I don’t fall asleep listening to anything but my fan, but reading knocks me the fuck out most nights. Sometimes I can’t make it through a paragraph before catching myself with my eyes completely closed.

I really struggle to enjoy crafting in Subnautica. Something about it just feels clunky and/or a step removed from me, and I don’t engage with it very well.

I love long open-world games, but I also reached a certain point in TW3 where I just burned out. It was weird too, because up until that point I was getting anxious over how little map I had left to explore. Then boom, I just lost my drive. Maybe I subconsciously sabotaged it so that I wouldn’t run out of game. I’d really like to try again sometime.

No, but I miss the days of smaller forums with user recognition. The last time I really recognized a user that wasn’t a mass repost bot was a user on the r/stalker (game) sub-reddit by the name of CeliceTheGreat. Every interaction and opinion we ever had were seemingly in solidarity with one another, and it was always a pleasure to encounter him on other subs occasionally. I doubt he was any more Russian than I am (American/Canadian), but I miss you, comrade, and think of you often.

Facebook.com

It’s so great, you guys… You would love it.

Oof… Thanks for the warning!

How does the camera quality and shutter speed compare to the Pixel on these? I love the color and the style, but am unfamiliar with this brand. I briefly tried to Samsung (🤮) S22 Ultra a few years back, as it was hailed for having the absolute best camera at the time. The shutter speed was absolute garbage and I was deeply unhappy with everything It produced. Not to mention the absurd amount of unnecessary bloatware that I couldn’t remove, and this was on top or the Google services. Brought it back for a measley Pixel 4A and was very pleased. Using a Pixel 7 now and with a launcher it has been a dream.

I’m open to other brands like this, though.

Raw mushrooms dipped in Hidden Valley are pretty good… I love how they pop lightly when your teeth pass through them. You also can’t go wrong with a peanut butter and banana sandwich…

I have a copycat recipe for Taco Bells quesadilla sauce that is dirt cheap to make. I’ve probably made 30 liters of it in my lifetime. Smear that on a mini flour tortilla with some Great Value grilled chicken strips (no doubt made with tortured chickens to keep the price low) and a bit of shredded cheese (cheddar and monteray jack) and you’ve got one hell of a tasty quesadilla to fry up.

Here’s the recipe for the sauce. Let me know if you get around to making it. Would love to know what you think.

1 cup mayo (I use Helman’s 1/2 fat)

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp pickled jalapeno juice (from Old El Paso pickled jalapeños)

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

A dash of salt

And how ever many diced pickled jalapeños you see fit

I don’t recall ever interacting with my phone in my dreams.

I think the biggest disappointment I had after moving to Alberta was finding out the Aurora Chaser groups use high exposure for all of their images and the actual aurora just looks like white beams most of the time. I do see green from time to time, but you need to go to dark-sky preserves or the fuckin’ Yukon to see the good ones.

Aurora photos are a real circle-jerk of dishonesty.

Absolute piece of shit cameras with slow shutter speed for sure, even on the Ultra. I brought mine back for a cheap ass Pixel 4A and used that for two years instead. That has been outdone only by my Pixel 7.

My dad suffered a heart attack and died suddenly about a year ago. I’ve never been religious or very spiritual, but after his death I became a lot more open to peoples’ various ideas on the afterlife. There was such an unfair finality to losing him. I always feel as though he’s right there on speed dial, even at this moment, but when I go to reach out to him I’m reminded that he isn’t ever going to pick up even though he still feels close. It’s like he’s always on the tip of my tongue.

Of all the things I’ve read and heard in my exploration of the topic since, NDEs are hands-down the most comforting and convincing of them all. Even if it’s all some kind of grand and miraculous illusion that we endure across all cultures, with or without any physical brain activity, the thought of him finding peace and comfort in that moment of death and choosing not to return to his body is very beautiful to me. My dad lived a life or immense chronic pain. His leg was obliterated as a young man and reassembled with rods. He had degenerative disks in his spine, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. So many memories are of him whincing and breathing through pain. Of course he wouldn’t return to that battered and broken body.

So while it still feels shitty, and still feels unfair, I take solace in the thought of him shedding that shit, seeing his dad (suicide) and mom (cancer) with him again, and choosing to return to the ether, knowing full well that my mom, my brother, and myself will heal, and be okay, and reunite with him eventually too on the other side.

And when I die, even if it’s all a last-minute illusion, I hope it gives me the peace I need to let go too.

I don’t know if it’s still this way, but at the time I felt as though I had joined an empty cell on reddit and had to go through pages upon pages of potential subs/interests, many of which were vastly under-populated or duplicates from various other instances. It felt a bit like using a radio dial to find stations out in the static, and most of them weren’t interesting. I was using Jerboa and didn’t care much for it, but after Sync arrived my experience became nearly indistinguishable from reddit… except I’m not always stressed out and constantly dealing with inflammatory assholes and social confrontation.

Lemmy has definitely grown a lot since I arrived, though. I do miss niche communities, especially for old PC games that are no longer mainstream… But I haven’t been back to reddit since before the blackouts. It wasn’t good for my mental health.

Setup was a pain in the ass for me, but I was determined not to return to reddit after the API changes. I’m tech-savvy enough to build a PC, format/partition disks, and provide tech support for my extremely confused mother, but Mastadon was so off-putting that I jumped ship during setup, and Lemmy had a learning curve that the average person may not be willing to figure out.

Even my brother who is familiar with using Tor and such couldn’t quite figure out Lemmy. He wound up joining (what I assume was) one of the shitty instances right after the first large migration, and it must have been defederated for one reason or other because he denounced the rampant censorship and went back to reddit. If he were right wing or a Nazi I could probably connect the dots there, but my brother is even further left than I am. He actually got me into politics while he was campaigning for Bernie Sanders. So I’m not exactly sure what soured his experience more-so than the initial setup (which he also struggled to wrap his head around).

I suspect he didn’t understand why his instance was defederated, and just saw the people around him complaining that it had happened. Kind of a bummer because he introduced me to Sync and would fit in really well here, but something went awry.

Poutine, but just the classic kind. Cheese curds and brown gravy over fries. Don’t go to a poutinerie for the first time ever and order some stupid shit like buffalo chicken poutine. And don’t order your first poutine from McDonald’s either.

Just gonna drop this here, since Ross has blown up suddenly. It’s important this masterpiece never fall into obscurity.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1Rnm-vr9V&si=dLKBo06GqI30I3QP

My cousin and I used to spend the night at my grandma’s house fairly regularly. Between my grandpa and my two uncles who lived there, the house had its fair share of old blank VHS tapes containing recordings of various horror films among comedy classics like Revenge of the Nerds. As far as horror goes, Return of the Living Dead scared the absolute shit out of us at age 8, as did Tremors and Gargoyles (1972).

And since you’re no doubt wondering, I don’t remember coming across any porn on those old VHS tapes, but my uncles did keep a few magazines stashed away in their closets that my cousin always knew exactly where to find.

EDIT: God damn, this really opened up a well of (positive) memories over an entire family that has since deceased. Cancer and poor health eventually took every last person in that house. Doesn’t help that nearly everyone smoked and drinked to the day they died. They were all such good people, though. Rest in peace.

In times like this, we turn to Cernunnos.

Cernunnos (praise be) where exactly is this?

Cernunnos: “Pfffffff- ehhhh- fffffffuckin’… Uhhh…”

Spoken like a true Baratheon.

The yellow ones are the best I’ve had, but cost nearly twice as much for what is typically a smaller portion than the red ones.