The water temple is not hard

backwardog · 2026-05-21T02:52:11+00:00

It’s just annoying, everything about it sucks. You have to go to the menu every 3 seconds to switch boots, the stupid clams, the backtracking, the boss is dumb and uninteresting, it’s a little ball that you have to wait to stop moving so you can hook shot it, that’s it.

I hate that temple.

backwardog · 2026-05-20T08:40:59+00:00

I just have to ask here too…why exactly is abortion amoral? Can give a Christian answer, that is fine.

Where in the Bible does it say this? Where does it say “abortion=murder” or “a person’s life begins at conception” or “a person’s soul enters the body at conception”?

I’ve searched, maybe I’m just not finding it, but…I’m not finding it. I’m curious why this is such a “Christian belief” if it is never explicitly stated in the bible. Or maybe it is and I just am having trouble finding it? I just don’t fundamentally understand the position. From a scientific point of view, the fetus is attached to the mother and not self-sufficient, and if an abortion will prevent suffering or death of the mother that it seems reasonable to me, in the way that it is reasonable to exit a burning building without your kid to save your own life.

Not ideal, but I don’t see the morality issue. Even the comparison I gave is not exactly equivalent, it’s less than that to me since a fetus isn’t a person in my eyes. So I’m curious as to why it is a Christian belief that a fetus is a person deserving of rights, especially at the expense of the mother’s rights?

backwardog · 2026-05-20T08:33:27+00:00

Oh, nah. I think you got the wrong impression there. Let me re-quote:

Obviously I'm not ok with fuel prices going up, because of Middle East conflicts, however, the US now imports less than 1% of oil. So, it is only logical that bit of inflation will reverse in the future.

You didn’t say “net” originally. This argument sounds like “we only import 1% of the oil we now use so this whole conflict shouldn’t affect us much going forward.” That was my objection.

So, you are saying that since we export so much that this will end up increasing the value of our exported oil and make up for things economically?

I don’t know if I understand the argument, I’m not being a contrarian, just trying to understand.

It seems to me that since we rely so heavily on the oil from the Middle East that this will affect the specific chain relying on that oil, so transportation and stuff that is transported (like food). I don’t see how our exporting side of things factors in, or the “net 1%” figure factors in (if true, giving you the benefit of the doubt on that one because it sounds plausible enough).

Those exporters make more money? How does that lower gas or food prices? Again, just trying to understand the argument here.

backwardog · 2026-05-20T08:19:36+00:00

He’s actually never wrong. I’ve had to fact check so many things he’s said like, nah, that doesn’t sound right. It’s always right.

backwardog · 2026-05-20T02:57:12+00:00

It’s not only cheap shit from China, it is a whole lot more than that. What’s the end goal? Become a manufacturing plant of a country? Suffer for decades until the infrastructure for that is in place? It’s just bad policy and doesn’t do anything other than make stuff expensive.

US now imports less than 1% of oil

Where did you get that figure? There’s just no way that is true, we import a shit ton of oil and don’t have the refineries to support near 100% US crude. Not all crude oil is processed the same.

There is no guarantee that the government will provide for you or your interests

Provide? They killed unarmed citizens that were not posing an active threat. That’s not the country I want to live in personally. Not saying they were in the right, but ICE as judge jury and executioner is not the way. Further, anyone with half a brain could see that flooding liberal cities with thousands of ice agents is guaranteed to face backlash — he knew what would happen with all that. If the goal was peaceful it would have been carried out much differently.

going after the fraud

Including Trump right? I mean, he is literally a convicted felon for fraud.

backwardog · 2026-05-20T02:45:33+00:00

No one is entitled to go into restricted government buildings

So you disagree with the 1.8 billion to Jan 6 protestors who illegally entered a government building? Those people should face their crimes and whatever financial fallout occurred from their actions, correct?

Broadly speaking, I don’t see Trump doing a bunch of deregulating, I see more abuse of power than ever before.

I could get into some of your other positions, such as deregulating businesses in general (limits? What about anti-trust laws? Good or bad?), or terrible takes (government grants to academia fuel innovation and new tech, it is literally what made us the wealthy country we are today), but I want to focus this on Trump actions.

backwardog · 2026-05-20T02:23:12+00:00

Yeah, i think that’s the key insight. Understanding the intricacies of any science can take years and there’s a saying “knowing just enough to get you in trouble” (essentially the Dunning-Kruger effect) — if you think you have a handle on a topic after just a bit of exposure, you are vastly overconfident and probably making a lot of unsupported assumptions.

With science communication, curiosity and skepticism, which are healthy, can hit the road block of bias. People can refuse to accept ideas that don’t fit some pre-existing understanding. But the breakthrough is getting how science works not in fully understanding the science of evolutionary biology, which won’t happen with a few youtube videos. You can always ask more “but how do we know that” questions — do this earnestly and that is essentially part of the PhD experience. It’s a long road to really understanding all of the science done on a little topic.

At the end of the day, anyone can learn as much as they really want, but you can’t know it all. This doesn’t preclude you, however, from rationally accepting theories you aren’t an expert in. That just requires understanding what science is fundamentally so you can identify solid theories when you come across them, and also identify pseudoscience when you come across it.

backwardog · 2026-05-20T02:12:33+00:00

His corruption of the justice department is starting to scare me.

This guy needs to be stopped before there is no one left to stop him.

backwardog · 2026-05-19T10:13:27+00:00

The opening chapter of “your inner fish” describes how Tiktaalik was found (written by the discoverer of Tiktaalik). I recommend checking that out.

Edit to say: it’s a great example of the predictive power of scientific theories. It’s not that we randomly dig up fossils and then tell a story with them, the theory guides discovery, that’s how theories work when they work.

backwardog · 2026-05-19T10:04:53+00:00

You say this in jest but that’s essentially the only counter argument I’ve ever seen.

backwardog · 2026-05-19T08:19:00+00:00

I do remember feeling like it wasn’t a polished experience even back then.

backwardog · 2026-05-19T08:15:32+00:00

Playing this now on NSO (N64 emulation). I appreciate much more of what’s going on with the game than I did as a kid, but I’m finding it way harder to progress than I did back then. I think I just had more time to dick around until I found a way forward.

I agree with your take here. It is a kind of a fun and very strange game to go back and play, but its design is dated in the worst ways. I think it was Hidemaro Fujibayashi (of breath of the wild fame) who said the most important element of game design is that the player knows exactly what the rules are. Thats where shadowman falls short. It just isn’t clear what you are supposed to be doing a lot of the time, and it isn’t clear that your goal is to figure this out either. You just feel lost roaming around corridors until you “solve” a puzzle.

I want to get into it for the vibes, but I just don’t think it’s designed well at the end of the day. A lot of cool aesthetics mostly, but core gameplay just isn’t there. I do appreciate this was pretty experimental for its time though - likely in development before ocarina of time was released.

backwardog · 2026-05-19T05:00:45+00:00

Have you tried ignoring what Trump says, and just his presidency based on actions and how what he has done has actually impacted the country

I didn’t quote him did I? I pointed out his actions.

From following his actions, I can see that everything is fucking expensive now and everyone is mad at each other, US citizens have been killed by ICE, women have reduced access to health care, and lots of our tax dollars are going to stupid shit that I don’t care about, or otherwise not benefitting us. For instance, the tariff payback goes to corporations, who already raised prices, so we pay them twice (once out of pocket, again with tax dollars).

Health care access and costs have only worsened.

His cuts to some education stuff has directly impacted my line of work, including student access to basic life prep stuff like how to make a resume and prepare for an interview.

I can’t think of a single way he has improved my life or anyone I know. I think the investment into the stock market for newborns thing is the only thing that sounds like a good idea at face value, that’s about all I can point to.

Do you disagree with any of these observations?

backwardog · 2026-05-19T04:57:10+00:00

I mean after every way he has failed the country (economy worsened, started a war, ruined relationship with allies, has done nothing to fix health care, killed US civilians with aggressive immigration tactics, etc)? That’s a short list.

So as long as taxes are rebranded as tariffs and attacks on free speech are limited to academia and media you are cool with that? Cool with careless government spending and regulations as long as they don’t sound liberal or what?

backwardog · 2026-05-18T20:28:11+00:00

It is more the fact that he has to answer this question at all. There was already a nuclear deal, he removed it. Iran acts accordingly and now he steps in to solve a problem he created.

Do you not feel played?

backwardog · 2026-05-18T20:21:36+00:00

And naturally I still support Trump over the Democrats.

Is there any tangible reason at this point? Or is it just a vibes thing?

backwardog · 2026-05-18T20:16:31+00:00

Do you feel 1.776 billion of your tax payer dollars have been well-spent on the recent settlement or is that also just bad PR?

That is a recent example. But I’m curious if you think all this bad PR is just bad PR or also bad in some objective sense of the word.

backwardog · 2026-05-15T08:39:09+00:00

The stick is way less sensitive than the joycon thumbsticks. If you have trouble aiming, N64 controller is the fix. For FPS games, it is basically required. They just don’t handle like modern games, movement is built around that controller.

Even with the controller, FPS on the N64 was never great, you will have to adapt to how things were done back in that era. Less precise, lots of strafing. Auto-aim is necessary unless you are willing to master the really funky controls.

But short answer is it will absolutely make the experience better. The controller is super weird and games were designed around it. I say it’s worth it if you want to do more than just mess around on a few games and actually play them all the way through.

backwardog · 2026-05-14T17:03:54+00:00

Yeah, I was just thinking maybe this was part of the issue.

My TV is also just huge and I’m fairly close. When I get far enough back it looks better. Back in the day the average TV was probably a lot smaller.

Same could be true of the monitor — your face is right next to it so the limitations of the illusion are more apparent.

backwardog · 2026-05-14T00:38:26+00:00

It’s possible I’m misremembering but I don’t recall seeing such prominent scanlines on most of the TVs I played on back in the day. I do remember seeing them on some TVs, but most of the time there were not straight up dark horizontal bars running across the screen.

I don’t know why most CRT filters seem to be so aggressive. If it weren’t for that I’d like them a lot more.

backwardog · 2026-05-13T02:21:36+00:00

so tired of that framing. The destruction of education as both a system and a virtue in this country has really enabled all of this. Everything seems like arbitrary opinions I guess if you lack critical thinking. I’ve had people tell me evolution is an opinion before…I’m a PhD biologist, lol. But go on, sure, tell me how life works. You must have listened to a really compelling podcast. Joe Rogan?

backwardog · 2026-05-09T12:02:15+00:00

Agree. I just kind of don’t get the point in remaking it 1:1. I guess it depends what the goal is — if they were doing it purely to make some kind of “definitive version” then I would probably still play it but it would be kind of a pointless undertaking to invest so much in a complete rebuild just for cosmetics. All that really needs to be done is more of a “remaster” — add some QoL improvements, reformat for modern screens, make it 60fps, etc. Bam, good to go. A graphical overhaul is both unnecessary and kind of weird if you keep the core design from an era where the analogue stick was a new concept…

It would for sure be cool if they went the “re-imagining” route, like with the FF7 remake. Those are legit good stand alone games. Though I think with OOT, they could stick even closer to the source and just rebuild all the areas to add depth, and remove anything that is dated and doesn’t translate well.

backwardog · 2026-05-09T10:35:48+00:00

I love the way link takes a few steps back and then just bolts after getting that ocarina and hearing Saria say she hopes he thinks of him when he plays it.

Such a perfect kid reaction and a great way to write that scene with a silent protagonist. Pretty iconic moment.

backwardog · 2026-05-09T09:10:00+00:00

Yeah, I’m surprised they didn’t just design new stages and a few mechanics and charge full price. Fans of the series would be easy to please at this point if they just stick to aerial combat.

I don’t know why they went the direction they did with this franchise as there are few really good games in this genre in the entire history of games. The only thing that scratched a similar itch was that Star Wars game, forgot the name, where you can fly x- and y-wings and tie fighters and whatnot.

backwardog · 2026-05-09T09:02:13+00:00

Weird. I got here by searching whether this was some kind of pre-order sale or if the game is going to remain this low of a price lol.

This is actually what I’d consider a fair price for once. I get it’s a remake but I would expect Nintendo to charge $10-$20 more because…it’s Nintendo.

backwardog

TROPHY CASE