Tools are a good idea. Probably should follow your lead on that…

I’m mostly looking at whether I would have made any medium sized purchases in the next two yearsl. I might buy some little things in bulk, too, but if there’s any one time purchase where the price is going to jump $200, $300, $500, it’s time to make a decision.

For me that mostly means furniture. I already bought a pair of commodity IKEA bookshelves I’d been considering buying vs building. I might still build replacements, but I would still use what I just bought and domestic lumber won’t be directly subject to a tariff. I’m looking at buying a papasan chair and a mattress as well, probably in the next week or two.

I’ve also considered electronics, but there’s nothing I would buy in the next two years short of some PC components that I’m sure I’ll want. I bought a Quest 3 a while back and it’s been a great purchase.

I did go back through some of my online buying this year to see what I used. I’ll probably buy a few pairs of work shoes and some good soap.

Buncha dumb fucks. Get ready to learn about the Supremacy Clause, hicks.

President Vance is going to skullfuck you into twenty years of Y’allqaeda Law. You don’t get to pick which Republican policies you like.

Sunrise here, tomorrow, is around 7:30. When I take my morning walk, presumably just after I wake up at 5:30 because the walk is supposed to “get my brain ready to work” and I’m supposed to put several hours of work in during the morning, how do I “get sunlight in my eyes”?

Yeah, even the better boards struggled to break 3,000MT/s with Zen 1. They sure were fun to play with, though, one of the last times I felt like tinkering was actually getting me something.

I’d be curious how the more modern “default” 3600 kits do, I didn’t have a Ryzen system by the time they were popular and cheap.

Some B350m models did get Zen 3 compatibility. Not all, if I remember correctly, though I could be wrong. So whether it’s compatible I think is model dependent. Whether an old B350m has the VRMs for a chunkier CPU would also be a reasonable question.

I mentioned the R5 3600 because the prices on them are great. A 5800X3D does perform better, but I see completed eBay listings at $225+. They also needs a cooler. I see one 3600 that went for about $50 and several that went for $60, which isn’t too much more than a 16gb kit of DDR4.

I would definitely consider a Zen3 CPU for this upgrade, depending on budget.

First generation Ryzen struggles with higher memory speed. You very likely will not get the full 3600MT/s. There’s no real reason to buy slower, just be aware you’re likely going to hit a ceiling.

For gaming you might see bigger improvements from upgrading the CPU, maybe to an R5 3600. That and the memory are both going to offer big performance improvement.

I’ve had an argument with a CEC about whether brown sauce or demi-glace is the mother sauce. Quote from Escoffier:

“[Demi-glace] is the base of all the other smaller brown sauces.”

He also says demi-glace is “Espagnole sauce having reached the limit of perfection.” It’s not crazy to say they’re the same sauce, just that one is actually done.

Functionally it’s true, you just don’t use brown sauce as an ingredient for much if anything other than demi. Or more commonly just buy the demi to save space and time.

Escoffier’s version includes veal, but it is made using milk. Page 21.

https://archive.org/details/cu31924000610117/page/21/mode/1up

Yes, the US Constitution filters down. Part of it reads:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

That is known as the Supremacy Clause.

The variations are usually just named after whoever wrote a book about the move back in the 1850s or whatever. So in a way, yes, random name generator, often done a long time ago. The names were more useful back in Ye Olden Times when people didn’t consistently use the same sorts of chess notation. Now chess notation is standardized world wide.

The funny thing is this opening is actually very organic. Someone with even basic understanding of opening theory would very possibly play it if they learned the three moves required for the Ruy Lopez.

Definitely. The texture of the canvas, the light and shadow in the room, the variations between the paints or other media, and of course the size matter a lot. All good painters reinforce their work with some of those, all great painters optimize their work using all of them.

Woman with a Parasol has particularly magnificent brushwork. It’s clear Monet was a master of blending color from the digital image, but how he blended color and texture is breathtaking, fantastically delicate and consistent.

I highly recommend checking out whatever art museums are around you. Even if they don’t have a lot of work from old masters, there are thousands, maybe even millions of paintings worth seeing in person. If it has to be Monet, entrance to the National Gallery in DC is free and the couch in front of this painting is a good place to spend fifteen minutes. Dozens of other marquee Impressionist works, too, and several Van Goghs with even more extreme brushwork just down the hall.

One of my favorite paintings. Definitely the most beautiful I’ve seen in person.

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Pathfinder was to get around WotC dropping D&D 3.5. Paizo was started by veteran D&D writers to sell adventures, which they still do as adventure paths, rather than a system. When WotC updated to 4e, meaning no more print books that Paizo could reference in their adventures, Pathfinder was a way to print new 3.5e PHBs and Monster Manuals.

Paizo didn’t initially change much in PF1e. There were a few balance tweaks. The books were better laid out than 3.5. The players did the math on things like combat maneuvers in advance. In practice the game played pretty much the same, my groups jumped over seamlessly.

Having run and played both, I do think Pathfinder 2e is counterintuitively simpler in play than 5e D&D. 5e plays fluidly almost immediately, move and act. PF2e is pretty demanding for the first hour or three, the three action economy and Conditions ™ are an armful, and many players need to unlearn some D&D habits. Once a player has below average system mastery PF2e is as fluid as 5e. Beyond that PF2e shines. The rules scale better to complex scenarios, giving players more clear options of how they could act and giving the GM a better framework to figure out exactly what someone needs to roll. I also think it’s easier for players to go from average to good system mastery in Pathfinder, it’s mostly just learning how to optimize their character and learning more conditions and spells that work in the framework the player already understands.

For new players in session 1 D&D is simpler, in session 5 Pathfinder pulls even or maybe ahead, and in session 50 Pathfinder still sort of works where D&D falls apart.

PF2e character customization, though, is much more complicated, which some people like and others do not.

I know this is a Reddit community, and I get the anger about Reddit going to shit, but I don’t think this sort of thing is healthy. A typewritten postcard might work people on the internet into a froth, but that’s the end. At best the person who gets Reddit’s mail is going to throw it out. At worst people will read it and mock its performative, passive aggressive outrage.

The earnest form of protest is avoiding Reddit, cataloguing its failings, and advocating for alternatives. They’re not worth this sort of mental space.

“Give me a perception check.”

“Fourteen total.”

“You don’t notice anything different .”

“I get out my shovel.”

Online sale have reduced distribution costs and unlimited scaling compared to physical media, so successful games are far more lucrative now than they were and unsuccessful games don’t have losses from overproduction and returns from stores.

Certainly a factor that should be included in determining what a game costs, as is the 30% off the top taken by Steam, Microsoft, and Sony for most digital sales. Distribution in 2023 was not a factor in determining the current max price for a standard edition non-sports game, which was set in the early 00s.

I’m also comfortable seeing games that cost less to produce carrying lower price tags, as in many cases they do, Hades and Hi-Fi Rush coming to mind.

If selling at the current rate wasn’t profitable, gaming companies would have stopped making games by now.

They continue to make $60 games, yes. No one can say whether some company would have made the greatest game of all time last year if they’d been able to sell it for $70, or $80 or $100. Maybe they’re making it now as GTA6.

The economy of scale is what lets companies operate at higher costs. According to Wikipedia RE2 cost about $1 million to make. $1m might still buy a PS1 caliber game, but the remake cost at least an order of magnitude more. Many games now cost nine figures; GTA6 apparently cost $1 billion.

I’m not saying games should haphazardly inflate with everything else for the sake of share holders, but I’m open to the idea that the formula used twenty years ago to decide that AAA games should cost $60 might be out of date.

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