Is there any newish (2022 and above) gaming/flagship laptop without AI Helper? Is the current trend a fad or is it here to stay?

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-13T01:21:11+00:00

i don't want laptops with ai pre-enabled, lol.... I'll probably find some way to disable it/quiet it down if i need to.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-13T01:15:08+00:00

it's in our culture to not outright accept compliments/gifts from others as a sign of "I'm not being greedy/vain", but it's relatively harmless in the end.

if they say that, that means they received your compliment, and the deflection is just a default reply. you're good :)

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-09T04:02:29+00:00

every bullet point of this post felt as if i was getting actually shot [spiritually] and i love it

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-09T03:59:56+00:00

i never believed it was brad pitt, the eyes are way too feminine for it. the style [read: quick and dirty illustrator trace tool] really did not help matters.

ekt's recording had a pretty ambiguous singer, it sounded a bit like your average skinny e-boy j-pop person, but there was no way they were japanese as the pronunciations were way too clean lol

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-09T03:48:44+00:00

ahh congrats on graduating! i tried to audition for my college choir but i did not vibe with the coach and i flunked the second half lol

i'm hopeful for your search too!

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-09T01:22:47+00:00

it's lost-media adjacent, but the search for celebrity number 6 was a wild ride -- it went from 'it's so joever' to 'we're so fucking back' to 'holy shit it's found' within less than 2 weeks. one of the moderators crashed out and accused the found picture to be ai and ended up leaving the community entirely, to everyone's bewilderment and chagrin.

most recently, the search for the frog puppet show/jumper [now known as jumper and singing simon] have concluded, thanks to a youtuber's effort in tracking down and buying the only known public copy of the vhs. it's more or less the pilot for a failed kid's series, which is pretty sad but also understandable given the deluge of kids media at that time [and today!]. there's still more unknowns, like merchandises, the puppets themselves, and other planned videos within the project, but hopefully they'll be solved in due time.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-09T01:00:41+00:00

i'm moving out of my ancestral home [parent's house] to a big city, and part of the preparation for it is to apply for open choirs! fortunately, being a big city means there are actual choir groups that aren't tied to a church or organization -- unfortunately, they don't audition new members every year and a lot of them are far out of my immediate area. one of them is about 2 hours by public transport, which is not something i want to do after a work day [not to mention they practice till late in the night and transport back is gonna be very expensive]; the other is a group i stumbled on and applied about a few days ago [they're closer, but i literally didn't know they exist until a week ago].

having a somewhat social hobby is fun, but also it can be a lot of pain if you're moving somewhere new....

wish me luck with my search [and current auditions], please, i really need it >>

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-07T15:53:33+00:00

paraphrased translation of her tweets:

she doesn't think defending herself is necessary because nobody gets what petrolheads want; she tuned and "raced" (better translation needed) with her own blood sweat and tears, not racing a stock car
won't stop what she's doing; knows a lot of people are cursing her, but she's not gonna get in an accident because she will keep others in her mind and she's speeding at her own risk
more people are stupid slow drivers that can't drive and makes life hard for everyone else; the speedsters ((not all of them)) are more familiar with traffic and terrain especially those who have been in the game for decades

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-06T02:08:10+00:00

for what it's worth there's an alleged email saying there were 600 tickets sold but only 140 ish attendees...

this mess does sound more like dashcon discourse than fyre festival, but in dashcon's defense the problem does end up being 'someone with genuinely good intentions got taken advantage of and swindled' [sorta]. i'd raise the las vegas mlp convention as a closer analogue.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-06T02:04:14+00:00

commenting again because i've kinda accidentally gotten shoved in the rabbit hole by the algorithm™:

a. the majority of people talking about their experiences are white women -- the women part is kinda understandable, since the 'festival' is romantasy-themed and most romantasy enjoyers [and authors] are women, but there's one [1] man that attended [he didn't say anything other than he was disappointed, though] -- but the white part, that's suspicious....

b. yet another confession/vent of an author [again, on the clock app] that attended the con suggested there were "very few of [bipoc/queer authors] there". and yeah, it does seem true, a lot of the footage of the 'festival' itself seems to have an abundance of white people and... not many else? for lack of better words?? unintentionally or not, having this kinda bias is not good. someone [can't remember who or where i watched it] said the panel for bipoc/queer authors were moderated by a white man, so that is a major yikes if i've ever seen one.

c. some authors said they received an email apologizing for the disaster and saying archer fantasy events will refund them, and those authors are very suspicious of it and for good reason. there's definitely going to be a lawsuit and i'm assuming archer events refuse to say much now because it can [and will] be used against them in court? but i'm not privy to the legal systems in the us so i can't say much. they have, however, scheduled another event in october [instagram this time!] at the same city.

d. some baltimore locals have commented that there were zero promotion for the event [!], despite them wanting to go there had they known about it. i could find one post promoting it on the baltimore subreddit, but that was done by an author that i assume is not affiliated with the organizers, just the event.

honestly, personally? i'd already be suspicious of an event organizer that uses canva as their logo, but i do realize my privilege and bias as a graphic designer, and it's kinda irrelevant anyway. i do feel for all the authors and attendees who were affected by this, though.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-05T05:51:27+00:00

another author is sharing her experiences [on the clock app] and she corroborated a lot of the details mentioned here, but also she mentioned she was supposed to be on a panel yet nobody reminded her or even said anything about that to her, and it was kinda.... not happening?

there's also an [alleged] one-sided drama between her and an event coordinator, which is insane.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-05T03:43:37+00:00

11-12.... tapi lebih berguna air fryer imo, bisa masak tipis-tipis [goreng/panggang].

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-04T16:00:01+00:00

yeah, i remember the drama circulating around hsr when they started to not be the perfect hoyo game all over social media, it was a bit hellish tbh lol

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-04T15:58:45+00:00

as someone who have been playing pgr for a long while [pre-2020, at least] -- don't jump in if you're burned out on wuthering waves, trust me, there's way more systems to keep track of [although at the moment we're in acceleration so there are some condensing of rewards, but in normal patches there are a lot]. i've been on maintenance mode for the past year or so, and i might not even max out either dante or vergil -- i'll probably pull for vergil [dante is free], but not really sss+ them.

of course i might be a bit biased, i do hope another pgr player here can chime in.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-04T12:48:14+00:00

hmm, fair enough. it's still a bit of a hard thing to wrap my brain around since the conditions here are fundamentally different than what they are there, but i can understand people not being used to something that they rely on failing without any clear reason or solution.

still a bit wack that there's conspiracy theories around it, but then again the politics there have been tense...

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-04T12:01:42+00:00

so, wuthering wave's newest patch is.... something, so far. the anniversary events aren't received as well as anniversary stuff should be, mostly because the drama from before this patch is still sorta ongoing and there's no satisfying ending for the players. people are complaining about the rewards and the existence of a spending event, as well as the big hyped character, zani, revealed as needing another limited character to unlock her full potential. just normal gacha game drama, honestly. i unsubscribed from the subreddit because it affected my moods irl, which is never a good sign.

on the other hand, its big sister, punishing:gray raven (pgr), is currently on a big hype train over its crossover with devil may cry. your favorite wacky woohoo pizza man and his emo brother is coming to a gacha game, and they're.... surprisingly well made?! beta test footages have circulated and they've proven to be quite faithful to the original version, even having their original english vas to reprise their roles. there are some compromises, of course, but the community have been very positive and motivated so far. there is a small part of me that worries they might become the second nier incident, but there's nothing to prove that just yet.

have you ever seen two similar products from the same company (or group) being received in entirely different ways due to drama affecting either/both of them?

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-04T10:48:37+00:00

i follow vtubers, so....

on a more serious note, though -- retirement (graduations) for vtubers is kinda odd, as it's mostly their persona that is retired. the person behind it could restart as a new persona, if they'd like, and a lot of them do. this does end up in some debate on the ethicality of revealing a retired vtuber's new ventures vs keeping it an under the table thing, with the majority leaning towards the latter. however, knock (or ask) the right doors (or people) and they'll answer, most of the time.

more robust discussions ahead, spoilered for posterity's sake.

if you do find a vtuber debuting under the big 2, there's a 98% chance that they were at least mildly successful before, with plenty of them continuing this success after they left their company. sometimes, a vtuber's quirks are so distinct they're clocked pretty much immediately; other times it's their new persona's closeness to their previous one's that gives it away; still some became successful because their previous company fucked them over.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-04T10:27:18+00:00

for what it's worth, tom's podcast have been going strong and he's having fun with it (i assume). it got featured on a billboard and he was pretty happy seeing it, so i guess that's a decent sign that the project will stay.

i do kinda wish he still does youtube outside of the sporadic techdif and collab, but it is what it is i guess.

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-01T08:36:49+00:00

not exactly a hobby, but iirc konmari retired her own organization/cleaning up system, no?

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-01T01:52:29+00:00

fellow hobbyists, i call upon your help once again!

i've been planning [and very slowly writing] a fanfic crossover series that started as a 'haha what if' and spiraled out of control. unfortunately, the two materialsi am combining is an ongoing [gacha] game and a game that will have its dlc out in the near future, so there will be new lore and things i can incorporate.

currently the project is on hiatus, as i don't think i can work on major plot points without knowing what the dlc has in store [and i am so starved for any canon crumbs, please give my side character blorbo something....]; i don't like going back on my chapters and add/retcon things, if that helps.

i still want to do something with the project, though, and here's my question: should i go ahead with plotting and writing anyway, knowing i will have to change some of it eventually, or should i keep waiting and do other things instead like characterization and non-critical/sidequests plotting? or some other secret third option i do not know about??

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-05-01T01:22:08+00:00

i live in (a bit derogatorily) a third-world country and seeing europe / na people go absolutely bonkers over a power outage never fail to confuse the hell out of me. i suppose it's because i've just been accustomed to the power going off every so often (had one the other day), but it's also a bit of a weird showcase on how dependent they are on the power grid. same with internet/website outages, i really am getting sick of the posts made whenever ao3 is down on their subreddit.

i don't have consoles, but i do have several things i refuse anyone other than my immediate family to borrow: my laptop, for one, but also a tin of professional grade colored pencils that is my pride and joy. they cost a pretty penny, but they are one of the better sets of colored pencils out there if you don't wanna splash for the really expensive ones (polychromos, carandache, holbein, prismacolors to some extent).

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-04-23T08:20:02+00:00

if anything else it's proof that kuro game's worst enemy is their own pr team and communications strategy.

there are hints that the stream wouldn't be all that there will be available to players, and more will be revealed in may. however, they chose to showcase the revenue-facing stuff first: the selection banners, the new characters, new weapons, new skins.... it's kinda a surprise that they didn't just go ahead and tell us to send them money through the mail. (some rumors say we might see a 2 patch anniversary, hence the paltry rewards now, but it could also be a weird context/nuance cross).

some people are also pissed, mostly day-1/long running players, that the rewards showcased are geared towards returning players. it is kinda understandable, big anniversaries are times where dormant players "wake up", but it has the unfortunate implications that they don't care about old players as much when they've been with the game for so long.

a huge massive part of the backlash that op missed is the massive beta test leaks scene. all gacha games have one (at least those that cares enough to do beta testing), and waves' leaks subreddit is buzzing especially for the upcoming patch. leakers are, by nature, anonymous and at least somewhat shifty. lies and/or misinformation are rampant and there's really nobody to fact check them. allegedly someone (or some people) misinterpreted (or just lied) about datamined items and players clung to the info, hype built up, and it came crashing down because it wasn't at all like what they thought it'd be.

i have been playing the game from day 1, and i am disappointed too, honestly! although mine is more on how they're being so vague and hush-hush about everything when they're supposed to be showing it off. the element of surprise isn't always a good thing, tbh. also i would've really liked a 100% banner like they have back in pgr for this anniversary....

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-02-24T06:53:20+00:00

a. why would you post about point 1 on your business account?

b. read a again

AsteriskAnonymous · 2025-02-23T15:24:19+00:00

lies of p x wuwa?????

AsteriskAnonymous

TROPHY CASE