• 9 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • To some extent this feels like episode 2; the last few episodes didn’t feel like they really moved along the main conflict with Marcus, but this one really sets up a proper encounter between Veltol (with more of his power available) and Marcus’ minion(s). There’s a point that ties back to everything else, not just a semi-SOL episode dealing with something random.

    Not that I didn’t enjoy the last few episodes, but clear progress towards the main conflict is always appreciated in this medium.




  • Yeah, half-heartedly doing French in Duolingo for a few years meant that I knew a bunch of words and could read stuff okay, but communicating and thinking in French was incredibly difficult. I took a couple of classes IRL to fill in those other skills, so now I can actually get by as long as people are a bit patient with me. It was easier for me to learn that stuff than other people in my classes because I had Duolingo experience, but Duolingo definitely isn’t enough on its own.








  • It’s one of my all-time favorite books and I’m still not sure I could actually explain the plot to someone. In fact, I’m not confident there is a coherent plot rather than a bunch of related vignettes that just kind of happen, some of which tell a story and some not so much.

    My brain just kind of spent so much time trying to understand what the point of any of it was that I eventually ended up with an interpretation that I loved to view the book through, and therefore I ended up loving the book.




  • I finished the main story last night and I basically agree with you. It’s got plenty of issues, but overall it’s fun. It is neither the 9/10 game of most reviews I saw nor the 4/10 game that people want it to be.

    I think my main issue is that it wants to have a story about the underworld and how you can’t trust anyone and you’re a huge underdog just trying to survive but it doesn’t want to commit to it. It feels thematically janky in places and ways that feel design-by-committee. It fills the shoes of Shadows of the Empire decently enough, but it feels like it was trying to be 1313 and failed.


  • If you can see a polar bear it’s a threat.

    They really aren’t like other bear species. They are an apex predator in an area where basically nothing other than another polar bear can even harm them. They see most things as food, including humans.

    As a bonus, Iceland has a pretty wonky ecosystem that needs protecting as is and polar bears aren’t native to the island. They have to swim extreme distances to get there, making relocation extremely difficult and expensive, plus if they leave it be it will entirely disrupt other wildlife in the area, to say nothing of the human population.

    As others have said, it sucks that it got shot, but Iceland especially has very limited options on how else to deal with it. Shoot on sight is, unfortunately, a very reasonable policy for them.


  • I find there’s a trade-off in quality for my bone conduction vs in ear pods, especially if I’m moving a lot, but not blocking my hearing as much is often worth that trade-off. Plus it’s more secure on my head, which is important when running/biking/swimming where it is not trivial to find a missing earbud in the grass however far back it fell.

    Highly recommend for exercise, but I would never fully replace my earbuds with them because, frankly, they sound worse and look worse.