Nothing is explained

It makes a lot more sense if you have the context from the Soulsborne games. The series started much simpler, with (mostly) linear progression, fewer weapons/abilities, and shorter “quests.” Part of the appeal of those games was the mystery, and the community that grew around solving the unexplained quests/mechanics/lore. The games were shorter, and the maps smaller, so it was easier to explore on your own.

Then with Elden Ring, it just exploded with content, built around the same game play mechanics. For veteran Soulsborne players, it plays like the next title in the series. The only really novel mechanics are the open world and spirit ashes. The downside is (at least for me), the world is so large that it’s a chore to explore everything. I finished my first play through and lost the will to start a +1 game. In contrast to Dark Souls 3, where I completed at least 6 play throughs.

But if you don’t have that context…yeah i’d imagine Elden Ring is overwhelming in its complexity and scale. Trying to figure out Soulsborne mechanics and navigate this giant world with little direction sounds daunting. Pitting you against the grafted scion to die immediately, and right after putting the tree sentinel in your way, was a confusing way to start the game, even for me.

It’s honestly infuriating to realize half of the people running the country rely on the moral principles of ancient religious texts, translated multiple times, to make policy decisions, while also taking every opportunity to bash the scientific process. Not sure which ones are more frightening, the ones who actually believe what they’re say, or those who don’t.

Fun probably-already-known fact: NASA accidentally destroyed a $200 million Mars orbiter from of a missed imperial->metric conversion, because NASA does generally work in metric, and some Lockheed-Martin software provided numbers in imperial (while claiming to be metric)

I’m a tinkerer as well, but I’m at a point in my life where I need to prioritize my tinkering haha. Like buying stir-fry takeout (Windows/MacOS), cooking it by buying a pre-packaged bag (packaged mainstream Linux distro), or starting from scratch, experimenting with literally everything from chopping technique to cooking temp for each ingredient, until you realize you’re missing an ingredient you need, then you have to go back to the store (Arch lol).

I do something similar (though less secure) for general purpose passwords; I have a couple of common “base” passwords that are decently secure that I commit to memory. Then for each website/service, I pick a pattern based on the name/url (maybe something like the first two and last three characters of the url), and append them to one of my “base” passwords, so each site gets a unique password, but I only have to remember a couple of them + the pattern

Is there a distro you recommend? I’ve toyed around with Tails, but the lack of persistence and forcing all traffic through Tor instead of a VPN (I guess the whole point of Tails) is too inconvenient for daily use.

TIL that Unicode includes hieroglyphs lol

'Cause the town came first. Town was built on the original river, which was later dammed for power/water reservoir for said town.

I don’t think OP knows what “lore” means lol. GTA ≈ ATLA ≈ Star Trek? DESTINY > DR WHO?!?!

Me, with ASD and ADHD: “Porque no los dos?”

“Damn, this is going to be a tough time for her. Better be sure to make zero effort to inject levity, or take her mind off it, or remind her that I’m also here to take responsibility for my part in this life we’re creating. She should remain 100% FOCUSED on how painful and humiliating this experience is for her. For the entire 20 hours she’s in labor. Just going to continuously remind her to keep breathing. So she knows how much I support her. Yup, that tracks.”

You must be a fun person to go through traumatic experiences with lol.

Wow, actually sounds like a pretty light sentence, considering it seems like the ATF was intent on nailing him to the wall haha. Maybe just more interested in stopping the broadcast of doing stupidly dangerous shit with guns and explosives…

Base 10 time makes me irrationally angry though lol

I feel like, at their core, most religions boil down to two things, for most people:

• Giving you purpose/security/scapegoats (“I’m living a good life so I can go to heaven,” “the Lord has a plan/is watching over me,” “Satan/sinners/demons tempted me”)
• Dissuading you from inquisitive, critical thought (out of self-preservation, I’d imagine)

Personally, I prefer to define my own purpose, live a more “dynamic” lifestyle than is traditional, think critically, and question authority. Doesn’t make me “better” than religious folks, in fact they’re probably overall happier than I am. But I can’t imagine living that way, regardless of whether or not I believe in a magical sky Santa who can’t decide whether he loves us unconditionally or whether or not he’s actually omnipotent.