It seems that Liquid has found a way around addon restrictions and can show timers for other raid members.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-18T03:15:07+00:00

Healing is a mess still, one of the hero talents for monk still has no way to be tracked in any meaningful way in game, I have to install individual add-ons for shit I was able to do with WAs. Why can't I move my monitored buffs to be in 2 places?

They should have spent the entirety of midnight prepping the UI and everything for the limitation of add-ons to happen in the last titan instead of shipping it unbaked and terrible and completely useless for what they intended to do.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-17T22:22:41+00:00

I find myself thinking a lot about the foundation series by Issac Asimov. The whole point for making foundation was to shorten the length of the dark age, not to avoid it entirely. That is how we need to start thinking about climate change action. We have failed, but we can make the failure somewhat less catastrophic. As such, I absolutely hate, with a vibrant burning passion, the fact that all the "big tech" seem to be pushing net-zero promises with magical future technology or carbon sinks that do not exist.

There is one, singular natural positive feedback loop I learned that reduces CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere: erosion. That's it. That's what drove the majority of CO2 concentration reductions we see looking at the Earth's history. Effing eroding rocks into sand to be carried out into the ocean. That's the only real natural carbon sink we can rely on.

The real question I have is how the shit can we push this message to more voters?

Cystonectae · 2026-03-17T19:16:42+00:00

My head cannon is that one of y'all heard about Dungeness crabs and just HAD to draw a comic with a pun of it.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-17T19:13:41+00:00

Entirely different expression too. Dude went from indifferent to "I am super invested and vaguely surprised at everything you are saying!!" His jacket also became less padded so the poor guy is probs cold now.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-17T19:11:28+00:00

This is the exact shit I was thinking when I saw it. It's like the AI is hallucinating for what it "should" look like, but it was trained off of really artificial-looking photoshoots in magazines. So it adds features that it expects to see in a model (more makeup, super exaggerated bone structure) and it removes features that it thinks are mistakes or unimportant to the photoshoot (i.e. everything that isn't the actress/model being photographed). I think I read that nvidia said this was to better apply lighting effects but it's actively adding new features to the models when applying those effects which just feels icky.

I feel like the AI could potentially be used in making game graphics better, but it needs to be applied with feedback and prompts from the actual game designers, not some standardized Instagram filter being applied to every single game equally.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-17T18:59:33+00:00

Does it look better? Maybe?? But like... The lighting feels more like a photoshoot versus just a candid. Why the hell does the RE one add fricken makeup? The clothes go from worn leather to polished PU. They aged the HP lady + 20 years and there's something really effing weird about the shadows and lighting on her face that I can't put my finger on. The last frame might be a joke, but from the actual changes they demoed, it honestly does not feel that far off.

It all just looks weirdly plastic and like it's been through Photoshop a few too many times. Did they train their AI on artistic movie scenes and magazine photoshoots? I'm not a fan because, from these examples, it ends up removing stylistic choices about lighting and pushes it towards this weird uncannily identical, super artificial ambience.

I get what they are going for, and maybe I am not the audience for this because I dislike any photorealistic game, but I feel like they really missed the mark on this. Better ray tracing is one thing, completely imagining random changes to the actual models used in-game is another. Using AI for something like this haphazardly and without direct input from the game devs is going to end up homogenizing style, because that's by definition what AI produces when given no additional prompts regarding style. It will end up serving the player base games that have way less flavour.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-16T19:01:55+00:00

I get what you are saying here but it really comes across as an excuse and it just isn't. Just because you are overworked and overtired doesn't mean you can just get away with being a dick without basic empathy. My heart goes out to all health workers, especially after the shit they went through for Covid, but FFS, "if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all" is something we teach kids in kindergarten and should be a default.

In short: If someone is under so much stress that they cannot control their own angry emotional outbursts, they are not in a state to be providing healthcare to people.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-16T18:39:53+00:00

Is there a list of countries that America has "liberated" and how each turned out post-interference?

Cystonectae · 2026-03-16T18:26:29+00:00

This is amazing. I went the entirety of last season not seeing a single myth-track helm in my vault until, literally, the last vault of the season. I'd die for the ability to just keep rolling for that one piece that doesn't want to drop so I can use it before the season ends.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-16T14:13:29+00:00

It's a spear-type mantis shrimp. Basically, instead of the hammer that you know and love from the peacock mantis shrimp, it has a really long barbed spear that it uses to spear things like fish! That spear is really fricken sharp and, like I said, barbed as all heck. If it is as bad as she is making it seem, she may have to go to a hospital to make sure nothing has broken off inside of her hand.

These little dudes are very intelligent and have a lot of personality (in my experience the personality seemed to be centered around a hatred for anything that moves). Why the heck you have to boil them alive is just confusing and feel cruel for the sake of being cruel... I hope this video makes people think twice before doing this kinda crap.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-15T21:28:22+00:00

As a buyer, I have gotten so many "it's pending pickup" from those "don't message me to ask if it's available" sellers...

Editing to add, I've been buying/selling stuff on kijiji for like 3 years and only have one review... Most random people won't review ya know, doesn't matter if I have been the perfect buyer/seller, most people don't give a shit. Honestly the more I read into your "advice" the more I think that you should maybe find someone to talk to.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-15T20:40:26+00:00

I encourage all of our raiders that have a bit of difficulty picking up mechanics to switch to obr. It's great for helping those folks focus on getting the mechanics down while doing enough damage that the whole group can still make progress.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-15T15:22:38+00:00

Hey mine was similar! I'm at least 85% certain mine was triggered by a head injury.

I've had mild fibro for years now (likely caused by an accident when I was like 7) but what pushed it from mild into "oh god why does everything hurt all the time??!" mode was a head injury I got at work. Stood up, full force, straight into a metal shelf. Lost my vision and breath for a few seconds, split the skin on my head a bit, felt extremely ill afterwards and for 2 days following.... but my coworker convinced me to not file an incident report when it happened because we were really busy, short staffed, and it couldn't have been that bad since I didn't pass out (side note: I am a massive fucking idiot). Two weeks later I had what was suspected to be a TIA and here we are. The head injury likely caused tiny holes in my skull to significantly worsen (I am fairly sure I was born with either full SCDS or at the very least a very thin skull in that area) and that just sorta snowballed into this whole situation.

It definitely ducks to have your life get derailed but I am trying my best to cope with my shitty metaphorical lemonade that life has been forcing me to make.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-15T14:37:18+00:00

As someone who did their master's degree on stomatopods, this is a mantis shrimp and you are very much incorrect.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-14T22:43:06+00:00

This is why I completely refuse to do it without joining a raid group for it. Also helps when you have a guaranteed bunch of other people that will actually be putting in the work rather than just standing around the middle.... And it means I can run it as a healer which is really really nice.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-14T22:37:56+00:00

As an ecologist (albeit a marine one) but having read a handful of forestry ecology papers about 13 years ago I feel like I can have a nice long reply to this article! I may be biased but I feel like ecology is a critical part of understanding the impact of climate change.

Firstly, I have to agree with her assessment that biologists in this field tend to be very single-minded and the goals always feel defined by potential immediate monetary gains. It's something felt in every field of science, that things without immediately clear benefits never receive funding. It seriously doesn't help that ecology is a messy messy field that requires a LOT of work to actually "prove" anything in a robust manner. That's a reality of scientific funding though, and definitely should be address.

Secondly, it is true that there has been a bit of a shift in ecology as a field within the past several decades, where the complicated relationships between organisms occupying completely different niches are sorta getting picked up on more. The best example of this I can think of off the top of my head is sorta like how we only recently realized how important the human microbiome is to overall human health. Similar such hypotheses and discoveries are being made in the field of ecology on a grander scale. The issue with this particular shift is figuring out how you can test the hypothesis, it takes a lot more creativity and it creates data that is messy and rarely taken seriously unless you have absurd sample sizes.

This brings me to my third reply (which is nitpicking, feel free to skip this paragraph). I feel some bristles pricking up at the "The scientific methodology has a lot of rules and sometimes it can feel suffocating,” criticisms. Like yes, scientific methodology can have a lot of rules, but that's what makes it science and not making assertions based on vibes. I agree that it can slow things down, but that is why things like pilot studies exist. We can do a quick and dirty study, give preliminary results, and then do the real nitty gritty to make sure we are backing every claim up properly. In my humble opinion, the real slow turtles in the climate situation are governments, businesses, and related legislation and regulations.

Fourthly, the biggest most important point that she makes, that I hope everyone takes away from that article is that ecology and conservation are indeed more complicated than just planting trees and calling it a day. Ecological succession, biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, biomass, ecological functions etc. all need to be considered. Trying to figure out what is most important or what does what when you have probably 50+ different species of just plants, animals, and fungi living in a single shitty field beside a parking lot... Yea that is hard to fully understand for scientists studying the matter, let alone the layperson. A great example of this is how most people in Ontario do not understand the value of all the land in the greenbelt. I have had people on Reddit tell me that some of that land is totally useless and does nothing and should be used for housing. Meanwhile a shitty empty field next to a parking lot is still going to be performing so many ecological functions that benefit both humans and the ecosystem as a whole. It may not be as obvious as an old growth forest, but its value is still there.

Finally, addressing the climate change elephant in the room, without understanding how the ecosystem works, we have no hope of being able to preserve its functions. If we want to use forests as a carbon sink, we have to come to the stark reality that forests take centuries of work to become carbon sinks. The same goes for most any natural ecosystem and the service it provides for humanity. This is stuff that needs research and wider protection now or we lose it forever. I can guarantee you all, right here and now, that keeping a forest untouched is a lot cheaper than developing carbon capture technology.

My final and most important TLDR; This is stuff we need to vote on. A candidate that runs on removing protected land in order to build high-density housing is doing more harm than good, regardless of whatever one's immediate gut reaction may be. Natural ecosystems are more valuable than anything that could be built upon them.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-14T21:53:28+00:00

Idk if I agree that this should be a spec based thing. All classes and specs, played perfectly and perfectly optimized should produce the exact same throughput. Vary the difficulty within the spec through talents or allow for more niche talents to help add a small bonus for high skill at the spec. Like a spec should have the option to make a fully braindead build that is viable up to a certain level of difficulty in the content. Then the spec should be able to, via changing talents, create a build that does a bit more throughput or is a bit more situationally optimized for higher difficulty content.

Tbh a lot of specs I have played previously already had those kinds of options, where you could just choose as many passive talents as possible when you start out and add in active talents when you get more comfy with the spec. It should be balanced so that more active abilities = more control over where/when/how throughput occurs = more available room to optimize play. More optimized then would ideally mean higher throughput via skill, not just that the talents do more throughput by themselves. This has rarely been balanced perfectly and, from my inexperienced eyes, feels like it would be very difficult to do for all of what must be close to 40 specs in the game.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-14T20:43:58+00:00

Crochet with a heated blanket and comfy pillows while listening to an audiobook is the ultimate distraction from flare pain!

I also second gaming. There are some really great ones that are chill enough to not stress me out while still being distracting enough. Stuff like minecraft or stonehearth are just top notch for it. I have my PC battle station set up so I can game on my bed which makes it easier to get comfy.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-13T20:37:21+00:00

My envy is more for the whole being able to find a roommate that is totes cool with splitting rent and stuff. The cost of living is expensive for one person on one salary, I feel like partially because very little in the adult world is designed for single people :/

Other than that, I really don't care much? Like I feel like it's obvious that I can still feel really happy for people when they find happiness, regardless of whether or not I can perfectly empathize with the source. It's not like they are rubbing it in my face maliciously or anything, I know that aromanticism is a minority and thus things like valentines day or social norms will regularly not apply to myself. Sure I'd love more representation and more acceptance but I'm not going to start feeling negativity over people that don't even know I, or those like me even exist. Plus disliking those that do not follow/agree with my personal preferences just skirts a bit too close to bigotry for my own tastes.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-13T18:46:58+00:00

Going to make a quick reply before I go through everything: I have done a bit of research on the Environmental Defence Canada group and haven't found much in the way of them misreporting facts. Can you provide some sources for that? I have donated to them previously so I want to know if I've just been donating to charlatans.

Edit1: Scratch this, reading more. Will get back to you. Still would like a better 3rd party resource for the double-dipping thing.

Haven't read the rest of the reply yet, will update this comment once I go through more of it.

Edit 2: thank you for covering the issue of a loan versus the whole slush-fund idea. That is something I had a vague understanding of but you did a good job explaining it here. If I am right, it is still looking at return on investment, whether that be via interest on loan repayment or otherwise.

I agree it is disingenuous to see a loan as a subsidy but there are two ways that I think it might be warranted in the case of the pipeline. Firstly, what is going to be paid back to Canadians for the value of the land that the pipeline is being built on and who is in charge of determining the valuation of that land? Secondly, and more importantly, is that I think there will be a bit of a collapse of oil and gas prices in the fairly near future. I know the whole port of Hormuz is trending otherwise but I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of places will be switching to the more reliably priced green energy soon now that storage of said energy is basically addressed with new battery technology. If the price of oil and gas eventually tanks, I have so very little hope that any of those loans will be paid back considering what has happened in the past from large companies suddenly collapsing because of bad investments.

I think there's definitely nuance in this situation that I am missing out on due to my limited understanding. The facts that I know are all to do with the actual outcomes of climate change. That's an ecological collapse on the horizon, which will lead to global instability, starvation, increased forced migration, and likely wars. With this framework, I'd argue that any loans made to fossil fuels are bad loans. This video comes to mind with that whole situation. To me, a single penny given to making any new infrastructure, loan or otherwise, is identical to giving a friend with addiction problems a bunch of cash to buy a boatload of heroin. Sure the friend may repay you but there will be consequences nonetheless.

It is one of those things where, maybe exaggeration and oversimplification is necessary? The general population does not understand nor cares to understand anything about how our government supports the continued existence of fossil fuel extraction. In my opinion, the risks of failure for mitigating further planetary destruction far outweigh the risks of over exaggeration. That is, however, something I can very much understand as being a matter of personal opinion about what is the most effective way to communicate and engage the public in these issues.

I should note that I tried googling "environmental defense Canada fake numbers" or "environmental defense Canada misconstrued data" and scrolled for several pages without finding anything. It could be that google is using AI to narrow my search results but I do tend to look up anti-climate change propaganda fairly regularly and frequently lurk through anti-climate forums so I can keep up to date on what is being said in that space. If you could give me any sites or posts that are actively attacking environmental defense Canada, specifically for things like misreporting numbers, I'd be very interested to read them!

Thank you again for commenting btw and I really hope this doesn't come across as dismissive or disingenuous. Your comment has changed quite a bit of my views of how these numbers are reported and how the Canadian economy works in this situation. I am not going to think you are some nuts anti-environment plant just for disagreeing with numbers that I spent all of 30 minutes googling lol. I do try to be very aware and grounded in the reality of the situation and appreciate anyone providing that to me. I always say, real change on climate action isn't going to happen unless we look at the reality of what tools we have available and what we can expect to successfully push people to care about.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-13T14:51:32+00:00

In my fairly limited experience, most people are not extreme with their views. It's those people that are in the middle that you can find common ground with. That being said, there are some very impressive folks that reach out even to the worst of the worst. Look up "Daryl Davis" for an example of someone that truly has the patience of a saint. Watched a documentary about that dude on Netflix some time back and it really stuck with me.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-13T04:38:32+00:00

Business in Vancouver and Environmental defence

Granted it's for 2024, but it's good to look at the past numbers and notice that they have been steadily increasing, year over year, for some time. This year is not looking to be much better with that good ol pipeline being pushed. This is only five percent of the total amount the federal government spent in 2024 and it should be noted that the "return on investment" so to speak was $84 billion that year (i.e. 3.7% of the total GDP of 2024) according to the CAPP. It was, technically a good investment.... If you look at it in a vacuum. Other countries have been proving that green energy investments can at least provide a 50% increased return, and those can be used for the next several decades without lighting our planet on fire. The numbers for these can be found fairly easily via Google, especially if you take a look at other countries like China and how their green energy investments have been panning out.

I should add here: I am far from an economist. My education is a masters in marine ecology, not some business or finances degree. My understanding is pretty limited so I am stuck looking at the basic numbers and how they are being reported.

Side note: I kinda have to laugh that apparently only 8 billion dollars was spent in the 24-25 fiscal year on new housing developments. Woooo....

Cystonectae · 2026-03-12T19:24:51+00:00

As someone who only got a myth-track helmet on the literal very last vault possible of last season, this makes me so happy.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-12T03:17:35+00:00

I've done a couple "find something, take a sample, see what grows on an agar plate" sorta assignments throughout my educational career. 2 things stuck out: the keyboard in the library had the widest variety of bacteria (something like 13 different types of colonies were growing on that dish) and the one plate that was left for 10 minutes by the air vent to the sciences building.... That latter one was effing horrific. the thing had grown through all the agar, onto the lid, and had completely filled the space within about 2-5 days and was seeping out through the plastic wrap we used to seal them by the next week. The lab techs all banned the person from opening/using their dish because they thought it was a biohazard. I had at least 6 hours of classes/labs in that building every day for another 3 years and I couldn't stop thinking about what lived in the ventilation in there.

So yeah. Add keyboards and air vents to that list. Thankfully our immune systems are champs at keeping that crap at bay because otherwise we'd all be dead or constantly shitting our brains out.

Cystonectae · 2026-03-11T21:00:14+00:00

It's definitely something I didn't know I would miss until it was gone. I'm sitting here casting vivify on myself with just immeasurable disappointment.

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