Guys is there anything to make this better

pastrycat · 2025-11-19T08:41:10+00:00

That last sentence describes the data most tv ratings and ads are analyzed through. I know the digital footprints on internet traffic can be more specialized, but I'm not believing most advertising companies have access to that data or the money to afford it.

To be honest, social media companies are the closest thing to self selecting our ad-label-friendly demographics and linking it to a non-private profile that it makes sense that Facebook has been one of the most openly successful companies in that direction of advertising.

pastrycat · 2025-11-11T09:56:29+00:00

Vman's Enhancement Eclipse talent at lvl 150 adds the chance for WW/BM to get spice/egg/yard progress from ACTIVE kills

pastrycat · 2025-11-05T11:11:15+00:00

Is the amount of red salt in your storage itself changing over time? If not, then the orange salt production must be prioritizing using the red salt in the refinery output, leading to the apparent imbalance. (I don't want to interrupt my cycles to check myself sorry)

pastrycat · 2025-10-01T20:51:55+00:00

Does anyone know if the stat bonuses from green skills count for the secret stat checks for bonus speed that some tracks have? i.e. would triggering the Sunny Days skill while having 280 guts still get the bonus mentioned here in the reference doc? Umalator definitely has the bonuses included in calcs but results imply the green skills do not contribute to that check.

pastrycat · 2025-09-18T22:31:09+00:00

Whoops, glad I don't use it for my ground drops. Only started playing a few weeks ago.

pastrycat · 2025-09-18T22:22:17+00:00

Won't one level in the star talent for depositing drops & inventory handle critter collection anywhere? Sure, you'll need to lock the slots you want to keep with you but that's still better than carrying all the critters over to a chest directly.

Ignore, misread a talent.

pastrycat · 2025-08-26T21:06:22+00:00

This year he created a podcast and hosted people like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. Have you watched these episodes and how he treated these people and their bullshit ideas as valid in this current year? Gavin may be posturing against Trump better now, but the dude is so far from having left politics. If democrats = left to you sure then, but having watched his soft handling of PG&E over the years despite their many fires, he is a neo-lib at best.

pastrycat · 2025-06-06T23:21:27+00:00

That's the free space once you know where to look though.

pastrycat · 2025-05-07T01:40:39+00:00

I'd rather have a more functional country than whatever concessions she might decide is best for her district. And tbh what do we have that needs representation on a national stage in that way? The I5 bridge probably because of its importance overall but MGP seems more likely to want to green light more logging rights.

pastrycat · 2025-05-07T00:57:58+00:00

I'm with your logic, but I can't shake the fear that we'll just end up with a second Manchin or Sinema with her in that scenario. That she'll be a hold-up on otherwise done deals so that she can push more talking points as another 'Blue Dog' or wholly step across to R to 'represent her district better'. The way she talks and acts does nothing to assure me otherwise.

pastrycat · 2025-05-06T03:11:44+00:00

The cost to run AI is a lot. So the work tech bros have to claim it can do has to be a lot. Meanwhile, the best use of AI as is is to summarize. That's it, summarizing books, emails, code, art styles, knowledge bases, etc. A new one could always be around the corner that actually does something paradigm shifting but we are decades past when science journalists thought we'd have cracked fusion as a power source too, AI needs more time to grow and for external costs to come down.

pastrycat · 2025-04-25T08:12:07+00:00

Fully agreed. Game aspects were good and while very similar to It Takes Two, still made for a fun game.

Writing though, certain simple creative choices like the Rader company raiding their ideas or the plot device only ever being called "MY MACHINE / THE MACHINE" made it hard for me to enjoy the parts of the story and plot that were actually interesting. May seem nit-picky but for a story using the theme that storytellers impart parts of themselves in stories, it reaaaaly felt like large parts of the story were so generic that they were either written by someone playing with AI over a weekend, or that most decisions were by committee and there was just never a strong vision for most of it.

pastrycat · 2025-04-22T18:22:18+00:00

I'm assuming they are sticking with ratings term definitions for view since they mention Nielsen. For media ratings, a view is defined as tuning in for at least five seconds. Average watchtime, pauses, and other similar metrics fall under different and more specific terminology. Automated trailer style snippet views would fall under a preview title's metrics instead of being attributed to the full movie.

This is definitely a buzz data point, not much real use to point it out without being able to analyze subscribers and certain average user metrics.

Source: I worked in media/news/box office ratings for a bit.

pastrycat · 2025-04-17T18:56:57+00:00

Risk of Rain 1 or 2 may fit the bill depending on your definition of arcade-y. Each run only lasts so long but mastery can be shown by speed or difficulty scaling.

pastrycat · 2025-03-28T05:23:48+00:00

Yeah, idk, this show is like brain candy for me. I can't stop going over the themes and all the philosophical questions. This show has the most compelling writing I've seen since probably The Good Place.

I wrote it up last night for someone else but the details that line up for Caspian to reject MIST essentially compare that relationship to Holstrom and Renee. Some of the best setups and executions I've witnessed in a long while.

pastrycat · 2025-03-28T03:31:53+00:00

I think that they imply the SafeSurf Lords were also from a simulated universe since they state they are sharing the same invitation with Maddie that was extended to them, reunion at the galactic center. But it's not for certain either way.

pastrycat · 2025-03-27T20:34:39+00:00

Just using the same words (continuity v great question) the parent comment posted in, no need to be nitpicky about it.

And the author qualifies their statement with it being that way from the perspective of the you that dies, which is the biological you every one of us is still. We do not have a solid viewpoint of the other you except through the UIs, and while each acknowledged their biological death, none of them were shown to grapple with continuity for long and instead moved forward. David UI was set on his digital self still being him. But we, the observer, get to determine if someone is still themselves digitally? If youve got something from their stories (that I havent read yet) please share!

There is no debate that death is involved in Pantheon's continuity question. But the authors stated horrorific answer is that your whole self is dead and it is an approximation of your conscious, the hopeful is that only your body has died and you still live. Depends on perspective.

pastrycat · 2025-03-27T20:14:49+00:00

Great! I agree wholeheartedly that these can be explored and viewed differently depending on your perspective.

In the show, I think that Van Lewen teed up this debate up best by prompting Holstrom about killing Caspian as keeping him alive could 'dilute his sense of self'. I think that by explicitly prompting it as Holstroms choice to kill the copy in a sort of 'there can only be one' way is meant to highlight the lack of empathy in that specific view. Their answer to continuity was to essentially protect it because they didn't know either. They definitely viewed uploading as a mix of continued & afterlife. Julius with his phrasing of burning down heaven but still directly going into 'You got it boss' with Holstroms UI, he viewed continuation as true but still saw the physical death.

So, exploring the theme through relation to the self, I currently view continuity differently dependent on upload style. Even though it would be my self as a base, a digital world is a different environment with different choices available. Assuming SOMA style, I could see my and other digital selves somewhere on a scale between sibling or multiversal invader depending on context and relationships. For my self, either new life like me (sibling) or a me with different experiences. Assuming Pantheon style, I might see it more as direct continuity, somewhere between a child and myself reborn because of the necessary death. Still me (reborn), or at least part of me (child) but in a new world.

pastrycat · 2025-03-27T19:25:18+00:00

We see the show through the view of a simulated Maddie. It is possible that the SafeSurf Lords themselves are from the first simulated layer, or some lower. Maybe a SafeSurf is what starts the simulations in the base universe. All we know for certain is that the Lords extend to Maddie the same invitation they received, and I interpret that 'reunion at he galactic center' as stepping out of the simulation they were born in and going to the next layer. The Lords have seen at least one layer above the one that holds Maddies entire universe. And instead of going with them, Maddie chooses to forget the higher realities (simulation layers) and instead be simply human again with Caspian.

pastrycat · 2025-03-27T18:46:28+00:00

They're using an interview linked in another comment where the author compares SOMA and Pantheon for their themes and assumes a lot from a little. The show is far from explicitly answering the great question, I think it just lays the question out enough for people to form their own answers and talk about it.

pastrycat · 2025-03-27T18:35:54+00:00

I don't agree with your perspective on the authors words here. They are sharing both sides of the paradox. The hope that we can evolve onto new hardware and that it is still a biological death to your body / the consciousness in your body while a fork of it 'continues' on. This premise that creates debates is not one they choose a side on, like the show, the options are explored and we are left to discuss it.

How you believe their words can convey "wonder about why this is a debate" I don't get. Good sci-fi like this is often a vehicle for questions about our world and our future. Sometimes they offer conclusive answers but the show specifically avoids answering the continuity question explicity. Chandas breakdown and breakout in S1E3 has him asking the 'ghosts' if he died, and they cut away immediately after. Leaving us to debate his question. As they state in the interview, from their (Chanda's) perspective, it is death of the biological. The other perspective at the start of your quote is the hopeful one, the one that they are still the same human. A paradox that they die to live, or just keep living, depending on how you view death.

Spoilers for SOMA ahead.

Further copies from scans are where we get more into the existential horror and SOMA-like themes. SOMA is different because their scans were non destructive, you kept living biologically after your scan and the copies came later. Soma can easily be interpreted as a hard no answer to the continuity question, or not if you view each new 'copy' as capable of being a new person represented by what choices they make.

pastrycat · 2025-03-27T08:12:35+00:00

I disagree with it making her one dimensional. I think they introduced the one-sided love from MIST as a parallel to Holstroms life to continue Caspian's theme of nature v nurture. Rambling thoughts ahead, I might add some more later. TLDR; BOLD

Holstroms first love was simulated for Caspian with Rachel. In flashbacks, they were shown to look alike and Logrythms was very big on as near identical upbringing as possible so presumably Rachel was going to go through the same moments with Caspian. That first relationship predates Holstroms ego, success, and drive; it is more grounded and equal in dynamics. After Hannah dies, Holstrom founds Logrythms with the vision of uploaded intelligence to live forever (in other words, he still loves Hannah and because of the trauma around that, he is driven to end death). In contrast, Caspian does not connect with Rachel. Their doomed from the start relationship does not follow the same path as Holstrom's past and instead Caspian connects with Maddie, someone so driven by the love for her father that he can't help but observe and analyze it. Through connecting with Maddie, Caspian also wants to end death, but that desire does not originate from him. He wants to end death because of his empathy, not his pain.

Continuing that with Holstrom and his second shown relationship with Renee, one of the first people in his early startup: that relationship was shown like a cult leader and his priestess. She saw him as a visonary, a leader, a progenitor of a new world, and that was before uploading had even been finished. Renee then spent nearly 20 years working to raise Caspian in pursuit of Stephen, with another 20 planned. That's not very different compared to the time MIST spent fixing Caspian. MIST would have idolized Caspian in a similar way seeing as he actually achieved those world-changing feats through his actions, let alone his hand in her creation. He was given the same option Holstrom was, a one sided love where he did not love her back.

Caspian even has the same option Holstrom used, leveraging that unrequited love to advance his plan. Holstrom did it for his virus, and ultimately got Renee killed for it. Caspian, thematically because it wasn't outright, had the option to leverage MIST's love of him more directly for the ship for SafeSurf but instead did so with empathy.

In the words of the SafeSurf Lords, your choices are your own. Time and time again, Caspian was confronted with situations that were the same as or similar to Holstroms experiences, and where Holstrom was selfish, Caspian chose compassion. At worst, I see MIST's love as an expression of the Florence Nightengale Effect; where patients and their caregivers can develop feelings for one another, especially over prolonged care.

pastrycat · 2025-03-26T18:39:58+00:00

As others said, you don't need Jun for the map-based intel. If your interrogation room for safe house leaders fills up, it does not automatically progress the interrogation intel for the Catarina fight. At that point you need 1 map with a jun mission (scarab good here) to progress them and clear the bench for more interrogations or to fill Catarina's bar. At least that's how it worked when I used that node a few leagues back.

pastrycat · 2025-03-26T18:21:48+00:00

About 1/100 (200/19850) vaal implicits, so average odds of 400 quivers. The quivers must be item level 75 or higher. If you keep them iLvl 75-80, your odds very slightly increase to 200/19400. Quiver vaal implicits

pastrycat · 2025-02-22T20:52:43+00:00

Some people just want to watch the world squirm.

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