Isn’t a cracked (old, I think?) Kindle the only way to pirate KU/DRM titles? At least, that’s what I recall from the last time I looked into it. There’s a book I really wanted to format shift from KU since Google TTS was fucking up all the proper nouns, but I gave up. (It was an obscure book that isn’t available anywhere pirated.)

Yeah, I agree. I’m not at all interested in what score they gave the game; I’m more interested in what they liked/didn’t like and, more importantly, why they felt that way. Then I can get a sense if the game will match my tastes/interests.

That sounds really cool. Thanks for sharing; I hadn’t heard about this one previously.

I was gaming exclusively on the Deck from January to the start of December…

…But Path of Exile 2 I’m streaming from my desktop to get acceptably clear visuals and smooth framerates. I’m back heating my house with my desktop.

Holy shit, that’s huge. I was trying to wrap my head around those numbers.

Russia is about 3½ times Canada’s population, so 30K deaths is, per capita, equivalent to about 8.5K deaths in Canada. That’s higher than all-cause mortality in Canada from ages 1-35. Just from HIV.

Whoa. That’s not good.

Or, another perspective:
More than 1% of Russians are infected with HIV. (Estimated 1.5mm out of ~140mm.)

Loving it.

On the Steam Deck, it was playable, but I couldn’t find settings that looked good and were visually clear, so I finally got around to setting up Sunshine and Moonlight (in-house streaming) and it’s amaze balls.

I’m using a script that switches my desktop to a virtual monitor that’s the Steam Deck’s native resolution, and I recently upgraded my house to a WiFi 6 mesh network, so it’s working almost flawlessly. (I often get crashes on startup, but it’s never taken more than 3 tries, then no issues.)

I’m still only in act 1 (limited playtime) but I’m so excited to be playing PoE again, and PoE2 is perfect for playing with a controller.

I’m a cis Canadian and I’m terrified for everyone in the US. Even the ignorant masses who viewed for him. Project 2025 is going to dismantle American democracy, and with a stuffed supreme court, there are no remaining impediments to reverse this for a generation, until it’s too entrenched to change. If the USA lasts that long.

Literally wondering if an American civil war, or breaking apart into smaller countries, will be coming.

Longer term, terrified what this will mean for anthropogenic climate change and the world my children will inherit. (A climate-science denier is going to be the PM of Canada this time next year, too, and many are already provincial premiers.)

I didn’t think this was possible, tbh. I don’t understand how 51% of Americans can think the “grab-her-by-the-pussy” con artist is the best choice for president. He’s literally told them, repeatedly, what he’s going to do and they don’t care, don’t pay attention, or don’t believe him. I can’t even.

I’m going to go bury my head in the sand. No more news for me for the next long while. This isn’t good for my health.

Had a horrible wait on election day a few years ago; a hateful bigot was polling really close to the (effective, thoughtful, visible-minority) incumbent leading up to the election, and people turned up in droves. Broke records for number of votes cast in a municipal election.

But waiting in line 3+ hours to vote, with 2 preschool kiddos with us? Never again. Never. Again.

Early voting, every time. It’s the way.

Project 2025 includes a detailed plan about how to dismantle the entire Federal government and replace thousands of government managers with alt-right extremists.

Project 2025 matches most of his campaign promises and is written largely by former Trump administration staffers.

Mood.

I’m not going to pay $45 for any game. If I’d known about the “never on sale, price only goes up” model they were using, I might have bought it back when it was $20, but I’ll just never play it now and I’m okay with that. There are literally hundreds of amazing games I already own to play, and if I had 100+ hours to sink into a game like this (I don’t, post-kiddos—for now, anyway), then I’d strike the earth for some Dwarf Fortress !!!FUN!!!, which I know I’ll enjoy.

Or maybe finally get around to beating Baldur’s Gate 1… (I never made it past the early game… BG3 I’ll get to in the 2040s at this rate, ha ha!)

Aside from people who just want to play football/CoD/D4/whatever multilayer game, I don’t understand why anyone pays full price for games. I’m glad they do, mind, since they’re subsidizing the development costs mean games get made, and I get amazing games for cheap.

As a recent example, I nabbed MH Rise for cheap recently, and bounced off it. I might try again later, but it didn’t grab me. So glad I didn’t pay more than $15 CAD for it!

The ultra-wealthy are terrified of reprisal from Trump. And they control the media (Bezos/WP) and social media (Zuck).

Democracy in America may fail next week. Terrifying to watch.

Meanwhile, Steam is raking it in by continuing to offer a better product than piracy. The Steam Deck is making that even more true; it’s so much more convenient to have games in the Steam library than try to keep a repack updated with new patches/content.

Right, but pirating Disney-owned IP is more moral than paying for it. Disney is the number 1 company in the world for lobbying for copyright over-reach. Every dollar that goes to Disney pays for lobbyists who will continue to push for life-of-author + 90+ years, because life-of-author plus 70 years just isn’t enough time to control our shared cultural heritage.

Similarly for Nintendo and software piracy.

Paying for Disney/Nintendo media is immoral.

“Family first” is unidirectional. Parents put their kids first. That’s the job. I signed up for it, and I’m going to prioritize then as much as I can.

Nothing, as far as I can tell, but political opponents have been running attack ads and blaming him for everything that’s gone wrong in the local (and global, for that matter) economy for the last decade.

I think he did amazingly well in the Trump presidency threading the needle of not giving in to Trump but also not antagonizing him, so Canada had limited personal vendettas and attacks from Trump.

He’s very articulate and careful with his words, and his pauses to think carefully about wording are seen as a lack of confidence. And, granted, it does make him a less inspiring/exciting/dynamic speaker.

Contrast that with Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Cons, who’s not at all worried about offending minorities and is constantly telling people how Trudeau has ruined everything, is ruining everything, and will ruin everything, for exemple by letting in immigrants, allowing schools to support trans kids (provincially controlled, not in Trudeau’s jurisdiction), and for long medical waiting times (also provincial), etc. Literally everything.

I worry that age verification will backfire spectacularly; users can just tunnel their traffic through a VPN and then once on a VPN, they would also miss all harmful content blocking. Middle schoolers can figure out how to get around school web filters, and they, and everyone else, will figure their way around age verification just as easily.

Pierre Poilievre is going to do the same in Canada, too. He’s been threatening to defund the CBC (Canada BBC, basically). And our current PM, Trudeau, is reviled by so many Canadians that he’s unelectable, so the Cons are going to cruise to an easy majority next year.

It sucks knowing that the country is going to be in a worse place 5 years from now but being unable to do anything about it. At least the US has a 50-50 shot of coming out okay, if the polls are to be believed. (I’m more optimistic about the actual election results, personally, but very concerned about a coup/civil unrest of some sort.)

Attacks on the press are attacks on democracy, and the Canadian press is crumbling.

A friend of mine has (had?) most of the world records in Sayonara Wild Hearts; it’s not as relaxing if you’re going for high scores since you need to get close to collisions for bonus points, but if you just play to beat levels and chill, it’s great.

Brilliant. I should do that. I’m not great at skipping stuff to race faster, so the skull dungeon is really hard for me and I end up save scumming after most runs. I read about people getting to floor 200+, but I can barely get to 100 unless I waste a whole stack of staircases.

Pausing time would make it a lot more relaxing.