Yeah, definitely misread that myself.

To OP, I see a lot of people with anthro PFPs posting from Pawb, maybe look into that instance?

I know exactly what it was for me. I used to read all the time in elementary and middle school, right up until 7th grade. To encourage kids to read, they implemented a reading requirement from 1st grade and up.

Upon completion of a quiz, every book with a length of ten pages or longer awarded a point per ten pages. Depending on the grade level, Five to twenty points a month were required for a satisfactory mark. Points did not carry over from month to month.

All the avid readers in my class quickly came up against the same issue - we were reading fucking novels like Eragon and Harry Potter, and they were individually good for one month each. After that, we had to start fishing for things to read, and what was once a treat became a chore, simply because we had to do it for a reason other than the enjoyment of the story. I remember getting chewed out for doing a quiz for an Amelia Bedilia book because it was on the list and I couldn’t be assed to read something more challenging to top up my points.

No discredit to R.E.M. but my world’s been ending for over a decade and I feel like dogshit constantly. Nobody told me the apocalypse would be heralded by the dumbest fucking cryptobros and AI prompters the world’s ever seen.

Meta acquiring Oculus

As someone with industry experience working with VR, I can tell you it’s a mixed bag. I think there’s certainly no way Oculus (and consumer VR in general) takes off the way it did without Facebook’s dollars behind it, and it’s certainly paved the way to the outstanding quality of standalone HMDs that are on offer today. However, it killed the initiative for PCVR hardware with the non-consolation that Meta, Pico, and HTC offer “Link mode” on all their headsets and it’s iffy on good days, which makes B2B PCVR very difficult to facilitate without some serious legwork on lowering latency over the air connections. Would that we could revive the Rift S, that headset was perfect for our needs.

Dark Disciples 1 and 2, including the temple of eternity module.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dark-disciples-43a

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dark-disciples-2-43b

Be sure to punctuate your actions with the occasional “…Which was the style at the time.”

Seconding this, steam decks are great even if you have a good computer but travel a lot. Capable enough to run Elden Ring, portable enough to fit in a backpack under a seat on most airlines with a laptop as well. Charges off USB-C, proton backend with easy setup for clean emulation up through Gen 6, and probably higher if you like tweaking or aren’t super concerned about performance.

I’m glad someone else said it.

I love that somebody actually went and fucking made them.

Worth noting this is all a byproduct of capitalism as it exists today. Not nearly enough competition or regulation means every major change these days is really just “How can we put more ads in people’s devices? How can we instill FOMO? How can we charge more money for less service?”

Look at how bad mainstream UX/UI has become, even on the biggest platforms with the most industry experience. Windows 11 is a fucking joke and everyone is certain the next one will be worse. We know Microsoft can design a good UI, but they choose not to because they don’t care about the consumer except as it pertains to getting clicks and ad revenue. They shove Edge back in your taskbar after every update, they make finding your own shit on your computer impossible so you’ll use Cortana. Who asked for icons to be centered by default? Who asked for them to fuck around with the start menu for at least the fifth time in two decades? Nobody. But everything they do is for the benefit of the shareholders.

I mean ultimately what you’re paying for here is the modularity of the device. Some people like the idea that they won’t have to junk or RMA the whole laptop when something goes bad or no longer meets their needs. The fact that you can get more I/O and storage functionality out of the 4/6 expansion bays down the road is probably worth it to at least a few people. I appreciate that support is at least implied for bigger and better CPUs/GPUs down the road, and I know a few people in my industry who would appreciate the ability to swap out an additional USB-C, HDMI, or DisplayPort port depending on where they’re presenting and what kind of equipment they have.

“Now what?”

https://youtu.be/2q35PgSXhKg?si=y50akSSlbmjnSrmG

“They do it for free!”

Not anymore, fucko. Have fun selling your ungovernable site.

I just want to return to a time before the technocracy, and the metricization of everything, before we started caring about clicks and views and the algorithm, for the sake of squeezing every last bit of monetization and efficiency out of everything and everyone.

I dunno, but they better watch out if they don’t want Seegson eating their lunch.

Technically speaking, it’s the 2TB platter drive full of games that I’ve pulled from computer to computer over the last 15 years or so. Everything else has failed or become obsolete, but it’s still kicking, miraculously.

We attempted to use the Reverb G2 for a training sim but their equivalent of ASW wasn’t up to snuff. Lots of jumping around between frames. Shame, because the display was really sharp, a good answer to the short-lived Rift S.

Back when I was about 15, I was invited to a Christmas Eve gathering by a friend of the family, who had a young kid, maybe 7 or 8, and I had a gift picked out for everyone but him. I spent a long time combing through gifts at the mall but I really didn’t know all that much about him. I settled on one of those 3D wooden puzzles, a roadster.

Come Christmas Eve, and I’m anxiously awaiting people opening my gifts hoping I’d chosen well. The kid gets to my gift and turns to his parents and says “Wow, you got it after all!” They were dumbfounded. Turns out he’d been asking for that exact kit but they had passed it up. I felt like a million bucks that night.

Make a diorama of kids getting mauled by bears because they made fun of that bald guy in the Bible.

Like, could I just have the aux jack back please? I can frig with my phone before I put the car in drive and just push audio through the speakers, I don’t need to be able to sort through my playlists or make calls from the steering wheel, I’m distracted enough by billboards, for chrissakes. The only thing I like about my phone being connected to my car is that I can skip forward and back, that’s it.