Thank you so much for the breakdown. I feel genuinely educated about something new and fascinating.

The concept of intentional exclusion sounds parallel to my experience as a metal head since childhood. There are times when we are the flavor of the day and others where we are being literally chased out of town (good times touring Utah with a band called fuck god in the face immediately after September 11, lol). But it is always a community that welcomes with a bit of gatekeeping. Sometimes a precious thing needs to be polished with a sneer.

The perspective on allyship is also interesting. I am never quite sure where to state my stance without appearing cloy or pandering. There’s an easy line between honesty and rainbow capitalism but it blurs a bit when you’re an individual who empathetically wants everyone to be able, safe and comfortable being the version of themselves they feel inside. Again, I think there’s another parallel between our communities.

The point on humor/irony or “evil” as you framed it is fun as well. In my simple understanding it’s akin to a statement of empowerment much the same as being a bad bitch. Love it. Be the Dr Evil you want to see in the world. Cpt Hammers be damned. (Not that a villain needs permission). I hope one day the status quo catches up to your virtue and you are all able to find new paths of decadent evil to engage in.

Cheers to that community. I will admire from afar and keep my mouth shut about it. Lest I spoil the delicious villainy for my own hetero purposes. But I will still perform in a mask and cape on stage at a crummy metal venue and raise a mental toast in our shared existence.

Have a fantastic day my friend!

Ok, I have an interest in a good faith conversation and realllllly hope we can do so about one of the “What This Isn’t” sections.

Please, bear with me if there is some obvious context that I am missing and understand I’m genuinely asking I’m good faith.

“A place for people who are straight and cis. Really can’t emphasize this one enough. I don’t care how nefarious or well-intentioned you are, you also need to be LGBTQIA+ in some way or another.”

This seems exclusionary to an entire group of allies and people who may find the ability to recognize something in the folks taking part in that community that allows them to be their true selves. It also feels a touch damning personally as someone who strives to practice tolerance and exceptance as a matter of course.

Is this in jest to keep with the villain motif? Is it a brand of humor and irony that I’m not privy to as a person outside of the community? Should I just accept its gate keeping as empowerment and move on?

I also understand you are likely not the author of the manifesto and not beholden to it’s message nor owe me an explanation. This is genuinely a question to expand my understanding of a world outside of my own as a (you guessed it) cis, 40 year old, white gun owner in America.

There was a demo reel of the spy as well that was incredible. I played untold hours of tfc. It is likely what made me a intellimouse fan (thumb buttons for both grenade types?! It was the future).

I truly miss conc grenades. There has never been a more versatile weapon in a game.

I hope so too!

I still get irrationally upset when there isn’t. But, if a game gives me a waterfall find (or 2, or 3 like Avowed) it will rocket to the top of my list.

Lived in a place that had a koi pond and waterfall fountain years ago. I placed a small adventurer and treasure chest behind it. Wonder if it’s still there.

Additionally, you can purchase “parts” bags/kits which are marketed as “repair accessories” for 11+ rd magazines(usually 30 rds for 5.56 and 7.62). These somehow skirt around the law from my understanding. You’re buying the complete mag, but assemble it yourself.

Julie Christmas is a personal favorite.

The Battle of Mice records are harrowing (content warning for DV). Made Out of Babies was incredible as well. Same for her work with Cult of Luna. Some really, really unique vocals there.

My personal favorite is the Spylacopa Self Titled record. That album was a great blending of styles and guest artists, but Julie’s work stands out.

That’s just like, your opinion man.

www.squarespace.com

There ya go, you can make a site for each of those. Use promo code ImATroll for 0% off.

Been playing quite a bit of the saboteur lately. Its a great game.

Posted above, I’ll drop it here as well, requestarr performs the same service but via discord.

Layering on top of that (I’m sorry to recommend a discord app) but, Requestarr is awesome as well. It allows you to attach a bot to a channel and request up through Overseer, Sonarr or Radarr. Works for local and remote users.

Live service means there are constant “content” updates being released by the developer/publisher.

This can be character skins, weapon skins or other cosmetics, new maps or modes, new classes, skills or really anything. A lot of times these are wrapped up in to “battle passes” time limited, purchaseable collections of stuff designed to keep players engaging with the game daily for carrots being dangled in front of them. Most of these are also time limited so if you don’t jump through all of the Hoops before the timer expires you no longer have access to the content that you were playing for and paying for.

To relate to old school gaming think of them like mini-expansion packs. The part that most people take issue with is the strategy behind the majority of them.

Almost all live service games are designed to keep players running on the hedonistic treadmill looking for the dopamine hit of that next unlock. In the more egregious free-to-play game you see that crafted through dark patterns in a way that incentivizes users to buy shortcut items through the marketplace to either automatically collect the ranks needed for the unlock or provide double accrual rate for whatever the experience marker is.

The reason they are coined lives service is due the nature of them receiving this constant update drip in a manner that would be live as opposed to static in traditional, Old School multiplayer games where you may see a large expansion every once in awhile but certainly not a weekly or monthly driven of new shit for the players to grind away at trying to unlock.

Aye, that was my suspicion. Really awesome to be stripped of options for privacy so they can suck down that data.

Yt-dlp still works thankfully.

Grayjay started shitting the bed on me recently (Android via Samsung and Graphene, and on Desktop Linux/Windows) unless I disable vpn.

Even with Agent andDNS whitelisting for the apps.

A bit of a bummer after recently donating.

I think its kinda nice we have a shit poster filling my feed with recycled memes.

Sure beats the usual spate of climate crisis, muskiness, and Palastenian genocide.

To each their own I suppose, but filters can be your friend.

While I somewhat agree, my key (pun intended) inference was that they’ve offered the key caps as a standalone purchase for quite some time and I don’t think those are selling well so now you can get a bundle with a board to help move stock. The opposing point being there are likely boards that are superior in a similar price range you could combine with the standalones.

If you’re a lotr fan this very likely doesn’t matter.

Feels like they’ve had a hard time selling these caps so now they’re bumbling them with a mid board.

Not sure there’s any value here unless the price drops.

The guides are pretty solid. The one that sometimes holds people up is ensuring you have a post-roll playout for the channel. I forgot that when going making new channels after a few months of initial config and it caused issues with channels rendering properly downstream.

Yup. It’s easy to setup the tuner in JF. We use Plex and Jellyfin frontends without issue.