I hate to say it, 'cause Bethesda has been very influential throughout my gaming life, but it's too little too late. Starfield is entirely unsalvageable without a complete overhaul and re-release using an upgraded engine that can actually handle the scope of the game.

So this is why Hogwarts Legacy didn't have playable quidditch.

Good! Tchia is a phenomenal, Breath of the Wild-esque, family-friendly game. My only complaint was its performance on the Deck - at medium settings, it gets 30-50FPS with occasional hitches. Performance wasn't enough to turn me off from it, but I very much welcome an improvement.

Broken clock, blah blah blah.

One extremely important factor that this article neglects to address: Valve is a private company - it's not publicly traded in Wall Street. That is the reason Steam has remained the best in the business; it's not beholden to shareholders' short-sighted meddling. It's also the reason Steam is effectively immune to enshittification.

I understand where you're coming from; it's annoying when any moral message is forced into a piece of media simply for the sake of checking a box, regardless of whether I agree with the message.

But I haven't noticed this in modern games. Modern movies and TV, definitely, but not games.

What games are you playing that do this?

AI art is very easy to learn, but has a lot of intricacies and extra functions that can take a while to learn and master. The only free and open source one, Stable Diffusion, has a lot of resources online. Here's a beginner's guide to get you started.

I recommend running locally if you have the hardware for it. You generally need at least 8GB of VRAM for reasonably fast generation, though I've heard of people being fine with as little as 4GB. Check out Civitai for additional resources.

The first thing I thought when I saw that image was "this is AI-generated"

And this all but confirms it:

But the job is so clumsy, particularly around the hands

Finally, something positive coming out of the Supreme Court!

of Canada

Ooooof course.

Cries in 'Murican

Phenomenal game, but the controller and Linux support are very lacking. It's good to see they're acknowledging and working on that.

He's hardly modern, having died nearly 30 years ago, but Kevin Gilbert's Song for a Dead Friend still brings tears to my eyes every time.

US politicians are so far removed from the will of the people that I think it's time we start being more accurate with how we refer to US policy and politicians vs the US public.

US politicians support the genocide in Palestine.

The US public (mostly) opposes it.

US policy is privatized healthcare.

The US public (mostly) wants socialized/single-payer healthcare.

At this point, the US government and the people it claims to represent are two almost completely separate entities, connected only by law. The public has to abide by the laws politicians enact, but it's a one-way street; politicians can (and do) safely ignore the public without any repercussions.

That's a big part what makes the new God of War so great - that Kratos has changed. He's not a one-dimensional murder machine anymore; he's a dad, and becoming a dad softens you. The game would've flopped if he was still the same Kratos from 18 years ago.

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If someone tells you they don't care about pronoun usage, believe them. I'm nonbinary and don't care what pronoun people use for me, because I identify as both male and female. Most people default to "he" for me because of my beard, but others use "they" because of my proclivity for wearing skirts, nail polish, and lipstick. Rarely I'll have someone use "she" (or I'll use it myself), but ultimately, I'm just a person who exists outside of the gender spectrum (or right in the middle), and pronouns are just a grammatical tool to save time, so I prefer that people use whatever comes most naturally to them.

Yesterday, while watching Beastars on Netflix, I shed some tears. Show's surprisingly good, despite its furry leanings.

But the last time I sobbed was during the finale of the Last of Us show. As a dad, that penultimate scene wrecked me emotionally.

I'm catching up on indie roguelites on my Steam Deck. Ember Knights, Wall World, Army of Ruin, Halls of Torment, Spiritfall.

I'm a video game slut. 😳

Yeah, thrift stores definitely seem like my best bet.

But they all close so early! I work 9-6, and every one near me is closed by 7. Guess I oughta put in a time off request and make a day of it.

Thank you for the advice! 🫶

Captain Squeegee. A rare combination of ska and psychedelic rock. Their album To the Bardos! is particularly great, and ranks among my top 5 albums of all time.

The Brotherhood of Dae Han. Southern rock with a hint of black metal metalcore.

Black Bonzo. A modern-ish prog band that sounds straight from the 70s.

Bubblemath. Progressive jazz fusion. Their first album was light on the jazz and pretty low-budget, but their second album, Edit Peptide, is the best in the subgenre, IMO.

Lotus Child. Indie alterna-rock. They only had one album, but it's creative and interesting.