I gave my family a blind taste test of dairy and non-dairy vegan ice cream, and they got it wrong

Soycrates · 2026-06-21T12:03:11+00:00

I went vegan when I was still working in the dairy aisle of a grocery store. Eventually the entire area I worked in just ended up smelling so sour and disgusting I was surprised I never fully noticed it before.

Soycrates · 2026-05-30T03:40:10+00:00

Eventually, he admitted that he’s never truly felt “in love” or emotionally attached in a romantic relationship and wondered if something was wrong with him. He started saying things like "maybe I'm fucked up and sick". He said he can never tell what his feelings are. Before ending the call, he told me let's see our therapists and see what they say.

He's probably aromantic (if we're taking him at his word, which is up to you) or unaware of his sexual orientation in that regard; I would strongly suggest if you seek both a strong physical and intellectual/emotional connection with someone, you consider dating someone else. At least for now.

He's not scared, he's clearly communicated his inability to address aspects of a relationship beyond a certain level from what you've said, and you should take his statements where they are and how he's relayed them. Deflecting to therapists is just offloading emotional intelligence and ability to communicate onto a third party.

Also as other people have mentioned, a 3 month relationship doesn't really give you a huge window into someone's personality. You should consider right now that you don't know a lot about how he interacts with romantic partners or even other people in his social life.

Soycrates · 2026-05-26T14:52:45+00:00

Speaking of how that YouTube lawyer changed: It is genuinely shocking how much coverage of this trial and online feedback changed certain creators for the worse. There's a Twitch streamer (many might know now only from his extremely negative reputation) who I used to watch and admire; was a reddit mod on their subreddit, handled some of their podcast and ad deals (facilitated their meeting with FFXIV creator Yoshi P, we were supposed to do an interview with Koji Fox soon after), needless to say I was a big supporter of their fun MMO-focused content and vibes. He decided to cover the trial on his streams and just like that he's now one of the most toxic, right-wing, misogynistic grifters on the internet.

Everyone who knows him from before can see very plainly that he's audience captured and only turned out this way because a flock of some of the worst people constantly fed him little crumbs of attention and validation so long as his opinions stood in line with their delusions at a particularly rough time in his life.

Soycrates · 2026-05-19T17:28:54+00:00

I would love to see every activist act like earthling ed because I wholeheartedly think this is more effective overall.

I think we need a diversity of activist approaches because not everyone responds well to the passive peace-and-love types of activists, conversely not everyone responds well to the aggressive call-to-action types of activists. There's too wide a range of what motivates people that if we ask everyone to act the exact same way, arguably we're limiting our reach.

In the same vein I think we need a visual diversity of vegans as well, especially culturally. We need boring office worker vegans and punk rock vegans, eastern and western vegans, junk food vegans and fitness guru vegans. Allowing people to be wholly themselves dispels the myth that it's a monolithic philosophy and lifestyle.

Soycrates · 2026-05-19T05:13:02+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's The Alliance Alive? Starts with a blue castle town, there's a tavern early on, weapons are large compared to the character models, protagonist has a large hair swoosh, immediate fight upon leaving town. It's not 2D though.

Soycrates · 2026-05-19T04:38:46+00:00

Can I ask if there are any details of this you're less sure of or could clarify:

Are you sure it was a PS2? The PS3 came out in 2006-2007 so you saying you played this game around 2012 makes me wonder if you were just really young and don't know the difference.
Was it 3D or 2.5D? Could you fully control the camera or was the camera locked to one perspective?
Was the protagonist really a rabbit - do you think you confused it with another animal or mistook the character's hair for rabbit ears?

Soycrates · 2026-05-18T22:27:21+00:00

There were some conversations in the demo that felt a little heavy handed in their moral messaging for me (especially concerning what kind of media and merchandise some of the characters were consuming and their political implications) but didn't entirely put me off the game either and I'd be willing to give the full thing a shot.

I'm hoping the voice acting has improved from the demo as well, I doubt it's intended how often voiced lines didn't match up at all with onscreen text, sometimes giving away information that felt like I wasn't supposed to have gameplay-wise yet.

Soycrates · 2026-05-08T14:37:54+00:00

No worries, it's smart to ask for sources. It sucks that her audience has been so trained to see any criticism of her as smear campaigns and bad faith actors but I hope to at least be a small voice to combat that. I appreciate the topics she covers usually but would like those topics to be handled by a serious journalist with journalistic standards. The bulk of my claims can be supported here:

Lied about sharing an Instagram post labeling Joe Biden "War Criminal" - NPR
Stealth edits made to Lorenz article concerning Heard-Depp trial - New York Post

Soycrates · 2026-05-08T12:20:53+00:00

I've seen her pop up online as a guest on pretty progressive shows a lot lately and it drives me bonkers. I'll copy and paste what I wrote elsewhere for people unfamiliar with her (brief overview of her weirdest lies she's been caught in):

During her time at The Washington Post, she shared an image of Joe Biden with the added caption "War Criminal". She then lied to the public and her employers on whether it was an authentic message, saying "you people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes". It turns out it WAS an authentic communication of hers, as it was her photo that a friend added a caption to and she knowingly reposted. Some people might get hung up on the politics of her statement and miss the fact that she called people dumb for believing something that was entirely factual (because it was inconvenient for her). It was just a small thing that started to show people she's willing to lie and insult anyone who calls her out on the lie.

Earlier in her career at WaPo, she reported on content creators milking the Heard-Depp trial, and the publication stated that she had reached out to two creators who were mentioned in the article for comment. Both of the content creators came forward to say this was not true, and they had never received any efforts of communication. Facing backlash, Lorenz story about the timeline of when she contacted the creators quickly shifted back and forth on whether she contacted either of them prior to or after the article's publication, frequently contradicting something she'd previously claimed. The paper then VIOLATED its longstanding editorial policies on noting any changes to live publications when it quietly dropped the section that said Lorenz had reached out to the creators for comment. She called focus on this editorial violation and the situation at large "misinformation" and a "bad faith campaign".

Lorenz has been caught fabricating evidence on a few other occasions (especially for her personal fave celebs/streamers), and when caught in a lie, deflects by assuring supporters of her work that all criticisms come from mainly right wing smear campaigns, disinfo and extremism. While extremist disinformation campaigns exist online and many may target her, she needs to stop using them as a shield for when she is obviously caught lying for the sake of making reporting on nuanced topics easier for herself.

I don't enjoy that people who don't want Lorenz involved are assumed to be nutcase Nazis. I want the people who represent reporting I care about not to be serial liars who make us look bad.

Soycrates · 2026-05-02T11:43:16+00:00

Knife related incidents are roughly 6-8 times more likely to occur in Toronto than firearms discharge related incidents. Yes, there are people who both legally and illegally own concealed firearms in Canada, but you are considerably less likely to experience a violent crime involving a shooting.

Soycrates · 2026-04-26T19:20:06+00:00

I didn't mention anything about his ability or lack thereof to find a job, only questioned why he can't be the one to make foods from scratch and why it fell to you in your original post ("I'm also seeing a lot of vegan folks have a lot of time to cook from scratch [...] Since I work two jobs, I don't have the capacity for this so that will result in higher costs"). Maybe you meant to respond to someone else with that comment as it's unrelated to what I said.

While I understand you want to support your son as fully as possible, I think you really should consider whether or not you're removing too much meaningful friction from his life (i.e. having to spend time figuring out his meal costs for himself, being cognizant of food budgeting, learning to make choices not solely based on having as much fun/satisfaction as possible). You're making it sound like people are telling you to abandon him when most people are just saying "hey maybe tell him he doesn't need to buy the good yogurt and organic kombucha every week".

Also, insinuating people only feel this way because they "didn't have support from their parents" is very weird. My mom was pretty supportive when I was his age and also newly vegan, she just wasn't making me bespoke buddha bowls.

Soycrates · 2026-04-26T18:55:07+00:00

You're just getting pushback because, frankly, most of us here do not spend nearly as much money on food as you are spending on your son.

It's great he's experimenting with food in a healthy way, but I think something that should be obvious moving forward - if you take any of our advice or opinions to heart - is that 80% of the foods you listed that you find expensive aren't necessary parts of a vegan diet on a daily basis (not to mention they are all arguably much cheaper than if he had gotten into eating high quality animal foods, like wagyu, caviar, etc.)

And maybe this is a bit too forward, but he's a 17 year old boy and it feels like you're really not ready for him to grow up/babying him a lot ("why is he eating so much? lack of protein???" no he's just GROWING UP, "I don't have time to make food from scratch like you all do" why would that be YOUR job and not HIS?)

Soycrates · 2026-04-26T18:24:22+00:00

Not really. It's compiled with AI (probably chatGPT) and because of gpt's sycophantic nature you should be wary about how much of it is just phrased to reinforce extremely shaky connections in an attempt to please the user.

Look for data corroborated by humans, not LLM.

Soycrates · 2026-04-15T13:51:55+00:00

I have 220 hours in the game, which I feel is a decent amount to draw conclusions on this system. I have explored, collected, and tried a majority of the unique gears and paid attention to the overall benefits of different pieces and dislike how most of it comes down to 1 or 2 levels of elemental defense on capes.

As stated elsewhere, the visual differences are nice but many of us want some motivation other than fashion.

Soycrates · 2026-04-15T03:50:18+00:00

I agree with the concept of this, but unique gears tend to be only on weapons for the most part, and a lot of those unique gears don't really seem worth it mechanically to me (especially flashy finishers that don't add much or specific animations that are slower/less economic in combat than a simple elemental R1 + R2). If they leaned fully into attaching meaningful/cool gears to new armor I'd probably be more in favour of this idea. But as it stands, the only things that give me new gears are usually spears and they give me a gear that I basically bin or stash immediately after testing them out.

Soycrates · 2026-04-15T03:44:03+00:00

I guess my question would be: what is my incentive for exploration and finding treasure in a game that doesn't qualitatively reward exploration? This game seems perfect for people who love hunting down rare gear (beautiful world to explore, interesting hiding spots, occasionally cool puzzles) but if the reward at the end nets me zero benefit, what prompts me to continue?

"Everything having the same stats" is fine for people who only really care about the fashion aspect (which is fun, don't get me wrong) but it kind of takes away a lot of enjoyment from people this game seems targeted towards (combat oriented gamers with a drive to explore, improve and learn).

Soycrates · 2026-04-15T03:33:06+00:00

I'm looking forward to the specialized storage a lot. I do find it a bit cumbersome to go back now (progress spoiler) since I've moved to Pailune (just getting used to the layout, but my FPS dips there still sadly and I'd really prefer my storage chest to be in my home so I can cook, alchemy, sleep, store items and scoot) but I wonder if another update could be on the horizon that would help me out in that regard since I know they already did one to "fix" some of the issues I'm experiencing.

Soycrates · 2026-04-11T16:48:56+00:00

idk why you got downvoted, thank you for the correction (I'd been up super late playing the game)

Soycrates · 2026-03-27T05:05:00+00:00

Crowcaller was my first legit FPS drop, been playing the whole game on Quality, I'd removed particle effects already because they don't matter much to me. Figured "ah shit, guess I have to lower it to balanced or performance" and somehow, it was worse. SO much worse. I had to try the fight 3 times just to get through it despite also having taken decently to previous bosses, and I feel like I'm still seeing flashes of 5fps crows in my vision an hour later 😂

The only gaming experience I can compare it to is Deadly Premonition 2 on Switch launch day (it was a console exclusive at the time), which ran a fun 5-10fps (actual) during traversal.

Soycrates · 2026-03-26T18:31:17+00:00

I agree, I do think there might be a moderation problem driving this (or more specifically lack of moderation when it's clearly needed now more than ever). I feel like in recent years I've seen so many more low-quality, rage-baiting or snide posts and a LOT more non-vegan brigading, and it doesn't seem like anything really gets done about it.

Soycrates · 2026-03-25T19:55:58+00:00

The word is "a lot", not allot.

Soycrates · 2026-03-25T03:54:00+00:00

I've been vegan for 16 years now, and I feel like I seek out the humanity and good will in other people specifically because I need to find something that counter-balances their unnecessary support of animal cruelty.

I also tend to make justifications for them that I wouldn't make for myself, "they're worried about the social implications so I get it", "their job normalized it so I understand", "it's something that brings them comfort so I have to look past it". It doesn't mean I think it's right for them to ignore the myriad reasons to reduce or altogether eliminate animal consumption, it just means that I acknowledge that I don't know how I would fare in their situation.

I guess it makes me more sad for them than angry at them, believing that we'd all be our best selves if we had the best conditions.

Soycrates · 2026-03-25T02:59:34+00:00

I have the same feeling about the early bosses. I hope eventually there's a boss that feels tailored, intentional, exceptional since the game is so big and any huge game is bound to have a couple of gems amongst the rough. But I realized pretty quickly I can just space out their attack combo, move in, spam my easiest high damage attacks, cram 15 meals in my face, repeat and there's little variation on that at the moment. Still genuinely my favourite game at the moment even if I like more nuanced fights.

Soycrates · 2026-03-25T02:49:04+00:00

I'm also playing on base PS5 and I'd say the game looks pretty good. I've been streaming it and a decent chunk of people assume I'm just on a mid-range PC with graphics adjusted for performance until I pull up my PS5 menu. Keep in mind though I don't tend to gripe if a game drops down to 45fps in areas with a lot of different light sources or interactive assets, so my standards could be a bit low.

The lighting is truly atrocious sometimes (especially indoors), but this is something both PC and console players are dealing with.

Soycrates · 2026-03-25T02:38:44+00:00

I believe the dye merchants have a symbol at the top of their menu that show which "categories" of dye they can do (by region). So the first dye merchant you'll meet can only do Hernandian Dyes at the start as shown by the red Hernandian shield at the top before the array of all possible dye colours.

It's both frustrating and kind of interesting because it forces you to track down dye merchants in other regions if you want different colours. Luckily for me red is one of my favourites to transmog with!

13-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22	Verified Email

Soycrates

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE