Keyrock

For whatever reason, I have no energy today. Weight lifting was rough, I had to will myself through it. Usually, once I do a set and the adrenaline kicks I'm chomping at the bit to do the rest of the sets but today I must have been all out of adrenaline. I did it anyway. It's been months since I've had an off day, I suppose it might have been good to take today off. Oh well. Maybe I need to get some of that Frank Thomas stuff? You know, the "by the way, she'll like it too" stuff.

I'm not going to assume this is 100% accurate, I am neither going to assume that it's false and I'm frankly too lazy to do research, but this at least sounds plausible. Either way, threats and harassment aren't appropriate (they never are). As a consumer, my main recourse is to vote with my wallet, which may harm some innocent devs in the short term that might be 85% of the way through developing their game and it's too late/impractical to switch engines now, but will ultimately have the desired effect. If no one buys games made with Unity no one will use Unity to develop games and Unity will go out of business. It's not a perfect course of action but it's the course of action I intend to take.

I went to see Tim Dillon today. I listen to his podcast all the time, but this is my fist time seeing his stand up in person. He did not disappoint, one of the absolute funniest people on the planet in my opinion. It helps that his comedy style is my favorite style of comedy, which is to say WILDLY offensive comedy. He says thing that are so ****ed up that I feel kind of dirty for laughing at them, but I couldn't stop myself from laughing if I wanted to because it's so hilarious, plus there's always a kernel of truth in there, it's not just sheer absurdities. Anyway, a good time was had.

I'm not a fan of Unity's change in pricing policy, but death threats seem a tad excessive.

It doesn't have to be a traditional war it would ideally be a proxy war. The neocons would prefer to sucker some other country to do the dying instead of us, but only because that makes it much easier to sell the war to the public, they don't much care whether it's Americans, Ukranians, Iraqis, etc. that are doing the dying so that they can line their pockets. To be clear, I'm pretty confident that China doesn't want a war (in the traditional sense) with the US, or Taiwan, for that matter. Frankly, they have no need to go to war. They spread their influence via economic means, much the same way Murica used to before the neocons took over and brought with them their foreign policy of military intervention solves all problems. As for MAD, that's a deterrent for folks like you and me, well, I guess I can only say me for sure. I'd like to continue having a habitable planet to live on, I'd like to think you do to, but I shouldn't assume. Neocons don't care. I'm sure they have access to a bunker somewhere in the case they call what they think is a bluff and it turns out the other party was holding 4 aces. They can later emerge to rule over an irradiated dead rock floating through spacetime. But hey, they'll be COMPLETELY in charge of said dead rock, so there's that. If it wasn't already clear, I have a STRONG disdain for neocons. It goes back to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld days.

The second part of my late 80s Bruno Mattei double feature is arguably his most famous film: Shocking Dark (1989) - This film's alternate title is Terminator 2 and while there is just enough Terminator knockoff present to not make that flat out false advertising (which would be par for the course for low budget Italian cinema) I'd say this movie is 90% blatant Aliens knockoff and 10% Terminator knockoff. You've got the Colonial Marines Mega Force sent on an investigation and rescue mission into a "water purification plant" in future ruined Venice where they are faced with essentially sahaugin rather than xenomorphs. While she's no Jenette Goldstein, Geretta Geretta as Ersatz Vasquez is the most memorable character in the movie. Her over the top attitude and foul mouth are a joy. The members of Mega Force get picked off one by one as they go deeper into the facility and discover the true plans of the evil Weyland-Yutani Tubular Corporation, hilariously told in a James Bond villain exposition scene where the villain details their evil plan for no reason whatsoever. The ending is *chef kiss* Really fun B movie with terrible acting, borderline passable action, cool monsters, and some legitimately solid cinematography. A must watch for any fan of crappy but fun movies. Easily one of the best Aliens knockoffs.

In the case of the US the "critical reserve" is whatever the folks at the Pentagon think they'll need for when they pivot to our inevitable war with China, if the neocons have anything to say about it, and unfortunately they do. They're salivating just thinking about it.

Newsom would be smart to steer clear of this $#!+storm and concentrate on gearing up for 2028. The thought of having to choose between Biden and Trump again... Yeesh! It's like getting to choose between having someone kick you in the schlong as hard as they can or having them drop a cinder block on your bare foot. At that point I'd either have to write someone in or just not vote because I've never voted for The Donald and I have no intention of changing that and I wouldn't vote for Biden even at gun point.

So the general consensus about One Piece seems to be positive and I'm kinda tempted to watch it. I've not watched a single episode of the anime ever, all I know is that it's about pirates. Anyone here watch it yet?

The most dystopian thing about Cyberpunk 2077's near future is that inexplicably the Skrillex hairstyle is still popular. Speaking of...

I have a feeling Biden isn't going to be the nominee for the Democrats Authoritarians. He already wasn't popular before the Lahaina wildfire and his administration's response to the deadliest wildfire in US history, or lack there of, hasn't done him any favors. He can't stop lying, even when there's no reason whatsoever to lie, nothing to gain. He lied on the anniversary of 9/11 for ****s sake. Why would he do that? Joe, we have the internet, we can fact check your bull$#!+, quite quickly too. And there's of course the age conundrum. If reelected he would be 86 at the end of his term. He's already at the point where he has trouble clearly expressing himself, needs a cheat sheet to answer softball questions lobbed to him by a sympathetic legacy media, and needs to be interrupted and taken off stage by his staff when he flubs his words and calls the entire southern hemisphere 3rd world countries. His cognitive functions ain't gonna get better in 5 years. I think the DNC is formulating some bull$#!+ about why he can't run as I type this and will quietly usher him out the back door. The traditional next in line (The DNC has rigged the primaries to the degree that they can run whoever they choose in the general election, voters be damned. See also: 2016, 2020) would be the VP and I'm sure Kamala believes she should be next in line, but I doubt the DNC is stupid enough to run a candidate as weak as her in the general election. I think it's going to wind up being Gavin Newsom, he seems to be the next Chosen One.

For no reason whatsoever, prairie dog yahoos:

"Storm Shadow" sounds like an adult film star.

A week late but Steve Harwell age 56. Somebody once told him the world would try to roll him, and I guess it finally did.

Yeah, this has been a really good year for gaming as a whole. We've had a lot of really great games released in 2023 from AAA, AA, and indie developers alike. Had FFXVI released during a dry spell it probably would have done (even) better just on the basis of gamers being desperate for something, anything to play. I suppose it's also possible that Final Fantasy no longer has the brand value that it once did, that Squeenix hoped it still did. That's baseless speculation on my part, though. I stopped giving a $#!+ about Final Fantasy 2 decades ago so I'm all types of out of the loop.

I seem to recall a similar situation roughly a decade ago with Torture Porn Tomb Raider when it sold several million copies and was considered a "failure" for Squeenix because they bled so much money elsewhere and were counting on TR to recoup it. They need to make some changes at Squeenix and run a tighter ship or they're going under sooner or later.

You know budgets have ballooned out of control when a game sells over 3 million copies and that's nowhere near enough to cut even, never mind turn a profit.

I've done well to cut refined sugar out of my diet, I did that a couple of years ago and have kept up with it quite well. The next step is to cut processed foods out (or at the very least down a lot). This is going to be quite challenging here is Murica, the Mecca of Processed Foods. I believe more than half of the average Murican's diet is highly processed foods. Step 1: Meat. I gotta stop buying the crap at the supermarket and find me a good butcher to get meat from animals that haven't been pumped full of all sorts of crap. Alternatively, I may do some research and try one of those delivery services that ships free range, grass fed, no antibiotics, yada, yada, yada meats to your door. I'm sure it will be significantly more expensive, but that's (one of) the appeal(s) of highly processed foods, they're cheap. Also, I need to go on some hunts and get good at that. Owning guns and being proficient with them is a good start, but there's a lot more to hunting than that. Any time I've gotten meat from someone who was recently on a hunt it's been some of the best meat I've eaten, not even comparable to the stuff you get at the supermarket. I don't do pasta often so making my own pasta from scratch won't be a big deal given how infrequently I'd need to do that. Bread is easy enough to make from scratch, I'll likely mostly make naan since it's quick and easy to make and super delicious. I'll try to find a good farm for eggs, cheese, and milk, it's been way too long since I've had raw milk, I need to rectify that.

Droppin' a deuce with the door open in full view of everybody. Bold choice! I like how everybody else is trying to look away while the archer is just staring at the lady taking a $#!+. I'm assuming they're keeping eye contact.

There's a new small patch that adds (among other things) DLSS support, so Team Green users no longer have to use a mod if they want to use DLSS rather than FSR, plus a FOV slider which, honestly, how the **** did they launch the game without a FOV slider? How do you NOT put a FOV slider in a 1st or 3rd person game in 2023?

Not necessarily. Let's not make any assumptions. @Hawke64might be into it.

^ Sad news. The fact that his father had to crowdfund a trip to see his son before he died suggests to me that either the two were estranged or that Mike Williams had burned through the money he had made in the NFL. That's just speculation, of course.

It took me a while but I got one of the secret archetypes in Remnant 2, the Engineer. I'm currently running through an adventure mode version of N'Erud to level it up before I make my final push in the main campaign. The Engineer gets a turret, three of them, in fact, though you can only use one at a time. The turret will fire at enemies, prioritizing your target, until it runs out of ammo. You can pick it up and use it yourself but you move slowly when you carry it. You can put it down at any time and it will go back to shooting autonomously, though. The starter turret is basically a machine gun, I haven't unlocked the other 2 yet. Each archetype comes with its own trait that you can unlock to use with any build once you fully level up the archetype (read: level 10). In the case of the Engineer the trait increases your armor (by a whopping 50% at max level) which will be useful in pretty much any build in the future. I also want to finish this version of N'Erud since it turns out I did something I probably wasn't expected to do on a first run in the campaign version of N'Erud and I wound up fighting and defeating an alternate version of that world's final boss. I'm not going to reroll the main campaign but I do want to get whatever the normal version of N'Erud's final boss drops.

You can't see it in the reflection in the bottle but I'm wearing shorts... Or am I? With Scotch you kinda have to spend some money. With some other liquors, vodka or rum for example, you can get relatively good quality for a fairly low price, but you can't cheap out on Scotch because cheap Scotch is raw sewage. @PK htiw klaw eriFI'm going to go ahead and recommend Chopin vodka to you. It ain't cheap but it's cheaper than Grey Goose and better IMHO, assuming you're down with a potato vodka. If you're adventurous and you can find it, I can't recommend Żubrówka enough, but that has a very specific flavor (from the blade of grass in the bottle) that's not going to do it for everybody, plus you're probably going to have to go to a big big liquor store to find it. I will also recommend Nikka Whisky From The Barrel, it's a Japanese whisky and it burns like hell going down (it's 51.4% it comes with the territory) but I thoroughly enjoy the flavor. I've only had 3 or 4 different Japanese whiskies but that's my favorite of the bunch.