hugthebed2

When you think about it, foxgirls are kind of an unsettling and disgusting concept, aren't they?

People also just need to curate where they visit better. I typically stay in higher quality discords and follow not a lot of people on twitter and I can avoid 90% of the boolshit.
 
But I still see that kind of stuff elsewhere or it can slip through the cracks on some discords I'm obligated to stay in, but I just don't bother most the time with that kinda stuff.

A bit late to the party, but I'm loving the insanity that is Rivals of Aether workshop characters.
 
 

Thoughts on Windows OS's, or rather public perception of them.
 
Windows XP is the king.  The only people who don't say this are the people who never used it or were thrown off by the default menu styles (which could easily be changed.)
 
Windows 7 is also well liked, because it currently holds the status of "the last good version of Windows."  It probably will maintain that status forever, honestly.
 
I think Windows 3.x and 98 are in the category of liked by people who use them, but a bit too old and obscure to have much perception in the general consciousness.
 
Windows 95 and Windows 2000 are in the "fine, but why bother using them" category.  I.e. 95 works but you might as well use 98 and 2000 works but you might as well use XP.  There's some point to using them with how good emulation tools are (so you might as well use the version of windows that a program was specifically designed for) but yeah 98 and 2000 almost make these obsolete.  (Though I guess Windows 2000 does allow compatibility with some hardware that XP does not, so maybe the question is really why use 98 when you could use 2000, I dunno.)
 
I think that Vista should be in the same category, in that it's fine but honestly you might as well use Windows 7.  But it will forever be tainted by its disastrous rollout.  If Microsoft had waited until drivers were common for Vista before pressuring PC manufactures to roll out with Vista, and didn't force it on to low end PCs that couldn't handle Aero, I think that Vista wouldn't have the bad reputation it does.  It does have some actually neat features; for example it's a hell of a lot easier setting up a LAN on Vista than XP.
 
ME is basically like Vista, but it deserves it.  Disastrous rollout, but never got into a usable state before being obsoleted by XP, and to make matters worse Windows 2000 was a better OS that had come out earlier.
 
The number of people who have actually used Windows 1.x and 2.x are miniscule, and there's really no point to using them as opposed to 3.0, 3.1 or 3.11.  You can't even have overlapping windows in 1.x.  Not that I'm saying they were horrible, since the very concept of a GUI on an OS was new at the time, but there's no point to them now except very particular historical interest, and they are largely unknown in the public consciousness.
 
Windows 8 was a mistake the whole way through, though it's unclear if Microsoft actually learned anything from it in the long term.  I do give it credit for trying to mix things up, since a lot of the Windows GUI has just lasted by inertia even if it is not particularly functional, but lazily copying smartphone design was not the way to go.  However Windows 8 did do wonders for the popularity of Windows 7 (I think before Windows 8 the consensus was that Windows 7 certainly was usable, but that XP was a better operating system for the time.  But after 8 came out you started having people legitimately argue that Windows 7 was the best of the OS line.)
 
Windows 10 isn't hated because it is usable, but it's pretty rough when compared to Windows 7.  This is definitely the version of Windows where Microsoft really started going "fuck you you don't own your computer, we do" though thankfully most of the worst of that stuff can be disabled.  The real problem with Windows 10 is that no one involved really knows what it is supposed to be.  I still don't understand why the start menu has an alphabetical listing of programs and I especially don't understand why you can't disable that entirely or replace it with a more convenient navigation system.  System settings are usually scattered across ten different places, often with overlaps and often with options that lie (in that nothing happens when you select them.)  Often workarounds work for a while and then mysteriously break for reasons that no one, not even Microsoft developers, understand.  It's a mess; a much bigger mess than Windows Vista, and I think it's more confused than Windows 8.  The only lesson that Microsoft really learned coming from 8 was "don't copy smartphones on desktop."
 
Windows 11 just doubles down on everything bad about Windows 10, and lazily steals design styles from Apple as a cherry on top.  But like 8 before, it is doing a good job of making people like the previous operating system.

People also just need to curate where they visit better. I typically stay in higher quality discords and follow not a lot of people on twitter and I can avoid 90% of the boolshit.
 
But I still see that kind of stuff elsewhere or it can slip through the cracks on some discords I'm obligated to stay in, but I just don't bother most the time with that kinda stuff.

The grind isn't bad, actually. Master Duel is a contender for most F2P friendly card game on the market. Which is wild because paper Yugioh decks make my heart palpitate when I look at the cost. Up until the Anniversary came out I had spent precisely $0 on the game, and have multiple decks of varying meta status, from tier 1 threats like Branded Despia and Swordsoul to almost-Rogue decks like 60 card Grass Zombies to "fun garbage" like Time Thief Raidraptors and P.U.N.K. PSY-Frames.
 
As for simulators, the interesting thing about Master Duel is I think part of what made me enjoy the game so much is the use of the OCG banlist. With one notable ex"C"eption, I think the OCG banlist philosophy of "let people have fun and play however they want" is way more interesting and feels less money grubby than the TCG approach of "If we nerf a deck, we're deleting it from the meta and crippling its playstyle entirely" so they can sell the next overtuned archetype.

Edit: Oh yeah and also the obvious benefit of not actually needing to learn the rules at the start, I ain't reading all that shit I'll just learn as I go.
 
PS: No

You know, belated appreciation post but I just want to thank (blame?) Corv for my current Yu-Gi-Oh! addiction, enabled by Master Duel. I started playing that game after not having played YGO since like...2008? I was in middle school anyway. And I immediately tried to get back into it building another Zombie deck, like my old one. It sucked, I tried to build Vendreads, 0/10 would not recommend, no not even with the most recent support.
 
Anyway, I was a bit dejected and trying to figure out what I could do with my limited resources, unsure if I'd permanently fucked myself pulling for the wrong packs. And suddenly, behold! A Dragonmaid Sheou from my most recent 10 pull, along with House Dragonmaid.
 
Not really my style, but two URs is hard to argue with and more importantly I had remembered Corv talking about them when they first came out, so my response was "Hey, I know these cards!"; familiar ground is comforting, and gives me an easy starting point.
 
Anyhoo I built a Dragonmaid deck, it was easy and did a lot of damage, and helped me grind gems easily early on so I could then build other decks (I built Branded Dragonmaids before it was cool), and I now have about 700 hours in Master Duel, am still having a ton of fun.
 
Thanks Corv!

But, erm... Look guys, look! One of my greatest achievements! Pizza Tower on the Steam Store! Hahahaha!
 

I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH VISIONS! MY MIND KEEPS SHITTING WEIRD FORMS AND DESIGNS! A HUNDRED OCS SHALL BE DRAWN! (Buncho sketches from near sleep brain blast)
 
 
 
 
 
 

Over the last couple of days I've been having some mysterious pains in my upper back. (Yeah I know, old man Gyoku.  But this kind of stuff starts happening in your mid to late twenties so most of you are going to have to start dealing with this soon if it hasn't happened already.)
 
Anyway, I started up Youtube for an unrelated reason and one of the top recommendations was for stretches to help with this exact sort of back issue, and they seem to work.  The natural question was, why was that the top recommendation.
 
The default assumption these days is that it was due to data mining.  But in this case I can't see how it would be possible.  This is the first time I've mentioned my back pain online, and I haven't done any searches on the matter since I've been using stretches I already knew before the video was recommended.  The youtube recommendation happened on a clean browser on a computer I don't usually use, and one that I can be sure was never in the same room with me when I talked about back pain, so no microphone harvesting.  I have talked about this on the phone, but only on a flip phone that has no internet capabilities ('cause I intentionally broke them).  So the only conceivable way that this could have been harvested is if Google already had linked that cell phone to my data profile, and also linked me to the other computer, and monitored all my cell phone conversations and processed that I should get a recommendation on the other computer only.  Is that possible?  I guess, but it seems pretty damned unlikely.
 
The more likely scenario is that lots of people have back problems and so this sort of video gets recommended frequently, so in particular it will get "blind" recommendations (as opposed to the weird weeb and boomer game crap I usually watch) and I just happened to have it show up when I started youtube on a fresh browser this time.  But even so my first thought was "oh shit they spied on my conversations" rather than "what a coincidence!" It made me reflect on how even ten years ago everyone probably would have wrote this off as a coincidence, even if they just had been searching for back stuff on the same browser, whereas now we just accept that we are being spied on so hard that it's impossible to avoid detection.

TF2 cope is the strongest cope of all time.

I don’t have a same tbh big enough for that

Was doodling and decided to draw something ENA related since the game will be releasing soon. I think the presentation didn't turned out as great as I imagined.
 

now this is the critical anime analysis that this forum was built upon

The discord is for posting Yui Hirasawa every ~4.5 months

I always saw the discord as a failed experiment to "revitalize the dying forum". It's whatever, if I have something juicy to share I'd rather do it here.
 
Spicy .webms or .mp4s go to the discord for Raison tho

People always ask me if I've seen the latest episode of [show on streaming service] and they act like I've committed some sin when I tell them I don't use any streaming services.
 

I'm one of these hermits that have no knowledge of social media/entertainment media trends.
I have a Twitter just for following artists (and even then I hate using it) and a Facebook because I made it like 15 years ago.
I never bothered with series/streaming services because it seems to always end the same way (Either runs longer than it should have and gets canceled, or it has a good season ending but they do another season and ruins it because fuck you, or it is a trash adaptation with some "inclusive" writer they got from twitter/tumblr that unironically thinks only white people can be racist)
If something manages to get near my reach distance, I just skim it to see what the fuzz is about and then return to my life.
 
I remember reading about the Velma thing like months ago. When I skimmed it I remember seeing "Race swapped cast", "Reboot", "Made for adults!", "Gore" and just thought 'yeah this is going to suck a lot' and never bothered with it again.
A few days ago, I saw some image talking about it, and yeah. Seems it sucks a lot.

A professor in a class was really grasping for an example when talking about social media networking effects and started going down the "so everyone who's seen X raise your hand" and I totally held up the class for like five minutes because I just didn't at all. They were apparently trying to find an example everyone had seen
 
After the first few times I had to stop myself from laughing. You'd think he'd have given up or just ignored me once it was clear I was just not on the same wavelength

I always saw the discord as a failed experiment to "revitalize the dying forum". It's whatever, if I have something juicy to share I'd rather do it here.
 
Spicy .webms or .mp4s go to the discord for Raison tho

Old Character Guide Jay sent me

Movin' the nation from New York to LA
Call now

As someone who is technically part of the L4D2 community update team, I find it unreal that some of the people there actively use the Discussions. I can't imagine having such a terrible "forum" be part of your daily routine.
 
The 100% Orange Juice discussions were pretty forum-like, but that died out once discord came out and all Fruitbat Factory discussion was relegated to their stupid discord.

When I was a wee lad I thought that there really wasn't any difference between "normies" (not that I called them that then) and people like me.  Nothing beyond a difference in hobbies.  I.e. I liked weird sci-fi stuff, RPGs, superheroes, etc. and normal people did not and it was only this difference in hobbies that made us seem different.
 
Now that every historically "nerd" hobby has been mainstreamed, I can be certain that no, the normies are intrinsically different.  What's more, it's also clear in retrospect that there were normies in nerd hobbies even back then, but not in large enough numbers to ruin them.
 
This kind of ties into the missing SPUF thing too, since SPUF's obsolesce made it anti-normie, which can never be achieved with Discussions.

I guess as an update to this - I worked on this map quite a bit in the early parts of the year
 
Then out of nowhere after a year of silence, someone revived my L4D2 group, and made my tf2 map progress to a halt because my free time for that got fed into l4d2 modding (hey I guess I said I wanted to get back into it...).
 
I did get the main part of the map ported into TF2 and released an alpha version for some friends, but getting accurate map lighting and the entities from the game into tf2 is tedious work that I'm still learning how to do efficiently.

 
I very often want to work on it, but it turns out the work is 50% modeling, 30% placing the entities into tf2 (using math because I had to rotate the map 45 degrees in tf2 to make it play better)., and 20% tf2 map editing.
 
Still, I worked on it very sporadically throughout the year, and there's still a ton more left to do for it to be "good enough" in my eyes. It's come a long way from that singular room I posted at the start of last year though.