Sometimes if I’m feeling classy I’ll grind the rest and set them aside to make cold brew with later. That’s more forgiving so I do it to use up old, stale beans that I end up with for whatever reasons.

Most of the time I don’t care and I just top off the weight with whatever I’m using next and drink whatever comes out. It’s usually fine, and when it’s not it’s at least novel.

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.

Yep, it sounds pretty much exactly like what people expected.

Honestly, I’m on a bit of a Star Wars kick lately and it’s been long enough since I’ve played an Ubisoft open world to find some enjoyment, so I might pick this up. But it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s going to blow me away.

Yeah, there was a whole kerfuffle about it because all the files were still on the disc, therefore some jurisdictions re-rated the game to some version of adults only. Rockstar definitely did all the development work to get that sex in the game, they just decided not to show it in normal gameplay.

I went from being glad this goofy-looking game is getting some attention to realizing I wasn’t one of those 5000 wishlists already. Oops.

Game looks like it’ll be a fun little experience, I’m looking forward to it!

This is cursed, and every added detail is more cursed. Holy moly.

Usually if I throw whey protein into something and it comes out chalky the problem is not enough liquid, you may have just reduced it too far. I’d probably try adding… chicken broth? Man that feels gross to suggest, but I imagine adding milk to Chinese food would be worse.

God speed on that diet, my man, you need it.

What a shame, you’ve contributed greatly to this conversation, you will be missed 🙏

I think it’s complicated a bit by the fact that this was said on stage at one of their shows. I think canceling the tour is a gross overreaction, but with the current political climate (even ignoring the assassination attempt) I can understand some hesitancy to proceed if anyone is going to be associating them with calls for political violence.

All that said… based birthday wish, fully agree with Gass’s joke.

I agree with all of this. Except I would probably buy all the stupid shit I want because I have no concept of how all the stupid shit I want could amount to more than a rounding error.

Unironically my two favorite sauces for fries. I attribute a not insignificant portion of my weight gain pre-COVID on slathering cafeteria fries with too much mayo.

Just to throw a few other options on the pile:

• Valheim is more combat oriented, but is probably my favourite survival crafting game after Subnautica. You’re playing vikings trying to earn their way into Valhalla. I die a lot. Very fun.
• Planet Crafter is more chill, more jank, and more linear, but it’s a survival crafting game that is clearly heavily inspired by Subnautica. You are sent to a mars-like planet to terraform it as part of your prison sentence. It’s a great podcast game, just build and explore and watch numbers go up.
• Less on the survival crafting side of things, the environmental storytelling is also really good in Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn. Very different games, but they were actually what I went to after Subnautica to scratch that itch and it worked weirdly well.

I wouldn’t call it a bug, just that a naive ranked ballot naturally favours the centrist voices. I don’t even mean this in an extreme way: in Canada we basically have three centrist, neoliberal parties running parliament, and this would mean that the Liberals just win a majority almost every time. NDP voters generally won’t vote Conservative, Conservative voters won’t vote NDP.

This can turn into a bug because it ends up pushing other voices out: if the popular vote suggests equal support between left, right, and center candidates, you would typically hope the make-up of the government reflects that, but more likely it would look like a center majority. There are ways to mitigate this (large number of parties, electing multiple candidates on a ballot, proportional components of the vote, etc) but ranked choice on its own tends to be a centralizing force, not a way to get a more representative democracy.

Again, not a bug, and I definitely wouldn’t call it worse than FPTP, just making it clear that it has its own biases that are worth taking into account.

Ranked choice is one of the simplest ways to get a more representative, but to the question in the title it does tend to favour centrist parties. Progressives will vote for a centrist over a conservative, and a conservative will vote for a centrist over a progressive, so the centrist party will win almost every time.

It’s still an improvement over the disaster of FPTP because it will at least elect parties that the majority can tolerate, but there is still a bias present.

The art direction seems kind of off, but sometimes that can shake itself out in game.

The tone of the trailer is definitely not the Dragon Age vibe. Lighthearted Oceans-style crew selection to deal with what looks like some sort of world-ending calamity? Yeah, that’s not right.

Things could work out but I’m sure not feeling optimistic.

My prediction is that people will overhype it with lots of hopes for super complex systems, call it shit when it has fewer mechanics and civs than 3/4/5/6 with all their DLC, and then eventually decide it’s good after a couple years of DLC and patches.

You know, the usual Civ cycle. I’ll probably buy it day 1 assuming it isn’t actually broken, per usual, and dump a couple hundred hours in it, per usual.

On principal I don’t use cloud-based password management solutions like this, but Proton Pass does make it somewhat tempting, especially since I have a Proton Unlimited subscription anyways. KeepassXC + syncthing do well enough, but PAM integration would be kind of nice some days when I’m opening and closing my vault a ton.

Mount and Blade: Warband has multiple incredible total conversions. I’ve dumped a lot of time into Prophecy of Pendor and The Last Days, probably more than the base game.

For actually free games there are so many options that it really comes down to taste. Unciv is a fantastic reimplementation of Civ 5. Super Auto Pets is a fun casual auto battler. HoloCure is a really good Vampire Survivors-style game themed after Hololive vtubers. There are tons of MMOs and shooters that are F2P and good, but I know most of those from hearsay rather than experience.

This is basically it, yes, but sometimes I’m drunk-ordering 40 nuggets and a milkshake and adding the mint myself is enough effort to make me reconsider my reckless disregard for my wellbeing.

Unciv works perfectly fine on a phone if you feel like risking significant amounts of your time (:

I only played a few hours of Dome Keeper but it was quite a bit of fun. There’s already a fair amount of variety possible in the runs but not so much that this isn’t appreciated.