I loved Nona (it’s my favorite), but when I originally read it, I thought it was supposed to be the final book (I didn’t know that the series had been changed to 4 books), which left me baffled until I looked it up.
Its biggest weakness is that to me, everything aside from the end itself wasn’t confusing at all. It felt fairly predictable to me.
If you don’t like Harrow, I wouldn’t continue the series. Nona the Ninth is more of an interlude (personally it’s my favorite of the three), and sets up more questions than it answers. Unless you really loved Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sexton (because Nona is their book along with Nona herself). Also, the final book, Alecto the Ninth, still seems to be nowhere in sight (on goodreads there’s no release date set). It’s been years now.
This for me, but with the new Fire Emblem. I’ve played almost every game in the series. But I can’t justify $500 for a console for a single game, then pay whatever the going cost is now for the game ($60-80?), and then have all the inevitable DLC that actually raises the cost of the game to somewhere between $140-160 (most FE games since 3DS have DLC that nearly double the price of the game).
Oh, and if I pay $500 for that console, I have to pay a subscription fee if I do want to use internet features.
I hate Nintendo for their corporate practices, but at least up through the Switch, they actually make good games. And when people complain about their high price games, when you buy physical, that also means you can sell your games and get most of your money back from them. It’s the attacks on fan projects, the DMCAs, the DLC, and paid internet subscription that made me lose any love for them. Almost every older Nintendo console was worth it, but not now (I had a Wii U, lmao). It’s also incredibly frustrating in this day and age to be locked to a console when I might want to play things elsewhere.
I loved Saints Row 4. I was surprised to see how hated it was, lol.
I’ve stopped buying most media. Almost all my physical books are bought at an extreme discount from overstock, or the occasional sale (Target weirdly has good deals once in a blue moon). Even if I could afford $30 for a book, do I want to?
Keep in mind if you want to own your books, many libraries sell off books (and other media) they no longer need, as well as donated materials (very cheap in my experience). It’s a good way to support your library and buy some books :)
Also, if you have too many books (or other media), consider donating whatever you don’t want to your local library (assuming it’s not one of the ones trying to burn books).
Fun fact. Many libraries have tons of extra services, like help with writing up your resume, genealogy services, access to peer reviewed scientific research, language learning, etc. There’s a lot you can get out of that library card. Check it out!
I’ve finally started The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I’m not sure when I’ll finish it, but so far, it’s much better than I was expecting. At the very least, I hate Danglars and am hoping there’s not some stupid parable of Christian forgiveness at the end, because I want that guy to get destroyed.
I often have a hard time enjoying older books, but I’m surprised so far at how very human all these characters Dumas is writing feel. Aside from the obviously dated aspects of the novel, it feels very much like they could be anyone I know today.
Also recently finished Queen of Faces by Petra Lord, which I picked up by mistake thinking it was an adult novel for some reason, lol. But I gave it a chance since I had it, and stuck with the YA novel anyway because the world was somewhat interesting. Honestly, it felt like it should have been an adult book. It barely made use of the magic academy, which in hindsight should have been a redflag that it was indeed YA. The anime vibe was strange (they kept using ‘manga’ instead of ‘comic’ in a fictional world with no Japan, and their ‘unique’ magic had names). The characters were pretty flat, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to find Ori as the most interesting character. Also, the real villain of the story was obvious. If you like YA, it’s good enough. I’m certainly not the audience, but it was enjoyable for what it was.
I’ve had that feeling with so many books. Glad you’re liking the last bit though 👍
That sounds fun. It’s nice to see a review for self-published stuff, too!
You’re not wrong. ‘AI’ leads a lot of people, whether they mean to or not, to humanize these LLMs. Humans love to humanize inanimate objects, for instance. People name their cars. But AIs are, as you say, not sentient. There’s nothing to feel guilty about. Why should you want to interact with a program you didn’t sign up for to pretend to be human?
If people want that, create their own places where the point is seeing how well they can get the ‘AI’ to interact with humans. But until that AI is real intelligence and has sentience, keep it out of human discussions. There’s zero reason to care about a program that at best is spitting out nothing meaningful.
Core gameplay is the same, but significant things were added to parts of the game, like an island you can eventually visit, 14 heart events for spouses, etc.
Stardew has tons of mods. If the clock is stressing you out, there’s probably a mod for that. You could use cheat mods to get around some of it (teleport home, change the time, change your money, etc.).
My old accounts never got banned (I think I have three still usable ones). I have one that was newer that was shadowbanned, but I never really posted anything (it was shadowbanned right out the gate from what I could tell because I used a VPN and a temp e-mail - remember the time you didn’t need an e-mail?!).
I came here simply because I want a better alternative (and to get away from fascist shitheads). Unfortunately, there’s really no engagement for most things here I used reddit for, but where there is, it’s mostly a nicer community (because it’s much smaller on here, plus less power tripping reddit mods).
Also, I can’t use new reddit. It’s awful. I tried again yesterday, and it sucked. The death of old reddit was always going to force me to jump ship. Although I mostly used it for lurking these days with my shadowbanned account, or through websearches for very specific things (old TV episode discussions for instance). Very rarely I log in to an unbanned account and answer a question in a niche sub of mine.
Yep. I really wished anything I used on there actually existed on Lemmyverse, or anywhere else decent, lol. I loathe Discord, but at least one sub has a decent server so I can follow deals on it.
Very sad that they’re destroying years of information, good and bad. It’s not like I wouldn’t have jumped ship before if there was an alternative, but for most things, there really isn’t.
I can’t do New reddit either. I remember when it came out I said I would never use the site again once they inevitably did this. Tried New reddit out of curiosity, and it was so much worse than I remember.
For now, old accounts work for old reddit. I have a shadowbanned (presumably, posts never showed up) account that I use to monitor subs for deals. But at this point, it’s a matter of months, if not weeks. The timing of this, I suspect, is not coincidental either.
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I had the exact same issue when I read it (which was a while ago). The last 1/3 was the best part of the book, at least imo.
As a former MMO player, I absolutely hated anything that required playing with a group. I mostly played solo (although back in my LotRO days I had an awesome guild to occasionally play with). I remember this being one of the reasons I liked ESO (I haven’t played an MMO in ages so I don’t know if anything changed or my memory of that is bad).
If something required a lot of group play, I was likely to stop playing it and find something else. It really depended on how easily I could ignore the group content.
I’ve suspected some cover art I’ve seen for books has been AI (but I can’t always reliably tell). Kind of gross that some of it probably is.
Sadly, as much as I see people against gen AI online, people in real life aren’t (at least where I’m at). They’re gobbling up the slop.
I don’t even want to imagine what things will look like in twenty years, when the kids who grew up with this thinks this is the new normal.
Going forward, either you embrace gen AI, or you stick to media produced roughly before 2022 (or before 2019 to virtually avoid it totally). For writing, I’m not sure how the future will look for those who care. At least you can go see live performances of music, for instance, or even watch someone paint something.
For now, maybe writers will ban together and create trusted groups of human made stuff. If we’re lucky, maybe AI slop for the most part will be contained to corporations. Indie publishers could become the place for human made stuff. Assuming the corporations don’t find a way to drown out the indie publishers. But even if indie publishers take off in this direction, for how long will the people actually interested in art/writing free of gen AI care?
Curious to see Nintendo’s numbers in comparison.
And yeah, those prices are insane. At a certain point, just pay for a PC and have access to whatever you want. Plus, you don’t have to pay an additional fee for online features. It doesn’t have to be the best gaming rig ever, especially for most people. And recoup the money spent on a gaming rig by escaping the closed eco system. Wait for good sales on PC games or turn to the high seas.
And honestly, outside of Nintendo, I haven’t seen a console exclusive game on Xbox or PS5 that I’ve wanted to play in years.
Those prices though. People can still game without consoles, and with the way they’re destroying the economy, it seems people are realizing they can ditch the consoles for other options.
This. It’s the poor kids who this targets the most in the first place. Equal access to uncensored media is absolutely essential for any society that isn’t a fascist paradise.
It’s not just libraries either. People need to reject censorship across the board. Why the hell is George Carlin’s ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’ still relevant to this day?
Two hundred some pages into The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephnson and Nicole Galland, and I’m thinking about dropping the book, which I rarely do. It could have accomplished in fifty pages what it’s taken two hundred some pages to do.
While it occasionally has its moments, it’s so boring. Which should be impossible. The whole government set up is a goldmine for comedy, and somehow it’s still dull.