What are your thoughts on semi-colons? Not the ideal for organs, I’m sure, but for punctuation… ?

• Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Inquisition are both games I’ve played through and loved multiple times over
• Skyrim lol but it’s infrequent for me now
• Civ (I’ve only played 6)

Thank you for such a thorough write-up! This was SO helpful. Genuinely appreciated :)

It’s sad that music UX is adopting these principles, tbh. Music is inherently a long(er) form experience. It deserves separate treatment. The last thing I personally want is for music apps to try to suck my attention as much as text- and video-based apps do. I know I’m fighting against the app economy headwinds in that desire, but I still dare to dream…

I’ll have to check it out. How is Tidal for music discovery? I found that GPM was great for helping me find artists with the “I’m feeling lucky” feature. YTM hasn’t scratched that itch.

Part of what’s kept me on YTM is that I’m still grandfathered into the GPM pricing, and I really like the ad-free feature for the rare occasions I am on YouTube. But—I could deal with giving that up!

I definitely don’t want to see how many people like a song I’m listening to or what they have to say about it. I want my music experience to be more personal. I will just go to normal YouTube if I want to discuss something.

Ugh, I still miss GPM so much. YTM is worse to me in just about every way.

Me too. I suppose I was too optimistic about what Lemmy could be, eh. :( Then again, maybe these are just some additional growing pains. Time will tell!

Corporate CEOs have taken the adage of shooting for the stars way too literally. At this point I believe they are trying to find the maximum possible price point people will pay for their products. Like seemingly everyone else in this country, they want their pound of flesh $$$.

I will be giving that a try. Thanks for the info.

Looks cool! Can anyone weigh in on how similar this is to DDG’s tracking blocker feature? Is it the same but open source?

I think NS is in a good position to expand and become something wonderful if only our leadership can get it together.

Halifax’s municipal council is embarrassingly slow to make meaningful changes, and council and the provincial government have been in a pissing match about housing for years now. Our housing situation is truly dire. Although I want NS and Halifax to grow, I especially want our government to work on making sure newcomers and existing residents can both afford to create a safe home and put down roots in their communities. If that somehow happens, then bring on even more growth.

I’d recommend playing in release order if you’re someone who tends to enjoy delving into lore. (And man, is there a LOT of lore.) I did them in reverse order originally, and although I enjoyed DAI a lot, I didn’t quite get why the stakes were so high for the protag. I felt way more connected to the storyline when I returned to Inquisition after having Origins and DA2 under my belt.

My other reason for recommending chronological order is that Origins is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I still fire up my Xbox 360 to give it a play now and again.

Origins struck a good balance between player autonomy and the required storyline. You can pick your character’s race, gender, and class at the start of the game and get a unique back story that informs how you can approach later conflicts and circumstances. Then you find out the central conflict and are presented with the different factions you need to draw together. From there, it’s up to you to decide who you’ll support and how you’ll make it happen. You can be a true asshole to all your companions, or a Lothario, or BFFs. And the combat system is pretty good overall, despite being dated and a touch clunky. The party mechanics are fun when you get used to them.

DA2 is a perfectly serviceable game, but not one I personally enjoy replaying. Humans are the least interesting race in Thedas to me, and I’m sure that contributes.

DAI is definitely an Open World Game and therefore plagued by all the struggles these games tend to have, but I still found it really fun. Jaws of Hakkon is a great DLC for the world building element. Trespasser is basically the real ending of the game, so hopefully you’ll have access to that DLC as well!

I hope you have a great experience playing these games for the first time! DA is my favourite series ever, and I love seeing folks give it a go. :)

I love the size and feel of the 7a. It was an adjustment to get used to a small screen again but honestly, so happy with that element of the phone.

The battery life, on the other hand, feels worse than my 4 year old OnePlus 7 Pro’s is. I am not sure if it’s a me problem or a Pixel problem, but that aspect has me seriously worried about the longevity of the device. I guess you get what you pay for, but I’d expect a bit better for a mid-range phone.

YouTube transcript link for anyone who needs it: https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=7wFqblQY6Dk

This is a good reminder of just how much CBC puts out there. I am a little surprised not to see a mention of using alternative search engines like DDG or Bing, as to my knowledge those aren’t blocking Canadian news corps. (Please correct me if you know differently!) I guess if the goal is to raise awareness of the content you can get without an intermediary, it makes sense.

I’m very interested to see which parties cave first in this standoff. If nothing else, I’m impressed the Canadian government had the balls to mandate this of American companies.

I really feel for the mods who’ve spent years building and curating communities, only to have them decimated by forces outside of their control. Reddit never listens to its userbase and I’d be surprised if they start now. I mean, they were regularly having calls with TPA developers only to blindside them with the API changes and treat them poorly for having questions. I don’t see how it will be any different for moderators, unfortunately.

It’s worth the time to me, but I can definitely understand why others might not feel the same. Personally, I don’t love the Viking “honour and glory” theme but I do like the zany “mystery” side quests and the overall game structure. As for whether it’s a rinse-and-repeat of previous games… yeah, it is, in most meaningful ways. Since Origins, they’ve relied on a lot of the same mechanisms, but that’s not a deal breaker to me. I like (modern) AC because of the visual polish and atmosphere, not necessarily unique gameplay. Odyssey was my favourite of the “new” gen of AC games, and I think Valhalla made a lot of tangible improvements to the mechanics and gameplay loops since that title.

I too am enjoying AC Valhalla, lol.

chips + jam

specifically, kettle chips (plain salted or unsalted) with a nice strawberry or blackberry jam to dip them in…

where it really gets controversial is that I like to do this with the bonne maman jams 🙈