I hated Myst as a kid. Not just because I disliked the gameplay, but because its inexplicable popularity heralded a shift in the adventure game market. Instead of more Sierra or LucasArts-type games, there were, for years, scads of shitty, boring Myst-likes.

Several hospitals in China have been offering childbirth pain simulation experience for over a decade.

Yeah, that’s the craziest part of this story. Why would any hospital do that? It seems wildly irresponsible.

I thought this had come out already? All the garbage is blurring together.

This is a fucking ad.

If it can make it through 5 training jumps, sure! Honestly, the little jumps they make you do on practice equipment hurt more than landing with a (functional) parachute. I’m just glad they weren’t using the towers when I went through; those seemed like a terrible idea.

Luckily for the rest of the species, this describes nearly all nazis.

This is from Waterworld, right? Troublingly relatable.

It’s true that I’m not on any other social media, but I’m here every day. There really hasn’t been much talk about Veilguard at all. Nothing like, say, all the Starfield criticism.

Is it a big commercial failure? I noped out of the series after seeing the direction they went with Inquisition, but I haven’t really seen any negative press about it. Kinda seems like the article’s just trying to stir up some shit

Only tangentially related, but when I was a kid I’d write stream-of-consciousness type stuff in a “code” consisting of the first letter of every word. Whenever I run across one of my old notebooks, I spend some time trying to decipher it, generally without much luck. Sometimes it’ll spark a bit of remembrance, like dipping madeleines in tea.

I think it’s the difference between punching down and punching up. Boomers in general have far more money and power than the people using the term. So complaining that it’s ageist, and comparing it to a homophobic slur will get you about as much traction as white people being offended by cracker, and comparing it to slurs used against African Americans.

I think you could make a very strong argument that the proportion of the population that isn’t under dubious leadership is vanishingly slight.

I mean, what else are you gonna wind a piece of string around?

Social media, as it currently exists, is a net negative. We’d all be better off without it.

Good day, Sunshine

Hadn’t played any of these games until recently; picked up the remastered series on sale, and spent months playing through Yakuza 0. Really enjoyed the setting, the characters, the drama, the humorous substories and fun little minigames.

I finally decided to stop hitting the batting cages and move on to Kiwami, which I’ve just started. Loving it so far, although Majima seems to have gone quite mad in the intervening years. Looking forward to a long career of singing karaoke, racing RC cars, and swinging motorcycles around.

Baba was probably the worst contestant they’ve ever had. I was hoping to warm up to him over the course of the series, but he brought precious little to the table. Jack was fine—a bit disappointing in light of how obviously excited Alex was to have finally got him on. Loved the other three, top marks for them!

Wasn’t a huge fan of the pub quiz. Loved the goose, and all of Andy’s prize tasks. Found Alex’s blatant efforts to tilt things Jack’s way kind of off-putting. Ignoring Baba’s obvious running in the maze task was disappointing. Glad Andy won, look forward to seeing him on CoC.

I don’t attribute a lot of positive things to social media, but I will give it credit for turning me around on spiders. Arachnophobia scared the crap out of me as a kid. For years afterward, I’d never sit down on a toilet without first getting down on my hands and knees to make sure there weren’t any spiders lurking underneath the bowl. Thanks to years of spiderbro memes, now I generally view them as comrades.

You’re not alone.