Bartimaeus

Not useless, but a little less insane. With the accuracy-affecting mods I installed ([1], [2], [3], [4]), the idea seems to be that first shots when fired from iron sights are generally pretty accurate (though still subject to a weapons' base accuracy, so not like perfect if you're at a pretty good distance), while subsequent shots fired soon after are subject to both degrading accuracy as well as recoil if you don't give it a moment to let it reset. Recoil is especially bad if you do not meet the minimum stat requirements on a weapon, just as it is in the original game (particularly noticeable with automatic weapons). Accuracy and damage still improve with higher skill levels, it's just...you know, if you take the time to line up a shot that's not even very far away, you can now expect the bullet to not go wildly off direction like it used to, or for your weapon to just be wobbling and swaying all the time like it does in the vanilla game, or for the iron sight to be visually inaccurate because the devs unfortunately didn't line the iron sight up with the actual center of the screen, all of which is important to especially me because I literally never use VATS and so I need to have some way of approaching combat that doesn't feel like poopy doodoo all the time (that or go all melee weapons, but that's not really my thing in these games either). But I can assure you that every time I get into combat where I need to burst off more than a couple of shots, I'm still very much feeling how bad my accuracy is at my Gun skill level of 35 even when using something as simple as a revolver. As for why no VATS at all...I've just never found it satisfying to use, you effectively pause the game to take control out of your own hands and instead put it into a random number generator, and a painfully slow and very goofy-looking one at that. Never felt like a good marriage to this kind of action-y gameplay to me, but obviously other people strongly disagree. Oh yeah, I always did that in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well. I'd always have a container for all the artifacts I'd ever found throughout the game, a container for one of each of all the armors in the game, a container for one of each of all the weapons in the game... I didn't usually go so far as to upgrade the ones I wasn't going to use though (actually, if I had one I was going to use, then I'd always make sure to have a second untouched copy still in the container instead).

One thing I do appreciate about the garbage can man (aka Kevin Durant) is that he has consistently shown up for the Olympics over his career. And I don't just mean that he played well, but rather that he actually committed to playing for the team, which is something that a lot of our stars have often declined to do. Though LeBron claims MVP of the tournament, Durant has been instrumental in leading team USA to 4 straight gold medals, which is actually a pretty rare feat for Olympic athletes. I think Serbia was the second best team, but it's always been the case that the two best teams can meet earlier in a playoff tourney than right at the end, it's just sometimes how it works out.

I've put like twenty hours into Fallout: New Vegas over the last few weeks after finding a few popular mods that changed how the accuracy of weapons work to make it...uhh, not dumb basically, and have actually been having a pretty good time, especially because I mostly play a stealthy shoot people in the head and/or backstab them type of player (which is pretty necessary given how clunky and bad the combat in this engine is). This approach has been working well, except for when I run into enemies who don't want to die and I get brutally murdered because my weapons are junk outside of stealth...which has happened a lot with mutants/monsters. But the worst part of the game is my own fault, which is the obsessive compulsive kleptomania that afflicts me whenever I play a game like this. I must...steal...all the things. I have a bunch of organized containers in the game's first town's gas station where I'm slowly but surely getting every single type of item into pristine condition by finding other copies of them and repairing them. I know it's just a pool cue and I'm never actually going to use it as a weapon, but I want to have a perfect copy of it. Please send help.

I got me a Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition in a closet somewhere... Idle power usage isn't disastrous by any means and does look mildly improved over the Zen 4, but still does leave a little to be desired next to the Intel chips. Kind of have to think idle power usage is an important metric for laptops and other battery-driven devices, no? Though how desktop chips are tuned versus laptop chips is a whole other thing, so it's not necessarily indicative of much yet. But look at that darling 5800X3D there hanging with the Intel chips (and also the 3900X): what a beaut. I don't think anybody sensible is going to upgrade from one of those any time soon...it's got long legs.

Patlabor: The Movie (1989) by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Angel's Egg, Jin-Ro et al.). Ostensibly a big dumb mech movie for a big dumb mech series, for this movie, Mamoru Oshii transformed Patlabor into a slow-moving investigative mystery. There are like maybe ten minutes of action throughout the whole film...a little bit right at the beginning, and the rest right at the end. One thing I do always appreciate about Oshii films is that even though they tend to be thematically heavy to the point of being nearly overbearing, his films are still able to have characters that don't feel like they only exist for the purpose of a delivering a message or the plot, which saves them from being too lifeless and pointed. It's always been a problem that a lot of other more "serious" animes of the time fell victim to which his films largely seem to avoid. So even though I think the story of this film is a bit dumb on the whole, I still had a good time, it's a cute and enjoyable movie - and with a Kenji Kawai soundtrack to help sell its moodier-than-expected atmosphere to boot.

Some synthetic benchmarking of the new micro-code that supposedly fixes the power degradation issues (scroll down): https://tweakers.net/reviews/12320/hoeveel-trager-worden-intel-processors-door-de-nieuwe-default-settings.html tl;dr: Typically a small performance dip (5-10%) versus prior benchmarks, occasionally more significant, occasionally less or even nothing at all...also, occasionally actually better! Mildly reduces clock speeds across the board, reduces power draw significantly in the 14th gen (but weirdly not the 13th). I hope chasing top performance no matter what was worth all this, Intel. (e): Actually, I misread: this doesn't seem to be the new micro-code that just came out (which Asus was the first to release as a beta version of earlier today, and these tests were done with a Gigabyte board anyways), but rather the cumulative micro-code changes that Intel has already made over the past year. Still useful information to know given initial benchmarks of these chips versus benchmarks you might see if they were tested today, but I guess hold onto your horses to see what the latest will actually do. Guess that's what I get for seeing "Asus releases new BIOS beta with Intel's micro-code changes" and then "these guys re-tested and compared 2023 to latest bios update" right after each other and making assumptions from that.

Yes, if you can perform the same at significantly better power efficiency or perform significantly better at the same power efficiency, it's an upgrade...assuming it works both ways. There's always been exponentially diminishing returns as you feed these Zen CPUs more power though, so we'll see how that works out in practice in the coming weeks. AMD should've made sure its release was squeaky clean with good communication of these facts and making sure existing motherboards had stable and functional BIOS updates ready, especially after delaying it for half a month, and that doesn't seem to have happened.

Oh no, it's happening again... Intel falls off a cliff, and AMD immediately rests on its laurels.

Tim Walz, Minnesota's and my governor, is reportedly Harris' pick for Vice President. Very pleased (and surprised!) that he was the choice.

Yeah, Ross' campaign (Accursed Farms) didn't really need to be gaming-specific here, the right to be able to use the things that you've bought seems like it should be pretty obvious and inalienable.

Yikes. As much as I would heartily laugh if Intel were to ever fail entirely, it would be quickly followed by some very grave contemplation. But hey, if AMD survived [insert unending horde of problems they faced for many years here], I think Intel will be okay.

Lily C.A.T. (1987). It's like an Alien and The Thing two-for-one combo rip-off, but instead of being the best thing ever like it should be, it's just pretty alright. It's the only one of these I don't have any misgivings about having watched. A.D. Police Files (1990). (If I could find a not terrible quality poster for this, it would be inserted here.) @Malcador reminded me that this exists. Overall, not a huge fan: first episode (lady cyborg who goes crazy because of being overworked) was pretty meh, second episode (lady cyborg who goes crazy because she couldn't go back to being fully human again) was O.K., third episode (guy cyborg who goes crazy because he replaced his entire body with machine parts and then got addicted to steroids) was pretty bad. None of them had anything to do with each other except for exploring similar ideas, they're standalone stories within the Bubblegum Crisis setting, which seemed to at least be better and more consistent than this, though I've yet to finish it. Windaria (1986). Felt vaguely like a Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind rip-off in terms of visuals, tone, and style...but pretty bad because of atrocious characters and writing, neither elements of which had much if any resemblance to Nausicaa. Look, the girl in the poster even stole Nausicaa's fox-squirrel pet. Not that it does anything throughout the whole film...or, uh, maybe it did and I already forgot. The story is some really basic Romeo and Juliette crap, and I really don't have any interest in describing it further. Golgo 13: Queen Bee (1998). This is one of the worst things I've ever seen. One of those cases I've mentioned before where it attempts to have some kind of story and emotional core that the viewer is supposed to connect with but because it's so completely terrible and at odds with itself (while also offering nothing else of interest), watching mindless action trash would have been less offensive. I hope the idiots that made this stub their pinky toes in real life today.

Everyone loves politics in their entertainment. They just hate it when it's not their politics.

Thanks for the wisdom, Mr. G. I think we should elect that guy, he's clearly aware of the dangers of authoritarianism! Oh...that Joseph G. Well, maybe not.

Trump has openly promised that we won't have to ever vote again if he wins, as he'll fix subsequent elections. I must confess, not having to care and be anxious about politics every two and especially every four years is certainly appealing...

This is pretty topical to me personally because I literally told someone recently that I'd vote for a Shrek .jpeg over Trump.

A couple week delay to make sure everything is as it should be is better than...uh, whatever Intel's been doing for the past couple of years, at least, . Funny comment: "Intel: delays performance-botching patch until after AMD's launch. AMD: delays launch until after Intel's performance-botching patch." Heh.

It's one thing if they're just unstable and the problem can eventually be fixed, but it kiiind of sounds like all these problems are contributing to permanently damaging two generations' worth of CPUs, which is, uh, not great. I guess we'll see when Intel rolls outs its updates in August to see if all the already unstable 14th generation CPUs continue to be broken, or if they're actually able to salvage at least that. Regardless, Intel's communication and transparency has been pretty terrible.

Sorry, KP, . Hope he was loved and cared for...though it kind of sounds like he was fighting to love and care for you guys.

Yes, the courts have license to overrule agencies and how they interpret the laws and statutes that give those agencies powers and duties. But given that Joe Biden currently is legally empowered to imprison and kill all of the judges that might disagree with how he might want those laws and statutes interpreted, I would place his authority as being higher than theirs...at least until such a time as that idiotic ruling is reversed. The scary thing about that ruling is that, depending on those who come into the office of President next, they may act to make sure that the ruling cannot be reversed. It's a Pandora's Box that no sane or stable country should ever open, which we clearly are not.

During times of crisis in the Roman Republic, the Senate would often appoint dictators to take supreme and direct control of the Republic, allowing them to bypass the bureaucracy, in-fighting, and intrigue typical to that time, springing the Republic into immediate and cohesive action in order to avert disaster. Once the crisis had been resolved and the dictator having admirably performed their duties, they would willingly give up their power and return to whatever position (or lack thereof) that they held before, allowing normalcy to resume. It was a system that worked well and saved the Republic upon numerous occasions...until it suddenly didn't. It takes incredible civic virtue to willingly give up power, a quality in dire lack across the world today, and I think there's a certain irony in the wildly corrupt Supreme Court having just enshrined absolute power into the position of President while the one currently occupying the position willingly relinquishes their hold upon it. No matter the impossible political climate and the issues of the day that he faced, may history remember Joe Biden fondly...especially if it results in our Sulla never returning to power.

...We've never had someone serve as VP for more than two terms, right? I'm pretty sure we haven't... (e): Nope: there have been seven VPs who have all tied for longest time in office at 2,922 days.

Yep, it's a mistake to always lock-on with your camera even when using a controller (your movement and camera controls become way too constrained due to being locked relative to whomever you're targeting, which is often very bad when you're trying to maneuver around certain kinds of attacks, get past enemies, or deal with groups), but I imagine this becomes quite a strength when you have way faster and more precise control of your camera with a mouse over an analogue stick. Like I said, even with the initial botched release of DS1 on PC, I knew people who played the game at a high level with M+KB...it just wasn't nearly as easy to learn to get to a base level of competency. But Elden Ring is not DS1, and it might not be a terrible idea to at least try it out for a bit both ways.

It should probably be noted that the Republican Party used to mostly be the progressive party prior to the 20th century. It's complicated, and how both parties evolved starting at the dawn of that century up until their transformations were (more or less) complete at the end of the 1960s is even more complicated still. Shooter was apparently a 20 year old white male registered Republican. Not old enough to legally drink, but old enough to legally own guns and...uh, illegally assassinate former presidents with them, I guess. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more information on this fun character in the coming weeks.