u/thereislightstill

as the days get shorter, winter closes in, and the world is... weird, what are some things you're optimistic about? new things in the city, plans for the fall/winter. hopes and dreams. im primarily thinking Duluth related but we'll take anything tbh.

i'm excited for that new little grocery store opening up in Lincoln Park. my partner are down that way regularly and it's gonna be real nice to just get a few things without a full trip up the hill.

gals, im here to tell you about how much i miss old duos in Apex Legends.

its been about a year since they changed how duos worked. used to be, it was basically the same as trios, just 30 squads of 2 instead of 20 squads of 3.

then, they hid it in the game mode menu, halved the lobbies and made the ring half size. and everyone stopped playing it.

Apex, and specifically duos, used to be the primary gaming my partner and i did. like, 1000 hours of mostly solos and some ranked. when we first started talking, she sent me a crazy kraber clip and i knew she was something special. we had so much fun together.

then, this change hit. and it just wasnt the same. this was the way we played this game we loved, and it now felt like an LTM. slowly, we just. stopped. tried ranked to get better thirds, but it wasnt the same. we got into other games with time. stardew, elden ring, timberborn, hell even marathon.

i know its not coming back. but god i miss how old duos felt.

what killed the vibe for you?

its been about a year since they changed how duos worked. hid it in the menu, halved the lobbies and made the ring half size.

Apex, and specifically duos, used to be the primary gaming my partner and i did. when we first started talking, she sent me a crazy kraber clip and i knew she was something special. we had so much fun together.

then, this change hit. and it just wasnt the same. this was *the* way we played this game we loved, and it now felt like an LTM. slowly, we just. stopped. tried ranked to get better thirds, but it wasnt the same. we got into other games with time. stardew, elden ring, timberborn, hell even marathon.

i know its not coming back. but god i miss how old duos felt.

gang, im finally runnin'.

after months watching the game go through its rough launch, ive been wanting to give it a shot, but didnt have anything to play it on. until one day a few weeks ago, visiting my amazing girlfriend. she realized she had most of a computers worth of parts in boxes from a storage unit uncovered in moving house. a power supply and hard drive later, we have a computer and have both become consumed by this game.

solo play is intense and terrifying. the aesthetic does so much for this game. alone, pve feels dangerous. the death rattle of robots and their uncanny movement keeps me on my toes. but the gunplay feels really unique, chunky weaponry but fluid movement at the same time. and im holding my own better than i expected against other players. in duos, Outpost and Night Marsh sing. when you dont get wiped, this game is really good at generating rolling firefights where pve and pvp collide in fun ways.

then we tried to get two my friends to check it out with us. even offered to buy it for them. neither would bite. one is a long time halo fan, and he said he would "rather stab glass into [his] own eyes a million times than play that game for a minute." he has a penchant for hyperbole but you get it. the other, a huge fan of tense pvp shooters, said it looks neat but "bungie is just going to do to this what they did to destiny."

i dont know what to tell em! i mean im not going to press it, but man. the reputation on this game is tough. this is my favorite shooter since apex legends was in its prime. and i cant sell the homies on it.

BUT. my wonderful girlfriend, coolest fucking person i know. maybe the most pro gamer i know, too.

she has maybe gotten more into it now than i have. she's giving me updates on her contract progress when we havent played, tells me stories of her runs, and has maybe become even more of a marathon believer than me. we're trying Cryo Archive tonight and cant wait.

i so badly want this game to keep going, for myself but also now for her. to the devs... we are sending you as much energy as possible. these two gay ladies believe in you!

gang im looking for a good italian sub. any reccs?

gang, i have a question.

ive had smoked salmon bagel and lox in NYC, and an approximation of that experience in Chicago. in both cases, the smoked salmon was served sort in medium width slices that, when served, gave it sort of a deli meat feeling.

recently, i tried the smoked salmon sandwich at Dovetail. it was good, but the salmon wasnt what i expected. it was closer to some sort of salmon salad or a paté, shredded and served in some sort of creamy base. good, but not what i hoped for. sort of like shredded canned fish.

then, just now, went to check out the new bagel joint in Lincoln Park, Bean and Bear. first things first: the bagels were pretty darn good. i'll be back! but the smoked trout sandwich i got was the exact same way - shredded, then held together with some kind of binding agent. in hindsight, i should have asked, but asked what? is your fish shredded or sliced?

so my ask is twofold: first, what do you call that style of fish? then, are there any places selling smoked fish (in sandwiches or plain) in the style i'm looking for?

So, web dev here, four years experience. dont love using AI, It annoys me and I miss coding. But I dont want this to be another vent about how much we hate our careers. what I want to know is: how are you managing to keep some understanding of how your shit works while moving faster?

I feel like my boss is constantly pushing us to ship faster, but gets frustrated when we don't fully know how the shit we ship works. I'm really struggling to keep everything in my brain when using this stuff. I struggled already to read others code in huge volumes, but at least there I could go archeology style and figure out how the person was thinking. Now its just lines and lines without reason that work mostly, except for when they dont and I need to know why.

Initially I would go function by function, planning and prompting with a ton of detail. Now I lean way more in the vibe coding side and I kinda dont know how to get out. Any advice?

I'm sorry in advance this is another AI-related post. I dont want this to be another "are you miserable and want to quit" post. I mean, I am kind of miserable but I'm asking this to guage folks' workplace dynamics on a more specific point: how have your team's expectations and standards changed as far as code review and knowing your code goes with adoption of AI? Do you feel like you have a solid understanding of the things you ship?

I ask because honestly, my work has devolved into vibe coding. I work at a B2B media company, around 250 people and a 12 person dev team. My manager and department head are all in on AI everything. And that could honestly be fine. I see the value in the technology.

What gets me though, is our manager keeps giving more and more aggressive deadlines. If you push back, he questions whether you are using AI enough. I have hardly written ten lines of code myself at work this year and he knows that and still asks me that time and again. It feels more like a threat.

We used to do pretty thorough code review. If I wanted to ship something, I needed to be able to defend my decisions. Now we effectively have to move so fast I am giving generated code a skim and going back and forth with Claude/Codex to review. Then at the end I tell it to refactor to simplify for legibility and hit merge. I will have the big picture stuff in my head, sure, but I cant tell you shit about the code. No one reviews anything, no one has time to review anything. Most of them dont even actually test what they ship. Everyone just pushes into prod when they want. It is chaos and my boss is happy as a clam.

Is that... the norm now? Are y'all using this stuff in more reasonable ways? How do you claw back your understanding while keeping up?

my boss tagged me into an email thread about a SaaS product we use, which im familiar with. he asked if i had any insights on how to accomplish a thing they asked for.

i spent like 45 minutes to an hour researching it, and found an answer. i wrote two and a half paragraphs in my email - the first two outlining the solution, the final bit a caveat that i havent tested this yet. i did not think it was a big deal.

an hour later he messaged me,
"nice research, but heres some advice: keep it short and sweet.
[block quote of my email]
this is frivolous and unnecessary. no one needs to know what you dont know."

i bit my tongue and said nothing, but then he brought it up on a standup and said, "dont waste any more time getting distracted with random requests like this, its not a priority." i feel pretty shitty, like ive been penalized and now i guess have a target on my back for doing literally what was asked of me.

any of yall have experience with this, where you fulfill whats asked of you and you get yelled at?

im looking around for archery classes and saw this. anyone have experience, whats the vibe at forteza?

hey gang!

i know we have an amazing club music scene, i was wondering, are there any places that have idk, performances or nights nights of more ambient music? there is that festival Plantasia at the Garfield Conservatory that looks really awesome. and im sure there are other people around making this music. but im wondering if there are any places to watch that regularly book stuff like that?

ive seen articles saying the IDOT expected construction to start Spring 2026... its summer, and i havent seen much. anyone heard or seen anything?

title. thank you to everyone who has repeated the same advice to just bid the minimum and wait. got a roomette trip on the empire builder for 225 total vs 425, thats huge

hey gang. feeling ready for halloween early. anyone have spooky stories about the Twin Ports or north shore generally?

looking from anything from the paranormal and unexplained to "im just going to mind my business" to just cursed vibes from a place.

i need advice to not burn myself out, to check out without letting my performance slip. my work has gotten so shit. acquisition, then new frustrating boss, then the pay freezes, then layoffs, then the AI mania. i'm so burnt out. everyone else i know on the team is also miserable and looking, but the market is the market. i don't feel ready to leave either, and i need to figure out how to coexist with this job without it killing me.

i've worked shit jobs before. at the call center, i could check out mentally. it wasn't me answering calls, it was the worksona. but i find it so much harder to check myself out with work that requires thought. any of you have advice for getting by?

it's been ages since i've been back and im missing my hometown of Wheaton. and when i do get out there, its always so different! theyve done a pretty tasteful job building up but it still makes me feel melancholy. maybe more than anything else i miss Jack Straws, my GOAT!! i loved that place so much, and few pizzas have hit the same for me.

also, in the alley next to the old theater, there used to be this tiny little graffitti bird. it was so cute and i loved it every time i saw it. makes me sad to not see it anymore.

whats something that isn't there in your town that gets you a little wistful?

hey gang. been considering a career change, and Electrical Engineering has been appealing to me as i read up on it. i was looking into LSC's Associates program as a way to find out if it would actually be my thing in practice. it seems like it probably wouldn't be the be all end all of my schooling to get into the field, but might be a good first step.

anyone go through that or know anyone else who did?

backend webdev with 4 years of experience here, losing my goddamned mind at the industry, wondering if the grass is greener closer to the hardware. i have half a mind to learn some C and start working on some small projects in my free time to get skilled up for a junior role working in more embedded / firmware contexts. anyone in that space have experiences to share?

how did you get in? how do you like it? how bad is the "Use AI For Everything" thing there, any better than webdev?