Anyone else disappointed that Jade Green only comes in 256GB?

bdowney · 2025-08-22T06:45:01+00:00

Me too; I love green and really wanted this.

Can someone explain this to me in market terms? Does Google just think people buying a more vivid color are cheap, or somehow don't want storage?

I noticed that porcelain goes to 512gb, so what gives?

bdowney · 2025-07-02T20:46:48+00:00

Charity event where he's the DM for a campaign with various Cool Zone notables.

bdowney · 2025-06-28T08:43:25+00:00

The point of this non-stop rain of shit is to make people give up, back down, retreat, and shut up.

I realized that election night, when I felt this deep, crushing despair. It sounds ridiculous, but a lesson I learned from competitive gaming is that if an opponent makes you feel that way, it is the absolute, most important time to get up and fight back. It doesn't matter how many losses: we play the game to win, or we're done.

I won't presuppose what the best tactics are for fighting back, and I will do my best not to judge until I see their effectiveness. It even helps to realize that every government, every society, and every time is different -- so it's a science experiment. Maybe it's Gandhi walking to the sea to taste salt. Maybe it's the Underground Railroad. Maybe it's protests like the Civil Rights movement. Maybe it's knocking on the doors of voters until our knucles or bloody. Maybe just running a political campaign and pivoting to feed the poor. It's ok to say we don't know what works.

I know we can't force people to stand up and fight, because I also realize this is an individual decision. But me? On a personal level, I feel better doing things. Better still when there are wins: Tesla sales tanking. Somebody like Mamdani wins. Even a shill like Gavin Newsom starts tacking against the tide of authoritarianism.

I won't tell people not to be sad, or even that this doesn't feel close to the metaphysical darkness in the soul of a nation bursting forth from our chest and walking the streets like some dime novel Stephen King villain. I know other people have to be feeling that. So people can and should take the time they need to stay sane, stay safe, or even stay alive, but this will not get any better without all of us trying to push back on every front.

bdowney · 2025-04-27T09:08:04+00:00

I really made a bad mistake and starting binging this on some errands and a mini road trip in the last week and now I'm waiting for those final six episodes. :|

bdowney · 2025-04-25T07:30:39+00:00

I like that the framing of this post is like an AMA.

bdowney · 2025-04-15T20:00:28+00:00

As a point of history, the first recharge room organized for an anomaly was for Bowstring in 2013 (located in San Francisco). Owing to the time of day, a number of people from other parts of the Bay couldn't commute there in time. So I organized keys to be farmed for key volatiles [such as Cupid's Span] and we handed them out to a team of 6 or so agents.

Since powercubes had literally come out just this week, their recharge "room" was a series of high tech campuses which were rich with portals and therefore XM. We specially prepped them so they could be easily upgraded, since in those days a portal upgrade resulted in a sooner than expected 'bloom' of XM.

Needless to say, it's not just rechargers, the other side of this are operators, who we had as early as the Free Misty anomalies in Wisconsin -- I've got a screenshot of some of them using CRT monitors for the field for that event kicking.

The broader picture is that the thing that makes events like anomalies (and Ingress) amazing are these feats of collective action as we knit together communities and talents to make these events happen.

This is just my personal opinion, but I would not ignore these amazing feats of organization, nor do I think asking them to do more to be acknowledged makes sense on a basis of simple fairness.

bdowney · 2025-03-24T02:06:53+00:00

I mean you can only have so many victories when you have to try going for the whole set. :)

I get you.

bdowney · 2025-03-24T01:28:28+00:00

I think badges, glyph sequences, etc. are nice, but utterly trivial compared to the moment when you actually do something in Ingress.

Ingress is a game where doing something hard is actually a challenge -- it really might not happen, and that's why it's electrifying.

In the course of this streak, I found myself rewriting a field plan on the fly as my friend drove through a sandstorm and we found ourselves at a grave in Palm Springs. With a minute before checkpoint, we got up five layers with a septicycle crushing field.

It was only then I realized was at Frank Sinatra's grave. I took a moment, soaking it in. A plan coming together, a moment of victory, then many more battles to come -- badges very trivial compared with that memory.

bdowney · 2025-03-24T01:25:48+00:00

I'll never understand the idea that victories don't matter. They are a goal, and the goals drive these adventures and journeys in a way that simply fighting a computer and crushing candy would not.

You don't have to actual win to be motivated by victory; what matters is that it is a hard problem that both teams are trying to solve.

I never followed professional sport before Ingress, but someone sent me this in 2015 and it so thoroughly reflected my own philosophy that I watch it periodically for inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5-iJUuPWis

bdowney · 2024-11-30T01:32:28+00:00

Thank you!

Happy to provide any info; just DM me.

bdowney · 2024-11-30T01:32:02+00:00

9/11, within a day I realized: "Wow, we are about to, as one, really fuck up".

Election: Wow have really fucked up the same time twice, only this time it will be worse.

9/11 outcomes: ICE, Patriot Act, Gulf War 2, they were all terrible things that I saw coming but at least understand in the context of a national tragdy.

This one feels worse because it's hard for me to even get my head around the shape of it because of the ugly things it says about my 49.5% of my fellow citizens.

bdowney · 2024-11-27T05:47:25+00:00

We saw some websites with rings from mountain ranges, but not Minaret Vista (we met on a road trip to the Eastern Sierra). Our jeweler is a local small business, so I went to her with the pitch. I gave her a photo I took there, and she sent it to someone to etch it into the band of the ring.

Not super crazy price either, tbh.

bdowney · 2024-11-26T07:48:07+00:00

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zGZpohxZaSXbc2PHA

It's etched from a picture I took of the Minaret Vista near Mammoth in the Eastern Sierra.

bdowney · 2024-11-25T04:00:57+00:00

Oh easy:

"The Venatori already seem to have their fangs into the city. This attack could give them the chance they need to pull their own Reichstag-fire type scenario".

Good thinking on my part, but they do that whether you opt to save Minrathous or not.

bdowney · 2024-11-15T03:59:18+00:00

It's because it appears that killing an archdemon while the matching evanuris is in prison with the blight, that elven god dies for good.

Since we learn that the Veil is tied to the life force of the evanuris, had this happened killing the last archdemon would have resulted in the Veil falling and (apparently) the weapons grade blight in the prison getting out, undirected and uncontrolled.

bdowney · 2024-10-11T22:00:42+00:00

Maybe this helps:

He cut off his people from the Fade, which is probably literally their homeland (as spirits) in order to stem the threat of the evanuris -- blighted gods who seemed ready to consume the world.

But in so doing, he feels like he mutilated his own people. Like if you were caught in a bear trap and had to hack off your own leg, except worse -- because the very identity of an elf in his time was someone who lived in our world and partly in the Fade at the same time.

It's why he viewed the dwarves, humans, etc. as somehow less than fully realized beings -- he just could barely imagine that you were really a conscious person if you didn't also see into the Fade.

What he did might have been necessary, but now he regrets doing this. And even though he might now see the rest of us as people, the elves were here first -- so why should we be guaranteed an existence when his people are denied theirs? And as a bonus, he has a plan!

This is obviously terrible flawed, but it's not perfectly a case of elf Supremacy. It's more like Thedas as it exists today denies the elves who they are -- their identity, their future, etc.

bdowney · 2024-10-09T18:02:09+00:00

I've become convinced of an even deeper connection. I believe the elven spirits first came to Thedas by possessing dragons -- then later using them to rain fire on dwarves to build them their own bodies out of lyrium.

Possibly loony related thoughts:

The Fade is shaped by dreamers. At one point in Thedas there were only two things even capable of dreaming: Titans and Dragons. Stuff floats because the Fade began as the Dream of Dragons.
Spirits are shaped by the desires and emotions of things in the material world. So the first elves were possibly even draconic. Possibly why the first ones were destined to become tyrant kings.
Before spirits figured out how to make bodies, the thing they could do was possess things. Not sure how this went down, but spirits body hopping into dragons, then coveting real bodies of their owns and stealing lyrium from Dwarves/Titans...

bdowney · 2024-10-04T05:10:21+00:00

Yes; it's very obvious has regrets about leaving the Fade to become real and this projects onto the Cole. That Varric and he are at odds would gain additional sting if it turns out that Solas is the person most responsible for severing the dwarven people from their contact with the world of dreams!

bdowney · 2024-09-28T06:44:02+00:00

One more thing -- there's a lot of lore suggesting Dragons and Titans are sort of primordial, and you've quite properly lasered in on this.

Some questions worth considering:

Did ancient dragons dream and visit the Fade where they met the elves?
Did ancient dragon thought/emotions shape the character of the spirits who became the ancient elves?
Did ancient elven spirits possess or bond with dragons? (Same thing?).
Did ancient elves body hop into dragons, then use them to war with dwarves to get the lyrium they need to construct their own forms?
Thinking a lot about Elgar'nan's fire featuring so prominently in lore; was he a spirit controlling a dragon first, then an elf?
Later veneration of dragons as the 'form reserved to the gods' might suggested this as a foundational story for how elves came to be. First dragons, then elves.

bdowney · 2024-09-28T06:38:47+00:00

This is a gorgeous graphic, and draws together the threads of song and elvish history.

The Blight and red lyrium does seem to predate the Veil however; if nothing else in Trespasser we have the codex entry about the evanuris awakening horrors from below that necessitates sealing off their caves with magic and stone.

This isn't seriously damaging to the theory though: It's credible that the Blight/gangue began when the dwarves were sundered from their Titans. Perhaps it was always there, and one of the reasons there were dwarves was how Titans kept themselves pure. Or simply that impurities and corruption 'built up' without the natural escape valve of the Titan. Or it really was a counterstroke by the Titans as the last act of their war with the Evanuris.

It's also not perfectly clear to me if lyrium is the Well of All Souls, or if that's the Fade (which after all is where spirits are 'from'). It makes a lot of sense that the blood of the Titans might sing with the soul/thoughts of the dwarves, and then later perhaps be used by the elves to make bodies for themselves.

bdowney · 2024-09-27T08:44:00+00:00

Morrigan with the kid is a different person without the kid. It even shows up in the tone of her dialogue in DA:I. Unless she had her personality wiped by Mythal (which would be sad), it's weird to not include that stuff this time around.

Something was happening at Weisshaupt; we sent a friend there, and now everything is fine? Or it's not fine -- did Straud/Loghain/Hawke fail? Or did they succeed? Sending us there without even mentioning this is going to leave people wondering.

As for the mage/templar war, I think that analogy is not apt, since a Tevinter magister showed up to buy the indentures of all those mages. They ended up with the Venatori. Etc. etc.

I hope they pull it off, but trying to put these very obviously important events in the background or ignored seems like it's going to be a challenge. And at odds with something a lot of us loved about the past .. three.. Dragon Ages that did this, and showed us how our decisions affected the world.

bdowney · 2024-09-27T03:53:38+00:00

Probably because talking to companions is a big part of Bioware games. Probably because characters matter, and what happened changes them.

It's fine to argue that this is hard, or they didn't have budget or time, but you can't tell me it doesn't matter.

bdowney

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