THE REVERSE is a big part of how we got here. I am glad that Dave and Rob are coming around on public healthcare because it is what is bankrupting Americans the most, when we most need whatever money we put away!

Hi everybody, I'm writing this post because an amazing game that I played a few years ago is about to get a sequel and I'm really shocked at how (relatively) few people know about it. Word-of-mouth has grown a bit, but it is still something of a cult indie game. Let me tell you what Withering Rooms is and why you should play it.

I tried to take a suitably intriguing screen shot for you

First, let me address some things right away to try and avoid instant takedowns (skip if you want):

• Rule 1: Withering Realms describes itself as a "2.5D horror RPG" and community consensus has given it the "Souls-like" tag. This doesn't always mean much, but the game satisfies the most important requirement in spades, including an oppressive dark-fantasy setting, challenging combat, a leveling system, a means to recover your stuff when you die, an interconnected world, amazing secrets, and a shocking amount of variety for enemies and equipment.
• Rule 2: I love you 💋🍑
• Rule 3: Read on, I will tell you
• Rule 4: Good news, I almost never post or comment here and haven't seen anybody talking about this game in some time. In fact, I think the last person who brought it up was me.
• Rule 5: Check and check.
• Rule 6: The game is two years old but I won't be spoiling anything.
• Rule 7: Not here to talk about mod activity.
• Rule 8: No, this is not my game.

What is it and why should you care?

Withering Realms is a 2.5D horror RPG with Souls-like and Rogue-lite (hang on!) elements. Characters, enemies, and environment designs are almost reminiscent of claymation or the works of Team Silent. You play as Nightingale, a 15 yo girl sent off to an asylum for girls who finds herself trapped in a dream version of a mansion that changes each night. The mansion and its grounds are interconnected but the equipment hidden inside it is randomized. You can choose to "remember" your preferred items and find several clever means to manipulate the Rogue-lite elements in your favor.

There is a heavy emphasis on exploration and experimentation, as in the original Dark Souls, and your curiosity is rewarded throughout the game. Lovers of Soul-likes (especially Dark Souls and Bloodborne) and Metroidvanias will be delighted. The game also has a "curse" mechanic reminiscent of scene transitions in Silent Hill 2-4 (and the movies) which can reveal new enemies, secrets, and sometimes puzzles.

The best things about this game are the depth of combat options, including melee, spells, status effects, and i-frames; the imaginative and rewarding world you have to explore; the massive variety of interesting enemies and bosses that you can fight; and the memorable cast of Souls-y characters you can find. There is more than one ending.

Somebody put a "stealth" tag on the game because you can technically crawl into holes and hide in furniture, but take it from me, it's almost never a good idea to try to hide from enemies. It may have been important at an early stage of development, but the version I played wasn't designed around it and I can only think of one place where it was useful.

If you have not played this game yet, I recommend you play it soon because

1. It may become one of your favorites (currently sits at "overwhelmingly positive" with the most recent batch of reviews "very positive".
2. The sequel, Withering Realms. is coming to Early Access in September

If you have played this game, I would love to hear your thoughts on it and what you hope to see in the sequel (spoiler-free, of course).

I thought this was a combinatorics problem. I thought I had to destroy the skele-men in each permutation until one of them worked:

ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA

But none of these caused anything to happen. What's the secret here? Wall on the right doesn't break with my weapon or with pumpkin bomb seed.

https://preview.redd.it/jrmh55hozs5h1.jpg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e46cb66876901c636183d07703c18135d1eedb71

Hi, I dismissed this game initially as a joke or something only hardcore D&D *NEEEERRRRRDDDDDSSSSS* would enjoy, but I finally got it, dumped about 16 hours into it, and this has been an amazing experience for me so far. I was glued to it all weekend. I mostly play Soulslikes, Metroidvanias and Metroidbrainias.

This game is the same in almost every way to Disco Elysium, but the setting is different and it's a little more humor-focused. The writing is truly excellent and I DO NOT LIKE TO READ. Something funny, interesting, or interesting and funny is happening almost every minute of this extremely dense game.

Take the plunge.

I'm no Jacob Geller so I can't lay this out there all poetically right now, but I think it was a mistake to have the first (and possibly only) FromSoft movie be Elden Ring instead of Dark Souls. I think a Dark Souls movie has a higher chance of being made right (to put it stupidly) than Elden Ring does, and it is a story that will be received well as movies and the American empire take their last gasps.

Something both games (in fact, most FromSoft games) have in common is that they are not about the player character. The player is a vehicle for unearthing the stories of other characters. A movie where the protagonist is the least important character is unheard of in movies and a big challenge on its own. I do think that fact is important to the FromSoft experience, but I do not think it will be attempted for this adaptation. The bigger missed opportunity, I think, is that Dark Souls has a very strong message and Elden Ring does not.

I'll start (unwisely) with Elden Ring. In Elden Ring, you are a nameless Tarnished (a ressurected and burdened undead) who is guided by the grace of the goddess Marika to free her from her alien shackles and (possibly) break the link between The Lands Between and the Outer Gods.

To back up a bit: There is a pantheon of gods and goddesses from The Lands Between who received their power from the Outer Gods (lovecraftian alien gods). This is understood to be a blessing and a curse. Marika, as the highest diety in The Lands Between, has the greatest burden. Prior to your arrival, several great battles between the gods of TLB were waged over (as I barely recall) who would have either the privilege or the curse of receiving the powers of the Outer Gods. Rani, who was selected to be Marika's successor, plots against her fate and murders Godwin the Golden, who (for some reason) sustains "Destined Death", or simply the fact of death. So nobody in TLB can truly die and that's a big part of how you, the player, figures into Marika's and, separately, Rani's plans to escape their eternal curses.

There are some broad themes here: the tragic consequences of unchecked ambition, the cyclical nature of life and death, and the corruption inherent in absolute power. What is the message though? I understand that Pac-Man, Tetris, and most games out there don't have a message, but games that make good movies do. I don't think the message is that humanity must unshackle ourselves from our manipulative gods, even though I do approve of it. Elden Ring doesn't even make as strong a point with how you interact with NPCs as Dark Souls (or even moreso, Bloodborne) does.

So what is Dark Souls about? It begins with very Greek-inspired Genesis story: The world was dark, primeval, and shrouded in fog. Then "The First Flame" spontaneously appeared. Four beings appeared from the dark and claimed four great souls: light, life, death, and dark. Lord Gwin, who claimed the Soul of Light, became leader of the gods, waged war against the ancient dragons, and established the world order; The Furtive Pygmy, ancestor of humanity, claimed the Dark Soul.

Thousands of years later, the first flame began to fade. Gwin conspires with the Witch of Izalith to attempt to reignite it, but it backfires and creates demons. Fearful that mankind will take his place and usher in an Age of Dark, he casts a cursed seal on humanity called the darksign that binds them to the first flame (i.e. the bonfires in the game). People who bear the darksign cannot die and eventually go insane. Humans are indoctrinated to believe that people with the darksign must be coralled and sent out on a pilgrimage to save mankind by re-linking the First Flame...without understanding that it perpetuates the curse or that it requires throwing themselves into it. By the time the game ends, it is not even clear if their sacrifice would be the first reignition of the flame or the billionth. Infrastructure is crumbling and every township is full of undead, mutated monsters.

Throughout the player's journey, they meet several despondent, manipulative, nihilistic, and occasionally friendly NPCs going through their own journeys and experiencing their own hardships. They can choose to help them, but they cannot save everyone, try as they might. As the fabric of the world unravels, Chosen Undead from other universes can invade your own seeking the souls from your death to fuel their own pilgrimages.

Throughout the game, the player can learn about gods and tragic heroes who fought to preserve--for better or worse, rightly or wrongly--their way of life. They can even put some of them out of their misery themselves.

The themes of Dark Souls overlap with Elden Ring: The abuse of absolute power, cycles of destruction, mankind thwarting the tyranny of their false gods. But far better than Elden Ring, Dark Souls has a clear message: "Humanity will endure the end of the world." Civilizations will rise and fall. The universe is indifferent to our suffering, but we can be kind to each other and we can overcome--if not literally in our own lifetime, then the generations that succeed us. That is the cathartic message that FromSoft movie-goers deserve and need right now.

Elden Ring has an interesting story but it's the most convoluted plot FromSoft has written and I dont think a movie adaptation can tell it in a more compelling way than the game does. Inevitably, to tell any of these stories, the audience has to receive these twisting back stories. Will that be done by having the protagonist creeping around ruins interpreting artifacts out-loud, or will they have some companion who is nonstop dumping lore about the gods and their servants at us? How much of that lore can be pared back and still make Marika's predicament and Rani's treachery interesting and coherent? Not much and not easily. I think the false pilgrimage of Dark Souls could be done compellingly and with fewer storytelling logistical hardships than what needs to be revealed in Elden Ring.

TL;DR - I 🦆ed your mom.

Hi everyone, I've been dealing with bulimia for many years "on and off" and recently made a change that has helped me immensely. For a few years, I've been drinking a lot of diet soft drinks. Sometimes 4 per day, sometimes an entire 12-pack. I'm sure I have a big problem with the reward center of my brain and I do need a fizzy fix after a couple of days or I'm pretty sure I would go insane. I recently set out to lose 10 pounds through diet and exercise and even though my weight did change (offset by muscle growth), I thought I looked flabby by midday--even if I thought I looked good when I woke up.

First I thought that was due to dehydration. Then I thought it was a consequence of still not being at my target and having eaten or drunken a meal. But then I powered through a big change: I stopped buying the diet drinks. I dont drink them at home, I dont drink them at work. I had one with breakfast 3 days ago and that's it. Guess what? My body image is consistent throughout the day. I dont I have the flab/water weight to roll around midday anymore.

If you are also drinking a lot of diet drinks, you should get off of them like I did. It's bad for our gut biome, it's probably fucking with our brains, and probably gonna give us all cancer anyway. It's also messing up our body image by making us retain water weight (I guess). This has helped me feel better about myself and I hope in the days and weeks ahead, some of that irritability and brain fog will roll away as well.