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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • RIP. I remember some of his papers were required reading for two key seminars I took in undergrad and grad school. Both carried the same title at the time: “The Anthropology of Women.” An amazing writer and scholar. I’ll never forget the scholarly work I read in my undergrad class authored by him and Anita Hill herself. Groundbreaking stuff, not only for what was considered at the time a “niche topic” as people online say these days, but groundbreaking stuff when it comes to basic human rights nobody seems to think about anymore. I might add, in memory of this great scholar, that the term “niche topic” be stripped from everyone’s vocabulary. Your “niche topic” today might be a sign of your narrow-mindedness in history tomorrow.


  • Most people refer to FitGirl as a man. They assume FitGirl is a man or know it’s a man. I thought like you once the first time I saw repacks made by FitGirl. I was like, “Oh, cool! A woman into fitness and computer science!” I hope I was right and I hope your “outsider’s take” is right. I fear that this is not the case. Note that I fear this, I cannot confirm if FitGirl is a man or a woman myself since this person is not my next-door neighbor. I just have been around long enough to see how FitGirl is always referred to as a man. Since I’ve learned more, the idea, as far as I can tell, is that the software gets “slimmed down” and “de-bloated.” Perhaps you’ve heard the term “bloatware?” My understanding is that, if FitGirl is a man, he is referring to women who complain about bloating and he is referring to the “bloatware” that he reduces in size as a woman who has been relieved of the bloating. “Fit” here does not refer to exercise, but rather a body type which, in turn, metaphorically refers to reducing the size of “bloatware.” Anyway, that’s what I’ve been able to piece together over the years. Mind you, it’s an interpretation of mine. Who knows how far off the mark I am? Maybe someone who knows FitGirl personally can tell us more. Maybe she’s somebody’s gym buddy.



  • I really don’t see the difference. Instant access versus delayed access… sounds like a Freud book I read about once about the pleasure principle. It’s all silly. The timing has nothing to do with anything. As a matter of fact, you’ve just argued yourself out of your own argument and made my point all over again. You can see it tomorrow, you can have it today. You can delay your pleasure. You can choose not to delay your pleasure. You can delay your pleasure because that’s what pleasures you.




  • I have not, because I don’t have a VR headset, either. VR technology is something really interesting, though, isn’t it? Right now, what I’m seeing, is a lot of few people owning VR headsets whining about how they wish old games could be VR-enabled and adjusted to be made VR. My best guess is that some console maker will make VR an integrated part of its technology (probably Nintendo) and everybody will get their VR on until they’re exhausted (like with the Wii) and then, after that, we’ll have VR that is affordable to the masses (not like what happened to the Wii, which my great-nephew used to call the “wee-wee” when he was 4).


  • Referring back to The Room, I had choices. I could play it on my iPhone, my iPad, or on my gaming laptop with Steam. I went with my gaming laptop on Steam. Again, I bought all of those in a sale. I was bummed because I was like, “I could have lolled around on the couch with my iPad and played this no prob instead of being weighed down with my heavy gaming laptop on my lap. Even the last installment, with the complicated creepy doll house shit and all the travel through the house and all.” The first The Room I saw as totally potentially cool on my phone, and maybe even The Room 2. After that, I don’t know. Maybe. The House of Da Vinci, as I am playing it on my computer, it really needs the screen real estate because of the camera and the wonky nonesense. I can tell that the developers originally made it for a computer because of the way you have to manipulate things. The Room is a format I can imagine on a touchscreen. The House of Da Vinci is not something I can imagine on a touchscreen. But you are living proof you can do this, on a phone. So there is something else to say about this game. It’s great on a phone. 99 cents is nice. It’s less than 7.99.


  • I can’t imagine playing this game on a phone. I guess 99 cents isn’t so bad. Do you still have eyes after playing this game on a phone? LOL. I wonder if the phone version and the PC version are different. Like, on a 17" screen, I’ve had to adjust brightness to see things and then re-adjust brightness to see other things. LMAO. I could play this on a tablet, though. Totally could see things on there. With brightness adjustments available on the fly. I can totally imagine The Room being accessible perfectly on any device. That’s the “polished” you couldn’t quite put your finger on. The Room was carefully created for all devices. The House of Da Vinci is a blue light special.


  • The “less polished” feel, I think, comes from the way sometimes the double-click doesn’t focus right depending on the angle you’re looking at objects from and also the way sliding objects don’t slide the way they’re supposed to. The sliding objects get wicked fiddly, sometimes. The camera isn’t as good as in The Room, either. The Room had all of these aspects perfectly polished, it was just easy and intuitive to interact with. The House of Da Vinci, lacking this perfection, pales in comparison. The regular price now is 19.99. It used to be twice that. I got it for 7.99. Having payed 7.99, I’m OK with the major wonky. If I had payed 19.99, I would be very unhappy. If I had payed 39.99 I would be very seriously pissed off. I have to say, though, too, that I like the addition to the looking glass, where it lets you see things in the past. I really think it adds a little more depth to the puzzle solving. Plus, you get a Renaissance bionic arm thingy. Kinda cool. This game is keeping happy. In a place where I need more of The Room and I finished all of The Room. 8 bucks well spent and I’m happy.


  • I don’t think you actually committed an act of piracy. Good for you, though. I’m still trying to figure out how to fit a 100GB game into my hard drive (SSD) without slowing my computer down. I, too, may turn to FitGirl for the answer. If my theoretical piracy isn’t piracy (because I bought the game plus DLC, just haven’t downloaded and installed) I don’t think your theoretical or alleged piracy is actual piracy, either. I have SO MANY issues with the username FitGirl, though. They could have figured out a name that wasn’t so sexist. I would have gone with SlimWare.


  • The House of Da Vinci. I got it in the Steam summer sale and needed something like The Room games. I had no idea it was so much like The Room games. I’m glad I bought it with a huge discount. It’s not worth the full price, which is the only difference I see between The House of Da Vinci and The Room. The Room is definitely worth full price on Steam and a huge value if you get it on sale. Anyway, I’m happy. I get more of The Room, but it’s in The House of Da Vinci. Great puzzle game to play clicking on stuff with your mouse and feeling relaxed.


  • Oh, I guess my comment looked like I was mad at the console companies? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound angry. I just don’t like using consoles because sometimes it feels like there is a forced obsolescence placed on them like just about everything these days. I feel like investing in a console is submitting myself to the whims of the console maker, who will decide for me when it’s out of date and how I’ll be able to use the games for it in the future. You know, I have an iPad 2 that works just like it did when it was brand new but it’s not useful for very much because software updates on it were stopped a few years ago. Now it’s a digital picture frame. If the iPad was a person, I think it would shout at me and say, “I still work great! If somebody would just let me, I’d show you web sites! Why are you just using me as a silly digital picture frame? I’m way better than this, you fool!” I think if people like using consoles they should feel free to use them. I don’t like them for me because I like to have all my games in one place and usable in the future. I see a PC as a better use of my money (again, for me, not for everyone) and I’m glad I made the decision to stop buying consoles years ago. If I had kids, they would learn how to game on a PC or not play games at all, I guess! Anyway, I was mostly talking about money, but there are other good reasons to use a PC over a console. For example, you can upgrade a PC with newer hardware as needed, so that’s less wasteful, don’t you think? Anyway, no anger from me. Console companies will do what they see fit to make money. That’s how the economy works and that’s just the way it is. That being said, I refuse to participate in that system and I think if somebody reads this and decides not to, well I did something useful and helpful today.


  • That’s the trade off. If you think you have to have the latest, greatest, fastest hardware you are going to have to shell out the big bucks. More often than not, a game looks the same to me whether its played on this year’s graphics card or last year’s graphics card or even the year before last’s graphics card. At some point speed and memory size are numbers that don’t need to go beyond a certain point to give you decent software performance. People will disagree with this and I think that’s fine. Maybe my eyes are wonky. Who knows? My wonky eyes save me money. The graphics look about the same to me using this or that graphics card.


  • Yes. It’s a money grab more than anything else, designed to make people buy new stuff. In this case, a new console, new games, new peripherals, subscriptions, etc. I like my PC because of the freedom from this type of stuff it affords me, it is in fact cheaper to use a PC if you’re a careful shopper. If you’re the type of shopper that buys things as soon as they come out or you’re impulsive, well then, yes, PC gaming can get very expensive. But it’s like anything else in this capitalist world of consumption. Jeans can be affordable or outrageously expensive. So can hamburgers. I’m the type of shopper that never pays full price for ANYTHING and I never buy things on a whim. I study stuff, think about it, and wait. I do my own upgrades on hardware, too. Opening a PC tower and sticking things into slots is not exactly complicated.


  • I don’t know about that. You can’t really say what the future holds unless you have a magical crystal ball or something. I take that type of answer as legitimately confused on the part of the respondent. I didn’t exactly say it was a good thing, just that there is hope. They could eventually wind up one way or the other. Time will only tell. I like to be optimistic and hopeful. It keeps me alive.


  • Except when the console maker decides to make a new console and decides what games will no longer work on the new console and what will. Or, perhaps the console maker decides that you can play some of your old games on the new console, but decides that to do so you have to buy a subscription, or you have to buy the games again because they had to make a new version of the old games that work with the new console. A PC will outlast that. You can buy two or three consoles, or buy one PC. Doesn’t look cheaper to me. Then, I’ll add to my comment: When it’s finally time to buy a new PC, which for whatever reason you have decided on your own because nobody cancelled your PC, you take your whole collection of games to the new PC and they work just fine on the new PC, plus you can have the new games that your new PC can run.


  • This is very sad. I was in high school in the 1990s and I was hugely big mouthed left-wing boy with friends who were hugely big mouthed left-wing boys and girls. This in a small town. My graduating class was 100 or so. “most high school seniors claim no political identity” looks promising. They are looking at the landscape and saying “this makes no sense, I’m not signing up for any of this crap.” So, you know, perhaps a silver lining?