Formerly /u/Zagorath on the alien site.

  • 76 Posts
  • 1.8K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2023

help-circle
  • In Australia I don’t think teachers are underpaid, but schools are absolutely underfunded. Which can often mean teachers end up spending personal money on school resources, which means their actual effective pay isn’t as good as it looks from the outside.

    They also work way longer hours than is reflected in their contract.



  • Can I play it in front of my kids?

    It’s been a while since I played, but I think the answer is mostly yes. There are sex scenes, but they’re pretty well-telegraphed ahead of time and I don’t think you can get into them by accident.

    how long from startup to the next save point?

    What’s a save point, to you? The game allows saving at any point (except maybe during combat?), but this may or may not be a satisfying experience to you. For the most satisfying experience you’d probably want to consider your camp the save point, and that can go a couple of hours between occurences, depending on the quest and how good you are (/the difficulty level).

    Is it a lot like Mass Effect?

    A very similar narrative style with the focus on your relation to the NPCs. Gameplay is very different. Much more about tactics and less about action. Personally I found that balance really awkward and not enjoyable: I’d rather lean more into the action like a Skyrim (or, indeed, ME) style game, or do tactics properly in a turn-based manner like BG3 or Lord of the Rings: Tactics. But I stuck it out for the story & characters which were great, though I couldn’t bring myself to keep going with the big DLC once I lost momentum thanks to finishing the main story, or to pick up either of the sequels.


  • Fantasy series with a very D&D-esque world and a combat system that feels a bit like an MMO or a turnbased tactics game. It’s real time with optional pausing, and you operate your whole party at once, with the ability to pause to give each of them precise orders, or to pre-program them with specific responses to situation.

    I think it mainly became popular on the back of its characters. The story was good but nothing special, and personally I found the combat in Origins to be absolutely terrible. But building up your party, getting to know the characters and making decisions that affect them was amazing. At least on par in this respect with the original Mass Effect trilogy.


  • Zagorath@aussie.zonetoComics@lemmy.mlNormy incantation 👹
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    20 hours ago
    Transcription

    a four-panel comic.

    The first panel shows a boy brushing his teeth. In the background are framed photos of a white dog, a weird fox-like creature, and Rick Astley from the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up, as well as usual bathroom things. He wears a yellow shirt with “LOL” written on it. Above him is a bubble with the words “Normie Gary” in it.

    The second panel shows the same scene, but the boy is gone, leaving behind his toothbrush and a spot of toothpaste. Where he stood are white puffs of smoke, with the word “POOF”. The bubble saying “Normie Gary” is slightly larger.

    The third panel shows the boy with a confused expression on his face, dribbling spit. He is surrounded by white clouds, and in the background are blurry flames. “NORMIE GARY” is repeated, much larger, now a speech bubble with three tails coming off of it. In the same direction as that bubble’s tails are three other speech bubbles each with a single tail, reading “?!”, “!!!” and “!?!”.

    The fourth panel shows the boy sitting surrounded by three demon-like creatures with red skin, cloven hoofs, and horns. They each have a speech bubble. The first reads “It… It worked???” The second: “AAAAAH!” And the final “WHAT THE FU” (before it gets cut off by the edge of the frame with only the leftmost edge of what might be a “C” visible). The boy looks even more confused than in the previous panel, mouth agape, surrounded by question marks.







  • I think the change in business model from theatre-exclusive for a long period of time to direct-to-streaming or fast-tracked streaming is related, which IIRC he/Dan mentioned in the full podcast. But I don’t think this theory about trailers is correct. I’ve never known someone to get excited for a movie based on seeing the trailer before another movie. They find out in the news or on social media, and see the trailer on YouTube.

    Streaming is just not as profitable as theatres, but it’s a much more convenient way for people to watch. I’ve seen some people make suggestions on how to make the theatregoing experience better to entice people to go, but the biggest thing IMO is just the fact that it’s on streaming early at all. From a personal perspective, I hope they don’t do this, but I do think it would benefit movies’ profitability to lock in much longer theatre-exclusive periods.

    But also, less crappy studio-run films pls? Almost nothing Disney is putting out these days is worth seeing, because it’s all lame remakes and sequels. We need studios to be brave and just trust good filmmakers to make good films, not constantly try to chase industry trends.





  • Honestly censoring it like this just calls more attention to it. Had it not been censored I’d have just read the word and moved on. Had it been censored but using the same colour as the background I’d have read it, spent some time thinking “I hate this trend of censoring benign uses of language to bypass big social media companies’ filters, but I guess it’s necessary” (because I’d have assumed you grabbed this from a Twitter or Facebook post).

    But censoring with a big red squiggle, the first thing I read was tits. All the downsides of the subtle censoring, but then it also gets seen over and over again because it visually stands out so much.


  • I’m just a well-read interested amateur, not a lawyer, let alone an American contract lawyer.

    Leonard was a case where Pepsi advertised, basically, that they’d sell you a Harrier Jet for $700,000. Leonard sent them a cheque for that amount and tried to get them to honour the deal. There was nothing explicit in the ad that made it a joke, but Pepsi refused, and ultimately won the lawsuit because it was absurd. Likewise, in my opinion, giving away a multibillion dollar company on the basis of three tweets, one of which is describing the possibility of a mysterious death, and another which is literally just “Ok” is very similar to that situation, in that it’s played straight, but is obviously a joke because of the content.

    You’re right that a lawsuit could be brought. I suspect it would even pass summary judgment, because whether or not it’s a joke would be a finding of fact, not a simple finding of law. And I don’t know what’s hypothetical Musk Estate would do, but if it were Elon himself in charge there’s a good chance you’re right, he’d try to settle it. Not because he’s afraid of losing or concerned about the cost of the lawsuit, but for the same reason he hurried to buy Twitter when he did: to avoid going through discovery. He obviously doesn’t want details of his finances made public, for whatever reason. And his estate might very well inherit that shyness.

    But all that would rely on Mr Beast being stupid enough to press his claim in the first place. I only know about him third-hand as a famous YouTuber with a history of doing some rather silly stunts, but surely this would be beyond him. The case might make for good Content™, but entering into it would be very expensive with almost zero chance of proper success and nowhere near a guarantee of even a favourable settlement.



  • but it absolutely does

    I get why you would say that, because verbal contracts are definitely a real thing that can be binding, and this basically takes the form of a verbal contract, with the added advantage of being written down so it’s easy to prove what was said.

    But I don’t think any court would ever find that this constituted a binding contract. No reasonable person would believe that this was intended to be taken seriously, and an offer made in jest does not constitute a binding contract. See Leonard v Pepsico.

    edit: With Twitter, as far as we know, he had actually signed a more standard contract in which he waived his right to due diligence. It was rash and stupid, but not really comparable to this at all.