There are definitely some things it is healthier not to know, and I’m pretty sure this is one of them. It’s why I don’t ask my mom questions about my dad, who I have never met since being old enough to form memories and I would like to keep it that way.

Open-ended, “sandbox” style MMOs are a lot trickier to get right than “theme park” style ones like Star Wars: The Old Republic. Games like SW:TOR require a lot of content to be developed, but you can at least be pretty sure that if you develop fun quests then players who like questing will have fun.

For a “sandbox” style MMO, you have to design systems that lead to interesting player interactions… and then hope players actually interact. This is complicated by the market share for sandbox games being smaller overall, meaning you can’t guarantee there will actually be a sizable player population. Also sandbox-style players are sharply divided on basically every topic from “how much PvP should there be” to “how much grinding should there be” so you quickly find yourself either targeting increasingly narrow slices of players or trying to appeal to multiple playstyles at once, which is even harder.

I think this is why sandbox games have mostly moved towards smaller worlds and self-hosted servers, like ARK and Rust, where they can thrive with small player counts and individual play groups can tweak the experience to better suit their needs.

https://meetunmeat.us/product/luncheon-style-meat/

Water, Non-GMO Soy Protein, Palm Olein, Seasonings (Onion, Black Pepper), Natural Flavors, Potato Starch (Thickener), Modified Vegetable Gum, Wheat (gluten and fiber, Sugar, Yeast Extract, Vinegar, Potassium Salt and Paprika Oil (color)

My friend seems to have good success meeting people in Discord channels about his niche interests, with the caveat that there is a lot more video calling than there is hanging out, because nobody lives in the same state. Maybe join a furry chat and say hello?

Mortal men cannot long resist the influence of the Ring at such close proximity. Replace Boromir with any other human, dwarf, or elf, and some member of the Fellowship would still have turned on the ring-bearer by the end.

Hobbits are more resilient, but with long enough exposure even they can be swayed. It was only a matter of time.

All, top 6 hours.

Much safer than fidgeting with your actual switchblade, which is extremely tempting, lmao.

This one isn’t even real. “Fewer” can only refer to countable things, but “less” can refer to both countable and uncountable things, and has been used that way for hundreds of years. It has never been wrong to say “less.”

I don’t understand the chart in this article about body type vs. underwear style. It doesn’t relate to the question that it’s located directly under, and it makes no attempt to explain why, for example, thin men shouldn’t wear boxers.

I can’t tell if this article is AI generated or just rushed out by someone trying to meet a quota.

Okay the image is messy but the snake coiling around the scales is actually a sick concept.

That’s not what the article is saying though? It doesn’t say the Greeks thought the sea was red, it says they didn’t have (or at least rarely used) a word for what color it is, so they only described it by its other attributes (like how dark it was).

1. Jenny is very popular but hasn’t uploaded to Youtube in a year, so this a big comeback.

2. Star Wars is a popular franchise but has had mixed success recently, and Disney’s perceived mismanagement of it is a popular topic.

3. It’s organized as an Internet-friendly numbered list!

4. I, and apparently a lot of other people, could listen to Jenny talk about theme parks all day.

I’m on board with this, but I may be biased because I also don’t like using Discord for anything else. Every time someone sends me a Discord invite I feel a little defeated, because it is usually after I have agreed to participate in something.

But they haven’t found the facial database and Invenda claims they don’t have one, right? Their story is that the machine takes an image, runs some local processing to determine demographic info about the user/customer/target/victim, and then stores that instead of storing the image or biometrics.

There’s a good chance they’re lying but claiming the database has been “revealed” when no one has found it yet seems like sensationalism.

Edit: “Secret demographic database derived from facial recognition” would be true but sounds less snappy, I guess?

Thank you! And no, genetic heterochromia in dogs is harmless. :)

I did as a kid, but my tinnitus covers it up now.

She’s SO floofy, I love her ^^

From the link:

Prismic is still early in development and not yet in a usable state. Most of the features described below are planned but not yet or only partially implemented.

I don’t think it looks like anything, yet.

Yeah I haven’t done this with a gas nozzle, but I walk off without stuff I need and which I was just holding basically every day, so I will probably manage this feat of incredible stupidity eventually.

This always reminds me of the Perfectly Normal Beasts from Mostly Harmless.