I’ve had some issues with Invidious being unable to play specific videos once or twice, but the issues tend to go away after a couple of days.

I mean, we know Google and Youtube are both multi-billion-dollar corporations that are absolutely enraged by the idea that there could be any possible way for a commoner pleb like you to NOT have your online experience absolutely crammed with as many privacy violations and hyper-targeted ads as possible. Invidious having to constantly stay ahead of such powerful entities’ attempts to block them out means that some errors and periods of downtime are perfectly excusable- what’s important is continuing to support them in their fight.

Nobody’s ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I’m honest

Insanely true, I didn’t give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.

Also: ew, Apple.

Edit: Really annoyed it doesn’t have a headphone jack though

Ooh, very nice! I’ve visited the country once, and ever since that visit whenever I taste dill I’m instantly transported back there. You guys have some really underrated good food!

I don’t rightfully know, but my heart says “The hotwheels logo”

It’s pretty modern if you mean popular, although the idea itself is REALLY old.

Rather than going into specific examples because there are a lot of them (especially in gaming and TV), I’d like to say my piece on cliches.

Basically, cliches come to exist because the cliche trope is a really good idea.

“The Butler did it” as a murder mystery trope is a fantastic idea because some people with too much money will use the protection money affords them to mistreat their employees, providing a great motive you can build on to create a great story with relatable morals and characters. It sets up a character with perfect motives, means and a reasonable position of trust to avoid suspicion.

Similarly, “Hell good, Heaven bad” is a fantastic trope because it lets you step back and analyse things like the negative impacts of religion and how authorities (and the bible) will portray themselves as good regardless of their actual actions. Plus of course there were periods of time where people were told doing virtually anything that didn’t fit into an extremely narrow worldview meant you were going to hell. You know, stuff like basketball and Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, the problem with cliches is when someone sees a popular idea that’s also a very good idea, but doesn’t understand why it was a good idea. As a result, when they use the idea, it rings hollow at absolute best, and that kind of terrible execution of something that’s already known and popular tends to be especially disappointing. I think the best example is The Hunger Games, which absolutely defined young adult dystopian fiction for years because it showed how the media industry mistreats its workers, and Alleigant, which used a lot of ideas from Hunger Games (and some other things) without actually understanding the ideas.

(TLDR: Hunger Games has a love triangle as a prominent plot element, but the actual reason is that it’s perpetuated by the media pretty much on pain of death for Katniss so that she can entertain the viewers. By contrast, Alleigant also has a love triangle but the triangle IS the plot element and the author bends over backwards to make it happen despite the fact none of the characters really feel like they’re suitable for it)

Anyways, cliches aren’t bad but you need to know how, why, and when to use them in order to actually fulfil their potential, and the heaven-hell one you’ve mentioned above is no exception.

“You call talking to a fox a survival skill?”

“Eh, whatever works.”

Fallout 76.

Aw, RIP. Guess time comes for us all in the end, and I hadn’t been watching for nearly a decade. Congratulations for lasting as long as you did.

Yeah. I’ll take minor hypocrisy any day of the week when the alternative is behaving like the russians do in Ukraine.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eFc2qQTY9P3ym9fyMNYHC_mIogpt9kNrOdm5n_yj1cs/edit#heading=h.yxnmrg5im7dh

Behold! Dragon homebrew

I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose, drinking fresh mango juice~

Oh, a fellow DnD guy, can I interest you in some homebrew?

It’s got to be DnD- I don’t just play it, I don’t just DM it, I’ve actively studied how it’s designed and balanced in order to make content that is better than the official stuff. I’ve found and ironed out critical flaws in how the game is set up and I’ve made pieces of homebrew content that are larger than entire books.

This is a hell of a bold claim to make, but I believe that I have come to understand the game better than its own Dev Team.

Better late than never. I’ll certainly not complain.

Dwarf Fortress.