claycle

I am surprised no one yet has posted the infuriatingly worthless expression of affectless sympathy:

thoughts and prayers

It is the E3 part (the Eventual Enshittification of Everything) of Capitalism that They forgot to warn Us about when They invented it.

I've lived in Texas all my life and while it is far from a "shithole", I am unapologetically disgusted by my home state's current political climate.

When I was growing up (in DFW), I got a liberal (as in the tradition sense, not as a political spectrum) public education which I look back on to fondly. We were taught about sex (starting in 5th grade) and encouraged to be aware of racial issues and the root causes of hatred and encouraged to be friends with all our peers and egalitarian towards people of any color. Gayness was not mentioned, but also not condemned, and I definitely had gay friends and knew at least two gay couples in high school who were open, supported by students and teachers, and happy.

My own childhood outside of school was one of amazing freedom and self-responsibility. My parents' rule was "be back for dinner". We all had bikes, and we would range dozens of miles a day on them. We did crazy, stupid, amazingly fun things all by ourselves as children. We got in trouble, we got hurt, but we learned how to be self-reliant and entertain ourselves and we never did anything "criminal" nor were we ever threatened by anyone.

I saw my state elect a liberal female governor who was amazeballs and famously stuck George W Bush with her barbed tongue.

But what always existed, underneath, was what we called the "Old Boy Network", which really was just code for white, wealthy, privileged, bigoted men. Clayton Williams, who infamously ran for governor, was a prime example of the type.

So, while Texas was - and I think still will be - on a grand trajectory towards being an enlightened, liberal, egalitarian state in my childhood, it got twisted up and corrupted (I point my finger at Reaganism and Religious Extremism as the starting points, at least in my awareness) until we now have a hateful little troll as governor, a shitbag full of cronies, and voters who think Donald Trump represents the ideal American who should be president (again).

I love Texas, or loved it, but now I am dismayed by it - by the hatred and the ignorance that it just seems to be oozing now. I hate the fact that this has happened to my state and after spending my entire adult life voting and speaking against this trend, I now just want to leave.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any other state in the Union I would leave to. They all have problems. The symptom of Texas is just one of the most visible of the disease that affects our entire country.

Hatred and fear of the other, the least American value I can think of, has finally blossomed, nurtured by people who would rather see this country descend into war than dare teach that the powerful people in this country have treated the powerless people in it very, very badly for a very, very long time.

Every single day, when I am out walking my dog, a jogger comes by smelling of like a shit-ton of soap/perfume/deodorant/body spray - I nearly gag. These guys (and sometimes girls) are so terrified they might smell sweaty when doing something, you know, sweaty, like jogging a couple of miles...it boggles my mind.

Who taught people we have to smell like artificial bouquets of flowers all the time, even when exercising, ffs?

Wow. Just wow. That is one of the best explanations of this I have seen. Thanks.

I don't eat fast food much at all, but a couple of months ago we went into a nearby Shake Shack to get 2 burgers, 2 iced teas, and a shared order of fries.

The bill was north of $30. Not surprising when, apart from the fact the burgers were about $10-ish each, the iced tea costs $3 each for a small. 8oz of Iced tea. That's criminal.

Needless to say we learned our lesson and don't eat out fast food anymore. I can sling a mean burger at home on the stove top in my cast iron pan.

#1.

Don't you just know it?! I work in media and I have pitched commercial projects to business executives many times only to see them completely choke on the costs. They say things like "Can't we just film the commercial on an iPhone, I see that on YouTube all the time?" FFS. I'll be like "Sure, we can. What's your budget for that? You realize I still have to pay the cameraman, the makeup artist, the writer, the producer, the director, the gaffer, and the talent. Do you want music with that, too? Oh, you want a Credence Clearwater Revival song in the background? That'll cost you."

I'll pull out some sheets explaining what they see on YT that they think is so cheap... I mean, sure, it's less expensive than other options, but crew and talent gotta eat and pay bills, too.

People have no idea...

It constantly makes me smile, whether it’s being smart, the actors are giving perfectly calibrated performances, or the action suddenly goes wham-bam VATS over the top.

3 eps in. Happy.

True story: in the early 00s, my company was acquired by a Large Silicon Valley Company. LSVC sent a "business integration" team across the country (to Dallas, Texas where we were at the time) to welcome us into the fold. At these meetings, these Perky Northern Californian Women - they were all Perky Northern California Women, for whatever reason - opened with the following sentence:

"We'd like to welcome y....ya.....y'y'y'y'y.....YA UL(!) to LSVC."

Repeated throughout the meeting, the integration team kept stumbling over "y'all" instead of just saying "you" when talking to us. Clearly, someone thought that - being Texans - we wouldn't understand them unless the did.

At one point, one of us spoke up and said something like, "First, thank you for attempting to use our local dialect to talk to us. But, we can understand you perfectly well when you speak your native Northern Californian. Second, by way of correction, the word is just "y'all". Also, if you want to use the plural second person, like vous in French, you may say "all'y'all", but it is optional."

(Preface - I've not yet picked up Starfield, though I have hundreds [far too many] hours in other Bethesda games; Cyberpunk 2.0, though, has thoroughly captured my attention.)

I hear what you're saying, but the YouTube commenter apparently loves Elden Ring, which I found to be an awful game and painful to play. Man, I love complex, deeply explorable games, but I played Elden Ring for 8 hours and never felt like I was making an inch of pleasurable progress. The commenter complains about games being a chore, but what about games like Elden Ring that aren't chores, but are literal punishment?

I guess I had trouble accepting the commenter's point of view after he rah-rah'd for Elden Ring...

Don't you mean: Statistically speaking, you will die.

Counter-point. I have used Maps over the past 8-ish years exclusively on three thousands-of-miles cross-country (US) excursions on my motorcycle, I use it to locate unpaved/off-beaten path roads to take, and I use it regularly as my local way finder and when I am in unfamiliar cities. Not once has it lead me astray...

I waited until CP 2.0 to play it. I can wait for SF 2.0 to play it. I am not a unicorn in this regard.

Steel-cut oatmeal is super-easy, set-and-forget (1 cup water, 1/4 steel-cut oats, pinch of salt, Bring water to boil, stir in oats, salt, lower to bare simmer, uncovered 30 minutes, flavor as desired, eat).

But that can get boring. For something a little more exciting, super-nutritious, and almost zero-prep, do a sort of Norwegian-style open-face cracker (no, you don't need "the tubes", but if you can find them, knock yourself out). For this I take a tin of fish (usually smoked salmon or trout, but sardines, mackerel, or even tuna would work fine), a piece of cracking toast or a Scandy flatbread cracker (Wasa, knekkebrod), and some kind of "schmear" (a thin spread of cream cheese, sour cream, yogurt, or - my favorite - Trader Joe's Everything But the Bagel Yogurt Dip/Spread). I can get all these ingredients both cheaply and well-made at Trader Joe's (TJ Smoked Salmon in a tin, TJ Norwegian seeded flatbread, and the aforementioned dip). For a little additional oomph toss on tomato or cucumber slices.

I miss Usenet.

UUCP

If you're not holding your nose when voting for someone, you're in trouble. The two go hand-in-hand. Be suspicious of any politician who seems so good you don't feel the urge to hold your nose when you cast your vote for them.

And here I am deliberately working my way though Origins->Odyssey->Valhalla so that I can completely ignore Starfield for a while until the hype train settles down and some bugs are fixed :-). I keep my eye on NMS (I was a Day 1ish player) but I feel it is soooo wide and soooo shallow it would just bore me to tears now.

Really enjoying Valhalla...

I have been, up until very recently, a "Thanksgiving Traditionalist", in that I loudly proclaimed that one should muck around with the traditional basics.

But last year, I changed my tune. We had a dinner based around Stanley Tucci's timpano instead of turkey (yes, the famous timpano from the movie BIG NIGHT). That was a big success.

This year, because I have some very dear friends who are vegetarians and who kind of slink away when anyone discusses Thanksgiving traditional dishes, I wanted to make dinner with their needs/desires squarely in mind, so I am doing a completely vegetarian menu. I generally despise "meat analogues", so no, we're not having tofurkey. So, here's the menu:

• velouté de châitagnes (chestnut soup)

• Spanish tortilla (the potato dish, not the Mexican flatbread)

• my grandmother's green bean casserole (very unique, not-what-you-expect, nod to tradition)

• roasted root vegetables (catch-all, probably rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, etc...)

• Jacque Pepin's "easy" corn soufflé

• a massive onion-mushroom tarte tatin as the centerpiece (onions, mushrooms, gorgonzola, walnuts, butter, pastry crust)

• fresh homemade pickles (various)

• fresh homemade bread (baguettes, sourdough boules, etc)

• risalamande (Scandinavian rice pudding)

I am probably forgetting something. Guests are bring desserts and wine (one is a L3 sommelier, never disappoints).

I just finished my CP2077 (first) play-thru. I had no fore-knowledge of game or outcomes. When I play RPGs, I abide by a strict "choices matter - there are no mulligans", in that I won't fish reloaded saves for "better" outcomes. If I make a bad choice, I live with it.

About a week before I finished, I was having dinner with some friends who had played it already and they were probing me to see how I think the game would end. I said, matter of factly, "Oh, I think my V is doomed, like Arthur [RDR2] was doomed."

And if there was a magic happy ending in Phantom Liberty, as there seemed there might be because Sol pointedly asked V twice "Are you sure you don't want it?", my V had given it to Songbird.

When I came to the pinch at climax where Jonny presents you with your options and you have to pick what to do, I probably sat on that dialog wheel for 15 minutes. I'd vacillate between the options presented and listen and watch carefully how Jonny reacted and think things through. I had played a V who was never comfortable with the loss of his autonomy and desired, more than anything, to live his own life his own way. This V was also sort of a mensch, too, inclined to empathy and sympathy. He had pity for Jonny's situation. After much contemplation, V reached out to Panam - I would say almost desperately as it seemed the only path that really gave V any hope - and events ensued and they arrived at what I called "The Sunset Ending" (which I considered a great success).

I felt I had arrived at a very satisfactory conclusion for this V and I really have no desire (in a good way!) to play CP more - the story was over, if bittersweet.

The feeling of completeness matched reaching the Sunrise Ending in RDR2, which kinda devastated me.

A friend and I tried this game and enjoyed it up to a point, a particular fight we could not get past.

Finally looking online for a guide, we discovered that every guide we could find suggested cheesing the fight in various ways.

We both decided that any game that required the player to both know a fight was about to happen (when it was impossible from context to predict) and cheese the fight to win was a bad game. Even if this was only one fight, it was a fight that blocked all progress. We quit and neither of us have wanted to play the game again.

Note: We have, either together or on our own, completed other games - like BG 1-2, NWN, PoE, DOS1 - without resorting to guides, cheats, foreknowledge, or cheese.

We were, and remain, very disappointed with DOS2 because of this, and we're "suspicious" of BG3 because of DOS2 (but, charitably, perhaps Larian made a mistake in DOS2 and won't repeat it in BG3).

EDIT: Please don't ask me what fight this was, because I really don't remember as it was now years ago. We were pretty deep into the game, bopping along pleasantly and thinking we were succeeding. As I recall, we had no side-quests to do (so no way to level IF we were under-leveled - I remember looking to see if we had missed some corner and needed to quest there). We basically entered a room in some dungeon/temple with no other direction on the map to go and experienced TPK. Over and over until we finally gave up. Looking at Steam, it says we were 93.3 118 hours into the game.

All great advice, but I personally cannot urge people towards pCloud. I have one of the permanent tiers, but I found the service frustratingly buggy and, when contacted, support was rude and unhelpful. There are so many little odd limitations on the pCloud file system it was frustrating. I also worry that their buy-once business model is not sustainable.

Sync.com provides an even more secure service (zero-knowledge across the board) with similar (better than US anyway) privacy protections in the host country (Canada) that has been, so far for 2 years of use, rock solid (I couldn't go a week without pCloud farting out some error). The subscription model is affordable and generous and the customer-facing pages for sharing files are very professional looking (important to me, because I professionally share files and pCloud looked like a hobbyist page in this regard AND leaked private information).

EDIT: Regarding iCloud. Not only is iCloud end-to-end, but you may turn on zero-knowledge encryption now, as well (Advanced Data Protection I think is what they call it) so that Apple doesn't even have the keys to decrypt your data, making it quite similar to sync.com now.

As a person who has had (in the last week) three shots and a series of oral antibiotics because of a small-looking but very angry infection in my index finger from a splinter(!) that has required two trips to the doctor to (NSFL) squeeze out the pus, I can understand this. Sepsis ain't no joke and can come from the most minor wounds.

Soap: a bar of unscented oatmeal-based soap

For deodorant: I have had very good experience with "Thai stone" style salt-based deodorants. These work simply by making your skin inhospitable to odor-causing bacteria while not causing you irritations. You need to apply it liberally (after slightly wetting the stone, I just count out 8 strokes under each arm), but a single stone will last you ... a very long time ... and it does really work for a whole day. It has no scent, per se, so you will just smell like you smell without the sulfurous bad smells caused by BO bacteria.

Or so I gather...

I understand the sentiment, but I reserve that disgust for this country - or more specifically for our national parties and their apparatchiks. If these geriatric nincompoops are seriously the best we, as a country, can put forward to lead us, when we are simply voting on degrees of shittiness, we are probably too far gone to recover.

So. When The Return of the King was released, the day before the official release, New Line Cinema held special screenings in a few select theaters around the country.

All three films screened in one day, with hour (or hour-and-a-half) breaks in between (in don't recall precisely).

The screenings were, for the first two films we all had already seen, the new extended editions, so each was over two hours long. Then there was TROTK screening (which was new to everyone).

New Line Cinema reps were there, handing out gifts. We all got three framed cells of 35mm film cut from one of the original prints of the new film. I still have mine.

It was actually quite amazing, being in a theater packed with people who all wanted to be there. It was breathtaking when the first strains of the LOTR theme played in the dark theater. And people wept openly as TROTK went through its many endings.

What stuck with me was how much the three films felt like one cohesive film when you watched them back to back.

I think we arrived at the theater around 9AM. We left the theater around 10PM (not including jaunts out across the street to grab a burger or something during the intermissions). It was grueling, but it was marvelous, too.

Yup.

One of the best FPS games I ever played. Marathon I and II. This was on a Mac in the early nineties, I guess.

My grandmother took me to see Liberace. Am I sure she enjoyed it more than I did.

While the oats (steel cut) are cooking, a take a cup of frozen mixed berries out of the freezer, put them in a small pot, add 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 tablespoon of water, bring to a boil, and make a quick compote (or very slack jam). This goes on top of the oatmeal (2 people).

Although I delight when I hear Keith David in Mass Effect or any game, I can reach farther back in time memory: Keith David will always be this wonderful man to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN8Z7y_QcwE (slightly spoilers)

Yes. We just had a scoop of homemade coconut sorbet tonight, super simple to make:

• 1 cup of water

• 1 cup of sugar

• 1 can of unsweetened coconut cream

• 1 can of unsweetened coconut milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Bring the water and sugar to a boil, lower the heat to medium, and let it simmer for 10 minutes to make a simple syrup. Let the syrup cool to room temperature, then mix all the ingredients together in a blender briefly, then pour into your ice cream maker and freeze. Set the sorbet into the freezer for at least 2 hours to finish the freezing.

If you can't find coconut cream, you can just use 2 cans of full fat coconut milk, but it will be icier.

Perhaps, but middle-schoolers genuinely stink to high heaven, especially after P/E. I think one can imagine more obvious/less conspiratorial reasons for showers being mandatory.

Just a rambling comment in general vis a vis Starfield. The loading screens mentioned in the article made me think of this.

I am a wierdo who really liked and played alot of FO4 (4 replays). My introduction to Bethesda games was FO3 and FONV just before FO4 released. After FO4, I tried Skyrim - which was ok, I was never blown away by it and have never replayed it. I have tried to play Oblivion but it was so ancient and janky I gave up. I played FO76 for about a year and generally enjoyed it to a point, but always wished the development effort had been applied towards a full-on single-player (or coop!) FO5 game.

I was looking forward to Starfield (I loved Mass Effect, replayed twice). But, I have not bought Starfield, nor am I likely to in the next year. I am going to wait for patches, mods that fix what Bethesda doesn't, and a banging sale on Steam.

In the meantime, I am playing a game I never thought I would play because I never thought it sounded like a game I would enjoy - ELDEN RING. I am not a very good twitch-muscle player (ridiculously bad, in fact), and I play exclusive M+KB games as I never had a console growing up and don't know how to use a control well. Am I enjoying ELDEN RING? Yes...I am with reservations, I still do not like "boss fights" (in any game really, when a boss fight boils down to a box you can't escape with a giant thing in it that insta-kills you, I just roll my eyes in disappointment). But, I am enjoying *everything *in between (glorious seamless no-loading-screens self-directed exploration and problem/puzzle solving) and hate-playing through the bosses.

In fact, the overall seamlessness (ie, lack of loading screens) of ER has spoiled me (it has them, but only during fast travel/respawn). Unvarnished in-your-face loading screens for doing something like stepping into a cave mouth or opening a door will take a full point (out of 5) off a my private evaluation of a game from now on.

Panzanella comes immediately to mind, as does gazpacho and Thai stuffed cucumber soup.

If I have to pick one drink to take to a desert island, it's the classic Sazerac.

That is what I will want most of the time when I want a cocktail. However, I will allow a few others to enter rotation, depending on mood, time/temperature, and place:

1. Margarita.

2. Vesper.

3. Pastis.

And, finally, my embarrassing guilty pleasure (which I never order except when I am in company I know well or I am on a Caribbean island): piña colada.

Though I only speak a minuscule smatter of Italian - and none is necessary to enjoy these videos - I really like anything with Giorgione in it, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q5i5C35ISE

OR even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WLMm08P-u8&t=9s

Just dive down this wonderful rabbit hole.

all'y'all is the plural second person form.

Sheriff, speaking to a number of bandits: All'y'all just put yer guns down and come out with yer hands up so we can end this all peaceful like.

Just finished CP myself yesterday, with a 9 hour push through the "final day". I had previously in my run rejected the (possible) helpful offer at the end of Phantom Liberty to find my own solution to my problem and, after spending far too much time debating over a single dialog choice, I settled on one that lead to a satisfactory, if bitter-sweet, conclusion.

The sense of finality was quite profound and pleasing. I have no wish to play my V anymore, as I think their story is done. While this means I may never revisit NC again (which makes me a little sad), I can live with that. I guess I can look forward to CP: Boston in 10 years :-).

When looking for my last vehicle, I still needed a midsize very-light-duty truck for my business (film production), I drove the Chevy midsize truck (Colorado?) first on my checklist of trucks to drive. It was a piece of garbage (and this made me sad because I was [trying to be] open to finding an excellent US-made midsize truck). The sales guy was super-enthusiastic, of course, to the point of pushy obnoxiousness. When he asked me "HOW GREAT IS THIS TRUCK???!!!??" I was like "I wouldn't complain if someone gave one to me, but I have other trucks to test."

After test driving four other competitors, I ended up with Honda Ridgeline (which beat out my second favorite from Toyota), that I have now had for 4+ years and absolutely love it - it is a great midsize+ truck. It's kind of a unicorn in Texas (so many Fords and Dodges), but I saw a ton of them in Arizona and other Western states. Great vehicle, and it has CarPlay. Sadly, it's in the shop at the moment (I, uh, backed into a bollard, cough) and my rental is a brand-new Dodge Charger which drives like a lead brick on wheels compared to the Ridgeline. Interior finish isn't bad though...and the UI, while not CarPlay, is polished).

I really dug the music in CP2077 (and, especially, Phantom Liberty). The use of leitmotifs lifted the score. More so than in a similar game (GTA5), I really enjoyed the radio stations, too.

I also fondly recall the soundtrack of RDR2.

Does all the great music in Fallout4 count?