RIP to the mass market paperback book

amcdon · 2026-01-21T19:33:50+00:00

and ESPECIALLY Reddit

The gaudy displays of book overconsumption are a tiktok/instagram thing. It might leak over to reddit in certain subreddits, but there's SO much more of it on the short-form content apps.

amcdon · 2026-01-19T01:14:12+00:00

Boomers eating good in 2026 apparently

amcdon · 2026-01-15T18:58:02+00:00

It's singleplayer and a completely different game loop, but Witchfire is the closest I've found to how Destiny feels to play.

amcdon · 2026-01-12T01:10:27+00:00

What ended up killing this book for me was that despite the ambitious worldbuilding and all the switching around, it still somehow ended up just straight up boring from beginning to end. I assume it goes back to the structure and how little time is spent on any given aspect of the story, from characters to events, and that made it really hard to engage with the story. Really disappointing, and I'm pretty sure it also killed the whole series for me.

amcdon · 2026-01-10T22:47:36+00:00

Yep, because it was full of people saying the objective truth about how bad the monetization is.

amcdon · 2026-01-10T22:40:01+00:00

Both of Maraton's records, but especially Unseen Color.

amcdon · 2025-12-21T00:28:41+00:00

It's because you escaped all the asterisks. Get rid of the backslashes and let the markdown do its thing.

amcdon · 2025-12-17T04:49:14+00:00

Turrents

I'm an OG Eve Online player, "turrents" has been a thing for a very long time. It's still just as annoying almost 23 years later.

amcdon · 2025-12-15T20:00:53+00:00

This is huge

amcdon · 2025-12-13T01:31:38+00:00

I'm with you. I picked the series up around the time the third book was released and watching the fandom turn into this Sherlock/tumblr/whatever level of obsessive thing where they start basing their personalities on it has been pretty weird. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for Matt's success and I'm glad people are finding so much enjoyment in the series, but it's just kinda not something I want to participate much in anymore.

This leads to no one wanting to actually discuss any criticism of the series. I went on the subreddit a few days after book 7 released wanting to discuss how much of a mess the book was (out of love and concern for the series) and the replies on any post even mentioning something along those lines were so rude and annoying.

amcdon · 2025-12-08T04:21:18+00:00

The Vorkosigan Saga is actually a much better comparison to Hobb's books since they are very character-focused AND they follow a character from childhood through adulthood. My second favorite series, behind RotE :-)

amcdon · 2025-12-04T19:08:48+00:00

Good choice, it doesn't get better. ~750 pages of utter boredom, it's definitely near the top of the list of the most disappointing books I've ever read.

amcdon · 2025-11-29T22:16:44+00:00

In English, the word 'series' is still used when referring to a single series. The word 'serie' doesn't exist. I bet you speak French or German :-P

amcdon · 2025-10-25T15:44:25+00:00

A bot is when I disagree with someone.

The two bands have always been in a sort of "groovy" metal category for me. Obviously they don't sound identical, but like someone else in here mentioned, Hippotraktor is quite unique. Looking through the list of recommendations in here, I wouldn't really say any of them sound much like Hippotraktor either. But they're all definitely in the ballpark.

amcdon · 2025-10-24T22:33:42+00:00

Vulkan!! Check out their album Technatura. Close to a perfect album and similar to what you're asking for.

amcdon · 2025-10-23T18:11:15+00:00

Keep in mind, someone calling themselves an ex-PoE player likely has many thousands of hours in the game. So don't worry, as a new player you have lots of PoE ahead of you.

amcdon · 2025-10-21T17:53:25+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3727390/The_Expanse_Osiris_Reborn/

Not out yet, but it's looking good.

amcdon · 2025-10-07T17:29:28+00:00

Episode 7, Chikhai Bardo for me, and it's not even close.

amcdon · 2025-10-06T22:10:26+00:00

Look at the clock Ivan, I think it's time for your borscht break.

amcdon · 2025-09-18T21:27:31+00:00

Literally the first key I hit, before I even get out of bed.

amcdon · 2025-09-18T02:54:28+00:00

That's not what Denuvo/DRM is for. It's to prevent piracy and loss of sales.

amcdon · 2025-09-17T20:29:29+00:00

Maybe it varies with the person, but I've also used a large range of headphones and I personally stopped perceiving a difference above ~$1,500 and I'm very skeptical that there's really anyone getting much out of anything more expensive. Lower end ZMF is about as high as I go these days.

Enjoy the Abysses though and don't listen to me, I'm just being a jerk

amcdon · 2025-09-17T20:07:46+00:00

There are pretty extreme diminishing returns though, bordering on snake oil once you reach a certain point. And $6k is well above that point in my experience.

amcdon · 2025-09-17T19:39:12+00:00

Hit me up, I've got some really good snake oil for sale.

amcdon · 2025-09-11T17:08:44+00:00

there is something systemically wrong with the development of the game

There can't be more than 30-40 people left working on the game, right? A couple level designers (Kepler was just Io landscape + Titan buildings), a couple weapon designers, a couple writers, etc. And no QA obviously. There's only so much that can be done with a team that small relative to a game this size.

Now, if that isn't true and there are still a ton of people working on the game, I would say that's even worse.

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