There was a few years where I pretty much only used Flatpaks because I was scared of the terminal. But now that I’ve learned how to use the terminal, it’s so much more convenient because I can quickly update all my applications all in one place without having to open a separate app. Plus, some Flatpaks can fall really behind on software updates.

There might be a Linux userbase someday where no one other than developers actually knows how to use the terminal, because users can run everything they want without a command line, but maybe that’s actually a good thing because it’ll drive up how many people use a Linux distro.

With Windows and Mac, there’s a shareholder incentive to enshittify. With Linux, if a distro goes bad and gets commercialized, there’s always another distro people can move to, not to mention there’s no financial incentive. The more people get on Linux, the less power these tech companies have. Personally, that and privacy are what drew me to Linux much more so than being able to tinker or fine-tune my experience.

Fairphone has been a really disappointing experiment in so-called sustainable tech over the years. They keep making new phones instead of continuing to support the old ones, which might be greenwashing. (Whereas if you got a legacy Framework 13, it’s still user-repairable and upgradable.) If they wanted to make a non-upgradable device, maybe it would have been wise to make it high-end to futureproof to work until 4G gets phased out. Fairphone still is not making their products available in the U.S., and Murena is a borderline scam company and I am genuinely shocked Fairphone works with them.

And I’ve heard their logic with the headphone jack, but I do think AUX is the lesser of two evils as removing it will just lead to more e-waste with broken bluetooth headphones that rarely last as long as good wired ones. Fairphone’s own bluetooth accessories have gotten negative reviews for their lower build quality, so Fairbuds are likely not the solution to the headphone jack problem.

For the simple fact that non-Europeans can buy them directly off the website, I would sooner recommend feature phones from Sunbeam as it also has user-replaceable batteries and you can send it in for repairs. Or just any phone used.

I personally prefer story over gameplay, but to each their own.

I mean, looking on the bright side: Even the Federation universe had to go through two civil wars, World War III, and the eugenics war to get to where they ended up.

Can I ask what you’re doing to act? I don’t mean it as a gotcha question, I’m actually curious. Because I don’t know what the heck to do other than protest and vote.

Which, in one sense, is definitely cool. I get the impression that Super Metroid is a game with tons of replay value that encourages playing it in a different way each time.

In another way, to make this happen, I didn’t think it was very fun for first-time players. Bomb jumping is kind of an awkward mechanic and harder to pull off than in Zero Mission, and finding upgrades seemed to rely more on pulling off complex techniques with perfect timing. I don’t remember ever being required to wall jump in Zero Mission or 2. There’s so many beginner’s traps too, with the one-way doors and the noob bridge. In Zero Mission, I felt like upgrades were more clearly telegraphed to the player, so you could get more of them without using a guide. In Super, it’s a lot of bombing random walls and stuff, and the X-Ray Scope feels really limited.

If I got stuck, it would be difficult to consult guides, because many writers seemed to put sequence breaks into the walkthrough as opposed to a “natural” playthrough.

While it might be true that Dread has a lot of “hand-holding” (I don’t know because I haven’t played it yet), part of me wonders if that criticism comes from experienced players who want a harder challenge than Super that lean even farther into advanced-level techniques. I guess I’ll find out when I play it.

I have to use a printer for my work-from-home job. If you just buy a Brother laserjet printer and avoid other brands and inkjets, it’s way more affordable. It costs more up front, but they’re reliable and don’t need to be replaced every year. My printer cost $250 and I’ve had it for at least five years at this point.

I came of age during the PS3 era and the Indie Game Revolution, where people were debating on whether video games could be art, so I personally can’t help but prefer when games have storytelling and ludonarrative and lore.

But for many people, Super Metroid’s lack of a plot will be a draw and not a drawback, and that’s cool. I’d actually really love a new nonlinear Metroid game in the vein of Super someday, and perhaps this time it wouldn’t take place on the planet Zebes.

I have AM2R archived on my computer. I’m very excited to try it!

When I called Zero Mission an asset flip, I was trying to steelman a potenial opposing point in favor of Super. I may not have been successful at this. And I myself don’t actually see it as an asset flip – I loved Zero Mission.

Oh, thank goodness.

It’s incredible that millions of people showed up and pretty much none of them feel for Donald Trump’s trap that would have, to the MAGA Republicans, justified martial law and the suspension of liberties.

I’m pretty solidly convinced the protest was a good thing and that we won this battle.

That is exactly why the midterms will be so important, not to mention the next presidential election. We need to keep the momentum going for a blue wave, and this protest may have helped with that.

When that fails, when Democrats lose voting rights, when Trump pardons the Minnesota assassin to effectively legalize political violence against MAGA’s enemies, when all peaceful options for democracy have been exhausted, then let’s talk about the violent revolution. Until then, there’s no reason to be a buzzkill about this protest.

The fact that No Kings was nonviolent was perfect, for now, because trying to riot or a coup would have just enabled MAGA to justify state-sanctioned violence of their own.

13 was a lot like 6 in that her expanded universe material is way, way better than her TV episodes. Seriously, if you haven’t read “Star Tales,” it has some of the most amazing Doctor Who stories ever, especially the one with Elvis, which made me weep.

And The Witchfinders has an amazing novelization that really dives into gender roles much deeper than the episode itself, thanks to 13’s inner monologue.

And the Doctor Who fanzine “More of the Universe” adds tons of stories that fix Thasmin, and it was endorsed by Jodie herself.

Chibnall is just really bad at writing the character, in my opinion.

I watched his era years after everyone else did. Matt Smith had an amazing first episode with really defined quirky characterization. Then his next few episodes, he’s mostly just angry and shouting at everyone, and all of that fun eccentric energy just goes away. During that part of series 5, I was calling him the “Gordon Ramsay” Doctor.

After that, his characterization just felt really inconsistent and all over the place, to the point where he felt like three different characters inelegantly melded into one. It’s way harder to get a read on his overall personality than every other Doctor, and I need to rewatch to make sense of his very disparate psyches and emotional responses to things.

By series 6, the show fell victim to a “mystery box” writing style where Moffat seemed to be making it up as he went along. Much like Sherlock, he was also constantly teasing Tumblr theorists to the detriment of the writing…

He also unlearns a lot of the Tenth Doctor’s lessons with little to no commentary or repercussions.

I spent his entire era craving the consistent characteristics I saw in The Eleventh Hour and rarely getting that. Exceptions: Amy’s Choice, The Lodger, Night Terrors, Closing Time, and his finale were all fantastic Eleventh Doctor episodes, and if he had depicted like that in every episode, he’d be my favorite.

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It’s a complex issue for sure, but I’m really proud of this thread for consistently using the term “trans women” when talking about the differences between trans women compared to cis women and cis men in sports.

On Reddit, most people on this debate just say “biological males,” “males,” or “men” in situations where they’re clearly talking about trans women, which is a clear tell that it was never about fairness in sports for them.

Hey, got any grapes?

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I’m trans and I see where you’re coming from. I was boycotting the game ahead of launch because I didn’t want to support J.K. Rowling, who has based her career off of making our lives harder.

But…it’s been two years. We lost the battle. The boycott led to the Streisand effect and the game sold insanely well. Trans people got a ton of negative press converage. We were all made out to be intolerant and cruel because one trans person said something that made the GirlfriendReviews lady cry. It seemed like after that, GamerGate 2 went into effect and so many games with diversity are getting preemptively reviewbombed, like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, leading to layoffs and shuttered development teams, while games like Black Myth Wukong with a known sexist director are insanely popular.

Hogwarts Legacy seems like such a small issue now. Now it’s 2025 and we’re quickly losing all our rights in an ongoing Constitutional crisis. These days, while I’d prefer if cis people buy the game used and add disclaimers to the posts they make about it, I’m too exhausted to care about the Wizard game and who chooses to play it.