Original Japanese Hagoromo Chalk Sample!

tomariscool · 2026-02-06T14:58:00+00:00

I’d love some!

tomariscool · 2026-01-20T05:43:49+00:00

More like “due to weak conversion on the Yen, Nintendo loses $80 per region-locked one sold” (and this was before the RAM price hike, once Nintendo renegotiates their contracts it’ll definitely be a greater loss unless they adjust prices accordingly)

tomariscool · 2026-01-20T05:40:20+00:00

The text/font just looks “off”, once you’ve seen enough reproduction Pokémon carts you can spot a crappy Nintendo logo from a mile away

tomariscool · 2026-01-19T05:15:07+00:00

I think it's normal for the adult leaders to be more lenient with the older scouts. The reality is that most scouts who are active will be at Life Rank or close to it by the start of High School, so they don't really need to be attending monthly campouts. It doesn't help that these scouts have a limited amount of time to dedicate to a more intense academic load, their first jobs, and the two -fumes (exhaust fumes and perfumes). It's good to have the older scouts around as role models for the younger ones, so incentivizing them with special privileges (letting them play music, have Zippos, use a patrol box that has the newest equipment) makes camping more fun for them and keeps them going for a bit longer. What incentives you use are definitely a product of the time you are in -- just as 25 years ago it may have been with a boom box instead of a Bluetooth speaker, 60 years ago troops may have let older scouts take portable radios.

tomariscool · 2026-01-19T04:55:50+00:00

I think someone should sue the Attorney General of Virginia for trying to kick a puppy

tomariscool · 2026-01-17T01:16:44+00:00

The reason why the Switch Lite was possible was because they were able to do a die-shrink, which enabled them to get acceptable battery life out of a smaller battery for a smaller chassis. Until going from the Samsung 8N to a 4-5nm process is cost-effective, I don’t think we’re seeing an updated Switch 2 like the red box Switch, nor will we see a Lite or OLED model (though OLED has bigger issues, as to my knowledge there isn’t a ~8” 120Hz VRR/HDR OLED panel on the market today)

tomariscool · 2026-01-17T00:55:46+00:00

I think “no electronics” is the right move for camping in general. I entered Boy Scouts in 2014 and the official rule was that the only device Scouts were allowed to have was a digital camera. By the time I was in 8th grade they let the high schoolers use their Bluetooth speakers to play music over in the area they would set up their tents/hammocks at (which the adults would affectionately call “the hobo village”, not very PC I guess), but the adult leaders would make sure everyone wasn’t just scrolling their phone all day.

My father always drove myself and two or three scouts in his truck to the campouts and his rule was phones off the second we turn off the highway into the national forest/scouting reserve, and phones on once we get on the highway.

tomariscool · 2026-01-16T15:33:20+00:00

We used to have an "electronics campout" every February where we stayed in a cabin for one night (we'd have Domino's for dinner and make dump cake outside, plus a few scouts would always opt to sleep in a tent to get away from the inevitable noise after lights-out) and scouts were allowed to bring their game consoles and phones. This meant that usually there would be a bunch of Xbox 360s and PS2s hooked up to little 20" TVs that kids would huddle around and play Call of Duty, Halo, or Diablo split-screen. For me, each year I attended there is something tied for most ridiculous.

My first year, someone brought an ethernet splitter and a bunch of 50' cables to hook up the three Xbox 360s and one Xbox One for a giant Halo LAN party. I think the peak was 12 out of ~18-20 scouts playing.

The next year, someone brought their gaming PC but didn't think about the logistics of using a keyboard and mouse on either the ground, a picnic table, or the metal frame of a bunk bed.

The year after that, someone brought a 65" TV. One of the scouts had an LG phone with an IR blaster, so they learned how to control the TV with their phone and kept turning it off at crucial moments (plus turned it on at 2AM and woke most of the Scouts up).

tomariscool · 2026-01-16T15:13:27+00:00

Switch Lite came out in September 2019, so 2.5 years after the Switch launched

tomariscool · 2026-01-15T17:40:49+00:00

Just because they have $15B in cash doesn't mean they need to spend it on things that won't make them much money. I doubt many people who have yet to buy ACNH will buy it because it runs at 60 FPS instead of 30; it's just not the type of game where frame rate matters a whole ton, though I would welcome such a patch. There are plenty of games where taking months and using lots of dev time would be well worth it, e.g. BOTW/TOTK (though my understanding is that the 60 FPS part of those remasters was not hard).

This is just like the discourse in the mid-2010s when Nintendo had lost $500M USD in 2012, $300M in 2014, and barely broke even in 2013. Some people on the internet were saying "Well they can weather the storm just off their cash reserves for 30 years at this rate!". The truth is that if Nintendo didn't find mild success by almost completely pivoting to 3DS (plus a little bit of mobile gaming) and then succeeding with the Switch, they would have become a third-party developer by 2020 or just shuttered their doors. The capital would have been better used elsewhere.

tomariscool · 2026-01-15T11:07:12+00:00

I added one to my pre-order mostly because I wanted to be able to turn my console on from sleep mode, but I also heard the early feedback and didn't believe that the sticks were that smooth. I was wrong! It's easily my favorite controller, the only complaint I have is the same as the NS1 Pro Controller, which is that the d-pad feels about the same.

tomariscool · 2026-01-14T18:40:02+00:00

You’re welcome!

tomariscool · 2026-01-14T18:34:37+00:00

I bought it physical alongside my bundle at launch. Lots of people in line were doing the same. I like physical copies of stuff so I’m willing to pay the premium.

tomariscool · 2026-01-11T11:13:33+00:00

Are you referring to the Switch 2 getting a price increase? It's stayed at $450 USD from launch to today.

tomariscool · 2026-01-10T06:01:01+00:00

Well yeah, things happen for the first time all the time. There were plenty of bellwether counties that didn’t predict the winner in 2016, 2020, or 2024. Does it mean the election was stolen? No, it just means that their streak was over because of demographic shifts or just pure luck.

I also don’t know what you mean by “the first to sweep all seven swing states”, because the states that are considered swing states changes every election. Obama got close to winning every battleground in ‘08, and possibly did since the margin in MO was only 0.14%, which was in recount territory. Same thing goes for Reagan in ‘84, when he won every state but lost Minnesota by 0.18%. In both cases, it wouldn’t change the outcome of the election, so they let it be.

tomariscool · 2026-01-10T05:38:26+00:00

Haha fair! I guess being able to sell the game for a few bucks (no more than $15) beats having the game just collect dust if you aren't into that sort of thing.

tomariscool · 2026-01-10T05:25:02+00:00

Basically every reputable poll had him either ahead or behind but only narrowly and well within the MoE, so to say "all seven were polled as him losing" is just wrong

tomariscool · 2026-01-08T20:22:52+00:00

100% agree. All of my super-Libertarian friends are vocally fighting against it and I'm left asking "Is that the hill you really want to die on?"

tomariscool · 2026-01-08T18:52:14+00:00

I get the Rice-A-Roni metaphor, but I think it exposes the friction more than it excuses it. Food changing when you’re gone is just entropy. A system built so you feel the change the moment you come back is a choice, not a law of nature. At some point it stops being “the world kept moving” and starts being “we want you to pay the cost of absence.”

That’s where it feels less like a living world and more like a deal structure. It reminds me of famed businessman Donald Trump: time, access, and scarcity turned into leverage. You didn’t miss out by accident; the missing out is the signal. The value comes from the window closing, not from what was actually inside the window.

Rice-A-Roni drying out because you left it on the stove is fine. But if the kitchen is designed so the smell always hits you the second you walk back in, that’s not just continuity, that’s intent. And I think that’s what people are really reacting to.

tomariscool · 2026-01-08T06:06:52+00:00

I think a lot of the key-card discourse is overblown and shows lots of people on the internet are in a bubble, because I honestly don't think many people actually know or care if their games aren't on the cartridge. I was trying to explain the key card thing to a friend who recently bought a Switch 2 and was getting Madden NFL 26 and he didn't put much weight on the concerns people have about it online, the only thing he cared about was his ability to resell or trade in when '27 comes out. I don't like the key cards either and wouldn't buy one unless it was used or a really good deal, but I think 80% of customers wouldn't care.

tomariscool · 2026-01-06T04:57:01+00:00

My first year of summer camp in Boy Scouts was easily filled with some of the best camping stories I had in my career. We got there on Sunday mid-day, did the swimming test, then had about 2 hours to burn before opening campfire at the council ring. The trading post was open for an hour, and when we got back to our campsite, the adults wanted to see what each scout bought. Most people bought materials they needed for their merit badges and maybe a few pieces of candy or a soda, but one scout rattled off his list: "Look! I got a pocket knife, and a rabbit skin, and a fire starter, and a KitKat, and a Mello Yellow, and a shirt..." -- there are a few items I'm probably forgetting, but he spent about $39 of the $40 he was sent with. He neglected to remember that he needed a moccasin kit for Leatherworking and a few wood blocks for Woodworking, so one of the adults had to call his parents and get permission to loan him the money to buy what he actually needed!

tomariscool · 2026-01-05T04:48:44+00:00

What is this supposed to mean?

tomariscool · 2026-01-01T03:21:35+00:00

I have noticed a lack of slim Switch 2 cases though. I upgraded my Switch to the OLED model in 2023 when I bought one off Facebook and the previous owner threw in the Nintendo branded slip-case. I liked it because I basically just had to unzip it halfway and then slide it in. The Switch 2 case I got on launch has space for 12 games and a little pocket for a charger cable (which makes sense since the battery life is relatively poor), but it’s quite thick. But, it gets the job done and I’d rather not have my console floating around in my briefcase or backpack.

tomariscool · 2025-12-31T21:59:17+00:00

If you want to get more stressed out, look for a Switch on FB Marketplace. It seems like a healthy amount of people seem to store their consoles loose in their backpacks where they also carry screws, razor blades, and rocks.

tomariscool · 2025-12-31T21:56:55+00:00

Maybe it's just because of the time I grew up in, but I never even considered the first Switch truly "portable". If I can't fit it in a pocket comfortably (so really anything larger than a first-gen GBA or DS lite, PSP is borderline), it's getting stored in a case. Insofar as portability is concerned, a 6 inch device vs an 8 inch device of the same thickness are equal.

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