I would be surprised at the absolute stupidity of that, voting for the absolute corpo party in some bizarre protest, but you guys already voted him in for a first term so nothing is really surprising when it comes to the US anymore.

Valorant?

I just started myself, after missing Overwatch 1 and thinking it was similar. To my surprise it is like an Overwatch with a Counterstrike feel to it, which I quite enjoy.

As a non American I just can’t comprehend how any of you even have to think about this.

On one hand, an old man, who, despite his age and stumbling over his words, has ran the country relatively successfully for the last four years.

On the other hand, another old man that was a global embarrassment, cosied up to Putin and Kim, spent most of his time golfing and shitting his pants, stole classified documents and likely sold state secrets, he is a sexual abuser, an actual criminal, clearly has corrupt justices on his side with crazy plans, chummy with epstein and took multiple trips to pedo Island, promoted racism at every opportunity, many of the people connected to him for his first term were imprisoned, refused to accept your democratic process, contributed in instigating a fucking coup attempt, and that’s likely not even the half of it…

Like, how the fuck can ANY of you look at that and say “Yeah but Biden stumbles over his words so I’ll just throw my vote away/vote for trump…”

I feel like I’m going insane just watching this shit unfold. It is all so bizarre.

Well, besides the obvious of paying off mortgages and debts which wouldn’t even amount to a fraction of that, I’d buy an island to convert into a 24/7 mass paintball (or laser tag or something) warzone experience, like hundreds of people on both sides.

Sell the experience to people, classic Red team vs blue team, stay until you’re eliminated, barracks/camps, HQ, command structures, etc. It would be a live streamed competition with commentary, tactics, live go pro cams, everything. Maybe do it in seasons, have leaderboards, MVPs, whatever.

Players that have already been to the island before would be able to advise, or place bets on their accounts or whatever to build up load outs for their next trip.

The goal being a fun live game, exercise, stamina training, whatever, but mostly an outlet for the people in the world that get excited by war with the intention of hopefully reducing that with a safe environment.

I feel like if done correctly, and made as affordable as possible, it could turn into a relatively profitable business. I would then ensure the profits went to charities that provide aid to actual warzones and ensure that the primary message of the theme park is completely anti-war.

Any money leftover that didn’t go into that project I would donate and invest in animal welfare and conservation, renewable energy, and tackling the climate crisis.

Oh, look, another old comedian jumps on the bigot bandwagon. It’s an incredibly transparent trend now for when they can’t write the same material that got them there in the first place, or when they are no longer working with the person that wrote their material for them.

Take a few shots at trans people, purely for publicity, then use that sudden boost from the circle jerking media to secure yourself a Netflix special, where you can talk about how you’ve been cancelled for an hour and a half for a big payout.

It’s just a marketing ploy for using peoples own outrage against them.

Since the whole API fiasco and losing reddit is fun, I wiped my reddit account, downloaded my comment history and then used a bot to wipe all my comments and posts, doing so got me banned from commenting on a lot of subs, something to do with the speed that the comments were edited at or something. Either way, I don’t really care.

I still use my reddit account for lurking, there are some niche active subs that still have good information/discussion that unfortunately haven’t been picked up elsewhere, but I have those subs opened in old reddit on Firefox and I don’t venture outside of that, and I’ll never contribute or comment again.

I get that I’m contributing to their traffic still, but I was an active member for 12+ years, and I’m still pissed they fucked the entire community to profit from our fucking content. Definitely won’t be contributing to their content again.

I have a “world bible” that I created on onenote with all of my characters, locations, lore, etc. As part of that I have my stories plotted out in rough notes, then chapter by chapter in a table, (this often changes when actually writing but it’s a great foundation).

Lots of people use Obsidian or Notion to do the same thing. I already had onenote on all my devices, so it was easy just to add notes to my notes section if an idea came to me on the move that I could return to later.

I’ve tried to move to obsidian or notion a couple of times, but I think I have a certain efficiency now with my crude system, and it just seems to work for me.

Not sure if YouTube links are allowed here, but if you just search for automatic 1111 install tutorials, Sebastian Kamph’s channel is excellent and pretty much everything you’ll need to know is on there!

Keep an eye for his updated videos though, as you can imagine the tech moves so quickly that some of his more popular videos have been remade and updated!

Hahaha, I hadn’t considered it that way. Touché.

Short form content platforms aren’t going anywhere, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts are just a carbon copy of tiktok. No problems with them, of course, because they’re American.

I’m still unsure why anyone would pay for AI image generation purely because of the trial and error it takes. I get that not everyone has a GPU that can do it, but I use stable diffusion through automatic 1111 and I’ll likely be about 2-300 generations of text to image, image to image, some inpainting and editing, then some more image to image and upscaling before I get a representation of what’s in my head down.

I love the process of it all, but paying for tokens would completely limit me. Is there a specific reason that people use paid models? Or is it just because a lot of people are limited by their gpu?

Currently in Tokyo from UK, paid for an Airalo esim before I arrived, and I was pretty impressed with how cheap and easy it’s been- and that’s with 20gbs data, which I’ve barely used.

My service provider O2 would have charged me £7 a day with their O2 travel bolt-on, but would have still been my usual contract of unlimited calls, texts and data, just that the data would have been throttled a fair bit. This is a lot more reasonable than it used to be, but still would have amounted in a large bill compared to the one off $18 esim.

So many amazing characters throughout the series.

Some examples I’d say:

Stetzer, Edgar & Sabin, even edgelord Shadow has a fantastic backstory. VI had such a large cast with such unique stories all round, I only wish a few were fleshed out a little more, Locke felt a little bland in comparison, but that could simply be translation not giving him as much of a personality, or maybe I’ve played it too many times.

Vivi in IX will always have a really touching story, the whole concept of trying to understand the world and his own existence from a very naive perspective. The fact that they still managed to portray that with wisdom and grace within that naive framework was just pure poetry, imo, and very much a staple of Japanese cultural fable/storytelling.

Sure, those are good examples of negatives, but that is just the way of it. This happens all the time when new technology emerges. Just think about the audio industry, all of a sudden people could produce music from their spare bedrooms- jobs weren’t needed anymore. But the music industry is now far more saturated than ever as a result, as it is so much more accessible to people, without the need for specialist equipment and stacks of cash.

Sorry, but the fact he was even elected the first time made America a complete joke to the rest of the world. It is utterly bizarre watching this all unfold, and that after everything that’s happened since, Trump still has a good chance of election AGAIN?

Wtf is going on over there?

Not OP, But, Stephen Hawking could have kept his voice, as an example.There are probably lots of beneficial uses of this technology. Automatic TTS voice messages would be another 🤷‍♂️

So they’ll be charging Grusch with perjury and lying to Congress then?

Few options available here I’d say, though I’m not aware of Vampire the Masquerade! Do the other players know that this player wants to reroll?

Definitely work closely with the player throughout the process and have them make the major decisions needed, though it’s an excellent opportunity to drop a shocking moment on the rest of the party if they are happy for the character to die in order to feed the tension and danger of the story. It could be a good opportunity to introduce a huge villain in the story, a taste of what they’ll eventually have to face down the line.

Other options could include taking something from the characters backstory that prompts them to leave the group in search of their own answers- retiring the character but leaving the option open for the future. Your players new character could be introduced as a prisoner or hostage, or even as an individual on their own mission that aligns with the current group.

There are so many different ways to approach, but the most important thing is ensuring the player is happy with the decisions. Having a little brainstorming session with them in private and putting a plan together you’re both happy with is absolutely key though!

I used to get this a lot, until someone reversed it on me, and I’ve thought about it this way ever since: If you can’t let yourself suffer because others might have it worse, then you also can’t let yourself be happy, because others have it better.

It’s all about personal experience and perspective.

Yeah, I did say someone recently told me this was a feature. I’ll find some time at the weekend to make the switch, it’s really far past time now I think.