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Anomander Anomander @kbin.social
Posts 9
Comments 214
October: kbin.social planned technical outage
  • Any chance that the broken inbox bug is among the things getting fixed by the suite of changes?

  • Game wikis just aren't as popular anymore?
  • I normally hate turning to Youtube when there's a text resource available, but I've definitely found there are some situations where explaining a trick or a location in text is massively harder than just watching someone do it in a video.

  • A is for Amy
  • Not easily - I think that notebook is living at my mum's house, from rather a while ago before I moved out.

    I absolutely can when I am next there and manage to dig it up - I'll try and remember to ping you once that happens.

  • A is for Amy
  • At one point in time I illustrated my own version, I think I made it to like 20 plates out of 26 or so.

    I had to stop working on the project while 'out' at like work or cafes, because people would snoop over my shoulder and then assume that I'm a fucking psycho. When I started the project, I had assumed that it was a relatively common and well-known little picturebook. Turns out no.

  • Baldur’s Gate 3 - Discussion post #1
  • My biggest complaint is that we can’t just let a more appropriate character take over a conversation. One of my clumsy, dim-witted brawler friends runs ahead by one pixel triggering a cutscene, and I can’t jump in mid-conversation to smooth things over with my bardic talent. This is our most common reason for loading a previous save.

    Yeah, we were running into this in my game with my buddy; I'm definitely the dumbass running ahead because I've got stealth and dex for scouting, but invisible cutscene/conversation triggers keep catching us and my dunce of a character gets stuck talking to the punters. It's kind of frustrating that the game encourages players to specialize in that way, but then makes it rather hard to take full advantage of that specialization if you don't set up the encounter absolutely perfectly.

    The other one where that happens is that when a combat encounter ends with dialogue - first Auntie Ethel fight, say - the game picks the character who had the last turn as who Auntie is talking to when the conversation starts. In that case, it's almost always the party member doing big damage that pushed her past the damage threshold, and they're generally not built for talking to people.

    Those get even more frustrating because there's an interface option to swap who's talking, but it doesn't seem to actually work in the majority of important conversations. It's only when talking to filler characters that I can hot-swap who's talking. I'd also love if, in addition to that button working more consistently - it'd tell you if someone in the party has 'unique' dialogue options for that moment. I think that having the whole party participate in conversations is chaotic and hard to implement in multiplayer - but a better capture of how those same interactions 'would' play out in a D&D game.

    Second biggest complaint is the number of things that you can mis-click to destroy your character’s reputation. I’d love to be able to opt-in to an “are you sure” dialog when you accidentally click a random item on the floor while moving around.

    It's very frustrating to get a whole faction pissed at you due to misclicking some 'owned' container or accidentally dragging a barrel. Gith creche was a nightmare for that, because every room and hallway is decorated with owned containers. Some measure to make it harder to accidentally loot someone's mold cheese while they're standing right in front of you would be really valuable.

  • TIL about the scientist who stuck his head in an active particle accelerator and the scientist who accidentally gave himself the wrong STD
  • I'm always so torn on him; he makes interesting videos about compelling topics that are reasonably well researched ... but as nitpicky as it is, I cannot deal with his accent for very long. I'm completely willing to believe it's actually genuine, but it sounds like an American doing a bad impression of a posh British lordling.

  • Messages / Notifications are unreadable - accessing page gives 50X error.
  • Thank you! I wasn't sure it's appropriate to ping ernest - or what the approved bug reporting mechanism was here.

    It may be worth linking to this thread? I think that whatever is going on with the sort-of-deleted-post there is what's causing the inbox errors.


    And thanks!, re the username. It was my handle on Reddit, too, snagged when only like two books in the series were out. At the time it was a couple niche fantasy novels and he was a side character that only appeared briefly in the first book, whose name sounded cool when said out loud. ...Now that the whole series is out, wildly popular, and the character played a massive role, I feel like the kid who picked "superman" as his super-original internet username.

  • Mike Dean admits avoiding VAR call to spare referee more grief [The Guardian]
  • And why on earth would he admit it later??

    Effective journalism. Someone asked him the right question in the right way, and he wound up volunteering something he might not have otherwise chosen to say.

    That said, I think some of this is just reasonable openness and accountability. Given the game was effectively a full year ago and the issues with VAR from that game are still a somewhat spicy topic, it's obviously something he's been questioned on rather a lot - and given that PGMOL also released a statement, and he mentions that he spoke to on-field ref after the game ... it seems like he's already owned that mistake professionally and personally, so making the same acknowledgement of error publicly isn't that huge a step beyond that.

    It was definitely a mistake that the fans deserved an accounting of, considering it's the exact sort of problem that VAR exists to address - and that it should have been a call, of some sort at least, was absolutely undebatable to anyone who'd seen it.

  • My mother-in-law lives with us and has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. We've been dealing with it for about a year but things are progressively getting worse. What are options for care?
  • my family can euthanize me even if I object?

    No.

    There's no law that allows killing of the unwilling; even a living will addressing assisted suicide or euthanization due to incapability assumes that you would still consent at the later date, but lack either physical or intellectual ability to communicate that. If you can clearly communicate that you've changed your mind, they have to respect that, even if that changed mind has reduced capability due to dementia.

    Your best hope would be to go with assisted suicide while you still have enough faculties to make the decision and execute on your portions of the act.

  • Relationship Mechanics Work Because The Game's Creatives Value Human Complexities
  • Just 2 of those would be fine, maybe 3, but 4 really pushes it.

    Yeah. Like, I get that having a little harem of named followers all lusting after the MC slightly is ... the sort of RP fantasy that some people want. I appreciate that Larian put that option in the game - and the ol' "horny bard" trope absolutely comes from very real players wanting to be sexually attractive and competent in their escapist fantasy game. I get that. It's just not my vibe.

    As someone who doesn't play games for romantic fantasy fulfillment - my biggest gripe with BG3 is that it feels like characters I like hanging out with have no concept of "we are friends" without suggesting romance is a logical next step, and are at incel levels of checking if maybe I've reconsidered and we can bang now?

    Which also makes the fact that a lot of companion conversations feel like a minefield of "oops actually romance" dialogue options even more frustrating. I'm having a blast RPing an older dude who had a nice settled life prior to the Leech and just wants to get back home and put his feet up, but I've chosen a few response options I thought were just snarky or jokes and ... oh wait, we're being romantic now. Goddamn it, F8.

  • The breakout song by an artist who goes by Oliver Anthony laid the groundwork to open the first Republican presidential debate for the 2024 election. But the song has notes of conspiracy theories.
  • Also, on the subject of this song being “breakout/viral” - how hard is it to manipulate streaming numbers?

    It's seemed like the numbers there are 'semi-'manipulated in the way that Kpop can be - hugely inflated by deliberate rewatching and multi-platform streaming, but by individuals who genuinely want the song to do well, rather than bots or purchased fake stats.

    It's really seemed like 'the right' sees Oliver Anthony as "their guy" and rallied behind him and his song in order to push it up the charts as an imagined way of 'owning the libs' - and I think OA's industry backing worked hard to seed that narrative among those circles in order to elicit that sort of boosterism from them.

  • 8-24-23 www.thefarside.com
  • Oh yeah, for sure. The spectacle and near-'festival' atmosphere around the capture, trial, and execution of notable criminals of the era absolutely lionized the criminal in many cases.

    There was also some amount of ghoulish fascination with particularly macabre crimes and criminals as well, but The State was already very close to being the bad guy for the average bloke in that era, so criminals whose acts were relatable, daring, or 'noble' somehow also were turned into backalley heroes via the spectacle of their trial and execution.

  • What's your snowflake stats for the day?
  • There's the necessary info, thank you! - I've heard horror stories about hosting exit nodes, and was immediately spooked this would result in the same issues.

  • Messages / Notifications are unreadable - accessing page gives 50X error.
  • As confession, I don't actually know where or how to go about doing that.

  • Some lessons are timeless.
  • I really enjoyed some darker content in terms of establishing that humans aren't always the good, wise, enlightened people of the galaxy, consistently The Good Guys in nearly every encounter.

    But shifting to that "oh there's a dark side to all the optimism" as the consistent ongoing tone for the show rings wrong as much as the always good guys tone did with older trek.

  • Raccoons are masters of stealth and staying hidden!
  • Little guy is damn near a sphere.

  • pro strats
  • No it's still against the rules. Ref will just happen to not notice it, though. Which is definitely unrelated and totally coincidental.

  • what messaging app you have quit and rejoined?
  • Yeah, I had to un-quit Whatsapp when my siblings-in-law moved to Argentina - because Whatsapp is the main communication platform for a lot of Argentina and that's where all the various family chats moved to once the in-laws no longer had local phone numbers or reliable SMS service.

  • pro strats
  • For a more values-based interpretation - players have to keep the ball 'in play' in a way that the other team can interact with, without posing a danger to the player(s) on your team.

    As in this case the play is either unstoppable, or requires the other team to somehow extract the ball from between two players' chests, it's a fun theoretical loophole - but is not a fun or safe way of playing football if it became a commonplace strategy. In most cases, this would be seen as daring dangerous play - either the other team needs to kick it free, or jostle the players until they drop the ball, both of which are taking pretty significant risks of injury.

  • 'You're not helping': Residents of B.C.'s Shuswap urged to stop seizing firefighting equipment
  • The person you're responding to is basically making the, "steal a loaf of bread to feed your family" argument. It's complicated by the fact that loaf of bread was already reserved for saving others,

    That's a spurious argument here, though. This is like not buying groceries for two months, having the cash to buy groceries, then stealing a loaf of bread to feed the family.

    These people shouldn't be there, they're on evacuation order, and they have safe routes to leave. Not one of their lives is in danger that they haven't chosen. But they did choose - to put their property ahead of their own lives, and in stealing fire equipment they're putting their own property ahead of the lives of fire response teams and ahead of all the other properties in the same area. They're willing to have the whole neighborhood burn around them, to cut off safe evacuation routes, all to try and save their own home.

    but it's stupid to act like they're a deranged person without a point.

    They're engaging in sophistry and misrepresenting the situation to try and make hindering firefighting efforts into something personally justifiable. It isn't.

  • /kbin meta @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    Messages / Notifications are unreadable - accessing page gives 50X error.

    I have two unread messages I can't access, as going to the notifications page results in a 50x error every time.

    Has anyone else encountered this, or know of a fix?

    ---

    This seems related to having left a comment, that got replied to, on a post that Kbin sees as "deleted\_by\_author" - after deletion, no comments are visible on the Kbin post.

    The original post on Lemmy appears intact, while the version on Kbin is empty. Navigating to my own comment there is a blank result, but if I navigate via the 'reply' function it's still available.

    If Kbin is trying to load a reply it also believes does not exist, that may be breaking things - but it leaves my notification box permanently broken because there's no way to 'clear' that paradox post from the listing.

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    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    Coffee News from July 2023

    Coffee News from July 2023

    \#Specialty News & Events

    Sprudge: Estimates say $450 Million in Annual Investments needed for coffee’s long-term survival.

    This is per this report from World Coffee Research, who are estimating the total costs for successful projects to conserve coffee’s indigenous biodiversity and to support coffee farmers adapting to climate change. Current investment is about $115M, mainly sourced from Public Sector funding.

    Roaster of the Year underway

    Roast Magazine’s “Roaster of the Year” competition applications closed July 26.

    Good luck to all applicants; this is generally the preeminent annual roasting competition for the worlds’ coffee roasters, and competition is stiff each and every year. The race to select 2024’s best roasters should be just as heated.

    US Coffee Champs announces qualifier circuit locations for 2024.

    Pretty much like the title says - regional qualifier dates & hosts have been announced on the Coffee Championships website. Some big names hosting - and a few hosts in there that I’ve never heard of.

    NCA calls for submissions

    The National Coffee Association is calling for presenter and program applications for the 2024 NCA Educational Program.

    The NCA’s 2024 convention will be taking place March 7 - 9, 2024 in Nashville, TN. This is one of the larger coffee events not strictly within the SCA umbrella, and the 2024 event is themed around “fuelling the future” - a look forward in the industry.

    California Energy Commission provides $1.8M grant towards Bellwether Purchases

    Per Daily Coffee News, it’s reported that Red Bay and Heirloom coffee received a total of $1.8 million towards the purchase of 24 new Bellwether machines to replace traditional natural gas roasters, as part of incentive programs towards phasing out gas.

    Personal commentary - that money would have been far more efficiently spent simply buying conventional electric roasters. Both by the roasters and by the grant organization. Spending money on multiple small-capacity roasters instead of a few large capacity roasters is always inefficient, and Bellwether even more so their whole gimmick is adding a lot of VC techbro bullshit on top of a relatively small-capacity electric roaster.

    \#Gear

    Blue Bottle Kicks

    Bit of a stretch as far as “gear,” but New Balance has released Blue Bottle sneakers

    Business News

    Keurig Dr. Pepper buys minority stake in La Colombe

    Like it says on the can, La Colombe is the latest NA Specialty OG to take the bargain with Big Corporate - to the tune of a $300 million cash injection, KDP will own 33% of the company pending regulatory approval. It’s unlikely to be disapproved.

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    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    2024 Preliminaries Hosts Announced — U.S. Coffee Championships

    uscoffeechampionships.org 2024 Preliminaries Hosts Announced! — U.S. Coffee Championships

    We are thrilled to unveil the dates and locations for the 2024 US Preliminary Competitions! The U.S. Coffee Championship Preliminary competitions are a celebration of passion for coffee competitions, empowering local communities to organize and host official USCC events. Following application and r

    2024 Preliminaries Hosts Announced! — U.S. Coffee Championships

    US Coffee Champs qualifier circuit for 2024 has been announced.

    Aug 25-27: San Diego, CA, Talitha Coffees – Barista, CIGS Aug 25-27: Houston, TX, Blendin Coffee Club – Roasters Sep 1-3: Houston, TX, Luce Coffee Roasters – Barista Sep 8-10: Tulsa, OK, Origin Coffee Company – Barista, Cup Tasters Sep 15-17: Newark, NJ, Redhouse Roasters – Latte Art Sep 29-Oct 1: Kansas City, MO, Messenger Coffee and The Roasterie – Brewers Cup, Roasters, CIGS Oct 6-8: Raleigh, NC, Black & White Coffee Roasters – Barista, Brewers Cup Oct 13-15: Essex, VT, Uncommon Coffee – Barista Oct 13-15: Burlington, VT, Brio Coffeeworks – Cup Tasters Oct 13-15: Kailua, HI – Hawaii Coffee Association – Brewers Cup, Roasters Oct 13-15: Dallas, TX, White Rhino Coffee – Latte Art, Cup Tasters Oct 20-22: Los Angeles, CA, Counter Culture Coffee – Brewers Cup

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    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    Application are now open for Roaster of the Year Award 2024 - deadline is Jul 26.

    www.roastmagazine.com Roaster of the Year Award — Roast Magazine

    The Roaster of the Year Award recognizes the top roasters in the world. The competition is fierce and draws applications from every part of the globe. Could you be our next Roaster of the Year?

    The Roaster of the Year Award recognizes the top roasters in the world. The competition is fierce and draws applications from every part of the globe.

    The competition has two categories:

    Micro Roaster Category Roasters who roast less than 100,000 lbs per year

    Macro Roaster Category Roasters who roast more than 100,000 lbs per year

    This is a self-applied competition - roasters interested should apply for and submit themselves, there's not generally a fan write-in category or assessment.

    Edited for correction: this is the 2024 competition year, not the 2023. The 2023 competition was decided in December 2022, and chose Rabbit Hole Roasters for micro scale, and Cafe Kreyol for macro scale.

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    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    What's your own personal Specialty Coffee act of heresy?

    Specialty coffee has it's own wild suite of dogmas and rules; there's all sorts of things we're "supposed" to do - or not. Many of these have all sorts of very good reasons and even some have scientific backing.

    But we all have one or two we absolutely deviate from, despite all that. What's yours?

    3
    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    What's the biggest detour you've made for coffee?

    Having just clocked out of a meeting and sprinted like four blocks to go buy a bag of coffee; it got me wondering ... Good coffee can be hard to come by and I'll take for granted a detour that most of the world would see as hilariously unreasonable. Who else?

    How far - time or distance - have you gone out of your way just to get that specific cuppa or to pick up beans from a specific company?

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    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    Hoffmann - Too Many Coffee Creamers: A Taste Test

    Video Description: Just a little fun exploring the unknown (to me, anyway) world of coffee creamers. When did it get so weird?! No links to products on this one, but many thank...

    ---

    Our lad James explores coffee creamers.

    0
    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    Coffee News from June 2023

    A summary of some major high points; not comprehensive - but the stories that seemed particularly important.

    Specialty Events & News

    World of Coffee Athens ran June 22-24; in (unsurprisingly) Athens, Greece.

    Winners of Coffee Champs Athens decided

    Boram Um of Brazil became the 23rd World Barista Champion - congrats to him! Second ever from South America. 4 days of competition across 127 competitors, the National champions of each participating nation.

    Carlos Medina of Chile took the top spot in the World Brewers Cup Championship; Young Baek of Australia is the new World Cup Tasters champion; and Pierre de Chanterac of France won the 2023 Cezve/Ibrik title.

    World of Coffee confirms 2024 Dates

    Copenhagen, Denmark from 27 to 29 June 2024, Dubai, United Arab Emirates from 21 to 23 January 2024, Busan, Korea from 1 to 4 May 2024.

    SCA Expo 2024 booked for Chicago Thu Apr 11th - Sun 14th

    https://sprudge.com/coffee-value-assessment-exploring-the-scas-new-tool-for-coffee-evaluation-209528.html

    The tool itself was launched in April at Expo Portland, but I think this overview of how the tool functions and some of the intent behind it is a valuable exploration of how and why this works.

    New Goods

    Cropster BrewBeacon + Cafe

    https://www.cropster.com/products/brewbeacon/ & https://www.cropster.com/products/cafe/

    Seems like cropster is moving it's tools into brewing spaces; the BrewBeacon is the tool, Cafe is the service - they're both aimed at providing the same analytics and data to a cafe brewing setting as Cropster offers to roasting. Not sure if the payoff is really there, but time will tell.

    Fellow Tally / Store page Scale that auto-calcs ratio and offers several different brewing modes. Ships 7/10. Launched completely normally and without crowdfunding, thankfully.

    Aeropress Huge

    Aeropress has finally launched the XL, the large version everyone really wanted like five years ago. It has unfortunately got negligible press and seems like it’s probably missed the hype window for this launch to do numbers.

    Rancilio Bond Announced

    Rancilio announces launch of Rancilio Bond, a commercial grinder that aims to try and cover some of the hassle of dialling in, their first grind-by-weight machine. The sensor and adjustment system is also set up to auto-adjust based on metrics from Rancilio espresso machines with similar sensor and communications systems. Ideally it seems to offer limited auto-dial, if you purchase the package deal.

    General News

    [Starbucks faces strike over forced removal of pride-related decorations.] (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/23/starbucks-strike-pride-decorations-ban)

    This winds up being kind of a no-win for Corporate, in that they’re going to get complaints for having pride decor, but get complaints for not having pride decor - but beyond that, like seen in this story, they also need to keep in mind that their staff will overwhelmingly trend in one specific direction on the issue.

    Specialty Coffee OG Anodyne bought by FairWave collective, terms seem to include a part-ownership clause for Anodyne leadership as well as assuring autonomy.

    Collectivization like this may be a solid way for Specialty companies to compete against the economies of scale that larger chains can muster - but it’s also a step into the Beer direction, where the majority of “independent” small breweries are actually semi-independent subsidiaries of the Big Three of AB InBev, SAB Miller, MolsonCoors.

    0
    Coffee @kbin.social Anomander @kbin.social

    What are your Top Three best roasters in your region?

    Where are you located, and who are your go-to success roasters within the area?

    What do you like about them - and are there any stand-out offerings you'd recommend?

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