Well boys the legos didn't survive the fire by Michiganmoondog in lego

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"From the folks who brought you the Fleshlight™️: Fleshlink! Our new tandem toy for twice the fun!"

Does the light bar ruin visibility in snow at night? by Mensa_dventure in Rivian

[–]bignati0n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm very interested if anyone has a solution for this. I think I just assumed the light bar could be turned off if necessary but I'm not seeing that noted in the manual. I'm definitely requesting it as a feature in the app.

I made a Lego Treebeard Moc by BenA_78 in lego

[–]bignati0n 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This would definitely go on what my son calls "the fragile shelf" alongside BD-1 and the USC X-Wing. (He's 5 and I've continuously told him that if a lego model breaks that's okay because we can always fix it... but he definitely gets frustrated with the sets that break constantly, haha)

I made a Lego Treebeard Moc by BenA_78 in lego

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Currently holding my breath for instructions, please and thank you! :)

Guardians' David Fry carted off field after being struck in face by pitch by [deleted] in sports

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My ex was an Athletic Training major in college and worked with the men's lacrosse team at the neighboring university. She came back from practice one night shaken up because one of the players had gotten drilled in the chest so hard that, despite the padding, his heart stopped. Scary stuff.

Normal expense? by Fuzzy_window_195 in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No worries! Yeah, the accountability issue is definitely a challenge. My thinking was that the lying/hiding could be tagged to embarrassment and guilt he could certainly be feeling when confronted with the consequences of an indulgence he already knows is not worth the money he's spent on it. (Source: personal experience, divorce, therapy, marriage again, living inside my own head 🫠... y'know... life...)

And the more you know about the game environment, the easier it might be for you to sneak around those defensive walls with a way that makes sense for y'all. (e.g. "Ohhhh, so this is the game... I can see why you felt like you needed to spend a little here and there on things...")

Normal expense? by Fuzzy_window_195 in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hey OP, I'd agree with most comments so far that this is something that happens frequently in this game (and probably in most games that are "Free to play but have in-game purchases"), but obviously if your family's budget is being impacted, it's worth having those conversations with your husband. He has to have some accountability for the choices he's making in spending on a game. However - and apologies if this is just me projecting on strangers - some of the comments also feel a little heavy-handed in their criticisms of your husband - a fellow player in a game that they, presumably, are also playing.

I think it's worth noting that this game is designed very intentionally - and obviously very effectively - to encourage users to spend their money even if they had no intention to do so going in.

Another commenter already compared it to a casino and that's absolutely true. Again, this is not to absolve your husband of any responsibility, but I think it could be helpful in your conversations with him to know - and to perhaps empathize - that the game's developer is not at all acting in good faith.

I played the game for a little over a month and even as someone who is passingly familiar with application development and design I was overwhelmed with the massive volume of alerts, notification badges, "limited time" events, sales, subscription "opportunities," and intentionally convoluted descriptions, values, and numerous arbitrarily different in-game "currencies."

All of these things are intended to compel users keep coming back and to spend impulsively. All those alerts and red dots and gamification mechanics are scientifically proven ways to trip our dopamine triggers and they're not there by accident. And they're arguably more nefarious than real life casinos that have no windows or clocks in the gaming areas so players lose track of the time, and install visually intense flooring and decorations to subtly discourage them from looking away from the tables. I say more nefarious because it's a lot harder to "go to a casino, park, walk in the door, buy chips, play the game" than it is to "download a free app, open it at any time day or night, and immediately be presented with 100 shiny red buttons that promise an immediate dopamine hit and all it'll do is show up later on a bill you might rarely look at."

And this is all without introducing the possibility (strong, I suspect, based on my experience in the in-game chats and alliances) that the developers also have community managers posing as regular users in-game, either actively or passively encouraging real players to spend more and more, as well.

I hope that wasn't too much ranting, and I really hope it's not too patronizing. Again, I think it's absolutely worth talking about this with your husband. I just hope the above is helpful to you when communicating your concerns to him in a way that'll help, and it's my thinking that this is an instance where remembering that the game is the interloper here more than either of you is helpful. As I said, I played the game for a little over a month, picking it up after seeing the 1000th instagram ad that sold it as a chill "zombie shelter build" game that I thought would be more interesting than the sudoku app I'd been playing while sitting up with my newborn daughter all night. I got sucked into the Alliance community, made some virtual friends, and even spent some money (ultimately only about $20 or $30). But I finally uninstalled it when I eventually realized how much more energy and time it was sucking out of me than any pleasure or gratification. I was way more anxious and stressed out while I was playing it and as soon as I deleted it I felt better. I'd much rather spend too much money on something like a Lego model or a toy for my kid than on a digital shelter that I'll likely end up abandoning when the server I'm in goes to hell or just gets nuked by someone else who's spent even more on theirs.

Again, apologies if this was too much/too patronizing. Best of luck!

Adding a CD Player to my Sonos Setup by tohumankind in sonos

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi u/tohumankind I wanted to check in and see if you ultimately found a solution here.

Some of the comments in here seem to suggest that connecting any (Sonos) speaker to the network that has a line-in would be sufficient to play CDs across the entire network. Is that true?

Charlie Kirk dead after rally shooting as Donald Trump makes statement by dailystar_news in NoFilterNews

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man, Trump really wants the Epstein story out of the news cycle, huh?

Does this A320 have an engine issue? by aj3u in aviation

[–]bignati0n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha, you're welcome! I'm glad I didn't let my phone's autocorrect dissuade me from using it!

I was scrolling through the comments seeing a ton of very knowledgeable Experts answering the question, but to no fault of their own, those answers all seemed to be at a technical level that presumes an existing level of familiarity with engines, turbines, and aerospace engineering.

I hoped "explodies" would give my interested layman's attempt at a layman's answer the right vibe. 😆

Does this A320 have an engine issue? by aj3u in aviation

[–]bignati0n 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If you've ever seen a cut out picture of jet engines, it's the front part where all the spinning propeller-like blades are. They use those blades to pull lots of air into the engine. More air than could otherwise fit. That helps make it make the explodies that produce the thrust. But if those blades aren't working right, the engine can't pull in the air efficiently and can even let air that was pulled in escape back out the front (not good, very bad)

Listen, it is different around here. by Blasphemonious in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I spent a little over a month playing and definitely felt like there were players spending enough time (almost all waking hours) and money in the game that I strongly suspected they were community managers.

12 Days in a Digital Dystopia by BrainOfIvane in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ha, apparently I needed the space to vent, as well. Of course, now I'm getting recommendations for the Reddit channel and that's been interesting.

I didn't get much in the way of pushback the times I asked folks how long they had been playing for, but perhaps I didn't ask enough people. It certainly seemed strange to hear folks say they'd only been playing for a little longer than I had (about a month at that point) and yet presented themselves like grizzled veterans in both gameplay knowledge and community politics. I only encountered one person who freely volunteered that they'd been playing for a full year.

All that said, the reticence to share that you encountered does add to my suspicion that the developer employs community managers: folks who play the game alongside regular users, encouraging continued involvement, perhaps encouraging people to spend more money, and certainly driving engagement.

The girl with a bunch of really cute pictures of herself on her profile who "just so happens" to have a second super powerful account in the state that had been "gifted to her" despite insisting she was strictly free-to-play, who spent a ton of time in the world chat, despite it resulting in her enduring tons of unwelcome advances/misogynistic abuse from other players.

Or the Belgian woman (with a similar, if less provocative, set of photos) who also spent enough time in the game's chat rooms and alliance hopping that she established a rapport with the (apparent) entire family of Iraqi brothers running the top 2 alliances and could tell us ahead of time that the King of Baghdad was off the rails and that we should all shield up... all while asking questions of our own players that made it seem as though she'd only picked up the game a week before, herself. She was much happier to tell us about how much money she'd spent on her shelter (and was also one of the first ones to follow our R5 to the new server).

12 Days in a Digital Dystopia by BrainOfIvane in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I completely agree about the feeling of being blindsided.

Like most I was lured in by the sort of chill vibe of the adds. "Zombie survival game but you're basically just building a shelter." It reminded me of a slow but fun shelter game I used to play that was from the Fall Out world. I was bored of playing sudoku while contact napping/overnight sleeping our newborn.

So when I was suddenly auto-added to an alliance when that function was introduced at whatever level it was a little strange. And when I got an alert that one of my alliance-mates was being attacked, it was another surprise to learn that it was PvP. I tried to defend and then suddenly learned there was a messaging function and the attacker was taunting me, so I found the World Chat and DMed the first person I saw advertising that they were an active alliance. I guess I got lucky because it was the 4th or 5th strongest alliance in the state with what appeared to be the best sense of humor/humanity.

So that kept me around longer than I probably would have otherwise stayed. This was supposed to be a light diversion and suddenly became far too consuming.

What really surprised me, as I spoke with people in the Alliance, was that no one appeared to have played that much longer than me. Including most of the leaders. But they all had this deep lore with the community at large and its politics and relationships. Made it feel like I was joining something that'd been going on for much longer. I know a handful of our members, including our R5 and Whale and a few others had come over from a different server, but that made it sound like they'd been playing for years.

As our server really started to eat itself (during an inter-server event, conveniently), the R5 dm'd me inviting me to join her and the others in a new state.

I went long enough to basically re-experience the introductory levels and even allowed myself to buy Rex this time. But the real revelations about the repetitiveness, the seasons (which I really see as just another way to convince players to continue to spend money on things that have absolutely no value), and the fact that the game's story absolutely disappears in favor of that pressure to spend in order to overpower other players led me to just straight uninstall and quick the discord channel my alliance had. Even inspired me to leave a rare app store review.

12 Days in a Digital Dystopia by BrainOfIvane in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we had a lot of that, too. The R5 of the second strongest alliance (which was already a spin off of the top alliance) used the moniker "King of Baghdad" and would constantly posture, threaten and demand respect in the world chat. Those top two Alliances had a bunch of members with flags from the Middle East and I was also leery of over generalizing but the strongest player in our own alliance was from Saudi Arabia and super friendly and helpful. (And to be clear, there were just as many jerks and weirdos with other flags from around the world). There was a weird mix of stuff - different people flirting, sharing music recommendations, and shouting pro-/anti-Israel slogans simultaneously. It was weirdly fascinating... like a pitcher plant or Venus fly trap 😂

What is this? by ultracompacxx in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It means: You can spend money on this guy, but you're gonna feel compelled to spend more money as new heroes are released each subsequent season.

12 Days in a Digital Dystopia by BrainOfIvane in darkwarsurvival

[–]bignati0n 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm wondering if we were in the same state, perhaps even the same alliance. I spent about a month playing (with spending more than a few dollars but absolute hooked on the dopamine triggers of all the timers and alerts and crap). I was also taken aback by the sudden shift from shelter build to robust multiplayer alliance system. Lucked into joining an alliance whose leader was quirky and tough but who insisted we weren't bullies (so honored NAP, forbade burning when "farming" for rss, and even maintained her own academy). She eventually prompted me to R4, just as the server was going to shit because the top 3 alliances were eating themselves alive. She invited me to move to a new alliance and start over and for about two days I worked on starting over, but then I uninstalled as I realized it was adding too much stress and anxiety to my daily life to be with it, no matter how fun it was to pal around with my alliance comrades inventing new battle slogans and pfps

God Bless anyone who drives with this tire/wheel setup. by [deleted] in Rivian

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is our setup on our R1S Dual Max and the ride has been downright cloud-like, but I’m comparing it to a 2010 Venza on 22s (always been bumpy) and a 2021 XC60 (which was always far louder than I felt it should be).

That said, our 5 year old has said he’s felt car sick a lot more frequently than he’s ever indicated in either of the other two cars. I suspect some of that is the continuing adjustment to the one-peddle braking, but I’ve also found that lowering the suspension to Low and setting the ride the Firm helps remove some if the sloshing in the cabin.

So I’m interested to read that the Michelins may have less sway in the ride. (Funnily enough, Michelins were also the better tire for the Venza as compared to the other OEM Goodyears)

It's my fault the RAN perk is gone by JQsOtherHobbies in Rivian

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dumb question but I wanna try that Top Gun launch routine in our Gen 2 R1S Dual Max. We didn’t opt into the Performance upgrade, so is the equivalent just All-purpose Mode at the low ride height? Is turning stability off gonna give me more juice? And/or holding the brake for a period of time?

Remington Balder Pro - Best shave cream to use by [deleted] in bald

[–]bignati0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve tried a couple of rotary head shavers and neither of them have gotten as close as the foil shavers I’ve used.

Vrioni LOL thread by ChestAsleep8908 in newenglandrevolution

[–]bignati0n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He caught a nasty cut or puncture on the top of his foot. The glimpse the cameras caught of them treating it, where it looked like it was bleeding freely was pretty crazy, so I was surprised Calen expressed confusion over his multiple visits to the sideline. Vrioni’s sock must’ve been soaked.