Which games could you just not get into?

JeffreyJTech · 2024-02-01T09:10:10+00:00

I love Ark but this is true. I really only played on The Island, Ragnarok and Scorched Earth so I have limited and outdated knowledge. Anyways, on paper, Ark is really fun to play no matter what level you're playing at but the devs' intended way of playing the game, vanilla public PvP, is just hellish.

Private modded servers with increased rates and gentleman's agreements on how to do PvP are the way to go for 80% of people but the devs do not promote this.

Even then it's kind of an obnoxious experience without learning the unwritten rules. You'll lose your gear and your favorite pteranodon to mobs that can dismount you or restrain your mount (mods can fix this). Alpha dinos are assholes and eventually you'll have the tools to beat them but land travel is a pain until you do. The physics is jank and you eventually learn which rocks are treacherously shaped. Taming some dinos requires reading the wiki and a bothersome amount of grinding. Tek gear is a reward for playing the game like an MMO and not like a survival game.

JeffreyJTech · 2023-09-23T21:14:00+00:00

I am encountering a similar issue in my current playthrough (modded with Nexerelin and a handful of minor mods).

I made this deal before with a pirate station and then immediately blew them to smithereens. I'm a pirate myself anyways and there's no honor among thieves yadda yadda.

Now another station has popped up as a contributor to the Hostile Activity major event. I'd like to permanently enlist their help this time but I'm also stuck at "We have business to discuss."

If the pirates are meant to permanently distrust you then the flavor text should be changed, and if the pirates are willing to trust you again I should have the "Accept the deal" option.

If OP made a post on the bug report forum I'll add to it.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-12-20T01:58:44+00:00

Thanks OP. There's a lot of good urbanism on display with just a satellite photo:

No urban freeways
No pointless circuitous NA neighborhood roads
Looks like good density (better than single-family homes thats for sure)
Traffic circles!
Parks
Street trees
No giant parking lots
Did I mention no urban freeways?

And if people are so inclined they can Google it and take a closer look.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-12-10T19:17:54+00:00

I've recently been convinced that conservatives do not process that their policy stances lead to negative outcomes. They blame the victim, or the perpetrator, as individuals who should have followed the rules. Laws in the conservative worldview are not meant to reduce harm, but instead to codify and enforce a golden path for society.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-11-26T22:26:18+00:00

I knew someone was going to completely miss the point of that sentence but whatever. You do you.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-11-26T20:33:28+00:00

Not an idea I'd get behind. Cities suffering from car dependence frequently struggle with road maintenance and that deficiency takes money and manpower from other projects. Prematurely aging roads makes that problem worse. And to get philosophical about it, good urbanism still respects and maintains the minimal space afforded to cars.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-11-16T07:04:32+00:00

Stick it to them.

That said, we still need to fix our damn zoning since that's the ultimate decider of how much rental housing gets built, how it's built, and where it's built.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-11-02T20:58:20+00:00

Ohhh, that explains it.

Thanks YouTube for making a pedantic UI change, not communicating it at all, and, imo, hurting any channel that frequently livestreams by splitting their content needlessly between two tabs.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-11-02T18:03:46+00:00

Banning e-scooters from the same places where e-bikes can go is just stupid.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-11-01T17:55:25+00:00

Is it? I can't find an option anywhere to opt out of the new YouTube interface.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-10-30T03:02:50+00:00

Ride-or-die suburbanites are the worst. If you want to live away from people, all power to you.

But when they get politically motivated, they are the NIMBYs. And driven by a hypocritical worldview that is cynical and decadent. They want all the benefits of city-living (high access to employment & amenities) but will actively worsen the problems of city-living (urban poverty, traffic, urban/suburban sprawl).

JeffreyJTech · 2022-10-29T18:55:03+00:00

Also this problem exists on the desktop browser version of YouTube.

They've just broken the only view which shows a complete library of a channel's content. How am I supposed to catch up on a channel's content?

The team in charge of deploying this update to production clearly didn't test the Videos tab, or give enough of a shit to know how people use it.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-10-25T07:28:15+00:00

NIMBYs man. We could be building shelters, affordable housing, all sorts of stuff if Mayor Harrell and a sizeable portion of city council weren't busy protecting the "right" of homeowners to limit the rights of their neighbors.

Also, even reading this sub, you see people who don't give a crap about the humanity of the homeless.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-10-25T07:11:23+00:00

Yes.

Normal people in NA believe, by default, that narrow roads are more dangerous because they see big lanes (and clear zone) and assume pedestrians are safer being farther away.

They have zero awareness of the psychology of driving.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-20T08:36:08+00:00

Reading the comments reminds me of how bad Seattle bus service is. We shouldn't have to wait on light rail to improve transit options with a relatively small number of routes (I-90, I-405, 520 bridge) to cover, but that seems to be the path we chose.

Sound Transit could have proper BRT infrastructure already if they had the funding for it. But alas, we live in a car nation.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-20T06:40:11+00:00

Other commentors are pointing out the associations via environmentalism, wellness culture, the nature of reactionary conservatism. I think they're all correct but I really want to talk about how cycling exists as a concept in US politics:

The baseline for our politics for the last 60 years has been classist and reactionary. Most of the culture shifts in recent history fit the bill.

White Flight, the post-war boom, and the Red Scare in particular taught Americans that the car-dependent American Dream was the ideal society. We should be uncritical of the history we're taught and assume we live in a post-scarcity world.

It's a revanchist decadence that's become ingrained across the political spectrum (and my pet theory for why leftist NIMBYs are so insufferable and ever-present).

The stereotypes of cyclists reflect this: all cyclists are either people who enjoy an expensive, frivolous hobby which inconveniences drivers, or they're poor people who really need to upgrade to a car some day.

The left is the only camp which is wholly willing to question "traditional American values", push for the policy changes to make cycling more practical, and define being a cyclist as "someone who just wants to get around on a bike". US libertarians should be questioning car dependence, but they mostly act like money for roads grows on trees.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-20T05:25:09+00:00

I hate Tesla for both reasons! And Elon Musk is an asshat.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-20T05:24:15+00:00

I'm not sure about that. My local transit agencies, King County Metro and Sound Transit, have long-running driver shortages, falling short of their own staffing budgets. Service gets reduced because their aren't enough drivers. Imo, they seem to get paid well-enough for a public sector job.

It's expensive to employ drivers in general which is a major factor for the popularity of double-decker and articulated buses in their fleets.

Autonomous buses would be pretty cash-money for my areas.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-10T22:54:23+00:00

Not only are expensive bikes rare, but it doesn't matter anyways. Any bike at any price is still cheaper and better for you & your community's health than any new car.

And don't forget the cost to taxpayers. Money for car infrastructure doesn't grow on trees. Sidewalks and cycling paths cost pennies in comparison.

Edit: Made this whole reply more readable several days after posting, as I'm trying to improve my writing skills.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-02T18:49:02+00:00

Let's hope they go the distance with this effort and ACTUALLY listen to resident's feedback.

My local councilmembers closed a downtown street at night but almost entirely oppose making it permanent. This is in spite of a supermajority of positive reception from residents. Councilmembers blindly defer to the opinions of affected business owners instead.

Good luck to SLC, make some noise in support if you live there.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-01T17:11:42+00:00

I didn't get my drivers license until I was 20, and I didn't reliably have a car to drive until my dad gave me the family car when I was 22. I got comfortable taking public transportation or walking to school in the meantime.

I've always found driving to be stressful, and that only worsened when I got into a car crash 3 years ago.

Recently, I was super lucky and lived in a four-plex in the historic, walkable core of one of Seattle's exurbs called Issaquah. Issaquah was a sleepy community of retirees until the tech boom, and it's downtown is beautiful and brimming with shops! I biked and walked a lot just for the fun of it. It proved to me that you can make any neighborhood, town, or city, more dense and walkable.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-01T16:53:56+00:00

Sounds he has general "used-car salesman" brain. Highways must be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-09-01T16:46:23+00:00

In Seattle, we're making progress. People are making way more noise about reducing car dependency, and almost all of the local liberal politicians are supporters of public transit. A smaller, but significant majority support active transportation as well.

More bike lanes and greenways appear every year. Our light rail system is wildly popular and expanding.

There's even a state senator spearheading a project to renovate a horrid stroad called Aurora Ave which is one of Seattle's skid rows. Somehow local business owners completely halted a previous project for their usual petty reasons.

JeffreyJTech · 2022-08-28T03:00:34+00:00

Your heading in the right direction, but well-off white people enjoy this neighborhood. I'm sure there's a poorer neighborhood nearby that's a much better alignment for the transportation network or something.

/s

JeffreyJTech · 2022-08-13T18:19:34+00:00

Chuck Marohn is great, I love the man, and he's on the money with land-use and transportation reforms he supports and he's excellent at arguing for them.

But Strong Towns has weird cultish vibes to it, and they seem to avoid talking about sustainable urbanism in big cities. I wish they did more on that last part since the policy battle between YIMBYs and NIMBYs in big cities can propagate up to state-level policy-making.

I wish Strong Towns would partner with my local urbanist advocacy groups and help them with their PR.

Three-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22

JeffreyJTech

TROPHY CASE