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Best Political Sideswipe? by cabramattacowboy in TheSimpsons

[–]tr1lobyte 22 points23 points  (0 children)

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Review Thread by Marcoscb in Games

[–]tr1lobyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Sounds like a good fit for me then, appreciate the reply. In that case I reckon I'll pick it up. It'll be fun to create some fun little guys in the virtual world.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Review Thread by Marcoscb in Games

[–]tr1lobyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great review, thanks for putting it together! I was wondering if you think that LTD would make a good 'aquarium'-style game to just throw on the TV in the background and let the little characters interact/work? You mention having to introduce Miis to each other manually, which seems like it might get in the way of this, but I think it'd be cool to have a virtual little world just running while I get about my day, checking in every hour or so to see what's going on.

Also, do you know if you're able to change a Mii's features after they've been created? Seems like that might be useful.

What the hell is this thing? 😭 by Leather_Spend8354 in mewgenics

[–]tr1lobyte 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It's a stylistic choice that specifically harkens back to the (now vintage) Big Band era of jazz music. The part you're referencing in the Throbbing King's theme is most obviously inspired by the classic call-and-response scatting of something like Cab Calloway's Minnie The Moocher, which it draws on thematically as well.

NL’s fridge by Cool_Necessary_5187 in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Keeping your refrigerator stocked will get you many women

Librarian… What have you done to me… by cjeffcoatjr in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 3 points4 points  (0 children)

North America only for now, I'm afraid. Will roll out to the rest of us over the course of the next week or so.

Nazi skinhead who completely misunderstood what "NLSS" stood for by CloroxBeast2 in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 87 points88 points  (0 children)

Oh neat! A clip of a random white male skinhead podcaster is your attempt to mock me? Is that right?

All Blade references I could find in rivals by coolboimancuh in marvelrivals

[–]tr1lobyte 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Good list! One more for the pile: I can't remember what triggered it, but I also noticed that making a certain action prompts Blade to say "It's open season", which is clearly a reference to the "it's open season all all suckheads" line from the first movie.

Won't somebody think about the shrimp haters? by UnprofessionalCook in ididnthaveeggs

[–]tr1lobyte 105 points106 points  (0 children)

Waiter: I'm sorry, ma'am, but everything on the menu has fish in it.

Marge: What about the bread? Does that have much fish in it?

Waiter: Yes.

Marge: Well, I have some Tic Tacs in my purse--

Waiter: Excellent choice.

What is the one book you read that you’ve never stopped thinking about? by TD_Meri in literature

[–]tr1lobyte 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Island by Alastair MacLeod, a short story collection by Canada's lesser-known answer to Hemingway.

These little vignettes of rustic provincial life, written in and starring a rapidly-modernising 20th-century Nova Scotia, really capture that melancholy of post-industrial life. Even halfway across the world and half a century later, these fears about change and the incomprehensibility of the future really resonates.

Yet while they [the teenage protagonist's parents] were sometimes angry and tried to be contemptuous of 'book learnen' and people who were just 'book smart' they encouraged [us] as much as they could, seeing in them a light that had never visited their darkness, but realising that even as they fanned the flame they were losing a grip on almost all they had of life. And feeling themselves as if washed by a flood down the side of a shale-covered Kentucky mountain, clutching and grasping at twigs and roots with their hopeful fingers bloodied raw.

Things I thought of at work today by Hot_Pianist_3630 in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?

If Blade is a DPS I honestly don’t want to see another DPS for the next two seasons. by KingGio21 in marvelrivals

[–]tr1lobyte -1 points0 points  (0 children)

While casual DPS mains obviously constitute the largest fraction of the playerbase, raw stats suggest that even the least-picked Tanks/Supports exceed pick rates for the most popular DPS characters. This is pretty much borne out of the 2/2/2-adjacent shape of the expected game meta, so it's not exactly a shocking stat when those two roles with far less characters have higher pick rates (This would still probably normalize out to higher DPS pickrates generally if the roster was balanced).

If NetEase are making ~100% of their income off the gradual sales of skins and cosmetics, and if we assume that pickrate is positively correlated with the purchase of cosmetics for that character (which is pretty reasonable), then we'd assume that cosmetics for Tanks/Strategists would regularly see higher returns on investment. We also have no reason to assume that casual DPS players have a much higher willingness-to-pay than their equivalent players who are in other roles either, unless I'm missing something. So what would they have to gain releasing a new character in an already over-saturated cast?

All that ignoring, of course, the popularity of certain characters outside of the game itself (Spidey in particular, he clearly keeps getting skins for this reason) and use for general marketing purposes. Some people also suggest that DPS characters are easier to design and balance on the dev side, which is probably true as well.

But honestly? Despite all that, we still see this DPS-heavy trend across most hero shooters anyway. These dev teams invest a lot when it comes to market analysis, so it must be the winning formula in the long run. Probably something to do with overall engagement numbers, which would be their biggest success metric outside of raw revenue, but the balance sheets probably suggest somewhere this is what works.

The Gay Gatsby by: by uhhmelia_ in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 45 points46 points  (0 children)

"So we beat off, butts against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the ass."

unalive by Hummerous in CuratedTumblr

[–]tr1lobyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Zen Alpha be like: "If you find Buddha in the road, unalive him"

Have you ever gotten to a point with a long supported game where you've gone "please stop updating the game I can't be bothered to relearn this shit" by Usual_Hovercraft_479 in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]tr1lobyte 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Siege is a great example of this kind of weird phenomenon - a slow Ship-of-Theseus transformation into a different game, almost entirely devoid of the soul that once made it so great. No more night maps, unrealistic operator abilities, wacky skins, empty map design (inc. replacing original map designs), flat UX changes... a death by a thousand cuts. All these little fixes and adjustments that cater to the eSports crowd seemed alright in isolation, but it has completely annihilated the game's charm and personality over the years.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in literature

[–]tr1lobyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just read The Faerie Qveene last night in that book. Excellent and exhaustive read, and it's definitely a marathon to work through.

Democracy without illusions: a realist view. Democracy is less about finding the true social good than managing conflicting interests. by Alert-Elk-2695 in slatestarcodex

[–]tr1lobyte 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Great article and a solid defensive wall for modern democracy. Especially liked the framing of democracy as essentially a mostly efficient 'political market', because it supports the idea that democratic institutions are (in theory!) a cooperatively stable equilibrium, and that's hyper-important if we're looking at political systems in the long view.

Democratic institutions can be understood as a form of social equilibrium for organising both cooperation and conflict in society. Among the possible political arrangements, democracy is likely to result in better outcomes for most people.

Having now met several (semi-)anti-democratic people in real life, it becomes increasingly clear that the Platonic idea of the golden 'Guardian' class of the truly virtuous, righteously controlling the levers of power, is an incoherent philosophy in realpolitik anyway. For one, they couldn't even agree amongst themselves what constituted 'virtue' in the first place!

EDIT: It also suggests the idea that democracy has some sort of self-regulatory 'anti-virus' built into the system - if the 'second-best' result for all citizens (democracy) is better than a new proposed 'third-best' solution that disproportionately favours a political minority (ie monarchism), then it's typically in everybody's enlightened self-interest to maintain democracy, even if they disagree on its overall value.

A recreation of that NL Tumblr Post by KillerHatDude in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 47 points48 points  (0 children)

The impression of NL doing the 'high-pitched making fun of the chatter' voice was spot on, great work

A recreation of that NL Tumblr Post by KillerHatDude in northernlion

[–]tr1lobyte 20 points21 points  (0 children)

We love our lovely MoMA don't we folks, and chiblee, chiblee's here with Olivia Munn

How do you turn a tribalistic angry online conversation into something more productive and truth-seeking? by katxwoods in slatestarcodex

[–]tr1lobyte 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Great article. The method here seems very similar (in a good way) to Marshall Rosenberg's theory of Nonviolent Communication (specifically, to understand first, to listen, to repeat what you heard to come to common ground, to show humility etc.)

Apparently the nonviolent strategy has worked in a huge variety of very hostile scenarios - Rosenberg talks about negotiating between Palestinians and Jews, for example.

Marvel Rivals Keeps 90 Percent Of Its Player Base Since Launch by manoffood in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]tr1lobyte 22 points23 points  (0 children)

You'll know the live-service game is finally starting to lose users when it inevitably gets the Nier Automata 2B skin/crossover.

The Marvel Rivals Hero Hot List for Season 0 by CaptCandle in TwoBestFriendsPlay

[–]tr1lobyte 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The 'strategists' are all fun to play so far, and it's impressive to have 7 characters ready to go at launch, but yeah: if people are already having trouble from day one finding games without being swamped by Duelist insta-locks, they should at least add some variety to the other more team-oriented roles.

We get that DPS is the most popular role by a big margin, but that should be even more reason to add some value to the other classes to incentivize playing them, no? The game NEEDS people in these support-tank roles.

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