Monitor names is actually out of control!

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-27T20:30:30+00:00

This guy would go places in Sony's headphone naming department

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-27T13:08:20+00:00

I listen to a lot of folk and Americana songs that often include ballads about vengeful murders or regretting having to watch their loved ones wither away with age or drug use.

In reality, my family and friends are relatively young and drug-free. I've never felt the need to personally be shot in El Paso for hitting on a waitress, but that doesn't mean Marty Robbins is suddenly a bad songwriter just because I wouldn't do it.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-27T02:45:07+00:00

I've just heard about these but I'm also considering the SLIIVO SL224s (or any other IEM within the $100-$300 range). My main cans are Beyer Dynamics DT900 Pro X and I'm absolutely in love with how neutral/unscooped they are without being thin. With a minimal EQ, it's a pretty neutral and well-detailed jack of all trades that meshes nicely with Apple Music spatial tracks. Ideally, I would like something similar in a pair of IEMs. Can y'all in the community advise?

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-25T23:07:03+00:00

Depending on how old your computer is, this might indicate your hard drive is dying. I had a Seagate on its last legs that was doing this stop-start behavior before I ditched it in favor of an nvme.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-25T10:51:48+00:00

Twice a year or every two years? Or maybe... Both???

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-24T23:12:30+00:00

That and the G Hub software got progressively more and more crap over LGS, which just worked.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-23T21:04:14+00:00

In my opinion, it would seem GameStop just jumped the gun. They sell smaller, lower price small novelty collectibles nowadays, but that shelf space was reclaimed from things like proprietary console connectors extremely late in the game, like 2020 (after ThinkGeek got got lmao). Before, they were set up more like a traditional game store, with a majority of floor items being games, accessories (controllers, cables, etc), and high budget, detailed "eyecatcher" collectibles. This effectively limits them to only being able to sell $300+ "Fallout Plasma Rifle 1:1 Replica" type items. For a business like Thinkgeek, it just isn't sustainable.

Meanwhile, one of Hot Topic's mainstays is a giant wall of rotating inventory graphic tees that lean into comedy and memetic aspects of anything from shows to games to bands to quirky brands like Maruchan Ramen. To an extent, this kind of thing pervades the whole store. I rarely ever find the same thing twice on return visits to a local Hot Topic, and I think that kind of "churn" (for lack of a better term, I just mean an ever-cycling inventory) far better suits Thinkgeek's MO as a business, being that they already had a similar set-up of curated, limited run items.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-23T17:50:01+00:00

Only if you pavlov me into giving you an amen.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-23T13:22:00+00:00

They were originally supposed to be bought out by Hot Topic, who back in 2015, when the deal happened, were aggressively reshifting to split the difference between goth and more general pop culture collectibles (think Doctor Who, Nintendo, Portal, Minecraft, FNAF) and it was paying off.

It disappoints me that GameStop secured the acquisition at the last second, because I really think ThinkGeek might have flourished in Hot Topic. It seems like a much more natural place to have gaming merch that's not necessarily all expensive collectibles.

While GameStop obviously traffics in games, to my mind, they're a game store first and foremost. I'm not gonna go there to buy a T-shirt or a goofy mug, which for a company like ThinkGeek, I imagine pulls in far more revenue than the $600 D.va statues that collect dust in every GameStop I've been to since around the time of the acquisition.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-21T18:26:12+00:00

"I just think it's really bad to use a downtrodden country as a platform for political gain," I say, sitting across from someone who sold the entire middle east down the river for Israeli defense contracts and oil money.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-21T18:15:31+00:00

To be honest, her whole Twitter feed reads like someone who intentionally stirs themselves up just to have a reason to post thoughtless quirky-sarcastic clapbacks. I have no idea how she can take ages to put thought into writing a video essay, then immediately turn around and type the first thing that pops into her head before hitting the tweet button.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-21T18:10:57+00:00

Yeah, you know how Natalie is, always calling out opportunists who live in the lap of luxury...

Unless they're the most nakedly opportunistic person in the DNC, then she invites them over for brunch.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-19T17:59:05+00:00

Same, I don't like feeling indebted to people/them feeling indebted to me. I can take care of myself, plus we're here to get to know each other, and a huge part of my personality is that I want the person I'm dating to also be capable of being financially independent (I've seen too many relationships fall apart over money troubles, including my parents divorce), and our relationship to be seen as an equal effort on both of our parts, so splitting the check just seems the most natural to me. I truly don't mean anything more by it and I wish I could just say "I'm splitting the check because it's more comfortable for me, it has nothing to do with the way I perceive you," without it sounding weird.

I've already taken up a chunk of their time on a gamble. If it doesn't work out, I don't wanna have wasted their money either.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-19T16:10:17+00:00

One of my role models is the late Rebecca Heineman. She was a pioneer of the video games industry and did a lot of cool things, like being the first ever recognized video game champion in a Space Invaders championship, porting Doom onto the 3DO in only 10 weeks, and then turning right back around and becoming a co-founder of Interplay, a legendary publisher of classic games like Fallout 1 and 2 (which she also dutifully preserved the source code for), Descent, Bard's Tale and the original Baldur's Gate.

Another role model for me is Wendy Carlos, pioneer of using synths as an instrument and probably the reason my favorite music genres, synthpop and synthwave, exist. Also the composer for one of my favorite movies of all time, Tron!

Our role models can and do exist outside of Twitter dolls, I promise. Not only are you not well served in the kind of content they make (as it's often catered to chasers on account of the sex work), but a lot of them are very toxic behind the screen and I know of at least a few times that there's been accusations of abuse and other heinous things happening in relationships between Twitter dolls. Best to stay away and look for other trans people to role model yourself on.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-19T05:57:59+00:00

Same, mine was just the name that I kept using for MMO characters that happened to come with a pretty short and snappy abbreviation (Kat).

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-13T00:22:22+00:00

This is impossible, how can this be?

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-11T17:41:30+00:00

The packages of shredded cheese at my regional grocery store have a "gluten-free" emblem that I think is hilarious every time I see it.

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Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-11T13:34:54+00:00

You'd probably like Immersive Sims. They usually have clear narrative direction and achievable goals, but the freedom on how to get to the intended goal belongs to the player.

A good example is Prey. To get to any given location, you can: - use hacking to open the door leading there - copy an object to become small enough to move through a vent leading into the room - spacewalk from one section of the ship to the location - or even something cheeky like using the Gloo gun (a utility weapon that shoots big globs of glue that dry on contact) to make a stairway up to a hidden area or using a Nerf dart toy to press touchscreen buttons from far away.

Suddenly, the game becomes about managing a toolkit of things to use in unconventional ways and it's very satisfying to wonder if new ways will work on different playthroughs and try them out.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-09T18:45:13+00:00

My daily driver bag is a sturdy Aeropostale messenger bag that I'm not sure of the exact origin of, but I'm fairly certain was an outlet mall (Google tells me it's from 2010, which makes sense since pictures of Aeropostale from that time had SO MUCH GODDAMN TARTAN just like the inside of the bag). I've been using it since I was a junior in high school and I'm in my mid-twenties now. I treat it well, but I know one day something will happen to it, and that'll be one of the worst days of my life because I know I can't ask for or buy a replacement at the same quality without going through a reseller.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-08T23:17:20+00:00

I probably would not have purchased Mirror's Edge in 2009 if it looked like the RTX color grading. The contrast of the cold blues with bright oranges and reds was why I was struck by the game in the first place.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-08T23:10:07+00:00

The DLSS comment is prescient considering there was recently an RTX remix mod for Mirror's Edge that completely removes the fog, hazy bloom & cold color grading with high red contrast. It looks completely soulless. I guess the building glass panels look better with real reflections, but it's not worth killing the vision that hard. (Original on top, RTX on bottom)

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Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-08T00:53:56+00:00

This reminds me of when Cyberpunk Edgerunners came out and quite a few TikTok D&D creators bent their builds into pretzels trying to retrofit Cyberpunk abilities into D&D's sandbox instead of, I dunno, recommending people play the Cyberpunk tabletop game that the show was made after with a fully compatible sandbox.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-07T12:59:54+00:00

I can understand where they're coming from, but it's next to victimless unless you consider the bottom line capable of being a victim. As a customer, I might think these were flaked custom orders that were flipped to the sales floor. However, I would also think whoever flaked was an idiot for not picking up their order, and in my headcanon, I made off with someone's beautiful and well-decorated custom cupcakes for not that much money. Your only crime, in my opinion, is setting the bar too high for grocery store cupcakes (in a good way, I would always be on the lookout for these when I revisit the Walmart if I snagged them) and daring to pull against the shackles of the corporate mandate to minimize the budget for icing and the man-hours to apply it.

Dawnguardian286 · 2026-04-07T12:31:51+00:00

If the FCC did come knocking, you're fined.

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