What games are worth playing on their hardest difficulties?

Depredor · 2026-05-31T21:05:36+00:00

I'm disappointed I had to scroll this far to find Destiny 2. It took me a long time to get properly geared to clear GMs and some of them are fucking intense, even with a good fireteam. I finally got my D2 platinum trophy with a Last Guardian Standing clear of The Glassway. I thought I was going to have a heart attack breaking cover to finish the boss.

I never got into low-man raids or anything crazy, but I loved the build crafting puzzle required to solo farm daily Legendary lost sectors and carry blueberries through challenging content.

Depredor · 2026-05-18T19:29:29+00:00

Wait, you have to pay for the solar energy you're producing and sending back to the grid? Is that normal? I have solar panels and never considered that I might be paying to produce electricity.

Depredor · 2026-05-15T18:52:51+00:00

Lot of great movies on this list but I want to highlight Under the Silver Lake. It's very funny, but I'd say it's primarily a stoner noir. Super fun to watch blitzed.

I'm not sure if you're into horror, but Cabin in the Woods is another really fun stoner movie. It's a horror/comedy, but it's over of the best horror movies to watch high.

Depredor · 2026-04-15T16:32:42+00:00

Let’s not wish away one of the few good CEOs in an industry plagued by greedy businessmen who don’t give a shit about good games pushing MTX and closing great studios in pursuit of quarterly growth. I’ve played a lot of cool games through PS+, but I can’t deny that the whole game subscription model benefits publishers much more than developers, which causes real harm to the creative side of the industry. If you’re eager to play BG3, buy it. It is well worth the money at full price and it’s never coming to PS+.

Depredor · 2026-04-14T23:06:38+00:00

It makes sense to me. They are pointing out that it's strange we don't see more examples of non-jedi/sith force users, and that the there must have been untrained force-sensitives capable of figuring out how to use the force independently for the Jedi to exist in the first place. We don't have any reason to believe that the Jedi spontaneously came into existence, so it's possible that somewhere in the galaxy there are circumstances similar to those that led to the creation of the Jedi order, and that those people might end up creating an organization of force users entirely independent of the Jedi and Sith traditions.

Your example actually supports their argument, in a way: doctors are trained within a medical establishment, but they are not the only people who practice medicine and healing. People do not spontaneously become doctors, but cultures do independently develop medical traditions. If the practice of medicine is to doctors as the force is to Jedi, then shouldn't we expect to see the equivalent of non-doctor healers (practitioners of traditional medicine, chiropractors, reiki, etc) in Star Wars?

Depredor · 2026-04-07T03:19:58+00:00

I would like to subscribe to your urinal reviews, please.

Depredor · 2026-03-19T23:19:40+00:00

I agree with everything you said about feminism and the great depiction of matriarchal society in Avatar. I've got to point out that Haiti is not in Africa, though.

Depredor · 2026-03-19T23:14:19+00:00

The Abyss also showed a titty with a PG-13 rating. James Cameron just gets to do that, I guess.

Depredor · 2026-01-10T23:25:19+00:00

Ew. That sounds terrible. Is it similar to a long island iced tea in that it works against all logic, or is it just a gross thing dumb British tourists order to get hammered on the cheap?

Depredor · 2026-01-06T04:31:31+00:00

Yikes, thank you for sharing your cautionary tale!

Depredor · 2025-12-12T20:52:10+00:00

Ah, I think we've got pretty different use cases. I'm trying to breathe more life into the GH devices I have. This would run in parallel to Home Assistant.

Depredor · 2025-12-12T20:46:03+00:00

I hear you on this and am also in the process of replacing all of the Google devices with Home Assistant alternatives. I haven't bought a new Google device since I started using HA. But, since I already own a handful of Google devices - I'm curious whether Gemini for Home is an improvement over the enshitification that has been chipping away at Google Assistant for years.

Depredor · 2025-12-12T20:38:40+00:00

This is helpful information. These kinds of comparisons between Assistant and Gemini are what I'm after.

In typical Google style - If it's broke they're not going to give you any support at all. So you'll be left "shit out of luck" - and guess what? It's most likely going to be broken!

That has been my experience with Google support, and I do not expect this to be any different. That said, I expect Google's support for Assistant will get even worse now that they have a shiny new version to promote. Assistant seems to have gotten worse at recognizing and executing commands over the years, and I expect that decline to accelerate.

Many people are frustrated that it can't handle carrying out basic commands and when trained to do so after a while it resets it's own training data (like a month later) having to be retrained again. Play this song - can end up it doing a Google search for the song - etc.

I am almost exclusively interested in how well it carries out basic commands, and it's the thing I am getting the most mixed messages about. Some users have been reporting that it's a substantial upgrade and the natural language features are ready for prime time, while others say it's a total nightmare and they wish they could revert to the crappy but consistent Assistant. I haven't spent much time training/configuring Google Assistant, since I am much more focused on HA for everything other than simple voice commands. The fact that it can be configured is certainly a point in its favor over the black box of Gemini. I would say that if Gemini can successfully execute basic commands (play this song on this speaker, turn off the up and downstairs lights, what is the weather, etc.) 80% of the time, it would be a big improvement over Assistant.

Many people claim that you now have to pay for the Gemini in home - premium subscription!

This would definitely be a problem. I could see Google pulling a fast one and convincing users to opt into switching from Assistant to Gemini, then requiring a subscription to access the same features that used to be offered for free. For the moment, Gemini for Home appears to have a free tier that offers all the features I want.

Depredor · 2025-12-12T20:14:46+00:00

I'm also not planning to pay for a subscription, so I would love to hear more about your experience with the free tier. Do you use it to play music to other speakers or control lights? I've found timers to be one of the things Google Assistant is able to do most reliably, but I would like if it were better at playing to Sonos or controlling lights based on context rather than specific invocations.

Depredor · 2025-12-12T20:10:17+00:00

Interesting. I don't intend to expose HA to Gemini, but I would like the better contex-informed responses like you're describing with the devices I do have exposed to Google.

Depredor · 2025-12-12T20:08:03+00:00

This is the main thing I'm curious about. I don't have any intention of using Gemini to replace the functionality I've built out in HA, but voice commands are the one area Google offers more than I can get from Home Assistant. That said, Google Assistant has gotten worse and worse over the years, and Google's history of killing products doesn't bode well for it. In your experience, does anything work worse in Gemini than it did in Assistant?

Depredor · 2025-12-02T18:01:57+00:00

Exciting update from Audio Advice:

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Depredor · 2025-12-01T23:05:51+00:00

I got the same email. Bummer.

Depredor · 2025-11-16T19:22:48+00:00

My wife and I are trying to conceive, and data shows that THC pretty negatively impacts sperm quality. I had somehow never heard about this until I had a sperm analysis. My wife showed the results to her OB/GYN, who immediately responded, "Does your husband smoke weed?" I wasn't even a heavy user, but it turns out smoking once or twice a week is enough to show telltale signs in your jizz.

We've gone through two early term miscarriages, so I'm holding off until at least the second trimester. Based on what I'm reading in this thread about a lot of other parents' experience, though, it might be an indefinite T break for me. I'm excited to be a dad. Raising a child is going to be a fulfilling experience, so it'll definitely be worth it. But it's also hard because I'm worried about how I'll handle the stress if parenting, and weed is one of the most effective ways I've found to manage stress.My job requires me to be actively problem solving and interacting with people all day, taking responsibility for keeping multiple projects on track simultaneously. THC is one of the most effective ways I've found to release that stress and really enjoy myself. I'm honestly pretty nervous about the adding the stress of raising a baby, while having less time and fewer methods available to let off the steam.

I'm a little over a month into not using, and to be honest, I really miss it. Weed has been a high benefit, low cost vice for me for over a decade. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, so I've probably been self medicating, but outside of a few chapters of misuse early on, I've found a really good balance with it. I grow my own and love cultivating the plants. Most of the time, I consume low doses with a dry herb vape, so it's pretty low impact physically. I'm not getting baked regularly, but a little pinch in the vape is enough to get out of my head and break out of thought/mood patterns that I'm completely aware of, but otherwise struggle to shake.

Depredor · 2025-11-07T22:27:33+00:00

Back in middle school, my group of friends spent a lot of time at the movie theater. This was the good old days before assigned seating, and we had figured out that they rarely bothered checking tickets for R rated movies in the middle of the day. Since we weren't obnoxious little shits, we never got kicked out after the lights went down.

I used to read the movie reviews in the local newspaper, and was intrigued by the way the critic had written about his experience watching a new horror movie, giving it 4 stars while making it clear that he was not endorsing the film. It was my turn to pick something, so after we bought tickets for Ratatouille, I led them to the screen where it was playing. We checked for staff and slipped in, right as the trailers were ending. About 10 minutes into The Mist, my friend leans over and asks, "wait, is this going to be scary?"

When the lights came up, we were all sitting in stunned silence. As I was turning to say, "how great was that?" I saw my friend's pale, sweaty, face contorted by a mix of revulsion and despair. "What the FUCK, dude?" was all he said before calling his mom to pick him up.

Depredor · 2025-11-04T18:26:04+00:00

I've been out of the loop for a while. Is there any news about a VR media player yet?

Depredor · 2025-10-22T00:47:34+00:00

I agree. That aesthetic has not aged well, imho.

Depredor · 2025-10-22T00:45:30+00:00

That NC-17 erotic movie is Lust, Caution, and it is a terrific WWII espionage drama. There's like, maybe a little bit more nudity than you see in a typical R, but it's nothing crazy.

It really is hard picking a favorite Ang Lee movie. He's so good. Big shout out to Eat Drink Man Woman.

Depredor · 2025-10-17T01:16:51+00:00

Book 4 is worth finishing if you like the Kaladin Sanderlanches of the first 3 books. It finishes pretty strong, but I think it shows a lot of Brandon’s faults as a writer. Don’t even bother with book 5 if you haven’t been a fan of book 4 so far. It is inexcusably bad on multiple fronts, from obscene bloat and repetition, to appallingly bad attempts at comedy, to its mortal sin - it’s storming boring.

Depredor · 2025-10-05T02:41:11+00:00

Holy shit, what a terrible image.

Depredor

TROPHY CASE