The most annoying part of these PCs is usually the keyboard - so terribly small! I have one tucked away which I see no reason to throw away, yet I have troubles finding a use for it. I’m thinking of building some sort of enclosure to hide the body, and use it as some sort of electronic journal with a properly sized keyboard. Hmm.

Youtube user Baseball Card Stories also expressed so much of how wrong the whole system is in a very concise video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8t9XHnIp9w , content warning for goofy AI pictures sometimes during the video lol), and he expressed how for him cards are first and foremost a tactile experience that has to do with paper, embossing, even the smell (he shows cards from the late 1800s which were sold with tobacco, still smelling of it).

I can see why some would ignore tactility for a card, since you can at least see it whole no matter how you spin it inside a plastic slab. But to suffocate a whole volume of a book inside of it is genuinely dumbfounding. I cannot wait for this fad to die, but I’m afraid there’s a good chance it’ll just ramp up in volume, in the near future.

edit: forgive me for the triple comment, for some reason my message would get sent as soon as I tried to change tab on my phone.

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I understand your point and while it might not follow the definition of a scam, it surely threads dangerously closes to it when the biggest and most used company by TCG players has been recently known for buying cards from customers only to re-grade them up and sell it themselves on the market, creating a vortex of conflict of interest.

And I do understand the activity of rating, but I still fail to see how truly meaningful it is if all the companies have such wide margins of error that they’ll give wildly different ratings to the same card if sent back again. It would make more sense if the company would limit itself to a) certifying that the card is not fake, and b) to note its main defects on the tag.

Grading from 1 to 10 is obviously a tactic to continuosly play with the market, creating scarcity when it is most convenient, and to enable the gambling addiction of customers who think that this time it’ll surely get a grade 10; and so the customer has to pay for: shipping, fees (which are crazy expensive, and they get higher if your card is more expensive for some reason), the card holder made for shipping sold by the company, and a box also usually sold by the company.

People can do what they want with their money, if this is how one wants to collect, shall they do so. But when the whole market and felt value revolves around grading from a handful of companies, something is fishy. There are countless kids in the world convinced that the rare card they just got from their Pokémon booster is worthless if they don’t spend a hundred bucks grading it.

The “synthetic leather is just shit that frails in two months” is also such an overused and misinformed point for leather enthusiasts. Because a) synthetic materials WILDLY change in quality depending on material and type of production, and b) research is always evolving and bringing up new materials (https://oleatex.com/ for example, which only uses roughly 10% of non-biocontent).

I hope it’s okay to mention brands here just for the sake of argument: I personally tried vegan “pleather” shoes by Ahinsa and Feelgrounds, for example, and after a year or so they still have to show any frailing whatsoever.

Lastly, one can always make the argument that many other natural fibers will also provide a similar durability when treated well. Thinking we ‘have’ to use animal leather because it is the only durable product feels so misinformed.

You’re right, I worded myself weirdly. What I was trying to say is that, while I’m very happy to see this kind of effort, I worry since it is easy for the pop world (be it music or something else) to lean into the type of black-or-white virtue signaling that stars (or rather, the way management usually phrases things) are known for, moreoften to appease to a certain “leftie” public that cannot wait to spend the buckaroos as long as the event organizers pinky promise that everything they’re doing will save the planet.

I am a big fan of live music and I wouldn’t want to gatekeep the experience, I just hope its general public won’t lose focus on the fact that they have to keep doing their part even on service that are accessory to the event itself. Apart from that, I am with you with the fact that it is undoubtedly a positive news to report on.

Celebrities’ managers always want their clients to shine as The Pioneer in whatever they do nowadays, so the sensationalistic head title is not surprising. Plus, big events like these can’t really be 100% green by definition, since so many will still use a car to reach it.

both could work! I feel like it’d be nice to maybe start slow and have a theme for each month. This way, anyone can chime in whenever they want without pressure, and without the fear of missing out on the particular month the themed event is being held.

Very late to the party, but mayhaps we could even have thematic months on this community! Like, a theme per week, as to give enough room to breath to busy people.

They were already floating against bad publicity because of famous “anti-woke” streamers constantly giving them shit, this move sadly doesn’t help: I understand they wanted to shift away the focus from COE33 - after all, it got enough publicity as it stands.

But they could’ve taken so many different approaches; like, for example, instituting a different prize and move Clair Obscur to their own category (I don’t know, call it “shine of the year” or something), but CLEARLY state you are doing this in honor of Indie Awards core concept, which is to highlight less known games.

Calling out a very minimal and almost accidental usage of AI that has been patched out for months just to ban it out… meh.

audible gasp

who would’ve thought?

I’m actually surprised 19% of homelabbers chose windows, lol.

I ended up trying barefoot winter boots from wildling.shoes, and my gosh! I can’t recommend them enough so far.

oh gosh, it’s time for another rabbit hole… everyone seem to have very high opinions of barefoot shoes! They do look comfortable indeed.

ooh, I see, thank you for your insight! I’m definitely eyeing Nae the most, and your opinion on them might seal the deal. I just wish they had more brown boots models for men!

oh… I don’t even know what barefoot style shoes are 😆 will look into Ahinsa!

oh! had no idea. Those are supposedly the guys and gals who used to make the Doc Martens when those used to be of good quality, right? A tad more expensive than Nae, but on par with costs from Vegetarian Shoes.