You may enjoy perusing the various winners of the Ig Nobel Prize.

Some fantastic stuff in there.

Is it worth the effort? Do they have anything better to do? I’d say the answer to both of those is “maybe”.

I personally enjoy these wild kinds of studies and hope they never stop.

I think I might play the Tomb Raider Legend/Anniversary/Underworld trilogy. Just to get ready for the I - III remasters.

As much as I enjoy the newer trilogy, I really miss old campy Lara. The fun adventures that don’t take themselves too seriously.

Edit: Man, I forgot how finicky the controls of these games can be.

Edit 2: No, seriously, fuck these controls. Anniversary feels like a nightmare to play. Legend had its control problems, but at least there wasn’t platforming in literally every room. I can appreciate that it’s got waaaaay more puzzles (I mean, it’s a remake of the original), but that doesn’t matter if the controls make the puzzles unnecessarily frustrating.

Annoying and painful. Too much to go into, but basically, my muscles seem to have a vendetta against me.

Also, I think my psych meds aren’t working right anymore. I’m beginning to experience anxieties that I haven’t had for well over a decade. Something’s off. Need to figure that shit out.

Otherwise, all is good, I guess. I think I’ve come to also realize why metal calms me the fuck down. Like, for a lot of people it’s energetic, but it brings me peace.

Didn’t really know why until I posted that Power Rangers theme on here yesterday. Went and listened to a few cartoon themes from the stuff I watched when I first fell in love with TV and especially animation. Half of them are straight up fucking metal. SWAT Kats (which had two equally badass themes), Biker Mice From Mars, etc.

I would rent SWAT Kats and Power Rangers on VHS as if they were fucking core foods I couldn’t survive without.

I think that’s why it brings me comfort. Psychologically, it’s kind of the first music genre I have associated with enjoyable experiences.

Whoa, I completely forgot about that. I was just on a Dio kick yesterday and ended up posting a few songs.

Sorry about that! Didn’t mean to repost.

Yeah, even when it comes to Dio (the band) and Sabbath, this is probably one of my favorite songs with him on vocals.

Stargazer, this, and Egypt (The Chains Are On) from The Last in Line also work well as a kind of unofficial “trilogy” due to their lyrical themes and general sound, blending in synths and guitar with some Middle Eastern influences.

I also really like Yngwie’s cover as well.

I don’t know, man.

Weird. Brains are just fucking weird.

Eternity (formerly Infinity) and Sync.

Both have options for filtering, thankfully.

Lol, I forgot how busy this instance can be because I blocked both of the news communities last year (and I think one or two others, but I can’t remember which and don’t care enough to look) and set up keyword filters in my app to never see posts with certain words or phrases in their title.

Thanks to that, the majority of my experience isn’t particularly negative. Admittedly, there’s a lot less content, but I don’t really care all that much.

Nah, nowhere near as bad as the psycho billionaires. Doesn’t seem to actually have much controversy at all, other than spending a fortune on yachts and using them for celebrity parties.

Outside of that, he seemed to be pretty reclusive and contributed a lot of funding to the arts, conservation, and scientific research.

I think him being a musician did actually impact things positively. Maybe the knowledge that art can bring people together helped, I don’t know. Then again, I don’t know what he was like in person, but he seems relatively “normal” for a billionaire.

Not the level of Chuck Feeney, but still okay.

Just had a thought … egotistical billionaries … do any of them have any musical background? Like, do they play instruments at all?

Paul Allen (of Microsoft, not American Psycho) was a pretty good guitarist. Picked one up at sixteen after listening to Hendrix, so played for most of his life.

Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name is what I consider quintessential Maiden. Everything from Harris’ bass to Dickinson’s incredible vocals.

While I was initially going to put Black Sabbath (the song) here as well, I think War Pigs is far better option.

The composition, the lyrics, Ozzy’s voice, and every instrument feeling distinct and getting its own little bit of spotlight. It’s just a fantastic song in so many respects.

There are a few others, but I’m just sticking with those two for now.

After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login.

Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.

Not on my computer at the moment, so I can’t remember the exact packages you might need, but if I recall, they should be plymouth-themes and kde-config-plymouth (so that you can choose the splash screen theme in your system settings). You can also find other themes online, but I forgot the name of that website where all the stuff is. Pling? I think it’s that.

Anyway, once you have the themes installed, you need to sudo edit /etc/default/grub and append "quiet splash" (with the quotes) to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= (“quiet” might already be there).

You can also change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT= in that file to whatever your preference might be for the duration of grub’s boot menu, but there might be other things you need to adjust in order to hide it completely and still be able to access it if necessary.

After that, run sudo update-grub so that it’s using the new config and choose whichever theme you want in the system settings.

Alternatively, grub-customizer is a GUI app that you can install to do all of the above (which will also update grub when you save your changes). Just don’t touch anything that’s not relevant. Stick to just the duration of the grub boot menu and add the splash parameter. Ignore boot priority, etc.

It should feel less “slow” to start up once all that’s sorted.

It’s also for Debian Stable/Testing users who only have ESR in their repos.

You can set up APT pinning and pull it from Sid, but I prefer not to fuck with official repos other than Backports. Even then, only if I really need to.

Yeah, Kubuntu’s fine. It has some of the Snap stuff, but the “minimal install” greatly strips down unnecessary bullshit to the point where I even find vanilla Debian Plasma to be more bloated in comparison.

I used Kubuntu for most of my time on Linux before switching to Debian. Still fully recommend it as a basically “plug and play” distro with a quick installer that works OOTB.

There’s also a KDE-specific backports PPA which gets you new Plasma and Qt stuff fairly quickly, but that works best on regular releases rather than LTS releases. (The only issue is that, because it uses Launchpad, the Plasma updates can be super fucking slow to download, regardless of your network speed).

Then again, if someone’s going to be using LTS versions only, there’s not really that much of a difference between it and Debian Stable in terms of DE updates.

Tried out Palworld a couple of days ago on Game Pass.

Not really my thing. People focused on the monster catching “Pokémon with guns” stuff, but it’s still a survival/crafting/building game at its core, and I rarely ever enjoy those (there are like three exceptions total). Glad other people are enjoying it, though.

Might go back and replay Cassette Beasts at some point. Also, buy the deluxe edition with the DLC and all (I know it’s small and short, but I don’t mind) because the devs deserve every cent. Soundtrack as well, because it’s fucking awesome.

Kind of funny how I never cared about “catching 'em all” when it came to any of the Pokémon games, but I was more than happy to record everything in CB given the right motivation.

EDIT: Yeah, Cassette Beasts has been fun again. Also, I really like the DLC monsters. It is short, but it’s still a fun little experience. Started a new run with randomised monster locations and types and it feels like a different game entirely. Had to try a few times due to RNG fucking me on the first two runs, but third one is going well so far (although I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to Telekitty not being lightning).

This, basically.

Up until yesterday, I was doing better, but last two days have been weird.

It’d be nice if I get a full week of “chill” at some point. Well, “chill” as in “good vibes”, not the weather that some of you in the northern hemisphere are dealing with (although, it’s surprisingly cold where I am today, despite it being the middle of summer).

Also, I’m sick of searching for headphones. Like legitimately tired of it. I don’t need perfect, but I need a good compromise between comfort and sound that I can vibe with, which seems to be fucking impossible for me. Probably because of sensory issues, but also because everyone hears shit differently, so reviews are generally pointless.

Edit, 11 hours later: Lol, I feel okay now. Think I just woke up to a bunch of bullshit. Gonna go watch some Sonic Prime and hopefully get a decent rest after that.

I expect Elder Scrolls VI to be similarly received. Although, it seems that after Starfield, people are definitely beginning to temper their expectations of the new TES game.

Also announced far too early and it’ll probably only start major development later this year once the Starfield DLC is out (at best), and that’ll last for about four years, but more likely somewhere around five, which means it’ll probably be released about five to six years from now, which is… At least 11 years after announcing it (2018) and a full 18+ years after Skyrim.

Someone could literally have been born after Skyrim and begun college by the time TES VI is released. It’s fucking wild.

But movie streaming is a HOT MESS right now. I looked up the X-Men movie franchise the other day for some reason. No joke, it’s split across 3 or 4 different streaming services!

Dunkey made a pretty hilarious video about this a few days ago.

The Pokémon bit was especially funny.

Tell your friends I fucking loved their game and can never go back to Pokémon again because they’ve absolutely spoiled me.

Also, tell them 70% of my time ended up with me playing as Khufo and using Wonderful 7 far, far too much. Love that design (I didn’t even realise it wasn’t the default Allseer transformation until I looked online later).

I finished Cassette Beasts a couple of days ago and now I can never go back to Pokémon.

I honestly can’t sing its praises enough.

Don’t even know if I can play any other monster tamers now. Still, I might pick up Coromon and/or Nexomon: Extinction or something else at some point, but man, Cassette Beasts absolutely spoiled me.

Highly recommend to anyone who’d like some chill vibes (with some dark moments to make for good contrast) and no significant stress in terms of strategy. Like, yeah, it technically matters when it comes to type advantages, but sometimes it’s just fun to fuck around and see what fusions you can come up with, regardless of type.

Oh, and if you like games where you aren’t restricted to gender norms and can romance anyone of any gender, also a good option.

I feel like if you enjoyed the vibe of games like Stardew Valley or Spiritfarer or (going old school here) Chrono Trigger, you’ll probably enjoy this, even if the gameplay is entirely different.

Honestly, even if you enjoy Pokémon but might be sick of it for whatever reason, it’s a nice change of pace as well. It has enough in common to feel familiar, but sets itself apart in a bunch of ways which make it stand entirely on its own.

Music is also great, though you might get sick of one song that repeats. And repeats. And repeats.