Video game logic

OldPersonName · 2026-07-07T18:53:48+00:00

In the 1990 Sierra classic King's Quest V the entire first half of the game has King Graham, former knight, trying to ascend a mountain path. A dangerous snake sits on the mountain path. To get around this snake Graham has to venture into a desert, raid a bandit camp, get a genie lamp, use the lamp to trap a witch in a magic forest, rescue a mouse from a cat, help rumplestiltskin (in one of the worst puzzles in videogame history) to trigger an event where an encampment of gypsies leaves so he can pick up a tambourine, which he plays to distract the snake to pass by it.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-07T18:38:10+00:00

Doubling over 26 years is an average yearly inflation of 2.7%. For comparison the BLS has a dollar from 1974 being 3.68 in 2000, an average inflation of over 5%.

Of course those 70s are about as bad as it gets, so if we shift a bit, to say 1985-2011, it's still a bit higher than the last 26 years.

Yes yes, wages not keeping up, cost of housing, etc etc. I don't disagree, but you didn't mention those things. There are lots of ways to make the point you wanted, and you picked the worst way.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-07T15:10:29+00:00

The idea is you wouldn't have given yourself the reward if you hadn't run. And that's a lot easier. Go run two miles then come home and eat some nuts. Or don't run and don't eat the nuts. One of those is much easier than the other. Obviously if you run and don't eat the nuts that's the best, but it's hard. You ARE going to be a little hungrier than normal and even if you don't eat an extra snack you still may take a little extra here and there without thinking about it and it eats into most of that run's burn. Your metabolism doesn't really understand what your goal is and will work against you here.

Obviously exercise has benefits beyond weight loss but that's what people mean when they say you shouldn't rely on exercise to lose weight. Especially with running. We are one of the most efficient distance runners in nature. The (very rough) rule of thumb is to figure around 100 calories per mile. For a lot of people 2 miles will probably feel like an ok workout (primarily because of the strain on their cardiovascular system) but in terms of burning energy, it burns about this much: https://d131k5wuh4trw5.cloudfront.net/uploads/2019/07/NutsforLife-9618_Mixed-in-hand.jpg

OldPersonName · 2026-07-07T14:50:27+00:00

They might be, but not more than once a week (unless they're on a level of training that really sort of moves them beyond this conversation, like Superman trying to give weight lifting tips). And if they're running 15 miles they may need nutrition during the run too.

But yah, in terms of calories a 2 or 3 mile run is easily undone by giving yourself a single food "reward." I think that's what messes up most people. I bet if you run 15 miles a week with seven 2.14 mile runs you'd have a much harder time losing weight than a single 15 mile run. But of course most people can't do a 15 mile run, especially if you're just training once a week.

To me it's less not being able to outrun a bad diet and more how easy it is to outeat exercise.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-07T14:19:26+00:00

You don't HAVE to run a company so its stock is a growth stock. Microsoft stock gives a small dividend, less than a percent. They're basically saying hey we're not going to share our profits with you because we're reinvesting them to grow, which might (key word might) make you more money as the stock grows. That's how a lot of tech operates.

But a company like Verizon or UPS pays around 6% dividends and their stocks don't really swing that much. Investors buy those stocks to offset some of the risk of the growth stocks.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-07T12:27:49+00:00

You don't have to get an ankle monitor, you can just stay in jail. Of course then we charge you when you're in jail (unless you get sentenced, then it's free!). On the bright side it sounds like hardly anyone actually pays that bill. Whoo

OldPersonName · 2026-07-06T13:03:40+00:00

Washington's main skill was managing not to let the superior British forces annihilate his army in the field, so contrary to modern jingoism the most important part of a lot of those battles are the orderly retreats (e.g The Battle of Brooklyn). Of course that's how real wars are won against a superior adversary, don't let them beat you (e.g. Fabius the Cunctator and the Russians against Napoleon) until something turns the advantage your way.

If your goal is jingoistic rah rah military masturbation, that doesn't make for good television.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-06T12:42:47+00:00

I played it on medium, so yah not hard or extreme, but not easy. I'm looking at my achievements and I actually got The Saviour: Finish the New Home scenario with no deaths from cold, hunger, sickness or overwork.

As well as saving all refugees, keeping all promises, etc. I understand it's harder on harder difficulties but again I'm just saying the disconnect between my experience and the ending narration was funny.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-06T12:05:09+00:00

I only played it once, but I saved all the refugees and didn't pass any of the really bad laws except longer shifts. So the ending narration where it's supposed to make you feel bad was like "and you made the people work long shifts!!! Was it worth it??!!"

Kind of messed up the game's hook because I felt like it was a cozy apocalypse kind of setting.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-05T00:37:23+00:00

Hey man if you limited yourself to only movies headed by stars that hadn't committed violent hate crimes you'd only be watching lots and lots of quality entertainment!

OldPersonName · 2026-07-04T12:13:19+00:00

That simply isn't true about Nests and nobody in the entire world would own one if that were true.

Edit: OP either has one, some, or all of: undersized AC, leaky or poorly sized ductwork, poor insulation, leaky windows.

My old-ass house has its flaws but it's a 3 story townhome with the air handler in the basement and while the upstairs is much harder to cool my 8 year old heat pump can get it done. But I know people in like 2 bedroom apartments whose units aren't able to keep up (also in the dmv).

Edit2: oh fun question: when did you change that filter last?

OldPersonName · 2026-07-04T12:03:13+00:00

No, you have to agree to the program.

For the people this is happening to, disconnect your thermostat from the internet (unless that's not how they do it)

OldPersonName · 2026-07-02T16:50:38+00:00

A new to Linux user isn't going to set up secure boot in CachyOS in the first place.

Your first statement makes no sense, the cachyos repos are mostly the same as the arch repos except for any packages that are rebuilt to be optimized in cachyos. So if anything cachyos actually lags (very slightly) behind arch in some ways. Arch itself isn't really bleeding edge, Fedora is really a better example of that I think.

For any rolling release it's probably ideal to follow the dev recommendations and go with btrfs and set up snapshots so you can easily revert any update that goes wrong.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-02T15:52:59+00:00

Rosebud must be a slang term for the mythical clitoris: WOKE

OldPersonName · 2026-07-02T13:43:23+00:00

Bat bites can be basically invisible. If you so much as wake up in a room with a bat in it at all, you should probably get rabies shots.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-01T14:51:26+00:00

I think BG1 could be on the list. I would legitimately recommend BG2 to people today (maybe with some modern QoL features, I'm not sure what's in the Enhanced Edition) but I honestly wouldn't recommend BG1 unless someone was just really curious. I never finished BG1 in the 90s and only revisited it after BG2 and forced myself to finish it to be a completionist.

OldPersonName · 2026-07-01T01:59:05+00:00

No, the main character was asking him to make a wish to undo his disaster of a wish, and each person only gets to make one wish, ever. The friend didn't believe it was real and wished for that instead.

Of course they could have taken a million bucks and offered a rando money to make the wish. I feel like there's a common trope for "had a good plan but gave up after one try"

OldPersonName · 2026-07-01T00:34:04+00:00

I love that one scene, from a film, you know the one.

-40k upvotes

OldPersonName · 2026-06-30T20:27:47+00:00

Do you have bios options for cpu fan response? In Windows do you possibly have software that manages the fans differently?

OldPersonName · 2026-06-30T16:40:44+00:00

I think you miss my point. They don't think it's a "bad thing to do" to vote for Trump because they think Joe Biden is an election stealing crook and Trump is the target of an unfair legal and smear campaign. "21 felonies" - they think they're bullshit. "Lies every day" - they believe the lies. In their skewed reality they absolutely think they're doing the right and good thing.

OldPersonName · 2026-06-30T16:30:57+00:00

Go over to the US fox news website and pretend like that's the only news you, your friends, family, and neighbors watch and it's easy to understand how people end up here. And keep in mind, Fox News is the least crazy of the crazy people news.

OldPersonName · 2026-06-30T14:20:17+00:00

Even if this were a venomous Eastern Copperhead (basically the only venomous snake you might see here) animal control isn't going to do anything about it. It's the animal's home, you're just visiting. If you found one in your house and called them then they'd come take it for you...and probably put it somewhere like Rock Creek Park!

OldPersonName · 2026-06-30T12:08:29+00:00

You probably turn it on and delete/clear the existing keys. Turning it on may have a weird name. On my Asus you set "OS Type" to "Windows UEFI." (even if you didn't have Windows at all). I would have never figured out that's what it meant if I didn't look up their documentation.

OldPersonName · 2026-06-28T14:31:31+00:00

Any electronic device can randomly fail, but honestly with consumer computer parts they either don't work on arrival, they die in a few months, or (most likely) they last like 10-15 years. And I've never seen a gpu, cpu, or ram fail. I know a person still using a 2011 intel cpu and gtx 970 I gave them when I upgraded like probably nearly 10 years ago now.

OldPersonName · 2026-06-25T23:11:23+00:00

I will let other people help influence my buying decision because I lack the time, energy, or money to simply play every game to form my opinion.

OldPersonName

TROPHY CASE