2008 Dodge Avenger. Believe it or not, it was that 2008 Dodge Avenger.
I hated every inch of that car. It was big without any of the benefits a car might have from being big. No power at all, pretty bad on gas. Didn’t have a very comfortable road feel or suspension. Every inch of the car was cheap. I drove it for a long time and towards the end, around 100,000 miles, everything in the car felt like it was malfunctioning.
Asia. China and Japan, I know in particular, go nuts for pay-to-win gatcha mechanics.
I’m not an adventurous person. I haven’t been to a sex shop at home in decades so I don’t keep up with what’s available out there. But on vacation in Tokyo in 2023, I was at a four story sex shop in Akihabara. The top floor is exclusive to men, no women allowed up there. There are all sorts of fuck dolls and the more intense, expensive dude stuff up there.
Now, what I was not mentally prepared for was the glass display case. I don’t remember much about what else was in the case but the thing that caught my eye was what I can only call “The Device.”
The Device was a very inelegant metal machine that in any other context I would have assumed was some kind of kitchenware. But it had a nozzle on the end and it was incredibly obvious what The Device was there to do. This was not a nice machine, it was a tool with one purpose. I imagine it was incredibly good at that, too.
I was tight on cash for that trip and this thing was listed at 45,000 yen, which was about $375 at the time. I joked with my friends that it would be well worth it. It would have been difficult to get home due to size and I imagine heft. I would have taken The Device back to our rental house and let it suck the soul out of my body. I would have died on that trip and would have had no regrets.
I went back to the same store earlier this year and the glass case had other things in it, The Device nowhere to be found. Someone bought it, took it home, and was claimed by its power. The shelves of the top floors of that shop are now sleek looking plastic and silicon jerk machines that look very user friendly; exactly what you’d expect from a sex toy. But they are probably nothing compared to The Device.
When the power goes out and that fan stops, it’s the quietest thing you’ve ever imagined. It shouldn’t even be possible. I hate it.
The Karen I grew up around nails the “karen” archetype so perfectly that when people started using the name like that, I immediately understood what they were referring to. It was uncanny.
These years later, even my boomer family all know the reference and agree, regularly point it out to our Karen.
I’m really into JDM cars, which are always interesting to see in America. I had a Toyota AE111 Levin for a few years. Ran into the most unfortunate luck with a large hailstorm and losing my job in the same week. Sold it for a fraction of its value to someone who wanted to fix the hail damage.
That car was the perfect car for my level of skill in performance driving and the style of roads where I live. I’ll never be able to replace that thing.
Big Money Salvia on Internet Comment Etiquette makes full on short films for his ad reads. They are pretty great.
I got a 2008 Dodge Avenger when it was new and immediately hated it. Everything felt cheap, it had absolutely no ability to get up to speed, and felt all around sluggish.
Everything I hated about that Avenger for the 8 years I drove it were nothing compared to the two Dodge Calibers I got to drive in that time. Every bad feature for a car dialed up to 11. Felt like it was built so cheap it could fall apart on the road. My parents and my partner both got one. They were both so, so very bad. It’s unreal that car ever got sold.
If you knew what that one knew, you’d be screaming too.
This is what I was afraid of 15 years ago. I couldn’t tell you the last time I bought a AAA game. This release is so disgusting.
I had my Reddit very heavily curated, my subs were mostly smaller subreddits. I was incredibly active and had my settings so that anything I voted on would not appear on my homepage. I got to see a ton of posts because of that.
Around 2021, I started noticing that reposts weren’t just people coming in and posting things we’ve seen a dozen times because they had no way to know it was a repost. It was bot networks that would take top posts and then other bot accounts would recreate the original post’s comment section. The accounts followed patterns and became really obvious to spot after a while.
The original tells were the bots taking really specific posts that only made sense in that context. Popular post from last Christmas? The bot doesn’t know what Christmas is, sees a popular post from a few months ago and reposts someone happy about their gifts in August. Look at this beautiful picture I took of the summer Alaskan wilderness this morning but it’s February. The photography subreddits were obvious because the bots would rotate the picture a few degrees which would sometimes ruin the picture’s aesthetic.
I’m not sure if it was just me spotting them easier or if they were really ramping up into 2022 but by the time they killed API access and I stopped using it, I think over 80% of posts were bots. Made leaving the site way easier.
I stopped posting but keep the account active because a lot of the Japanese artists I follow have stopped using other sites that were once pretty standard and never moved away from Twitter. There are also some people I don’t want to lose touch with that never moved away.
This story should be done and dusted but these devs keep dredging it up and coming back for more. It’s really astounding.
BALEETED!
White vinegar, run them again. All good.
I’ve always known he was a real ghoul. On his death, I decided to see if Behind the Bastards had an episode on him. Just a few weeks ago, they finished uploading the sixth episode on him of the series. What timing.
I’ve listened to them and wow. Knowing his story kinda makes me lose all hope in the decency of people.
Yay, I’m in bed now! Good thing, I was getting eepy.
An open world, survival, party based rpg. Survival elements are light and focused away from micromanaging every crop placement and every floorboard. Player parties build cities, forts, roads.
It’s like: Minecraft without the block gimmick or detailed building capabilities. Skyrim with more playable characters in a player built world without a set storyline. Valheim without the heavy focus on survival elements or linear progression. Party management and diversity like a tactics RPG.
I’d love it to have several for game loops to bury yourself into. City building, character builds, crafting, gathering…
And multiplayer capable, self hosting if desired.
This is a pipe dream. A game that huge is too difficult to make for a game that wouldn’t have larger appeal.
dBpoweramp. Always worked really well but the UI was weird. It’s bizarre, I have a bunch of CDs I need to rip and was thinking about the topic recently.