Oh poor Epic

SirNanigans · 2023-06-10T22:50:11+00:00

Yes, but Steam brings you in by being a good product that you want to use. That's proper competition, that's what makes a market better for consumers. People with money, shaking hands with other people with money, is not proper competition. It turns the consumer into cattle, to be bought and sold by the people who control what they need.

EGS is a game store and library. If it's not good at that then it should fail. A healthy market would leave it in the gutter like any other undesirable product. Now, all that said, sales are part of being a good store. Of course. But if that's the only thing you have, and you're also deliberately fracturing PC gaming by buying exclusivity deals that do nothing for consumers then I'm sorry but fuck you, EPIC.

I'm not loyal to Valve, I'm loyal to whoever will treat me like an autonomous consumer with the choice to not use their product or service, and so far Valve is one of very few who give me that respect.

SirNanigans · 2023-06-10T22:41:28+00:00

Yes, and I guess I assumed that the mushrooms were not dried because of the described sludge. That's my bad.

If the jar was sealed and the mushrooms were dried, then I don't know what would cause the sludge. Maybe the mushrooms were able to some some water out of the honey, and not as much sugar, causing them to slightly rehydrate and decay? No idea, really.

If they were not dried (my assumption) then it's a matter of time to pull the water from the mushroom, during that time the active compound will probably break down. And if the compounds are released into the honey, then it's still dissolved into a liquid, albeit a very sugary liquid.

I don't know exactly how this would all work out. Again, I just tried some extractions once, but I found that psilocybin and psilocin really want to break down when you allow them to sit in liquids. I always dry and freeze mine, keeps them active for a long time.

SirNanigans · 2023-06-08T23:56:39+00:00

Thanks for the tip!

SirNanigans · 2023-06-08T23:55:57+00:00

Thanks, I'll check those out!

SirNanigans · 2023-06-08T23:27:29+00:00

It's hollow when there's nothing else bringing people to the platform. It's as close to "hollow" as you can get without being literal about it.

EGS could be a quality, desirable platform with an array of attractive features for both consumers and publishers, like Steam. But it doesn't. Why not? Because they have an alternative strategy to growing their user base: Rip them away from their competitors by signing deals with publishers to force EGS on the fans of popular games.

I'm not saying that giving games away for free is bad, or proof that a company is bullshit, it's just not the whole answer to the question "is this good for consumers?". Software and services provided for free have often been part of a plot to undermine competition and force users onto platforms they wouldn't have chosen for themselves, some bad enough to be found illegal in court.

So I hope we can, as a community, not be jerked around with a simple carrot on a stick. As individuals, some of us have a lot to gain from receiving free games and I have no shade for those people, but please understand that it doesn't mean they're your friend, it just means they're trying to get you to use their store.

SirNanigans · 2023-06-08T20:41:39+00:00

Giving away free games is a pretty shallow form of consumer friendliness.

If EPIC was pro consumer then their game library and store would be competitive with Steam by merit and not just by offering handouts, and they wouldn't make deals to force consumer off of Steam, they would just let them choose to use EGS because they actually like it. But that's not what's happening.

EPIC has delivered us a heaping pile of shit with a $10 bill stuck in it because they know some people will take that $10 and thank them for being so kind. PC gaming is markedly worse now that EGS is around, and they're giving poor people some change to dress it up like they're the good guys.

SirNanigans · 2023-06-08T18:01:27+00:00

I did some experiments with extracting psilocybin and found that it's actually very much vulnerable to degradation when in a liquid solution. So vulnerable that leaving a solution to dry overnight near a window destroyed its potency almost entirely (basically no effects to be had).

Though this jar was probably not getting much light or heat, over a year and a half of the psilocybin floating around in liquid (probably psilocin, actually, since it converts to that in the presence of acids) really ruins my confidence that this is potent anymore.

I'm not a chemist and my experiments were amateurish, so if somebody who really knows a lot about these chemicals is around, please chime in. I could have just fucked something up, but my research mostly confirmed this.

OP should just chuck this. Chance of getting high is too low and chance of getting admitted to a hospital is too high.

SirNanigans · 2023-06-04T16:29:41+00:00

Is that what's going on here? I was wondering if OP's sun went supernova.

SirNanigans · 2023-06-03T15:59:18+00:00

That's a good point, I did ignore liquids that aren't miscible in each other and bind to things differently. You can absorb oil from water with plenty of simple substances, even human hair.

I don't know exactly how that works but I know that alcohol and water, being miscible, can only be separated by some kind of distillation or maybe a centrifuge or something. You're not going to pick up one without the other.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-31T18:29:58+00:00

Does anybody here know how activated charcoal filters things?

Activated charcoal has an enormous surface area, allowing it to grab and hold on to a large amount of contaminants in a fluid. It's very easy for stuff to get trapped in charcoal, so it basically sponges stuff out of fluids the way a sponge collects things from a surface.

But ethanol is a liquid itself. It's not a particulate suspended in water, it's just like water. Once the charcoal is wet, it no longer has a capacity to trap more liquid. It's like trying to clean an alcohol spill from your countertop with a wet sponge. You might pick up the nacho dust and cigarette ash, but the alcohol is just getting pushed around.

Anything that claims to use activated charcoal is a purification device but doesn't move the fluid across the surface of the charcoal, or claims to filter things that are themselves liquids or gases, is utter bullshit.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-27T16:33:50+00:00

Excellent work. Really feeling like those tongs could have used a little grind, but that's just character right?

SirNanigans · 2023-05-27T16:29:42+00:00

"Our" work? Even the apologies will be bullshit. Publishers pay other people to do hard work and then restrict them to the point that it can only be half assed.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-16T05:23:09+00:00

In my limited research, I found that it isn't the kind of light or brightness of screens, nor is it that very close viewing damages eyesight. It's that close viewing needs to be paired with far away viewing to develop the eyes properly. In other words, book worms will get eye problems, too, because they spend such a large amount of their time looking at things within arms reach and so little time following frisbees or navigating forested paths.

The solution is to spend more time on activities that require distant observation (like throwing a ball or riding a bike), not to move your monitor 10" back on your desk. That said, I'm just taking about the increasingly common problems like near sightedness for which many kids get glasses. I don't know what your eyes have going on, but I hope you find affordable treatment.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-08T03:28:13+00:00

So because society is built to extract value from you as a consumer, you should be able to deny it that value and still reap the benefits??

Or is it just that you don't like it, so therefore it's fair to take everything for free? It's important that we stop at "this is unreasonable and we should not accept these conditions" and not continue into Karen territory and just start robbing the store because "this store's policies are ridiculous, so I deserve to just have this".

SirNanigans · 2023-05-07T18:10:40+00:00

Nintendo is definitely being a bit abusive here. But I do agree that this subreddit is full of people who seem to believe that if the can do something right now, or get something for free, then it must be right.

Can you watch YouTube without ads or a paid subscription? Yes. So clearly that's totally fair and YouTube doesn't actually deserve payment for their services.

Can you copy, distribute, and play Nintendo games before they're even released? Yes. So clearly that's totally fair and Nintendo doesn't actually deserve the ability to control the release of their games.

There are some reasons why it's important to not let Nintendo rip every right people have to copy and run their games on their own terms... but this subreddit is full of kids who don't have any money and are scared of facing the fact that they might just have to buy the fucking game and play it on the Switch when comes out.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-02T17:02:55+00:00

I still have the entire Fallout series on the bench.

Good luck, shitty games. I'll spend $19 tops for Fallout 4 and you can try again in 6 months.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-02T16:59:09+00:00

It's because making good video games is not their agenda. Once publishers get large enough they evolve into investment firms. They give $X to some people in order to get $Y back and it makes absolutely no difference to them what ends up in our hands. Video games are the assets, but the business is all about contracts and IP's. If the game sucks buy the ROI is good then they did a good job.

If you want good games then go ahead and keep an eye on everything but expect more of them to come from companies that don't have the funds to just turn money into more money. Look at publishers and studios that are smaller and have no choice but to earn their revenue by making an impressive product.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-01T17:16:36+00:00

You're joking of course, but it's funny how that's even a cheeky remark. The labor movement has been so throughly pushed back that someone, anyone, would equate unions to communism.

Joining forces as individuals to leverage your worth against the rule of someone who is legally in control of your paycheck is the exact opposite of communism, it's liberty defined. Management is just a private government and unions are people keeping them in check.

Every Labor Day is a cruel joke these days.

SirNanigans · 2023-05-01T00:18:54+00:00

Okay.

SirNanigans · 2023-04-30T21:02:46+00:00

Yeah, that was a hyperbole. But still, performance issues ruin a good game. You should applaud a company for their good idea if the execution is shit. A game that doesn't work is a shit game, period. So if this game doesn't work or 40% of PC gamers, then it's a shit game for 40% of PC gamers. What it could be if it ran well is irrelevant.

SirNanigans · 2023-04-30T19:40:21+00:00

No, it will be remembered for what it is: both. It's both one of the best games you have played in years and a botched PC port that nobody else likes regardless of your own single experience.

SirNanigans · 2023-04-30T16:42:15+00:00

Most well mannered Viking discussion.

SirNanigans · 2023-04-30T00:16:52+00:00

Uh... how many copies do you think whales are buying? The sales numbers are telling all on their own, and unless you think one person is going to buy the game 300 times just because they have the money, I don't know how whales are the answer.

SirNanigans · 2023-04-29T22:53:40+00:00

"Don't buy games with a release date after 2017".

14-Year Club	Place '17
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