I took AI courses in college and it was fun to learn about then when it was a bunch of toy examples that showed the potential of these systems, but it was clear enough to anyone in those classes or doing that research how not ready they were for real applications because of all the known flaws with how model training worked. And then some ceos just ignored all that and started blowing up the bubble.

So my answer is the research models that could play video games kinda good. Everything after that was getting ahead of ourselves.

I played BG3 twice but I bounced off of E33. But I’m not as much of a fan of JRPGs so /shrug. I might go back to it at some point though.

have you been to a psychiatrist, ideally more than one? Done any research yourself beyond just the depression?

Yes. Quite a few at this point. A few that just diagnosed and managed medications, but then there was also a clinic that did a brain scan to try to help figure things out, this is where I learned I was also autistic, but that didn’t really lead to anything useful. I also went to try TMS and Ketamine. Lately I thought that I might have ADHD, so I went to go get tested for that, but they decided that wasn’t it even if I did have some attention problems, they were just more related to the depression symptoms. After that, I’ve started doing ECT. I’m still in the early stages, but I’m starting to get to the number of treatments where people supposedly start feeling it helping and they of course ask me every time I go and I just never know what to say. I can’t really tell if I feel any different. At some point if it’s not helping I’m gonna have to stop because this is easily the most painful, disruptive treatment I’ve had so far. At least with the Ketamine I was basically just zonked out listening to music for like an hour. The ECT involves going to a hospital that’s like a half an hour away, not eating for 8 hours, not drinking for 2 hours, getting a needle stuck in my arm for anesthesia, then getting my brain zapped. I feel like shit the rest of the day. So if it’s not working, more than any other medication or treatment I’ve had, I need to end it. But I don’t want to miss my chance at what feels like the last thing that might help.

I think the interesting thing about the US is that its propaganda sews the seeds for eventual dissent. It runs on ideals about freedom, democracy, equality, individualism, progress, prosperity, etc. The national mythology isn’t “fuck all the poor people.” The trouble is, the US isn’t any of these things. It just makes it hard to recognize that or what the alternatives are. So I wouldn’t say I moved along the political spectrum as much as I slowly started to notice that I wasn’t where I thought I was. You grow up seeing Obama go from “Hope and Change” to continuing to do all the wars, torture, and spying… it makes you realize “hey I don’t think these people were being honest about sharing my values.” And it’s just a long, slow trip from there to figuring out what movements actually represent your politics.

Personally I think they’re still playing catchup from their launch commitments, but what’s been added so far has been pretty good. Season 2 expanded out the endgame content and crafting loop by a lot. This season looks a bit tamer in the grand scheme of things. A relatively smaller endgame content system with some new loot. Some class reworks. A new chapter in a still unfinished campaign.

Tech-wise I haven’t really had problems with it after the first few days of s2’s launch, but new patches always come with new bugs, so I’d expect some instability at s3 launch.

Also like others said, they got bought out so………………. Yeah… we’ll see what happens with that.

Some good answers already here, but I can only answer for myself: I used to be that kind of leftist that was “Well I want socialism, but not like those scary foreign authoritarian countries. They’re doing it wrong! Or that’s not really socialism!” At some point after learning more history and talking with others online, I’ve softened my view on these places. Some of that is learning that some of what I knew about them was straight up misinformation, but some of it comes from a shift in perspective: These aren’t abstract ideals of countries. They’re real countries. With real people, real histories, real material conditions, real geopolitical relationships to deal with, etc. They’re doing something really difficult and it’s really easy to be an armchair quarterback while sitting cozy in the US where I don’t have to deal with any of their tough decisions or the consequences of them. Am I happy with them doing some authoritarian policies? No. But maybe they’re necessary to deal with the interference of the US? I don’t know for sure if that’s the best approach, but I don’t have to imagine the counterexample of what it looks like if you don’t take defensive measures, the US has helpfully provided a bunch in the form of all of the countries they’ve backed coups in for the crime of electing even a slightly leftist government. We could squabble about better ways to deal with this, but neither of us has the full context to have an educated discussion on the matter. Also for the genuinely bad stuff, I wouldn’t go as far as specifically supporting those things, but it’s worth putting them in perspective. You can’t talk about China online without someone bringing up Tienanmen Square, meanwhile the US has been a never-ending avalanche of evil in it’s short history, but you can talk about any number of things not related to politics in the US without a random leftist wandering into the discussion about the latest hollywood movie shouting the entire lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” I mean we’re happy to bring all that stuff up if it’s in the right context, but people are so deranged about communist countries that the ONLY thing they can think to bring up in relation to them is their less savory moments that may or may not even be true/exaggerated.

It’s really hard to sort good information from bad about these places because there’s so much propaganda. I get that those other countries have an incentive to put out their own propaganda, but it’s hard for me to know what their reach is or what their motivations are or how much they are lying vs countering US misinfo. Meanwhile I KNOW the US has a fairly sophisticated system of propaganda spanning government agencies, media companies, NGOs, etc. I KNOW the US is motivated to prop up the interests of capitalists and try to stop other countries from pushing back against them. A lot of the bad shit and lies the US has done is just straight up declassified history. So I’m sorry if I’m a little skeptical about what the empire that’s made it it’s business to deny self-determination to countries around the world has to say about those countries.

As for Russia, I’m not specifically a supporter. Ever since the USSR collapsed they’ve been another capitalist, imperialist country. But in terms of scale they’re just not even remotely comparable to the US. They are at worst a regional power and outside of nukes can’t really threaten the US on the global stage. So when the US war machine starts saber rattling about them, I know what it’s for because I’ve seen it a million times before. We always need an external enemy to justify the massive amount of money we spend on the military and all of the capitalists who profit from it. Even if I think it would be good if someone in the region pushed back against Russian aggression, I think feeding the beast that is the US military industrial complex is a net negative for the world. Not that I really have any say in it. I can’t remember the last time my congressperson or senator asked if I wanted to give another couple billion dollars to their friends in the “defense” industry. And then of course there was all the hysteria about Russian interference in our elections from the Democrats. I don’t even care if they’re right or wrong. That’s besides the point. The function of the claims is what is more valuable to look at: The implication of “Russia is subverting our democracy by interfering in our elections.” is “We had a previously uncorrupted democracy before the Russians got involved. Please ignore how our own billionaires have bought out all of our elections.” It’s a way to shore up support for a failing system by externalizing it’s problems.

I just want to live in a world where we can all live dignified lives. US capitalists are the current greatest obstacle to that dream. I’d rather have imperfect allies against that than throw my lot in with the “Endless war, exploitation, and ecological collapse” team.

The Halo warthog run music.

The same way people go on knowing their president is a war criminal. We’re so far past the line that this doesn’t even register.

“Duh nuh nuh naaaaaah! Dun nuh nuh naaaaah! Dun nuh nuh naaaah!….”

I tried it out when the testing started. It’s… fine. I’m not much of a shooter/action game player, so the higher skill elements of it are a bit of a barrier on top of re-learning a lot of DoTA-type stuff. I can imagine getting into it more if it came out years ago. But now it’s hard to find the time and motivation I’d need to dedicate to even get back to the level of incompetence I had with DoTA.

It’s really hard for me to separate my nostalgia for older games with what I’d think about them now. There are some games I’ve played a LOT but haven’t touched in years for one reason or another.

Some pre-Steam games would be things like Halo 3, World of Warcraft, Runescape, and few Pokemon games.

On Steam my most played game BY FAR is DoTA 2 at ~2100 hours. I loved that game and I still think it’s really well designed… I just haven’t played it in years because it makes me too mad to play with randos and it’s impossible to get 5 friends who play DoTA online at the same time anymore.

If I was going to pick a top 3 outside of those nostalgic outliers, maybe:

• Slay The Spire
• Dark Souls
• Deep Rock Galactic

Quite frankly I had such a high Inland Empire on my playthrough that the only things I’m sure are real are the things Kim or my good friend Horrific Necktie backed me up on.

It just depends on what classes you need and when you get access to registration. I got lucky some semesters and managed to craft a schedule where nothing started before noon and some semesters where I was dying because I had a class at like 8am.

Gotta love it when companies put something in their legal agreements that just says “we can do whatever the fuck we want.” Is the rest of the wall of text just there to hide that somewhere someone won’t read?

Then there’s “if it ain’t broke… how can we break it to extract a few extra bucks from it?”

Sugoi! This is the kind of thing I was looking for. Thank you.

Because I don’t think sticking my head in the sand is good either. Besides, it’s not just abstract far away things that are bothering me. A lot of what depresses me in my personal life is connected to the broader problems we face as a society. I kind of can’t ignore that if I want to make sense of my own life. That doesn’t stop it from feeling hopeless, but the alternative isn’t really an option even if I didn’t care about others.

It’s been really bewildering and concerning seeing all the crazy consumer crazes online. Maybe this was unfounded, but there was a while where I thought we were starting to wane on consumerism but I guess I was just wrong about that. The internet has just supercharged it. We now have turbo consumerism. Forget about keeping up with the Joneses, you now scroll past 100 of them in your feed and half of them are human billboards influencers.

I can appreciate people enjoying fashion even if it’s not for me. What I don’t understand are the things that are just regular ass items like a tee shirt, but they printed the name of a brand on it and charged a crazy price for it. Nothing else. No actual design or special manufacturing quality. Just the name of a fashion brand that’s famous for… being the name of a fashion brand that sells clothes that… have their name on it. IS EVERYONE PULLING A PRANK ON ME? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON?

That’s the neat part. I don’t. I’m depressed as fuck.