Fuck cars.

Can’t we just watch that one Zeitgeist indie documentary to find out the Venus Project is a thing, and then make open-source Star Trek real?

I’ve played with and without the analog inputs, and using a real DualShock 2. By default it’s not L3, it’s circle for cqc, and square for pressure sensitive controls for the gun.

The controls were even worse on ps2 because even though they are technically analog buttons, they have a very short travel distance which makes it too easy to accidentally do the wrong thing. I found the modern controls slightly more intuitive.

There was also a time I tried to play the ps2 version on pcsx2, but could only use a DualShock 4 then. Since that controller doesn’t have analog face buttons, I remapped cqc to L2 and gunfire to R2 and found that control scheme worked surprizingly well.

But the basic controls are the least of those game’s problems.

As far as getting them in the wild, you just have to be sure to forage where the air and soil is free from pollutants (as far as that is feasible anyway), then clean and dehydrate them.

As far as safety goes, the conventional wisdom is that you want to decarboxylate them. If I recall, there are two main active ingredients in amanitas: muscimol, and ibotenic acid. It’s believed that one of these is safe, and the other not so much. But the whole thing really isn’t very clear, and we certainly don’t have any reliable long term data on habitual use. Anyway, the process just involves simmering them in a solution of water and citric acid, which converts the unsafe substance into the safe one.

And of course dose is a large part of safety.

Amanitas are not “magic mushrooms” in that they do not contain psilocybin, and are fully legal, just heavily stigmatized. I’ve tried them and found them to be the single greatest substance I’ve taken for anxiety, but I’ve stopped taking them because I have doubts about their safety. Chubby Emu on youtube has an episode about a guy who died after taking them, for example.

So if you are inclined to try them, do your research first. Extensively. And keep in mind that even the science on these fungi is still far from complete.

Despite my best efforts, I never got to a point where I felt like I wasn’t fighting against the controls and mechanics. As somebody who has played a fair share of other stealth games, they just are really bad.

I’ll talk about the boss fight that was the final straw for me.

The whole thing was an exercise in annoyance and frustration. After getting past it, it made me realize how hard I had been trying to ignore the way these things had been annoying me throughout the entire game. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Just hate it, the games are not for me.

These days when I play Bethesda games I always end up using console commands to expand inventory space. I’m so done with hyper-limited inventory systems and having to waste stat points to increase them.

I really want to like Metal Gear Solid games, but after playing a fair way into MGS3… I kind of hate it. The controls and mechanics are so bad.

There’s no easy solution, because it’s like trying to treat a cancer that has already been growing for generations and is already metastasizing. Ironically, the best bet from a wide perspective is probably a combination of supporting religious diversity (more institutions who don’t share their views), and even moreso a healthy, science-respecting educational system. These groups thrive most in rural areas with the poorest access to education. They perceive college as a threat for good reason - because their entire worldview is a hot garbage house of cards that immediately crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.

Free public college is the biggest threat to them.

People still underestimate the role of christian fundamentalism in this ongoing trainwreck. When you have a religious institution whose image of God is quite literally an abusive father, who all worship power above all else, whose church policies are to spread as far and wide as possible and systematically “train”(ie., abuse) their own children into actively seeking out every position of power possible to force their worldview onto everyone - it was only a matter of time before this all happened.

These are people who genuinely believe the war on terror is a holy war. Their entire social network is meticulously designed to draw a dichotomy between themselves (apart from the world), vs everyone else (the worldly), to isolate their own against outside views, and indoctrinate their children throughout their entire lives to vigorously proselytize on the one hand, and be ready to eliminate anyone who opposes their worldview on the other. And many of them are bloodthirsty.

It has been for me. As a fellow tea enjoyer, lung function, gut health, a melting away of aching joints and physical malaise, seasonal allergy alleviation, and a shockingly boosted immune system are all benefits that I’ve personally enjoyed since going fully plant-based. Most likely heart benefits as well, but I won’t know for sure until I get my cholesterol levels tested.

But of course personal anecdotes are not valid evidence. Which is fine, because the science largely favors diets that are at least mostly plant-centric anyway.

In my experience sacrifice is a relative matter, and soon dissipates. Every abstained choice gets replaced with an alternative, and the more alternatives that are explored the more it becomes apparent that there is an entire culinary world that has been ignored. It becomes apparent that what felt like sacrifice is in fact opportunity, and those opportunities are well worth investigating in full.

If you keep exploring plant-based options you will be a lot more likely to find what works for you, than if you just give up.

It should also be noted, dairy impairs the bioavailability of beneficial plant-based compounds. Here are a few studies. Milk and coffee. Milk and blueberries. And Milk and tea.

Oh no, you’re owning the vegans! 😵

But, uh, what’s going on here? Do you think animal abuse is funny?

Not everyone has the privilege of their family members making it to their 80s or later. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer. I’ve had family members die in their 40s, 50s, 60s, but almost never later than 70s.

Why does it matter if journalists report on this stuff more? Because a crazy amount of people are dying from these top causes, and they are not just “shit that happens.” They have causes, and they are preventable.

Right, something like that would be great.

I get that, I had to keep my FB when I lived in a rural area just to pay rent. Lazy.

Fuck ai, see here.

I think there has to be a happy medium, but I guess it depends on personal preference. It’s not like brevity can’t be achieved through things like aliases anyway. I just want text-based computer stuff to look a little more like something Inform 7.

Friend, I have studied my fair share of programming, I get it. I’m not saying there should be any significant difference to the way information is processed, or what kind of processing occurs. Just that the syntax itself trades off a little of it’s brevity for a little more readability, like something along the lines of the Inform 7 but still within the boundaries of how the programs and cli normally operate under the hood.

I like both, but I think I would like cli better if the syntax were more expressive, and more akin to natural human language.