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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • 58008@lemmy.worldtoPC Gaming@lemmy.caGOG Fighting the Good Fight
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    3 days ago

    Witcher 3 hard copies required activation to your GOG account before they could work. Hitman (2016) was 70% locked behind the worst DRM in human history, but they sold it on their store until they were pressured by customers not to.

    And Devotion still ain’t ‘preserved’ because the CCCP hivemind told them not to have it on their site, and they obeyed instantly.

    GOG can suck all the dicks with that self-righteous bullshit.


  • | and they’re also easier on the eyes

    This is my main reason for preferring to read on e-readers. A book is a long-ass journey, and to be staring at a regular screen for that long can be painful business.

    I also like that there’s at least the suggestion of old-school physical connection to the book. It’s a device that does just one thing (and is very good at it as a result), and you find yourself treating it the way you used to treat a paper book. I guess it’s the same sort of “positive friction” you get when you listen to vinyl or something like that. Makes the experience a bit nicer. Like, yeah, you could open notepad on a smartphone and read the complete works of Shakespeare for free in Courier New font, having to scroll every 2 paragraphs, but who the fuck wants to do that?

    The basic form factor of the book has been perfected over centuries, and e-readers emulate it to a fair degree.

    I think most e-readers are waterproof, too 🤔 One would hope so, at least! Reading in the tub or on a beach is one of the benefits of its portability.








  • Currently reading Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser

    The thesis of the book is basically that environmental pollution, particularly lead, might be the thing that caused so many serial killers to pop up during the period of the late '60s to the late '70s. Only half way through it so far, and not quite convinced by the theory yet. Although it’s indisputable that such pollution can damage brains to a severe degree, I’m just not sure how you get from “damaged” to “I’d better serial kill some women”. Random violence and anger management issues, sure. But the highly specific and MO-driven criminality of serials killers seems like something else entirely. We’ll see what evidence comes in later chapters!

    EDIT: Finished. Yeah, sounds like complete bullshit to me. She was even attributing the existence of the Bloods and the Crips to smog, for fuck’s sake. It’s as though she’s genuinely unable to imagine any reason for any violence other than pollution-induced brain damage.



  • I think I blocked a couple of accounts years ago that were just reposting ancient memes from reddit in bot-like numbers. But it seems like the majority of content here falls under that category, so blocking seems futile. Can’t even use downvoting to correct the issue because our votes aren’t private/anonymous here and I don’t need a large account seeing that I downvote their content every time I come across it. It would have to feel personal at that point 😆

    I don’t mind big accounts in principle, I just don’t want to see memes from 2018 being reposted every day with the same titles, and for there to be no other content from those accounts.





  • Whatever replaces Tenor needs to allow for more specificity in searching. If I search “lemur” and I see 3 orangutans, a chimp and a 12 gibbons, and maybe 1 actual lemur, I’m still happy to have simians, but I really needed a lemur, man. I was quite fucking specific in my search term. Had I written “monkey” but it showed me a series of apes, I wouldn’t mind that so much.

    Also, “cat on skateboard” has fuck all to do with a poorly staged video of a dog playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with a set of gaming bongos. Again, glad to see it, but where’s my skateboarding cat??



  • I had a hilarious dream just last night! Remember recently when Quentin Tarantino was talking shit about the acting skills of Paul Dano? I dreamt that Paul was in a new movie, and was acting hard, like, really giving it insane levels of energy, and after every line he delivered he’d glance at the camera with an expression of exasperation on his face, as if to say “is THAT good enough for you, ya cunt??” directly to Tarantino.


  • Some early shock/gore site discussion below, spoilered in case you don’t wanna read about such things.

    spoiler

    rotten.com - nasty website hosting bizarre and violent tableaus of human suffering, pretty tame by today’s standards though.

    steakandcheese.com - another shock site, it hosted a clip that became quite infamous, showing a Russian soldier having his throat stabbed and cut by a Chechen rebel. I feel like that clip was a rubicon for the internet; after that, things got darker and more extreme, and now you can literally find clips of people being skinned alive. But that clip for sure ruined many a childhood.

    When the internet was first introduced to me in around '97 or so, in IT class in high school, the only thing I really did was look for URLs on products around the class or in my pockets. For example, Pepsi had a website, Peperami had one too. I also created an email account on Hotmail.com, and I believe we did some chat room stuff in IRC or ICQ or one of those things.

    One day during a lunch break at the same school, I looked up porn and actually found some, although I have no memory of what the site was called. I got scared though, and closed the browser as soon as I saw nudey ladies. I’m sure the teacher checked the browsing history (something I had no idea about back then) and saw what I was looking at, but he never said anything to me about it. Legend 🫡




  • I’m sure the obvious picks are already mentioned, so I’ll try to think of some stuff that might not be well-known:

    Shane Meadows has produced 2 TV series worth watching. One is the This is England collection. It starts with This is England (2006), which is a film, then 3 miniseries (This is England '86, This is England '88 and This is England '90) that continue the story. All of it together is about as good as TV gets. Might wanna check for triggers before watching on something like doesthedogdie.com.

    He made a second miniseries called The Virtues. It’s a difficult watch at times, but it’s a masterpiece. And it’s another one you might wanna look into before watching.

    There’s a show that was very popular in the UK and Ireland back in the '90s called Cracker. It stars the late great Robbie Coltrane (you probably know him better as Hagrid from Harry Potter). He plays a psychologist who works with the police to find and interrogate various kinds of pathological killers and sex offenders. It’s really, really good. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s ever been released on anything but DVD, so you’ll be stuck with SD quality.

    Say Nothing is a recent show that does a really nice job of dealing with ‘the troubles’ in N. Ireland. It’s based on real events, the most central of which is the abduction, murder and ‘disappearing’ of a widowed mother of 10 children by the IRA. Jean McConville is one of 17 people who were disappeared in this way, and is by far the most notorious given her circumstances. The story - based on the book by Patrick Radden Keef - follows Dolours Price, a female IRA member who was a significant figure in the conflict and who was involved in Jean McConville’s abduction. One of the better shows I’ve seen generally, and probably the best bit of media on the N. Irish troubles (there’s so much junk about this place, it’s refreshing to see something half-decent for once). If you need a palate cleanser after watching it, Derry Girls should do the trick!


  • I agree about Ricky Gervais. I actually liked him in The Office, but in everything else - before and after - he is just fucking awful. Talk shows, stand-up, speeches, podcasting, he is a desperate, strained and insecure performer. When he’s telling a joke, it’s like every word has had to be pressed out of a gland with a clenched fist before the next word can be milked free; it’s clear he’s just saying the words in the correct order, and not performing it. He is never present and ‘in the moment’, and seems to be in a perpetual state of panic about his own inadequacy. If he were actually a decent person instead of whatever the fuck he has become, I wouldn’t be saying this about him. But he’s a cunt, so, yeah. His imposter syndrome (which is entirely deserved in his case) makes the media he’s in unbearable to consume.

    To see just how truly awful the man is, watch that Talking Funny documentary. It’s him, Jerry Seinfeld (the least-funny paedophile in the world), Chris Rock and Louie CK all in a room together talking about comedy. Ricky is obviously feeling the full force of his imposter syndrome throughout. It’s probably the most glaring example of what I’m talking about.

    I simply don’t get his success. Like, I can understand the success of paedophile rings, but I can’t fathom how Ricky has made it so big. One of life’s great mysteries, I guess.


  • My girlfriend-at-the-time’s dirty, dirty ass. Thought it would be like in my fantasies, where it tastes like candyfloss and smells like a Yankee candle. Nope. Shit. Just shit.

    If you’re curious, shit tastes exactly as it smells. I wish I didn’t know that. Although I’m happy that now you, too, know that.

    And she had the nerve to dump me later. I deserve a Nobel peace prize for not recoiling in horror and instead just powering through in silence like a fucking GENTLEMAN.

    On the bright side, it became a great way to ensure future partners were cognisant of the issue. I’d drop it into the usual “what was your ex like?” gossip sessions that come with new relationships. It’s like saying “please wash your various holes if I’m gonna go rooting around in them like an ant-fiending aardvark” without actually saying it. A cautionary fable from days of yore to guide the next generation.

    P.S. I’m still pro-anilingus. Just… clean the fuckin’ thing first. I don’t need to be picking dingleberries from between my teeth, thanks.