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Egyptian languages and linguistics
2019.12.16 21:43 Osarnachthis Egyptian languages and linguistics
A place for all things related to the ancient Egyptian languages. All stages: Old, Middle, Late, Demotic, and Coptic. All scripts: Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Abnormal Hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic.
2013.12.10 09:18 UntrueAlpacaFacts Bad Gifts
Is someone in your family terrible at buying gifts? Share the story here!
2024.06.01 15:24 donnerdogdays Help me find something similar or a cheaper dupe?
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2024.06.01 15:24 LordChozo Chronicles of a Prolific Gamer - May 2024
May got out to a lightning start for me, continuing the torrid April pace for a while before cooling off a bit in the back end of the month. That's partially by design, as I jumped into a pair of longer games (one enormously so) which I won't finish until deeper into June, but I've also noticed I'm slowly bleeding gaming time from my evenings. As my kids get incrementally older and the days grow incrementally longer entering summer, an hour that would previously be my own is now deferred to them, and that adds up over the course of an entire month.
Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
Coming in June:
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Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
- I've had less time for PC gaming lately for a couple of different reasons, but I'm expecting that to be a temporary thing, and I don't think I'm in danger of failing to finish Mass Effect 3 by the end of June. I didn't realize the version of the game I had included all the DLC. Nor did I actually know what any of the DLC was. So I was quite a ways into the game and feeling great about my progress when I got suspicious that the section I was playing wasn't actually base game content. I looked it up and found that, in fact, about 90% of what I'd played to date was DLC and I'd barely actually started the base game itself. That explains why the main story was taking a while to get off the ground, at any rate.
- Speaking of getting off the ground, my journey through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom began impatiently a few months after release, but I took an extended break from the game and have now spent pretty much all of May continuing my thorough trek through the game world. I'm well over 200 hours into the game and am only several days away from having explored the entirety of the game's map. At which point I believe I'll finally advance the main quest past its initial stage.
- In my review for Rogue Legacy 2 above I mentioned the Castlevania franchise, which I feel I can speak to as a whole given that I've finished nearly every game in the series to date. Unsurprisingly I felt most drawn to the metroidvania style games, so there was a layer of disappointment in exhausting the last of those to discover. Disappointment that will soon be temporarily eradicated when I boot up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, produced by that same creative mind.
- And more...
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2024.06.01 15:14 RyanMorholt Forest Grove Settlers: First Day Fallout Fan Fiction - A Short Story
“I told you there would be nothing in that military check point,” Barrett said. He cleaned his hands from bloodbug residue. “Only abandoned cars and empty cigarette machines.”
“Okay, I was wrong!” Simon admitted. “Is it my fault that I have hope?”
“No one ever knows out here,” Kevin chimed in.
Simon affectionally grabbed his youngest brother by the shoulder.
“See, Barrett, this is what a supportive brother sounds like.”
Barrett grunted.
The three brothers continued to follow the broken asphalt road. In time, the sky above them disappeared behind the ruins of an interstate highway. Its massive concrete columns towered over the horizon. It had cast a long shadow over their route.
Kevin stopped his brothers.
“Is that an elevator?” He pointed to the yellow cable lift that ran up to the overpass.
“I’m not using that,” Barrett quickly responded. He touched his stomach unconsciously, cognizant of his size and weight.
“Yeah, that might be an adventure for another life time,” Simon said, noting the precariousness of the cables that rose up to the ruins of the highway overpass.
Kevin pursed his lips with a modicum of disappointment. As the youngest and smallest of the three, he possessed more daring than his brothers combined. Perhaps this difference was due to the inexperience of his age or the simple fact that Kevin had a different mother than Barrett and Simon. His courage may have been a genetic inheritance that the others lacked.
“House!” Simon spotted the wooden building before his brothers, who still focused on the elevator and the possibility of ascending it.
“Let me guess, there’s going to be treasure inside of it,” Barrett said sarcastically.
“There could be!” Simon replied.
As the young men approached the building, it became apparent it had been apart of a long abandoned settlement. From their higher-ground perspective, they could see the ruins of several buildings roll down the landscape and into the consuming waters of the Charles River. The houses closest to the river had flooded and slowly rotted in the river’s murky water.
“We got a lot of work to do,” Barrett said. His siblings could hear the smile in his words. They knew that there would be at least one piece of worthwhile loot among these buildings. Barrett, however, wanted more than the natural greed of survival. The big man itched for a real fight.
“Raiders, Ghouls, or Mirelurks,” Kevin asked.
“Five caps on raiders,” Barrett said. His hand dropped to the pipe pistol holstered to his thigh.
“Five for mirelurks,” Simon said.
“I guess, I take ghouls.”
The three men moved closer to the first building. The residence, once a beautiful suburban home, had decayed over the two hundred and twenty years since its owners died in the nuclear fallout. Yet, despite the age of home, its door seemed to have been freshly repaired.
Simon, as per usual, approached the entrance with military tact. Barrett positioned himself behind his older brother. He placed one hand on Simon’s shoulder and the other around his pipe pistol. Kevin checked their flank and readied his pipe rifle.
Simon lifted his hand. He counted silently with his fingers.
One. Two. Three.
He grabbed the door and yanked it open. Barrett entered the building, his pipe pistol scanning the interior of the house.
“Clear!”
Simon followed Barrett. Kevin slowly backed into the building. He closed the door behind him.
“Stairs,” Barrett said to his brothers.
Immediately, the big man took the lead, scanning the floor above him with his pistol at eye-level. Simon followed in the wake of his larger brother, keeping his eyes straight to the top of the landing. Kevin stayed on the first floor. He found a corner, pressed his back into it, and crouched. He kept his eye on the front door.
“Clear!” Barrett’s voice rang through the structure.
“Nothing for nobody,” Kevin said, standing from his position and letting his rifle hang limply in his hands. He thought at least one ghoul would be hiding in the house. Their fraternal bottlecap wager would have to wait another house.
“Cheer up! Better luck in the next building.” Simon said as he walked down the stairs. “Right now, we have some time to loot.”
The brothers began the careful examination of the residential building.
Despite two centuries of rain and snow the building seemed to be in good condition. Clearly, since the bombs fell, a series of squatters had made improvements and adjustments over the years. In fact, the house seemed almost luxurious compared to the standards of the Wasteland. The floors had been redone with new planks of wood. The walls had been scraped of their original wallpaper and painted a light seafoam green. Although the glass from the windows had been long destroyed, curtains hung over the wooden shutters that secured the windows from the exterior world.
“Ooo!” Barrett exclaimed upstairs.
“What’d you find?” Simon called out. He stood at the bottom of the staircase and waited for a sign.
“Caps stash!” Barrett appeared with a grey tin can. He shook it and a number of caps inside of it pleasantly jingled.
“And you thought there wouldn’t be any treasure?” Simon laughed to himself.
“And the fridge is full!” Kevin called.
Barrett rushed down the stairs and joined his brothers at the fridge. Together, they drank a bottle of mostly clean water, each taking sips and passing it to the others. Then, they finished a plate of crispy squirrel bits.
“Almost fresh,” Barrett said, shoving a large handful into his mouth.
Simon continued his perusal of the house as he chewed his last portion of squirrel meat. He went to the living room section of the main floor and rummaged through a chest of drawers.
“Women’s clothing?” He lifted a dress from the chest of drawers and showed his brothers. The light green dress seemed to be in relatively good condition. The clean herbaceous smell of carrot flowers wafted into his nose.
“Someone might still live here,” Barrett said, looking at a bouquet of fresh hubflowers on the table.
Kevin looked from one of the windows. “I think he’s just arrived.”
Before Simon and Kevin could arm themselves, the door opened. An old man entered with two buckets of water. At the very moment he saw these three men, he dropped the buckets on the floor and rushed out of the building. One of the buckets spilled its contents across the floor, slowly dribbling down the front steps. Meanwhile, the old man pressed his back against the exterior wall of the building.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“We didn’t know!” Simon shouted back. “We didn’t mean to trespass!”
“Well, you did. Now, what are you going to do? Kill an old man and take his home?”
“Not if you let us leave unharmed!”
“How do I know that you’re not raiders?”
“You can’t,” Simon shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
“And why would I that?”
“Well, for one thing, there are more of us than there are of you.”
“Send one man out.”
“No!” Simon responded. “How do I know you’re not just going to shoot him the moment he leaves the building?”
“You can’t,” the old man shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
Simon felt bested by the old man’s negotiating skills.
“I’ll go,” Kevin said to his brothers.
“No, I will.” Barrett put his hand on his younger brother. He would gladly die in his place.
“There’s less of me to hit,” Kevin bantered.
Barrett grunted, but he could not stop himself from smiling.
Simon thought about dissuading his brothers, telling them that no one was going to leave the house, but this show of trust needed to be made. If things went well, there could be a chance that the three of them could profit from this encounter. Perhaps, they could spend the night sleeping inside a warm house and finally be able to get a proper night’s rest.
“I’m coming out,” Kevin shouted to the old man.
“Unarmed. With your hands up! If I see so much as a big iron on your hip, the deal is off.”
Kevin placed his pipe rifle and his switchblade on top of the chest of drawers.
Simon stepped close to his brother and embraced him.
“If he harms you, I will make sure he suffers until his very last breath,” Simon whispered.
Kevin squeezed his brother tightly and went to the door.
“I am approaching the door now,” Kevin shouted. “My hands are up.”
Kevin stepped over the spilled water bucket and crossed the threshold of the house.
“Keeping going,” the old man commanded.
Once Kevin descended the front stairs and reached the hard ground, he felt the old man sweep behind him and check for weapons.
“Do we trust each other?” Kevin said, letting the old man pat down his sides. “I’m alive, so I know I can trust you, but there are still two men inside of the house.”
“Two, huh? I thought there’d be more of you.” The old man met Kevin gaze. His face was wrinkled, freckled, and scarred. His neck-length beard, once nearly black in colour, had become streaked with grey. His moustache faired slightly better, but it too had begun to pale in his old age. Overall, the old man seemed hardened by his experiences in the wasteland, but, despite this hardness, Kevin noticed a softness behind his eyes. They reflected no bitterness or resentment.
“Now what?” Simon called from inside of the house.
“I’m going to come inside with your friend as collateral.”
The old man drew his 10mm pistol and pressed into Kevin’s lower back. Kevin straightened his posture with a reflexive fear. He climbed up the stairs and back into the house, the pistol never losing contact with his spine.
“Welcome to my home, gentleman,” the old man said. “The name is Duncan. I hope you make yourselves comfortable, although, by the looks of yesterday’s dinner, it seems as though you already have.”
Barrett glanced back at the empty porcelain plate. He wiped his greasy hands on his pant legs.
“Watch it, big guy,” the old man said. “You don’t want to make too many sudden movements.”
Barrett looked into his brother’s face. Kevin seemed calm on the surface, but Barrett could see the fear beneath his composure.
“My name is Simon. This is Barrett, and the man you currently threatening is our brother Kevin.”
“Pleasure, gentlemen.”
“We’re travellers. We’ve no particular destination. We’re just trying to survive.”
“Yes, that always seems to be the story. Why aren’t you getting comfortable in Diamond City or Goodneighbor?”
“We’re new to the Commonwealth,” Simon replied.
“Just arrived,” Barrett added.
“Boys, I’m happy to be your first experience in these here parts, but you’re going to have to leave. I can’t risk any trouble.”
“We won’t be any trouble,” Kevin said, looking behind his shoulder.
“Truly, I would like to believe you boys, but you best be going.”
Duncan stepped aside and positioned himself to the side of the room. He tilted his head toward the door with a quick gesture, encouraging Simon and Barrett to leave.
“Now, please.”
“Can we at least get Kevin’s weapons over there?” Simon asked.
“I’ll toss them to you once you’re out of the door. Just go.”
Simon and Barrett complied. They walked out of the house and down the steps. Duncan led Kevin from his house, allowing the young man to move away from the pistol.
“Grandpapa!”
The men turned to see group of three women approaching the house. Two of them carried heavy bags of harvested food, while the third held a tactical submachine gun in her hands. The three of them kept staring at their grandfather, who kept his pistol held toward the brothers.
The woman with the submachine gun lifted the stock to her shoulder. She knew that with her large drum magazine, she could cut down these three intruders without the need to reload.
“We had a small misunderstanding, ladies,” Simon said with a winning smile. He looked at the woman with the submachine gun. Her short dark brown hair swooped over one of her eyes. She flipped her hair out of the way. “We’ll be on our way,” Simon continued, “once your grandfather hands us our weapons.”
“How about you head on out without them?” the woman with the gun said.
“That’s not fair,” Kevin said. He stepped forward as he said it, causing the woman to swivel her sights on him.
“On more step and you’ll have lost more than your weapons.”
“Woah, woah. Okay, message received,” Kevin said, putting his hands back into the air. “Let’s go, guys. It’s okay. We can find kinder hosts somewhere else.”
“Or, at least, a better fight,” Barrett said with a sniff of his nose. “An old man and three little girls hardly constitute a challenge.”
“I can wipe the floor with you, big boy,” said the woman with the machine gun.
“Audrey!” Duncan reprimanded.
“I’d like to see you try, girlie. Unarmed, one-on-one, you stand no chance,” Barrett said. As he spoke, he took a deep breath and inflated his already imposing figure. The muscles beneath his shirt could be seen flexing.
“Want to try me? Or are you scared of losing to a girl?” Audrey responded.
Barrett roared with laughter.
“Audrey, that’s enough!” the old man said. “Do not aggravate them. They’re on their way.”
“Wait!” the smallest of the three women called to her grandfather. “Can’t they stay? If they wanted to hurt us, they would’ve already.”
“It’d be too risky!” Duncan replied.
“But you’ve always said that people need to come together and rebuild this world,” she said.
Duncan flashed her a quick scolding look.
“Sylvie’s right,” the third woman added. “They can help us around the property.” Her eyes danced over Barrett’s large figure. While her middle sister seemed ready to harm him, she merely wanted to be held by him.
“Audrey, talk some sense into your sisters!” Duncan exclaimed. “You ladies know that we can’t invite people at random!”
“We’d be happy to help,” Simon interjected.
Kevin locked eyes with his young counterpart. Sylvie broke eye contact and looked at her feet.
“Yeah, we can help,” Kevin said a little absent-mindedly. He continued to admire the woman before his eyes.
“Wait a minute,” Barrett said, “This guy pulls a pistol on you and you want to help him? What are you going to do? Fetch him water?”
“We made him to spill it,” Kevin said with a shrug.
“Are you guys out of your mind? How can we trust them? What if the old man and these she-devils are planning to kill us in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, now you’re afraid of me!” Audrey teased, loosening her grip on the submachine gun.
“I ain’t afraid of anything,” Barrett snapped.
Simon bursted in laughter. “Buddy, you know you’re agreeing with the old man, right? He doesn’t want you around because he thinks your going to do to him what you think he’s doing to do to you.”
Barrett squinted his eyes, trying to parse the sentence.
“I don’t like it,” Barrett said.
“Neither do I,” Duncan agreed.
“Well, they’re not staying in the house,” Audrey said. She tilted her swooping hair out of her eyes again. “Give them the rotting house.”
Duncan stayed silent. Everyone looked at him as though it was his decision which made everything final.
“Fine, but I’m standing guard during the night. If one of these boys come creeping in the night, I’ll make sure our walls get a nice new shade of red.”
Barrett nodded his head in agreement. “And I’ll take first watch at our place.”
Audrey turned to her sisters. “Morgan, Sylvie, take the food inside. I’ll show these men their residence.” She adjusted the tactical submachine gun in her arms.
Her sisters did what they were told.
“Gentlemen,” Audrey said, leading the men down the slight hill, “Your new abode.” She kicked the front door, which broke free from its hinges. The wood from the door had rotted from the moisture in the air. Wet dust flew from the ground and an acrid smell spewed from the interior of the building.
“Enjoy.”
Audrey left the three brothers and returned to her home.
The three of the brothers exchanged uncomfortable glances and looked at the building. Kevin approached the doorway and peered into the darkness.
“Ghoul!” Kevin shouted.
His brothers ran into the building with their weapons drawn. Kevin threw his arms around his brothers as they looked at remains of a feral ghoul. It had died a long time ago.
“Pay up, boys!” he said with a smile. “Five caps each.”
submitted by RyanMorholt to RyanMorholt [link] [comments]
“Okay, I was wrong!” Simon admitted. “Is it my fault that I have hope?”
“No one ever knows out here,” Kevin chimed in.
Simon affectionally grabbed his youngest brother by the shoulder.
“See, Barrett, this is what a supportive brother sounds like.”
Barrett grunted.
The three brothers continued to follow the broken asphalt road. In time, the sky above them disappeared behind the ruins of an interstate highway. Its massive concrete columns towered over the horizon. It had cast a long shadow over their route.
Kevin stopped his brothers.
“Is that an elevator?” He pointed to the yellow cable lift that ran up to the overpass.
“I’m not using that,” Barrett quickly responded. He touched his stomach unconsciously, cognizant of his size and weight.
“Yeah, that might be an adventure for another life time,” Simon said, noting the precariousness of the cables that rose up to the ruins of the highway overpass.
Kevin pursed his lips with a modicum of disappointment. As the youngest and smallest of the three, he possessed more daring than his brothers combined. Perhaps this difference was due to the inexperience of his age or the simple fact that Kevin had a different mother than Barrett and Simon. His courage may have been a genetic inheritance that the others lacked.
“House!” Simon spotted the wooden building before his brothers, who still focused on the elevator and the possibility of ascending it.
“Let me guess, there’s going to be treasure inside of it,” Barrett said sarcastically.
“There could be!” Simon replied.
As the young men approached the building, it became apparent it had been apart of a long abandoned settlement. From their higher-ground perspective, they could see the ruins of several buildings roll down the landscape and into the consuming waters of the Charles River. The houses closest to the river had flooded and slowly rotted in the river’s murky water.
“We got a lot of work to do,” Barrett said. His siblings could hear the smile in his words. They knew that there would be at least one piece of worthwhile loot among these buildings. Barrett, however, wanted more than the natural greed of survival. The big man itched for a real fight.
“Raiders, Ghouls, or Mirelurks,” Kevin asked.
“Five caps on raiders,” Barrett said. His hand dropped to the pipe pistol holstered to his thigh.
“Five for mirelurks,” Simon said.
“I guess, I take ghouls.”
The three men moved closer to the first building. The residence, once a beautiful suburban home, had decayed over the two hundred and twenty years since its owners died in the nuclear fallout. Yet, despite the age of home, its door seemed to have been freshly repaired.
Simon, as per usual, approached the entrance with military tact. Barrett positioned himself behind his older brother. He placed one hand on Simon’s shoulder and the other around his pipe pistol. Kevin checked their flank and readied his pipe rifle.
Simon lifted his hand. He counted silently with his fingers.
One. Two. Three.
He grabbed the door and yanked it open. Barrett entered the building, his pipe pistol scanning the interior of the house.
“Clear!”
Simon followed Barrett. Kevin slowly backed into the building. He closed the door behind him.
“Stairs,” Barrett said to his brothers.
Immediately, the big man took the lead, scanning the floor above him with his pistol at eye-level. Simon followed in the wake of his larger brother, keeping his eyes straight to the top of the landing. Kevin stayed on the first floor. He found a corner, pressed his back into it, and crouched. He kept his eye on the front door.
“Clear!” Barrett’s voice rang through the structure.
“Nothing for nobody,” Kevin said, standing from his position and letting his rifle hang limply in his hands. He thought at least one ghoul would be hiding in the house. Their fraternal bottlecap wager would have to wait another house.
“Cheer up! Better luck in the next building.” Simon said as he walked down the stairs. “Right now, we have some time to loot.”
The brothers began the careful examination of the residential building.
Despite two centuries of rain and snow the building seemed to be in good condition. Clearly, since the bombs fell, a series of squatters had made improvements and adjustments over the years. In fact, the house seemed almost luxurious compared to the standards of the Wasteland. The floors had been redone with new planks of wood. The walls had been scraped of their original wallpaper and painted a light seafoam green. Although the glass from the windows had been long destroyed, curtains hung over the wooden shutters that secured the windows from the exterior world.
“Ooo!” Barrett exclaimed upstairs.
“What’d you find?” Simon called out. He stood at the bottom of the staircase and waited for a sign.
“Caps stash!” Barrett appeared with a grey tin can. He shook it and a number of caps inside of it pleasantly jingled.
“And you thought there wouldn’t be any treasure?” Simon laughed to himself.
“And the fridge is full!” Kevin called.
Barrett rushed down the stairs and joined his brothers at the fridge. Together, they drank a bottle of mostly clean water, each taking sips and passing it to the others. Then, they finished a plate of crispy squirrel bits.
“Almost fresh,” Barrett said, shoving a large handful into his mouth.
Simon continued his perusal of the house as he chewed his last portion of squirrel meat. He went to the living room section of the main floor and rummaged through a chest of drawers.
“Women’s clothing?” He lifted a dress from the chest of drawers and showed his brothers. The light green dress seemed to be in relatively good condition. The clean herbaceous smell of carrot flowers wafted into his nose.
“Someone might still live here,” Barrett said, looking at a bouquet of fresh hubflowers on the table.
Kevin looked from one of the windows. “I think he’s just arrived.”
Before Simon and Kevin could arm themselves, the door opened. An old man entered with two buckets of water. At the very moment he saw these three men, he dropped the buckets on the floor and rushed out of the building. One of the buckets spilled its contents across the floor, slowly dribbling down the front steps. Meanwhile, the old man pressed his back against the exterior wall of the building.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“We didn’t know!” Simon shouted back. “We didn’t mean to trespass!”
“Well, you did. Now, what are you going to do? Kill an old man and take his home?”
“Not if you let us leave unharmed!”
“How do I know that you’re not raiders?”
“You can’t,” Simon shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
“And why would I that?”
“Well, for one thing, there are more of us than there are of you.”
“Send one man out.”
“No!” Simon responded. “How do I know you’re not just going to shoot him the moment he leaves the building?”
“You can’t,” the old man shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
Simon felt bested by the old man’s negotiating skills.
“I’ll go,” Kevin said to his brothers.
“No, I will.” Barrett put his hand on his younger brother. He would gladly die in his place.
“There’s less of me to hit,” Kevin bantered.
Barrett grunted, but he could not stop himself from smiling.
Simon thought about dissuading his brothers, telling them that no one was going to leave the house, but this show of trust needed to be made. If things went well, there could be a chance that the three of them could profit from this encounter. Perhaps, they could spend the night sleeping inside a warm house and finally be able to get a proper night’s rest.
“I’m coming out,” Kevin shouted to the old man.
“Unarmed. With your hands up! If I see so much as a big iron on your hip, the deal is off.”
Kevin placed his pipe rifle and his switchblade on top of the chest of drawers.
Simon stepped close to his brother and embraced him.
“If he harms you, I will make sure he suffers until his very last breath,” Simon whispered.
Kevin squeezed his brother tightly and went to the door.
“I am approaching the door now,” Kevin shouted. “My hands are up.”
Kevin stepped over the spilled water bucket and crossed the threshold of the house.
“Keeping going,” the old man commanded.
Once Kevin descended the front stairs and reached the hard ground, he felt the old man sweep behind him and check for weapons.
“Do we trust each other?” Kevin said, letting the old man pat down his sides. “I’m alive, so I know I can trust you, but there are still two men inside of the house.”
“Two, huh? I thought there’d be more of you.” The old man met Kevin gaze. His face was wrinkled, freckled, and scarred. His neck-length beard, once nearly black in colour, had become streaked with grey. His moustache faired slightly better, but it too had begun to pale in his old age. Overall, the old man seemed hardened by his experiences in the wasteland, but, despite this hardness, Kevin noticed a softness behind his eyes. They reflected no bitterness or resentment.
“Now what?” Simon called from inside of the house.
“I’m going to come inside with your friend as collateral.”
The old man drew his 10mm pistol and pressed into Kevin’s lower back. Kevin straightened his posture with a reflexive fear. He climbed up the stairs and back into the house, the pistol never losing contact with his spine.
“Welcome to my home, gentleman,” the old man said. “The name is Duncan. I hope you make yourselves comfortable, although, by the looks of yesterday’s dinner, it seems as though you already have.”
Barrett glanced back at the empty porcelain plate. He wiped his greasy hands on his pant legs.
“Watch it, big guy,” the old man said. “You don’t want to make too many sudden movements.”
Barrett looked into his brother’s face. Kevin seemed calm on the surface, but Barrett could see the fear beneath his composure.
“My name is Simon. This is Barrett, and the man you currently threatening is our brother Kevin.”
“Pleasure, gentlemen.”
“We’re travellers. We’ve no particular destination. We’re just trying to survive.”
“Yes, that always seems to be the story. Why aren’t you getting comfortable in Diamond City or Goodneighbor?”
“We’re new to the Commonwealth,” Simon replied.
“Just arrived,” Barrett added.
“Boys, I’m happy to be your first experience in these here parts, but you’re going to have to leave. I can’t risk any trouble.”
“We won’t be any trouble,” Kevin said, looking behind his shoulder.
“Truly, I would like to believe you boys, but you best be going.”
Duncan stepped aside and positioned himself to the side of the room. He tilted his head toward the door with a quick gesture, encouraging Simon and Barrett to leave.
“Now, please.”
“Can we at least get Kevin’s weapons over there?” Simon asked.
“I’ll toss them to you once you’re out of the door. Just go.”
Simon and Barrett complied. They walked out of the house and down the steps. Duncan led Kevin from his house, allowing the young man to move away from the pistol.
“Grandpapa!”
The men turned to see group of three women approaching the house. Two of them carried heavy bags of harvested food, while the third held a tactical submachine gun in her hands. The three of them kept staring at their grandfather, who kept his pistol held toward the brothers.
The woman with the submachine gun lifted the stock to her shoulder. She knew that with her large drum magazine, she could cut down these three intruders without the need to reload.
“We had a small misunderstanding, ladies,” Simon said with a winning smile. He looked at the woman with the submachine gun. Her short dark brown hair swooped over one of her eyes. She flipped her hair out of the way. “We’ll be on our way,” Simon continued, “once your grandfather hands us our weapons.”
“How about you head on out without them?” the woman with the gun said.
“That’s not fair,” Kevin said. He stepped forward as he said it, causing the woman to swivel her sights on him.
“On more step and you’ll have lost more than your weapons.”
“Woah, woah. Okay, message received,” Kevin said, putting his hands back into the air. “Let’s go, guys. It’s okay. We can find kinder hosts somewhere else.”
“Or, at least, a better fight,” Barrett said with a sniff of his nose. “An old man and three little girls hardly constitute a challenge.”
“I can wipe the floor with you, big boy,” said the woman with the machine gun.
“Audrey!” Duncan reprimanded.
“I’d like to see you try, girlie. Unarmed, one-on-one, you stand no chance,” Barrett said. As he spoke, he took a deep breath and inflated his already imposing figure. The muscles beneath his shirt could be seen flexing.
“Want to try me? Or are you scared of losing to a girl?” Audrey responded.
Barrett roared with laughter.
“Audrey, that’s enough!” the old man said. “Do not aggravate them. They’re on their way.”
“Wait!” the smallest of the three women called to her grandfather. “Can’t they stay? If they wanted to hurt us, they would’ve already.”
“It’d be too risky!” Duncan replied.
“But you’ve always said that people need to come together and rebuild this world,” she said.
Duncan flashed her a quick scolding look.
“Sylvie’s right,” the third woman added. “They can help us around the property.” Her eyes danced over Barrett’s large figure. While her middle sister seemed ready to harm him, she merely wanted to be held by him.
“Audrey, talk some sense into your sisters!” Duncan exclaimed. “You ladies know that we can’t invite people at random!”
“We’d be happy to help,” Simon interjected.
Kevin locked eyes with his young counterpart. Sylvie broke eye contact and looked at her feet.
“Yeah, we can help,” Kevin said a little absent-mindedly. He continued to admire the woman before his eyes.
“Wait a minute,” Barrett said, “This guy pulls a pistol on you and you want to help him? What are you going to do? Fetch him water?”
“We made him to spill it,” Kevin said with a shrug.
“Are you guys out of your mind? How can we trust them? What if the old man and these she-devils are planning to kill us in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, now you’re afraid of me!” Audrey teased, loosening her grip on the submachine gun.
“I ain’t afraid of anything,” Barrett snapped.
Simon bursted in laughter. “Buddy, you know you’re agreeing with the old man, right? He doesn’t want you around because he thinks your going to do to him what you think he’s doing to do to you.”
Barrett squinted his eyes, trying to parse the sentence.
“I don’t like it,” Barrett said.
“Neither do I,” Duncan agreed.
“Well, they’re not staying in the house,” Audrey said. She tilted her swooping hair out of her eyes again. “Give them the rotting house.”
Duncan stayed silent. Everyone looked at him as though it was his decision which made everything final.
“Fine, but I’m standing guard during the night. If one of these boys come creeping in the night, I’ll make sure our walls get a nice new shade of red.”
Barrett nodded his head in agreement. “And I’ll take first watch at our place.”
Audrey turned to her sisters. “Morgan, Sylvie, take the food inside. I’ll show these men their residence.” She adjusted the tactical submachine gun in her arms.
Her sisters did what they were told.
“Gentlemen,” Audrey said, leading the men down the slight hill, “Your new abode.” She kicked the front door, which broke free from its hinges. The wood from the door had rotted from the moisture in the air. Wet dust flew from the ground and an acrid smell spewed from the interior of the building.
“Enjoy.”
Audrey left the three brothers and returned to her home.
The three of the brothers exchanged uncomfortable glances and looked at the building. Kevin approached the doorway and peered into the darkness.
“Ghoul!” Kevin shouted.
His brothers ran into the building with their weapons drawn. Kevin threw his arms around his brothers as they looked at remains of a feral ghoul. It had died a long time ago.
“Pay up, boys!” he said with a smile. “Five caps each.”
2024.06.01 15:14 RyanMorholt Forest Grove Settlers: First Day Fallout Fan Fiction - A Short Story
“I told you there would be nothing in that military check point,” Barrett said. He cleaned his hands from bloodbug residue. “Only abandoned cars and empty cigarette machines.”
“Okay, I was wrong!” Simon admitted. “Is it my fault that I have hope?”
“No one ever knows out here,” Kevin chimed in.
Simon affectionally grabbed his youngest brother by the shoulder.
“See, Barrett, this is what a supportive brother sounds like.”
Barrett grunted.
The three brothers continued to follow the broken asphalt road. In time, the sky above them disappeared behind the ruins of an interstate highway. Its massive concrete columns towered over the horizon. It had cast a long shadow over their route.
Kevin stopped his brothers.
“Is that an elevator?” He pointed to the yellow cable lift that ran up to the overpass.
“I’m not using that,” Barrett quickly responded. He touched his stomach unconsciously, cognizant of his size and weight.
“Yeah, that might be an adventure for another life time,” Simon said, noting the precariousness of the cables that rose up to the ruins of the highway overpass.
Kevin pursed his lips with a modicum of disappointment. As the youngest and smallest of the three, he possessed more daring than his brothers combined. Perhaps this difference was due to the inexperience of his age or the simple fact that Kevin had a different mother than Barrett and Simon. His courage may have been a genetic inheritance that the others lacked.
“House!” Simon spotted the wooden building before his brothers, who still focused on the elevator and the possibility of ascending it.
“Let me guess, there’s going to be treasure inside of it,” Barrett said sarcastically.
“There could be!” Simon replied.
As the young men approached the building, it became apparent it had been apart of a long abandoned settlement. From their higher-ground perspective, they could see the ruins of several buildings roll down the landscape and into the consuming waters of the Charles River. The houses closest to the river had flooded and slowly rotted in the river’s murky water.
“We got a lot of work to do,” Barrett said. His siblings could hear the smile in his words. They knew that there would be at least one piece of worthwhile loot among these buildings. Barrett, however, wanted more than the natural greed of survival. The big man itched for a real fight.
“Raiders, Ghouls, or Mirelurks,” Kevin asked.
“Five caps on raiders,” Barrett said. His hand dropped to the pipe pistol holstered to his thigh.
“Five for mirelurks,” Simon said.
“I guess, I take ghouls.”
The three men moved closer to the first building. The residence, once a beautiful suburban home, had decayed over the two hundred and twenty years since its owners died in the nuclear fallout. Yet, despite the age of home, its door seemed to have been freshly repaired.
Simon, as per usual, approached the entrance with military tact. Barrett positioned himself behind his older brother. He placed one hand on Simon’s shoulder and the other around his pipe pistol. Kevin checked their flank and readied his pipe rifle.
Simon lifted his hand. He counted silently with his fingers.
One. Two. Three.
He grabbed the door and yanked it open. Barrett entered the building, his pipe pistol scanning the interior of the house.
“Clear!”
Simon followed Barrett. Kevin slowly backed into the building. He closed the door behind him.
“Stairs,” Barrett said to his brothers.
Immediately, the big man took the lead, scanning the floor above him with his pistol at eye-level. Simon followed in the wake of his larger brother, keeping his eyes straight to the top of the landing. Kevin stayed on the first floor. He found a corner, pressed his back into it, and crouched. He kept his eye on the front door.
“Clear!” Barrett’s voice rang through the structure.
“Nothing for nobody,” Kevin said, standing from his position and letting his rifle hang limply in his hands. He thought at least one ghoul would be hiding in the house. Their fraternal bottlecap wager would have to wait another house.
“Cheer up! Better luck in the next building.” Simon said as he walked down the stairs. “Right now, we have some time to loot.”
The brothers began the careful examination of the residential building.
Despite two centuries of rain and snow the building seemed to be in good condition. Clearly, since the bombs fell, a series of squatters had made improvements and adjustments over the years. In fact, the house seemed almost luxurious compared to the standards of the Wasteland. The floors had been redone with new planks of wood. The walls had been scraped of their original wallpaper and painted a light seafoam green. Although the glass from the windows had been long destroyed, curtains hung over the wooden shutters that secured the windows from the exterior world.
“Ooo!” Barrett exclaimed upstairs.
“What’d you find?” Simon called out. He stood at the bottom of the staircase and waited for a sign.
“Caps stash!” Barrett appeared with a grey tin can. He shook it and a number of caps inside of it pleasantly jingled.
“And you thought there wouldn’t be any treasure?” Simon laughed to himself.
“And the fridge is full!” Kevin called.
Barrett rushed down the stairs and joined his brothers at the fridge. Together, they drank a bottle of mostly clean water, each taking sips and passing it to the others. Then, they finished a plate of crispy squirrel bits.
“Almost fresh,” Barrett said, shoving a large handful into his mouth.
Simon continued his perusal of the house as he chewed his last portion of squirrel meat. He went to the living room section of the main floor and rummaged through a chest of drawers.
“Women’s clothing?” He lifted a dress from the chest of drawers and showed his brothers. The light green dress seemed to be in relatively good condition. The clean herbaceous smell of carrot flowers wafted into his nose.
“Someone might still live here,” Barrett said, looking at a bouquet of fresh hubflowers on the table.
Kevin looked from one of the windows. “I think he’s just arrived.”
Before Simon and Kevin could arm themselves, the door opened. An old man entered with two buckets of water. At the very moment he saw these three men, he dropped the buckets on the floor and rushed out of the building. One of the buckets spilled its contents across the floor, slowly dribbling down the front steps. Meanwhile, the old man pressed his back against the exterior wall of the building.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“We didn’t know!” Simon shouted back. “We didn’t mean to trespass!”
“Well, you did. Now, what are you going to do? Kill an old man and take his home?”
“Not if you let us leave unharmed!”
“How do I know that you’re not raiders?”
“You can’t,” Simon shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
“And why would I that?”
“Well, for one thing, there are more of us than there are of you.”
“Send one man out.”
“No!” Simon responded. “How do I know you’re not just going to shoot him the moment he leaves the building?”
“You can’t,” the old man shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
Simon felt bested by the old man’s negotiating skills.
“I’ll go,” Kevin said to his brothers.
“No, I will.” Barrett put his hand on his younger brother. He would gladly die in his place.
“There’s less of me to hit,” Kevin bantered.
Barrett grunted, but he could not stop himself from smiling.
Simon thought about dissuading his brothers, telling them that no one was going to leave the house, but this show of trust needed to be made. If things went well, there could be a chance that the three of them could profit from this encounter. Perhaps, they could spend the night sleeping inside a warm house and finally be able to get a proper night’s rest.
“I’m coming out,” Kevin shouted to the old man.
“Unarmed. With your hands up! If I see so much as a big iron on your hip, the deal is off.”
Kevin placed his pipe rifle and his switchblade on top of the chest of drawers.
Simon stepped close to his brother and embraced him.
“If he harms you, I will make sure he suffers until his very last breath,” Simon whispered.
Kevin squeezed his brother tightly and went to the door.
“I am approaching the door now,” Kevin shouted. “My hands are up.”
Kevin stepped over the spilled water bucket and crossed the threshold of the house.
“Keeping going,” the old man commanded.
Once Kevin descended the front stairs and reached the hard ground, he felt the old man sweep behind him and check for weapons.
“Do we trust each other?” Kevin said, letting the old man pat down his sides. “I’m alive, so I know I can trust you, but there are still two men inside of the house.”
“Two, huh? I thought there’d be more of you.” The old man met Kevin gaze. His face was wrinkled, freckled, and scarred. His neck-length beard, once nearly black in colour, had become streaked with grey. His moustache faired slightly better, but it too had begun to pale in his old age. Overall, the old man seemed hardened by his experiences in the wasteland, but, despite this hardness, Kevin noticed a softness behind his eyes. They reflected no bitterness or resentment.
“Now what?” Simon called from inside of the house.
“I’m going to come inside with your friend as collateral.”
The old man drew his 10mm pistol and pressed into Kevin’s lower back. Kevin straightened his posture with a reflexive fear. He climbed up the stairs and back into the house, the pistol never losing contact with his spine.
“Welcome to my home, gentleman,” the old man said. “The name is Duncan. I hope you make yourselves comfortable, although, by the looks of yesterday’s dinner, it seems as though you already have.”
Barrett glanced back at the empty porcelain plate. He wiped his greasy hands on his pant legs.
“Watch it, big guy,” the old man said. “You don’t want to make too many sudden movements.”
Barrett looked into his brother’s face. Kevin seemed calm on the surface, but Barrett could see the fear beneath his composure.
“My name is Simon. This is Barrett, and the man you currently threatening is our brother Kevin.”
“Pleasure, gentlemen.”
“We’re travellers. We’ve no particular destination. We’re just trying to survive.”
“Yes, that always seems to be the story. Why aren’t you getting comfortable in Diamond City or Goodneighbor?”
“We’re new to the Commonwealth,” Simon replied.
“Just arrived,” Barrett added.
“Boys, I’m happy to be your first experience in these here parts, but you’re going to have to leave. I can’t risk any trouble.”
“We won’t be any trouble,” Kevin said, looking behind his shoulder.
“Truly, I would like to believe you boys, but you best be going.”
Duncan stepped aside and positioned himself to the side of the room. He tilted his head toward the door with a quick gesture, encouraging Simon and Barrett to leave.
“Now, please.”
“Can we at least get Kevin’s weapons over there?” Simon asked.
“I’ll toss them to you once you’re out of the door. Just go.”
Simon and Barrett complied. They walked out of the house and down the steps. Duncan led Kevin from his house, allowing the young man to move away from the pistol.
“Grandpapa!”
The men turned to see group of three women approaching the house. Two of them carried heavy bags of harvested food, while the third held a tactical submachine gun in her hands. The three of them kept staring at their grandfather, who kept his pistol held toward the brothers.
The woman with the submachine gun lifted the stock to her shoulder. She knew that with her large drum magazine, she could cut down these three intruders without the need to reload.
“We had a small misunderstanding, ladies,” Simon said with a winning smile. He looked at the woman with the submachine gun. Her short dark brown hair swooped over one of her eyes. She flipped her hair out of the way. “We’ll be on our way,” Simon continued, “once your grandfather hands us our weapons.”
“How about you head on out without them?” the woman with the gun said.
“That’s not fair,” Kevin said. He stepped forward as he said it, causing the woman to swivel her sights on him.
“On more step and you’ll have lost more than your weapons.”
“Woah, woah. Okay, message received,” Kevin said, putting his hands back into the air. “Let’s go, guys. It’s okay. We can find kinder hosts somewhere else.”
“Or, at least, a better fight,” Barrett said with a sniff of his nose. “An old man and three little girls hardly constitute a challenge.”
“I can wipe the floor with you, big boy,” said the woman with the machine gun.
“Audrey!” Duncan reprimanded.
“I’d like to see you try, girlie. Unarmed, one-on-one, you stand no chance,” Barrett said. As he spoke, he took a deep breath and inflated his already imposing figure. The muscles beneath his shirt could be seen flexing.
“Want to try me? Or are you scared of losing to a girl?” Audrey responded.
Barrett roared with laughter.
“Audrey, that’s enough!” the old man said. “Do not aggravate them. They’re on their way.”
“Wait!” the smallest of the three women called to her grandfather. “Can’t they stay? If they wanted to hurt us, they would’ve already.”
“It’d be too risky!” Duncan replied.
“But you’ve always said that people need to come together and rebuild this world,” she said.
Duncan flashed her a quick scolding look.
“Sylvie’s right,” the third woman added. “They can help us around the property.” Her eyes danced over Barrett’s large figure. While her middle sister seemed ready to harm him, she merely wanted to be held by him.
“Audrey, talk some sense into your sisters!” Duncan exclaimed. “You ladies know that we can’t invite people at random!”
“We’d be happy to help,” Simon interjected.
Kevin locked eyes with his young counterpart. Sylvie broke eye contact and looked at her feet.
“Yeah, we can help,” Kevin said a little absent-mindedly. He continued to admire the woman before his eyes.
“Wait a minute,” Barrett said, “This guy pulls a pistol on you and you want to help him? What are you going to do? Fetch him water?”
“We made him to spill it,” Kevin said with a shrug.
“Are you guys out of your mind? How can we trust them? What if the old man and these she-devils are planning to kill us in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, now you’re afraid of me!” Audrey teased, loosening her grip on the submachine gun.
“I ain’t afraid of anything,” Barrett snapped.
Simon bursted in laughter. “Buddy, you know you’re agreeing with the old man, right? He doesn’t want you around because he thinks your going to do to him what you think he’s doing to do to you.”
Barrett squinted his eyes, trying to parse the sentence.
“I don’t like it,” Barrett said.
“Neither do I,” Duncan agreed.
“Well, they’re not staying in the house,” Audrey said. She tilted her swooping hair out of her eyes again. “Give them the rotting house.”
Duncan stayed silent. Everyone looked at him as though it was his decision which made everything final.
“Fine, but I’m standing guard during the night. If one of these boys come creeping in the night, I’ll make sure our walls get a nice new shade of red.”
Barrett nodded his head in agreement. “And I’ll take first watch at our place.”
Audrey turned to her sisters. “Morgan, Sylvie, take the food inside. I’ll show these men their residence.” She adjusted the tactical submachine gun in her arms.
Her sisters did what they were told.
“Gentlemen,” Audrey said, leading the men down the slight hill, “Your new abode.” She kicked the front door, which broke free from its hinges. The wood from the door had rotted from the moisture in the air. Wet dust flew from the ground and an acrid smell spewed from the interior of the building.
“Enjoy.”
Audrey left the three brothers and returned to her home.
The three of the brothers exchanged uncomfortable glances and looked at the building. Kevin approached the doorway and peered into the darkness.
“Ghoul!” Kevin shouted.
His brothers ran into the building with their weapons drawn. Kevin threw his arms around his brothers as they looked at remains of a feral ghoul. It had died a long time ago.
“Pay up, boys!” he said with a smile. “Five caps each.”
submitted by RyanMorholt to FalloutFanFiction [link] [comments]
“Okay, I was wrong!” Simon admitted. “Is it my fault that I have hope?”
“No one ever knows out here,” Kevin chimed in.
Simon affectionally grabbed his youngest brother by the shoulder.
“See, Barrett, this is what a supportive brother sounds like.”
Barrett grunted.
The three brothers continued to follow the broken asphalt road. In time, the sky above them disappeared behind the ruins of an interstate highway. Its massive concrete columns towered over the horizon. It had cast a long shadow over their route.
Kevin stopped his brothers.
“Is that an elevator?” He pointed to the yellow cable lift that ran up to the overpass.
“I’m not using that,” Barrett quickly responded. He touched his stomach unconsciously, cognizant of his size and weight.
“Yeah, that might be an adventure for another life time,” Simon said, noting the precariousness of the cables that rose up to the ruins of the highway overpass.
Kevin pursed his lips with a modicum of disappointment. As the youngest and smallest of the three, he possessed more daring than his brothers combined. Perhaps this difference was due to the inexperience of his age or the simple fact that Kevin had a different mother than Barrett and Simon. His courage may have been a genetic inheritance that the others lacked.
“House!” Simon spotted the wooden building before his brothers, who still focused on the elevator and the possibility of ascending it.
“Let me guess, there’s going to be treasure inside of it,” Barrett said sarcastically.
“There could be!” Simon replied.
As the young men approached the building, it became apparent it had been apart of a long abandoned settlement. From their higher-ground perspective, they could see the ruins of several buildings roll down the landscape and into the consuming waters of the Charles River. The houses closest to the river had flooded and slowly rotted in the river’s murky water.
“We got a lot of work to do,” Barrett said. His siblings could hear the smile in his words. They knew that there would be at least one piece of worthwhile loot among these buildings. Barrett, however, wanted more than the natural greed of survival. The big man itched for a real fight.
“Raiders, Ghouls, or Mirelurks,” Kevin asked.
“Five caps on raiders,” Barrett said. His hand dropped to the pipe pistol holstered to his thigh.
“Five for mirelurks,” Simon said.
“I guess, I take ghouls.”
The three men moved closer to the first building. The residence, once a beautiful suburban home, had decayed over the two hundred and twenty years since its owners died in the nuclear fallout. Yet, despite the age of home, its door seemed to have been freshly repaired.
Simon, as per usual, approached the entrance with military tact. Barrett positioned himself behind his older brother. He placed one hand on Simon’s shoulder and the other around his pipe pistol. Kevin checked their flank and readied his pipe rifle.
Simon lifted his hand. He counted silently with his fingers.
One. Two. Three.
He grabbed the door and yanked it open. Barrett entered the building, his pipe pistol scanning the interior of the house.
“Clear!”
Simon followed Barrett. Kevin slowly backed into the building. He closed the door behind him.
“Stairs,” Barrett said to his brothers.
Immediately, the big man took the lead, scanning the floor above him with his pistol at eye-level. Simon followed in the wake of his larger brother, keeping his eyes straight to the top of the landing. Kevin stayed on the first floor. He found a corner, pressed his back into it, and crouched. He kept his eye on the front door.
“Clear!” Barrett’s voice rang through the structure.
“Nothing for nobody,” Kevin said, standing from his position and letting his rifle hang limply in his hands. He thought at least one ghoul would be hiding in the house. Their fraternal bottlecap wager would have to wait another house.
“Cheer up! Better luck in the next building.” Simon said as he walked down the stairs. “Right now, we have some time to loot.”
The brothers began the careful examination of the residential building.
Despite two centuries of rain and snow the building seemed to be in good condition. Clearly, since the bombs fell, a series of squatters had made improvements and adjustments over the years. In fact, the house seemed almost luxurious compared to the standards of the Wasteland. The floors had been redone with new planks of wood. The walls had been scraped of their original wallpaper and painted a light seafoam green. Although the glass from the windows had been long destroyed, curtains hung over the wooden shutters that secured the windows from the exterior world.
“Ooo!” Barrett exclaimed upstairs.
“What’d you find?” Simon called out. He stood at the bottom of the staircase and waited for a sign.
“Caps stash!” Barrett appeared with a grey tin can. He shook it and a number of caps inside of it pleasantly jingled.
“And you thought there wouldn’t be any treasure?” Simon laughed to himself.
“And the fridge is full!” Kevin called.
Barrett rushed down the stairs and joined his brothers at the fridge. Together, they drank a bottle of mostly clean water, each taking sips and passing it to the others. Then, they finished a plate of crispy squirrel bits.
“Almost fresh,” Barrett said, shoving a large handful into his mouth.
Simon continued his perusal of the house as he chewed his last portion of squirrel meat. He went to the living room section of the main floor and rummaged through a chest of drawers.
“Women’s clothing?” He lifted a dress from the chest of drawers and showed his brothers. The light green dress seemed to be in relatively good condition. The clean herbaceous smell of carrot flowers wafted into his nose.
“Someone might still live here,” Barrett said, looking at a bouquet of fresh hubflowers on the table.
Kevin looked from one of the windows. “I think he’s just arrived.”
Before Simon and Kevin could arm themselves, the door opened. An old man entered with two buckets of water. At the very moment he saw these three men, he dropped the buckets on the floor and rushed out of the building. One of the buckets spilled its contents across the floor, slowly dribbling down the front steps. Meanwhile, the old man pressed his back against the exterior wall of the building.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“We didn’t know!” Simon shouted back. “We didn’t mean to trespass!”
“Well, you did. Now, what are you going to do? Kill an old man and take his home?”
“Not if you let us leave unharmed!”
“How do I know that you’re not raiders?”
“You can’t,” Simon shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
“And why would I that?”
“Well, for one thing, there are more of us than there are of you.”
“Send one man out.”
“No!” Simon responded. “How do I know you’re not just going to shoot him the moment he leaves the building?”
“You can’t,” the old man shouted back. “You can only make a leap of faith.”
Simon felt bested by the old man’s negotiating skills.
“I’ll go,” Kevin said to his brothers.
“No, I will.” Barrett put his hand on his younger brother. He would gladly die in his place.
“There’s less of me to hit,” Kevin bantered.
Barrett grunted, but he could not stop himself from smiling.
Simon thought about dissuading his brothers, telling them that no one was going to leave the house, but this show of trust needed to be made. If things went well, there could be a chance that the three of them could profit from this encounter. Perhaps, they could spend the night sleeping inside a warm house and finally be able to get a proper night’s rest.
“I’m coming out,” Kevin shouted to the old man.
“Unarmed. With your hands up! If I see so much as a big iron on your hip, the deal is off.”
Kevin placed his pipe rifle and his switchblade on top of the chest of drawers.
Simon stepped close to his brother and embraced him.
“If he harms you, I will make sure he suffers until his very last breath,” Simon whispered.
Kevin squeezed his brother tightly and went to the door.
“I am approaching the door now,” Kevin shouted. “My hands are up.”
Kevin stepped over the spilled water bucket and crossed the threshold of the house.
“Keeping going,” the old man commanded.
Once Kevin descended the front stairs and reached the hard ground, he felt the old man sweep behind him and check for weapons.
“Do we trust each other?” Kevin said, letting the old man pat down his sides. “I’m alive, so I know I can trust you, but there are still two men inside of the house.”
“Two, huh? I thought there’d be more of you.” The old man met Kevin gaze. His face was wrinkled, freckled, and scarred. His neck-length beard, once nearly black in colour, had become streaked with grey. His moustache faired slightly better, but it too had begun to pale in his old age. Overall, the old man seemed hardened by his experiences in the wasteland, but, despite this hardness, Kevin noticed a softness behind his eyes. They reflected no bitterness or resentment.
“Now what?” Simon called from inside of the house.
“I’m going to come inside with your friend as collateral.”
The old man drew his 10mm pistol and pressed into Kevin’s lower back. Kevin straightened his posture with a reflexive fear. He climbed up the stairs and back into the house, the pistol never losing contact with his spine.
“Welcome to my home, gentleman,” the old man said. “The name is Duncan. I hope you make yourselves comfortable, although, by the looks of yesterday’s dinner, it seems as though you already have.”
Barrett glanced back at the empty porcelain plate. He wiped his greasy hands on his pant legs.
“Watch it, big guy,” the old man said. “You don’t want to make too many sudden movements.”
Barrett looked into his brother’s face. Kevin seemed calm on the surface, but Barrett could see the fear beneath his composure.
“My name is Simon. This is Barrett, and the man you currently threatening is our brother Kevin.”
“Pleasure, gentlemen.”
“We’re travellers. We’ve no particular destination. We’re just trying to survive.”
“Yes, that always seems to be the story. Why aren’t you getting comfortable in Diamond City or Goodneighbor?”
“We’re new to the Commonwealth,” Simon replied.
“Just arrived,” Barrett added.
“Boys, I’m happy to be your first experience in these here parts, but you’re going to have to leave. I can’t risk any trouble.”
“We won’t be any trouble,” Kevin said, looking behind his shoulder.
“Truly, I would like to believe you boys, but you best be going.”
Duncan stepped aside and positioned himself to the side of the room. He tilted his head toward the door with a quick gesture, encouraging Simon and Barrett to leave.
“Now, please.”
“Can we at least get Kevin’s weapons over there?” Simon asked.
“I’ll toss them to you once you’re out of the door. Just go.”
Simon and Barrett complied. They walked out of the house and down the steps. Duncan led Kevin from his house, allowing the young man to move away from the pistol.
“Grandpapa!”
The men turned to see group of three women approaching the house. Two of them carried heavy bags of harvested food, while the third held a tactical submachine gun in her hands. The three of them kept staring at their grandfather, who kept his pistol held toward the brothers.
The woman with the submachine gun lifted the stock to her shoulder. She knew that with her large drum magazine, she could cut down these three intruders without the need to reload.
“We had a small misunderstanding, ladies,” Simon said with a winning smile. He looked at the woman with the submachine gun. Her short dark brown hair swooped over one of her eyes. She flipped her hair out of the way. “We’ll be on our way,” Simon continued, “once your grandfather hands us our weapons.”
“How about you head on out without them?” the woman with the gun said.
“That’s not fair,” Kevin said. He stepped forward as he said it, causing the woman to swivel her sights on him.
“On more step and you’ll have lost more than your weapons.”
“Woah, woah. Okay, message received,” Kevin said, putting his hands back into the air. “Let’s go, guys. It’s okay. We can find kinder hosts somewhere else.”
“Or, at least, a better fight,” Barrett said with a sniff of his nose. “An old man and three little girls hardly constitute a challenge.”
“I can wipe the floor with you, big boy,” said the woman with the machine gun.
“Audrey!” Duncan reprimanded.
“I’d like to see you try, girlie. Unarmed, one-on-one, you stand no chance,” Barrett said. As he spoke, he took a deep breath and inflated his already imposing figure. The muscles beneath his shirt could be seen flexing.
“Want to try me? Or are you scared of losing to a girl?” Audrey responded.
Barrett roared with laughter.
“Audrey, that’s enough!” the old man said. “Do not aggravate them. They’re on their way.”
“Wait!” the smallest of the three women called to her grandfather. “Can’t they stay? If they wanted to hurt us, they would’ve already.”
“It’d be too risky!” Duncan replied.
“But you’ve always said that people need to come together and rebuild this world,” she said.
Duncan flashed her a quick scolding look.
“Sylvie’s right,” the third woman added. “They can help us around the property.” Her eyes danced over Barrett’s large figure. While her middle sister seemed ready to harm him, she merely wanted to be held by him.
“Audrey, talk some sense into your sisters!” Duncan exclaimed. “You ladies know that we can’t invite people at random!”
“We’d be happy to help,” Simon interjected.
Kevin locked eyes with his young counterpart. Sylvie broke eye contact and looked at her feet.
“Yeah, we can help,” Kevin said a little absent-mindedly. He continued to admire the woman before his eyes.
“Wait a minute,” Barrett said, “This guy pulls a pistol on you and you want to help him? What are you going to do? Fetch him water?”
“We made him to spill it,” Kevin said with a shrug.
“Are you guys out of your mind? How can we trust them? What if the old man and these she-devils are planning to kill us in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, now you’re afraid of me!” Audrey teased, loosening her grip on the submachine gun.
“I ain’t afraid of anything,” Barrett snapped.
Simon bursted in laughter. “Buddy, you know you’re agreeing with the old man, right? He doesn’t want you around because he thinks your going to do to him what you think he’s doing to do to you.”
Barrett squinted his eyes, trying to parse the sentence.
“I don’t like it,” Barrett said.
“Neither do I,” Duncan agreed.
“Well, they’re not staying in the house,” Audrey said. She tilted her swooping hair out of her eyes again. “Give them the rotting house.”
Duncan stayed silent. Everyone looked at him as though it was his decision which made everything final.
“Fine, but I’m standing guard during the night. If one of these boys come creeping in the night, I’ll make sure our walls get a nice new shade of red.”
Barrett nodded his head in agreement. “And I’ll take first watch at our place.”
Audrey turned to her sisters. “Morgan, Sylvie, take the food inside. I’ll show these men their residence.” She adjusted the tactical submachine gun in her arms.
Her sisters did what they were told.
“Gentlemen,” Audrey said, leading the men down the slight hill, “Your new abode.” She kicked the front door, which broke free from its hinges. The wood from the door had rotted from the moisture in the air. Wet dust flew from the ground and an acrid smell spewed from the interior of the building.
“Enjoy.”
Audrey left the three brothers and returned to her home.
The three of the brothers exchanged uncomfortable glances and looked at the building. Kevin approached the doorway and peered into the darkness.
“Ghoul!” Kevin shouted.
His brothers ran into the building with their weapons drawn. Kevin threw his arms around his brothers as they looked at remains of a feral ghoul. It had died a long time ago.
“Pay up, boys!” he said with a smile. “Five caps each.”
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2024.06.01 15:01 aznpersuazion Is the Michelin Guide Overrated?
My experience with Michelin in a complicated one. Having gone to one, two, and three Michelin star restaurants across the globe, I've seen Michelin do some great things for restaurants, but I've also seen them bring the demise of others.
Because it's quite apparent what good things come from being highlighted by Michelin, this post is more focused on some of my criticisms of the Michelin guide, and why I think the current structure of Michelin should be changed.
Maintaining "Michelin's definition" of the gold standard..
There have been a ton of amazing restaurants given a one star review. Restaurants don't even need to be "fine dining" to be given a Michelin star, as highlighted by some of the cheap eats that have received a one star review.
But a one star review, can at times, be a curse for restaurants. Often, restaurants receive one star reviews got there by showcasing there strengths. A passion for food and creativity, a desire to share culture or tradition, or an expression of a personal brand of art.
When a restaurant receives a one star review, two things happen.
And eventually, they start to act as more of a "tourist attraction", and start to lose the original loyal clientele that brought them to where they were in the first place.
Secondly, they begin to compare themselves to the standards of other "higher" Michelin star restaurants.
And that typically means focusing more on a particular brand of fine dining. Hyper-attentive service, an overuse of "micro complex food"(emulsions, purees, colorful vegetation). Just to name a few.
I've seen this unfortunately happen time and time again.
If your customers wanted to go to a Eleven Madison Park, they'd travel to New York. But don't turn your restaurant into a chain of fine dining. You'll start to lose the allure, and it starts to feel like the routine of Mcdonalds or Capital Grille.
**If you enjoyed my content, consider checking out a referral link. You get additional sign up and welcome bonuses. Signing up and using Rakuten for cash back is free!*\*
submitted by aznpersuazion to travelfooddiaries [link] [comments]
Because it's quite apparent what good things come from being highlighted by Michelin, this post is more focused on some of my criticisms of the Michelin guide, and why I think the current structure of Michelin should be changed.
Maintaining "Michelin's definition" of the gold standard..
There have been a ton of amazing restaurants given a one star review. Restaurants don't even need to be "fine dining" to be given a Michelin star, as highlighted by some of the cheap eats that have received a one star review.
But a one star review, can at times, be a curse for restaurants. Often, restaurants receive one star reviews got there by showcasing there strengths. A passion for food and creativity, a desire to share culture or tradition, or an expression of a personal brand of art.
When a restaurant receives a one star review, two things happen.
- They begin to get huge influx of customers. Initially.
- They start to be compared to other one star restaurants, sometimes even two or three star.
And eventually, they start to act as more of a "tourist attraction", and start to lose the original loyal clientele that brought them to where they were in the first place.
Secondly, they begin to compare themselves to the standards of other "higher" Michelin star restaurants.
And that typically means focusing more on a particular brand of fine dining. Hyper-attentive service, an overuse of "micro complex food"(emulsions, purees, colorful vegetation). Just to name a few.
I've seen this unfortunately happen time and time again.
If your customers wanted to go to a Eleven Madison Park, they'd travel to New York. But don't turn your restaurant into a chain of fine dining. You'll start to lose the allure, and it starts to feel like the routine of Mcdonalds or Capital Grille.
**If you enjoyed my content, consider checking out a referral link. You get additional sign up and welcome bonuses. Signing up and using Rakuten for cash back is free!*\*
- Explaining why travel hacking is my favorite side hustle, along with step by step instructions.
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2024.06.01 15:00 AutoModerator 4 Round 1QB Rookie Mock Draft (12 Team)
Rules:
Each selection is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
After each pick, you must wait for 4 picks or 12 hours before you may make another selection.
Please format your selection properly with Round, Pick Number, Player, Position, College i.e. 1.01 Bugs Bunny, WR, Acme State University
Each selection must be its own parent comment and discussion on certain selections must be child comments of the parent (selection) comment. All other comments outside those will be removed and any selection made in a reply of a pick will be void and removed. Simply put, make a selection by replying to this thread and discuss selections by replying to the comment of the selection.
Assume 12 teams and standard PPR scoring with no particular team needs in mind. Simply put, BPA.
This is a 1QB mock draft.
Feel free to offer up your opinion on why you made your selection and feel free to offer up a video of highlights or stats.
Please consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.
submitted by AutoModerator to DynastyIdiots [link] [comments]
Each selection is on a first-come, first-serve basis.
After each pick, you must wait for 4 picks or 12 hours before you may make another selection.
Please format your selection properly with Round, Pick Number, Player, Position, College i.e. 1.01 Bugs Bunny, WR, Acme State University
Each selection must be its own parent comment and discussion on certain selections must be child comments of the parent (selection) comment. All other comments outside those will be removed and any selection made in a reply of a pick will be void and removed. Simply put, make a selection by replying to this thread and discuss selections by replying to the comment of the selection.
Assume 12 teams and standard PPR scoring with no particular team needs in mind. Simply put, BPA.
This is a 1QB mock draft.
Feel free to offer up your opinion on why you made your selection and feel free to offer up a video of highlights or stats.
Please consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.
2024.06.01 15:00 AutoModerator Saturday Showcase June 01, 2024
Previous
Today:
AskHistorians is filled with questions seeking an answer. Saturday Spotlight is for answers seeking a question! It’s a place to post your original and in-depth investigation of a focused historical topic.
Posts here will be held to the same high standard as regular answers, and should mention sources or recommended reading. If you’d like to share shorter findings or discuss work in progress, Thursday Reading & Research or Friday Free-for-All are great places to do that.
So if you’re tired of waiting for someone to ask about how imperialism led to “Surfin’ Safari;” if you’ve given up hope of getting to share your complete history of the Bichon Frise in art and drama; this is your chance to shine!
submitted by AutoModerator to AskHistorians [link] [comments]
Today:
AskHistorians is filled with questions seeking an answer. Saturday Spotlight is for answers seeking a question! It’s a place to post your original and in-depth investigation of a focused historical topic.
Posts here will be held to the same high standard as regular answers, and should mention sources or recommended reading. If you’d like to share shorter findings or discuss work in progress, Thursday Reading & Research or Friday Free-for-All are great places to do that.
So if you’re tired of waiting for someone to ask about how imperialism led to “Surfin’ Safari;” if you’ve given up hope of getting to share your complete history of the Bichon Frise in art and drama; this is your chance to shine!
2024.06.01 14:59 Repulsive-Peanut1192 Reviews of various dictionaries
These are reviews of various dictionaries based on my personal experience (though I kinda ran out of steam halfway through):
Unabridged Dictionaries:
Webster's Third New International Dictionary (W3): Basically the unabridged dictionary in the US. A good dictionary overall, but this dictionary is also heavily outdated. This dictionary was published in 1961 and stopped receiving additions to the Addenda (a section at the front where new words or definitions and usages for old ones could be added) in 2002. The Addenda is a bit inconvenient to use, being separated from the main text. Note that the Addenda is where you'll find all the vulgar four-letter words. As for positives, this dictionary has well-written and comprehensive definitions, the most entries of any physical unabridged dictionary (besides the Oxford English Dictionary), and lovely hand-drawn black-and-white illustrations. It has great coverage of words in every area and field and contains even the most obscure definitions.
One oddity of this dictionary is that nearly every word is shown in lowercase, even if it's always uppercase (though initialisms, trademark, and God are the exception to this rule); a label next to the word indicates how often it is capitalized. This makes for a consistent look, but it's overall inconvenient. The definitions also tend to be a bit wordy; for example, consider the definition of "leaf": "a lateral outgrowth from a stem that constitutes part of the foliage of a plant and functions primarily in food manufacture by photosynthesis, that arises in regular succession from the growing point, that consists typically of a flattened green blade which is joined to the stem by a petiole often with a pair of stipules at its base, which in cross section exhibits an outer covering of epidermal cells penetrated by stomata usually more numerous on the lower surface, which has one or more layers of palisade cells beneath the upper epidermis and between these and the lower epidermis a mass of spongy parenchyma cells, both palisade and spongy tissue being ramified by a network of veins, and that is distinguished from a leaflet, cladophyll, or phylloclade by the presence of a bud at the juncture of petiole and stem and from a phyllode by differentiation into blade and petiole" Comprehensive, but a bit wordy and difficult to comprehend.
This dictionary faced quite a bit of controversy over being "permissive" at the time of its release. This controversy was mostly culture war nonsense, and the dictionary is no less descriptive than its predecessor.
This dictionary also has useful usage guidance and synonymies (discrimination between synonyms). Physically, this book is massive but also quite lovely. Overall, most people do not need an unabridged dictionary, but if you need or want one, this is the one you should get.
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: I found this dictionary somewhat disappointing. First, the positives: the illustrations are nice and the formatting is acceptable. It's a bit more up-to-date compared to W3 (released in 1987 and updated until 2001); however, it's still fairly outdated. However, this still gives the Random House Webster's an edge when it comes to slang and newer terms. The essay on avoiding insensitive or offensive language is a nice addition. However, the definitions are somewhat weak in comparison to W3. For example, regret is defined by Random House as "a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc." and by W3 as "sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair : grief or pain tinged with disappointment, dissatisfaction, longing, remorse, or comparable emotion." In addition, there aren't nearly as many entries as W3. Overall, a decent dictionary, but the W3 is overall the better package.
College Dictionaries:
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: This is the dictionary most people should get. It is abridged from W3 but is more up-to-date, the eleventh edition having last been revised in 2020. Good definitions, nice illustrations, useful usage guidance and discrimination of synonyms. It's not afraid to capitalize entry words like the W3 was. Overall, if you only want to get one physical dictionary, make it this one. It's pretty cheap on Amazon.
Webster's New World College Dictionary: This is the other dictionary most people should get. In comparison to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, this dictionary also has good definitions and illustrations; the definitions are a bit easier to understand though not quite as precise or comprehensive. It's a bit less descriptive but not by much. Overall, my recommendation is to make this your second dictionary. Best used in conjunction with Merriam-Webster's Collegiate.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: This is a great dictionary. Its strongest strength is its formatting, generous margins, and lovely full-color pictures. Unfortunately, it's no longer in print. Famously, this dictionary contains the usage panel; however, this is more of a drawback than an advantage. The usage advice is subpar compared to other college dictionaries. It also has an appendix containing Indo-European roots (probably its best feature in my eyes). Overall, you can't go wrong with this dictionary even if it's not as good as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate or the New World.
Random House Webster's College Dictionary: An abridgment of Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. All of my criticisms for that dictionary apply here.
Online Dictionaries:
Wiktionary: This dictionary is very up-to-date but the definitions are of varying quality. A very useful feature is the very many foreign words treated here. Also, the section outlining translations of a word into various languages is good. Obscure words are treated here too. Overall, I recommend using this in conjunction with Merriam-Webster Online or Unabridged.
Google Dictionary: This is the dictionary you use if you don't care about dictionaries. The definitions are acceptable. One useful feature is a graph showing the usage of a word over time. However, this offers no usage advice or discrimination of synonyms. Overall, if you don't care at all about the dictionary you use, just use this dictionary.
Merriam-Webster Online: The definitions are the best out of any online dictionary. However, due to Merriam-Webster's standards for inclusion, some more recent words might not be here. This is basically a digital version of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate but more frequently updated.
Merriam-Webster Unabridged: This is basically a digital version of W3 (see my critique of W3 above). It also includes the Collegiate Dictionary, Collegiate Thesaurus, and Medical Dictionary. It solves the main issue of that dictionary which was capitalization of entry headwords and up-to-dateness. Unfortunately, there's a heavy subscription cost though you can get a free one-year subscription at https://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/ (though this requires a copy of the Collegiate). This is my overall preferred online dictionary, and I often use it in conjunction with Wiktionary.
Dictionary.com: This is basically a digital version of Random House Webster's Unabridged. My criticisms of that dictionary apply to this one.
American Heritage Dictionary Online: This is basically a digital version of the AHD (see above). My criticisms of that apply here.
If you have any questions or want clarification, feel free to reply to this post.
submitted by Repulsive-Peanut1192 to dictionary [link] [comments]
Unabridged Dictionaries:
Webster's Third New International Dictionary (W3): Basically the unabridged dictionary in the US. A good dictionary overall, but this dictionary is also heavily outdated. This dictionary was published in 1961 and stopped receiving additions to the Addenda (a section at the front where new words or definitions and usages for old ones could be added) in 2002. The Addenda is a bit inconvenient to use, being separated from the main text. Note that the Addenda is where you'll find all the vulgar four-letter words. As for positives, this dictionary has well-written and comprehensive definitions, the most entries of any physical unabridged dictionary (besides the Oxford English Dictionary), and lovely hand-drawn black-and-white illustrations. It has great coverage of words in every area and field and contains even the most obscure definitions.
One oddity of this dictionary is that nearly every word is shown in lowercase, even if it's always uppercase (though initialisms, trademark, and God are the exception to this rule); a label next to the word indicates how often it is capitalized. This makes for a consistent look, but it's overall inconvenient. The definitions also tend to be a bit wordy; for example, consider the definition of "leaf": "a lateral outgrowth from a stem that constitutes part of the foliage of a plant and functions primarily in food manufacture by photosynthesis, that arises in regular succession from the growing point, that consists typically of a flattened green blade which is joined to the stem by a petiole often with a pair of stipules at its base, which in cross section exhibits an outer covering of epidermal cells penetrated by stomata usually more numerous on the lower surface, which has one or more layers of palisade cells beneath the upper epidermis and between these and the lower epidermis a mass of spongy parenchyma cells, both palisade and spongy tissue being ramified by a network of veins, and that is distinguished from a leaflet, cladophyll, or phylloclade by the presence of a bud at the juncture of petiole and stem and from a phyllode by differentiation into blade and petiole" Comprehensive, but a bit wordy and difficult to comprehend.
This dictionary faced quite a bit of controversy over being "permissive" at the time of its release. This controversy was mostly culture war nonsense, and the dictionary is no less descriptive than its predecessor.
This dictionary also has useful usage guidance and synonymies (discrimination between synonyms). Physically, this book is massive but also quite lovely. Overall, most people do not need an unabridged dictionary, but if you need or want one, this is the one you should get.
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: I found this dictionary somewhat disappointing. First, the positives: the illustrations are nice and the formatting is acceptable. It's a bit more up-to-date compared to W3 (released in 1987 and updated until 2001); however, it's still fairly outdated. However, this still gives the Random House Webster's an edge when it comes to slang and newer terms. The essay on avoiding insensitive or offensive language is a nice addition. However, the definitions are somewhat weak in comparison to W3. For example, regret is defined by Random House as "a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc." and by W3 as "sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair : grief or pain tinged with disappointment, dissatisfaction, longing, remorse, or comparable emotion." In addition, there aren't nearly as many entries as W3. Overall, a decent dictionary, but the W3 is overall the better package.
College Dictionaries:
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: This is the dictionary most people should get. It is abridged from W3 but is more up-to-date, the eleventh edition having last been revised in 2020. Good definitions, nice illustrations, useful usage guidance and discrimination of synonyms. It's not afraid to capitalize entry words like the W3 was. Overall, if you only want to get one physical dictionary, make it this one. It's pretty cheap on Amazon.
Webster's New World College Dictionary: This is the other dictionary most people should get. In comparison to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, this dictionary also has good definitions and illustrations; the definitions are a bit easier to understand though not quite as precise or comprehensive. It's a bit less descriptive but not by much. Overall, my recommendation is to make this your second dictionary. Best used in conjunction with Merriam-Webster's Collegiate.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: This is a great dictionary. Its strongest strength is its formatting, generous margins, and lovely full-color pictures. Unfortunately, it's no longer in print. Famously, this dictionary contains the usage panel; however, this is more of a drawback than an advantage. The usage advice is subpar compared to other college dictionaries. It also has an appendix containing Indo-European roots (probably its best feature in my eyes). Overall, you can't go wrong with this dictionary even if it's not as good as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate or the New World.
Random House Webster's College Dictionary: An abridgment of Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. All of my criticisms for that dictionary apply here.
Online Dictionaries:
Wiktionary: This dictionary is very up-to-date but the definitions are of varying quality. A very useful feature is the very many foreign words treated here. Also, the section outlining translations of a word into various languages is good. Obscure words are treated here too. Overall, I recommend using this in conjunction with Merriam-Webster Online or Unabridged.
Google Dictionary: This is the dictionary you use if you don't care about dictionaries. The definitions are acceptable. One useful feature is a graph showing the usage of a word over time. However, this offers no usage advice or discrimination of synonyms. Overall, if you don't care at all about the dictionary you use, just use this dictionary.
Merriam-Webster Online: The definitions are the best out of any online dictionary. However, due to Merriam-Webster's standards for inclusion, some more recent words might not be here. This is basically a digital version of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate but more frequently updated.
Merriam-Webster Unabridged: This is basically a digital version of W3 (see my critique of W3 above). It also includes the Collegiate Dictionary, Collegiate Thesaurus, and Medical Dictionary. It solves the main issue of that dictionary which was capitalization of entry headwords and up-to-dateness. Unfortunately, there's a heavy subscription cost though you can get a free one-year subscription at https://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/ (though this requires a copy of the Collegiate). This is my overall preferred online dictionary, and I often use it in conjunction with Wiktionary.
Dictionary.com: This is basically a digital version of Random House Webster's Unabridged. My criticisms of that dictionary apply to this one.
American Heritage Dictionary Online: This is basically a digital version of the AHD (see above). My criticisms of that apply here.
If you have any questions or want clarification, feel free to reply to this post.
2024.06.01 14:50 pixel293 Wine Proton failing with vulkan.c:(.text+0x132be): undefined reference to `ceil'
I have Gentoo running in a VirtualBox instance and I was trying to install wine to test it out. But I'm getting this compilation error:
submitted by pixel293 to Gentoo [link] [comments]
make: Entering directory '/vatmp/portage/app-emulation/wine-proton-8.0.5c/work/build64' x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-gcc -m64 -o dlls/winevulkan/winevulkan.so -shared -Wl,-Bsymbolic -Wl,-soname,winevulkan.so -Wl,-z,defs dlls/winevulkan/vulkan.o \ dlls/winevulkan/vulkan_thunks.o dlls/ntdll/ntdll.so dlls/win32u/win32u.so -Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs /uslib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/13/../../../../x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld: dlls/winevulkan/vulkan.o: in function `fshack_vk_queue_present': vulkan.c:(.text+0x132a3): undefined reference to `ceil' /uslib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/13/../../../../x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld: vulkan.c:(.text+0x132be): undefined reference to `ceil' collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit statusThis is my build environment:
$ emerge --info '=app-emulation/wine-proton-8.0.5c::gentoo' Portage 3.0.63 (python 3.11.9-final-0, default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop, gcc-13, glibc-2.39-r6, 6.6.30-gentoo-dist x86_64) ================================================================= System Settings ================================================================= System uname: Linux-6.6.30-gentoo-dist-x86_64-AMD_Ryzen_9_7950X_16-Core_Processor-with-glibc2.39 KiB Mem: 6068404 total, 3899836 free KiB Swap: 20971516 total, 20971516 free Timestamp of repository gentoo: Fri, 31 May 2024 20:04:05 +0000 Head commit of repository gentoo: d0053cd9e606ef5a87580f46d5aee7542255c440 sh bash 5.1_p16-r6 ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.42 p3) 2.42.0 app-misc/pax-utils: 1.3.7::gentoo app-shells/bash: 5.1_p16-r6::gentoo dev-build/autoconf: 2.71-r7::gentoo dev-build/automake: 1.16.5-r2::gentoo dev-build/cmake: 3.28.5::gentoo dev-build/libtool: 2.4.7-r4::gentoo dev-build/make: 4.4.1-r1::gentoo dev-build/meson: 1.4.0-r1::gentoo dev-java/java-config: 2.3.3-r1::gentoo dev-lang/perl: 5.38.2-r3::gentoo dev-lang/python: 3.11.9::gentoo, 3.12.3::gentoo dev-lang/rust-bin: 1.77.1::gentoo sys-apps/baselayout: 2.15::gentoo sys-apps/openrc: 0.54::gentoo sys-apps/sandbox: 2.38::gentoo sys-devel/binutils: 2.42-r1::gentoo sys-devel/binutils-config: 5.5::gentoo sys-devel/clang: 17.0.6::gentoo sys-devel/gcc: 13.2.1_p20240210::gentoo sys-devel/gcc-config: 2.11::gentoo sys-devel/llvm: 17.0.6::gentoo sys-kernel/linux-headers: 6.6-r1::gentoo (virtual/os-headers) sys-libs/glibc: 2.39-r6::gentoo Repositories: gentoo location: /vadb/repos/gentoo sync-type: git sync-uri: https://github.com/gentoo-mirrogentoo.git priority: -1000 volatile: False sync-git-verify-commit-signature: yes ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" ACCEPT_LICENSE="@FREE @BINARY-REDISTRIBUTABLE" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=native -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usshare/gnupg/qualified.txt /usshare/maven-bin-3.9/conf" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=native -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/vacache/distfiles" ENV_UNSET="CARGO_HOME DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY GDK_PIXBUF_MODULE_FILE GOBIN GOPATH PERL5LIB PERL5OPT PERLPREFIX PERL_CORE PERL_MB_OPT PERL_MM_OPT XAUTHORITY XDG_CACHE_HOME XDG_CONFIG_HOME XDG_DATA_HOME XDG_RUNTIME_DIR XDG_STATE_HOME" FCFLAGS="-march=native -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-docompress binpkg-dostrip binpkg-logs binpkg-multi-instance buildpkg-live config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles ipc-sandbox merge-sync merge-wait multilib-strict network-sandbox news parallel-fetch pid-sandbox pkgdir-index-trusted preserve-libs protect-owned qa-unresolved-soname-deps sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync xattr" FFLAGS="-march=native -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" GENTOO_MIRRORS="https://gentoo.osuosl.org/ https://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/" LANG="en_US.utf8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs" LEX="flex" PKGDIR="/vacache/binpkgs" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --exclude=/.git" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/vatmp" SHELL="/bin/bash" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdda cdr cet compress-zstd crypt dbus dist-kernel dri dts dvd dvdr elogind encode exif flac flatpak gdbm gif gpm grub gtk gui iconv icu ipv6 jpeg lcms libnotify libtirpc logrotate lto lz4 mad mng mp3 mp4 mpeg multilib ncurses networkmanager nls ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf png policykit ppds pulseaudio readline sdl seccomp sound spell ssl startup-notification svg test-rust tiff truetype udev udisks unicode upower urandom usb vorbis vulkan wxwidgets x264 xattr xcb xft xml xv xvid zlib zstd" ABI_X86="64" ADA_TARGET="gcc_12" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_anon authn_dbm authn_file authz_dbm authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="karbon sheets words" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" CPU_FLAGS_X86="aes avx avx2 mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt rdrand sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock greis isync itrax mtk3301 ntrip navcom oceanserver oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf skytraq superstar2 tsip tripmate tnt ublox" INPUT_DEVICES="libinput" KERNEL="linux" L10N="en en-US en-GB" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb text" LUA_SINGLE_TARGET="lua5-1" LUA_TARGETS="lua5-1" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php8-1" POSTGRES_TARGETS="postgres15" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_11" PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_11" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby31 ruby32" VIDEO_CARDS="vmware" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tarpit sysrq proto logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" Unset: ADDR2LINE, AR, ARFLAGS, AS, ASFLAGS, CC, CCLD, CONFIG_SHELL, CPP, CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, CXX, CXXFILT, ELFEDIT, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, EXTRA_ECONF, F77FLAGS, FC, GCOV, GPROF, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LD, LFLAGS, LIBTOOL, LINGUAS, MAKE, MAKEFLAGS, MAKEOPTS, NM, OBJCOPY, OBJDUMP, PORTAGE_BINHOST, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PYTHONPATH, RANLIB, READELF, RUSTFLAGS, SIZE, STRINGS, STRIP, YACC, YFLAGSI'm not real sure where to go from here.
2024.06.01 14:48 No-Marionberry-6769 DJI Osmo Action 4 Standard Combo 4K Waterproof Action Camera Bundle
 | Experience Adventure Like Never Before with the DJI Osmo Action 4 Standard Combo - 4K Waterproof Action Camera Bundle submitted by No-Marionberry-6769 to BestToBuyUSA [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/nof8aipzhy3d1.jpg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=16e6f0d879b6192ec22f6c08baedd833613a0984 Description: Unlock your potential for capturing breathtaking moments with the DJI Osmo Action 4 Standard Combo. This 4K waterproof action camera bundle is designed for adventurers and content creators who demand the best in video quality, durability, and versatility. Whether you're diving into the deep, conquering mountain peaks, or cruising on your bike, the Osmo Action 4 ensures every moment is captured in stunning detail. Why Choose the DJI Osmo Action 4 Standard Combo?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "The DJI Osmo Action 4 has completely transformed my travel vlogs. The 4K video quality is amazing, and the stabilization is top-notch. It's also super easy to use, even underwater!" - Rachel T. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "This action camera is a beast! The dual screens are incredibly useful, and the footage quality is unparalleled. It's a must-have for any adventure seeker." - Mark L. Capture Your Adventures with the DJI Osmo Action 4 Standard Combo! Don't let your epic moments go unrecorded. The DJI Osmo Action 4 Standard Combo is the perfect tool for capturing high-quality, immersive footage of your adventures. Click here https://youtu.be/pH90UQtDg5k to purchase your DJI Osmo Action 4 today and elevate your content creation to new heights! DJIOsmoAction4 #ActionCamera #4KVideo #WaterproofCamera #AdventureReady #RockSteady #TravelVlog #OutdoorPhotography #DualScreens #CaptureEveryMoment |
2024.06.01 14:48 TonyChanYT Is worrying/anxiety a sin? How to deal with it
u/AbleismIsSatan, u/JamieIPrentice1, u/Blopblop734
G3307 μερίζω (merízō): to apportion, to divide, to disunite
G3308 μέριμνα (mérimna) from 3307: the state of being concerned and preoccupied, through the idea of distraction
G3309 μεριμνάω (merimnáō) from 3308: worry, concern, preoccupy
G3309 appears 19 times in the NT.
NIV Matthew 6:
Is worrying or anxiety a sin?
That depends on whether you are worrying negatively or are concerned positively about something.
How to deal with negative anxiety?
Practice peace as a way of life. Philippians 4:
submitted by TonyChanYT to BibleVerseCommentary [link] [comments]
G3307 μερίζω (merízō): to apportion, to divide, to disunite
G3308 μέριμνα (mérimna) from 3307: the state of being concerned and preoccupied, through the idea of distraction
G3309 μεριμνάω (merimnáō) from 3308: worry, concern, preoccupy
G3309 appears 19 times in the NT.
NIV Matthew 6:
25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry [G3309] about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.The same Greek word is translated as "anxious" in English Standard Version:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?Luke 10:
41 "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried [G3309] and upset about many things"But then, the same Greek lexeme appears in 1 Corinthians 7:
32 I would like you to be free from concern [G3309]. An unmarried man is *concerned * [G3309] about the Lord's affairs—how he can please the Lord.It is not a sin to concern G3309 about pleasing God.
33 But a married man is concerned <3309> about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned [G3309] about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned [G3309] about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.The English concept of worrying is not a good thing. The Greek original concept of G3309 is ambiguous. It could mean worry or concern, or it could be a good thing.
Is worrying or anxiety a sin?
That depends on whether you are worrying negatively or are concerned positively about something.
How to deal with negative anxiety?
Practice peace as a way of life. Philippians 4:
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious [G3309] about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.Look to Jesus. Focus on the Paraclete who dwells in you. He is your peace. Instead of dealing with anxiety on a case-by-case basis, practice the general solution of growing your faith daily. The more you grow spiritually, the less you will experience negative anxiety.
8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
2024.06.01 14:39 ECUALUM2003 🔥🔥Cash Orioles/Miami Umpire Over/11-8 MLB/Friday Recap
Friday could have been much better but ended + thanks to #1 Baltimore coming through and we cashed another Umpire Over. Now 27-7 umpire overs.
Anyone tail and cash past 2 days? Looks like not many did. Not sure if i'll be around much next days, we'll see.
Thank you in advance to those who say thanks and tip when they Hit. You keep me griding daily on days when I feel like not posting.
MLB=11-8 (Cash #1 top play/4 top plays)
NHL=0-2
MLB=11-8 Fri/8-5 Thurs/12-12 Wed/10-13 Tues/7-10 Mon/9-11 Sun/10-10 Sat/14-7 Fri (8-3 Top)/10-3 Thurs/14-10 Wed (8-4 Top)/9-10 Tues (Cash #1/7-5 Top)/7-9 Mon/13-6 Sun/11-9 Sat/13-8 Sat (Cash#1/7 Top) Thurs/(Cash #1)/12-10 Wed (6-5 top)/11-10 Tues (Cash #1)/9-8 Mon/11-12 Sun (Cash #!)/11-11 Sat (Cash top 2)/12-11 Fri (7-4 Top)/4-7 Thurs/11-10 Wed/11-9 Tues (Cash Top 5)/12-5 Mon (7-1 Top)/10-12 Sun/13-8 Sat (7-3 Top)/5-14 Fri/5-4 Thurs/13-8 Wed (Cash top 6 straight/12-10 Tues (Cash #1)/8-8 Mon (6-3 Top)/7-12 Sun (6-4 Top)/13-9 Sat (6-4 Top)/9-9 Fri (5-4 Top)/7-5 Thurs/14-6 Wed (9-2 TOP)/15-8 Sun (9-3 Top plays)/
647-563 YTD/ (340-274 Top plays) Umpire Overs=27-7
*All plays are standard bets unless adorned with a star. Those adorned with a star are TOP Plays.*Top plays are listed in order of strength.
⭐️Baltimore-135-W
⭐️Texas-116-L
⭐️Cubs-139-L
⭐️Cleveland-1-140-W
⭐️Houston+102-L
⭐️Yankees-117-W
⭐️Royals+115-L
⭐️Boston-0.5-110 (F5-First 5 innings)-W
⭐️Cardinals/Phils Over 7.5-120-L
⭐️Rockies/Dodgers Over 8-115-L
Phillies-0.5-120 (F5-First 5 innings)-W
Mariners-1-105-Push
Brewers-150-W
Toronto-1-105-W
Dodgers-1.5-120-L
Braves-1.5-103-W
Arizona+106-L
Cincy/Chicago Over 7.5-120-W
Washington/Cleveland Over 7.5-115-W
Texas/Miami Over 8-130-W (Umpire Over)
Pittsburgh/Toronto Over 8-120-Push
NHL=1-0 Thurs/2-0 Wed/Push Tues/1-1 Mon/0-1 Sun/1-0 Sat/1-1 Fri (1-0 Top)/0-2 Thurs/0-2 Wed/1-0 Mon/1-0 Sat/2-1 Fri (2-0 Top)/2-2 (Cash #1)/0-1 Wed/1-3 Tues (1-1 Top)/0-3-1 Mon/0-2-1 Sun/1-2 Sat/2-1 Fri/1-2 Thurs (Cash #1)/2-1 Wed/1-2 Tues/0-1 Mon/2-1 Sun/1-0 Sat/0-3 Fri/0-1 Thurs/2-1 Wed/2-4 Tues/2-1 Mon/4-2 Sun (2-1 Top)/1-4 Sat (Cash #1)/3-3 Fri (2-1 Top)/4-1 Sun (Cash top 2)/3-0 Sat/4-3 Thurs/5-1 Sun/4-2 Friday (2-1 Top)/6-1 Fri/6-3 Thurs (3-1 Top)/4-2 Wed (2/3 Top)/5-3 Tues (Cash #1)/6-0 SUN/8-4 Sat/2-0 Fri/5-1 Sun (Cash 2/2 Top)/7-4 Sat (Cash 3 Top)/7-4 Thurs (Cash 3/4 Top plays)/4-1 Wed (3-0 Top)/6-3 Tues (Cash top 2 plays)/7-2 Sat/4-0 Fri/7-5 Sat/4-2 Friday/6-0 Sun/6-5 Sat/3-1 Fri/3-1 Wed/4-2 Tues/2-1 Sun/11-0 Sat/676-654 YTD
⭐️Dallas-122-L (didnt even show up)
Edmonton/Dallas Over 5.5-112-L
My picks/analysis/answering questions is and will remain free- but if you’ve been crushing the books with me, would you consider a tip for my time and effort? (and keep wife off back ha!)
As always Tips are NEVER expected but GREATLY appreciated to the newborn diaper fund/medical bills for wife.
Venmo=@ECU03 (LAST 4 DIGITS IF IT ASKS=5029)
PayPal=@superbae
Cashapp=$Alew1980
submitted by ECUALUM2003 to u/ECUALUM2003 [link] [comments]
Anyone tail and cash past 2 days? Looks like not many did. Not sure if i'll be around much next days, we'll see.
Thank you in advance to those who say thanks and tip when they Hit. You keep me griding daily on days when I feel like not posting.
MLB=11-8 (Cash #1 top play/4 top plays)
NHL=0-2
MLB=11-8 Fri/8-5 Thurs/12-12 Wed/10-13 Tues/7-10 Mon/9-11 Sun/10-10 Sat/14-7 Fri (8-3 Top)/10-3 Thurs/14-10 Wed (8-4 Top)/9-10 Tues (Cash #1/7-5 Top)/7-9 Mon/13-6 Sun/11-9 Sat/13-8 Sat (Cash#1/7 Top) Thurs/(Cash #1)/12-10 Wed (6-5 top)/11-10 Tues (Cash #1)/9-8 Mon/11-12 Sun (Cash #!)/11-11 Sat (Cash top 2)/12-11 Fri (7-4 Top)/4-7 Thurs/11-10 Wed/11-9 Tues (Cash Top 5)/12-5 Mon (7-1 Top)/10-12 Sun/13-8 Sat (7-3 Top)/5-14 Fri/5-4 Thurs/13-8 Wed (Cash top 6 straight/12-10 Tues (Cash #1)/8-8 Mon (6-3 Top)/7-12 Sun (6-4 Top)/13-9 Sat (6-4 Top)/9-9 Fri (5-4 Top)/7-5 Thurs/14-6 Wed (9-2 TOP)/15-8 Sun (9-3 Top plays)/
647-563 YTD/ (340-274 Top plays) Umpire Overs=27-7
*All plays are standard bets unless adorned with a star. Those adorned with a star are TOP Plays.*Top plays are listed in order of strength.
⭐️Baltimore-135-W
⭐️Texas-116-L
⭐️Cubs-139-L
⭐️Cleveland-1-140-W
⭐️Houston+102-L
⭐️Yankees-117-W
⭐️Royals+115-L
⭐️Boston-0.5-110 (F5-First 5 innings)-W
⭐️Cardinals/Phils Over 7.5-120-L
⭐️Rockies/Dodgers Over 8-115-L
Phillies-0.5-120 (F5-First 5 innings)-W
Mariners-1-105-Push
Brewers-150-W
Toronto-1-105-W
Dodgers-1.5-120-L
Braves-1.5-103-W
Arizona+106-L
Cincy/Chicago Over 7.5-120-W
Washington/Cleveland Over 7.5-115-W
Texas/Miami Over 8-130-W (Umpire Over)
Pittsburgh/Toronto Over 8-120-Push
NHL=1-0 Thurs/2-0 Wed/Push Tues/1-1 Mon/0-1 Sun/1-0 Sat/1-1 Fri (1-0 Top)/0-2 Thurs/0-2 Wed/1-0 Mon/1-0 Sat/2-1 Fri (2-0 Top)/2-2 (Cash #1)/0-1 Wed/1-3 Tues (1-1 Top)/0-3-1 Mon/0-2-1 Sun/1-2 Sat/2-1 Fri/1-2 Thurs (Cash #1)/2-1 Wed/1-2 Tues/0-1 Mon/2-1 Sun/1-0 Sat/0-3 Fri/0-1 Thurs/2-1 Wed/2-4 Tues/2-1 Mon/4-2 Sun (2-1 Top)/1-4 Sat (Cash #1)/3-3 Fri (2-1 Top)/4-1 Sun (Cash top 2)/3-0 Sat/4-3 Thurs/5-1 Sun/4-2 Friday (2-1 Top)/6-1 Fri/6-3 Thurs (3-1 Top)/4-2 Wed (2/3 Top)/5-3 Tues (Cash #1)/6-0 SUN/8-4 Sat/2-0 Fri/5-1 Sun (Cash 2/2 Top)/7-4 Sat (Cash 3 Top)/7-4 Thurs (Cash 3/4 Top plays)/4-1 Wed (3-0 Top)/6-3 Tues (Cash top 2 plays)/7-2 Sat/4-0 Fri/7-5 Sat/4-2 Friday/6-0 Sun/6-5 Sat/3-1 Fri/3-1 Wed/4-2 Tues/2-1 Sun/11-0 Sat/676-654 YTD
⭐️Dallas-122-L (didnt even show up)
Edmonton/Dallas Over 5.5-112-L
My picks/analysis/answering questions is and will remain free- but if you’ve been crushing the books with me, would you consider a tip for my time and effort? (and keep wife off back ha!)
As always Tips are NEVER expected but GREATLY appreciated to the newborn diaper fund/medical bills for wife.
Venmo=@ECU03 (LAST 4 DIGITS IF IT ASKS=5029)
PayPal=@superbae
Cashapp=$Alew1980
2024.06.01 14:37 BeardyFragz Looking for a TKL with a few other Pre requisites.
lost on what decent options i have as i am aware of the big KB brands (logitech, SS, roccat ect) and have used many through the years but i cant distinguish between brands i have not heard of that ARE worth looking at and ones that are.... of the cheap and disposable variety, i just basically want more options and am looking for guidance of what other bands/ product lines are a decent use of my money :)
I play esports titles alot and need/want a keyboard that performs consistently well (no crappy keycaps or stabs, decent latency ect.)
i am not too knowledgeable on keyboards as a whole so if i have asked for something that in the end dose not actually matteis unattainable within my budget feel free to correct me.
Thankyou in advance to anyone who takes the time to read or recommend
Pre requisites- (with a total budget of £160 with the ability to go to £180 if i have too.
TKL
Back lit with shine through key caps as standard or an option upon order (dont want to use budget for extra caps, and i need the shine through as i am blind as all fuck and sit in the dark a lot)
solid frame and Linear switches as an option on purchase or at least hot swappable.
ISO layout
available to order online in the uk (i dont want to wait an undisclosed amount of time for shipping haha)
be NOT one of the following: Logitech (hate their switches) Razer, Corseair, (dont like their software and have not had the best experience with build quality of MANY of their products i have had before) Roccat (story to long but fuck Roccat IMO)
aluminium frame would be nice but not 100% needed.
needs to come pre built (buildings things just isnt... my thing) :)
this should be covered by the above but i dont want to have to lube my keys and stabs and whatever and have to take things apart if i dont have too.
colourways are not too important but something that isnt black or white for once in my life would be pretty mint :)
submitted by BeardyFragz to keyboards [link] [comments]
I play esports titles alot and need/want a keyboard that performs consistently well (no crappy keycaps or stabs, decent latency ect.)
i am not too knowledgeable on keyboards as a whole so if i have asked for something that in the end dose not actually matteis unattainable within my budget feel free to correct me.
Thankyou in advance to anyone who takes the time to read or recommend
Pre requisites- (with a total budget of £160 with the ability to go to £180 if i have too.
TKL
Back lit with shine through key caps as standard or an option upon order (dont want to use budget for extra caps, and i need the shine through as i am blind as all fuck and sit in the dark a lot)
solid frame and Linear switches as an option on purchase or at least hot swappable.
ISO layout
available to order online in the uk (i dont want to wait an undisclosed amount of time for shipping haha)
be NOT one of the following: Logitech (hate their switches) Razer, Corseair, (dont like their software and have not had the best experience with build quality of MANY of their products i have had before) Roccat (story to long but fuck Roccat IMO)
aluminium frame would be nice but not 100% needed.
needs to come pre built (buildings things just isnt... my thing) :)
this should be covered by the above but i dont want to have to lube my keys and stabs and whatever and have to take things apart if i dont have too.
colourways are not too important but something that isnt black or white for once in my life would be pretty mint :)
2024.06.01 14:28 ZotraxOTG Could the Wayhaven Detective beat the POMA MC? A 1000-word long analysis 🤔
 | What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? This is the core question which this submitted by ZotraxOTG to hostedgames [link] [comments] [Scope of this Analysis] In this analysis, with the help of a thesaurus, I'll be stealing 15 minutes of your productive time, inspecting scenarios within the confines of what is allowed within their respective worlds, before inevitably making a general assumption of the most plausible end within the material laws of our own reality, delivering the topic in the most contrive nophisistic dialectic way imaginable as a means to give this piece some semblance of legitimacy in academia. (Did you understand what I just wrote? Because I sure as hell don't. ☺️) [Summary of their respective powers] —Bocchi The Rock Feats— •Immense Endurance •Ludicrous Reflexes •Extreme Speed •Inhumane Strength •Demonic Powers •Elemental Powers •Void Control •Unnatural Rizz —The Detective— •Immunity to supernatural bullshit •The Indomitable Human Will •Absolute Rizz •Plot Armor •Brit*sh •Gun [Analysis] In the case of the Wayhaven Universe, we can clearly see that Bocchi the Rock is severely at a disadvantage in offwnsw when facing against Scenario one, the Detective's immunity to Supernatural Bullshit works against the POMA MCs power as well, in that case, it's just getting in range, pulling out his gun and shooting his is ass. Scenario two, he wins through in-direct means; since the Wayhaven Universe is set in Britain the Detective has the benefit of showing the POMA MC a comparison of British Food prices from five years ago with what it is currently now, such a sight will undoubtedly break a person's drive to live, and in the case of the POMA MC, they will promptly concede so he can fuck off back to his world and away from such misery. In the case of the POMA universe or just beyond, the inverse is true, the Wayhaven Detective (in most scenarios) doesn't stand a chance against Bocchi the Rock. His plot armor is only applicable within the confines of the Wayhaven Universe, and beyond that his mostly just an average shmuck, maybe more trained than some due to his police training, but wholistically simply ordinary beyond his supernatural bullshit nullification field, therefore in a situation where the two meet, Bocchi the Rocks gonna snap his body like a twig more than Sidestep towards Gerald's knee ever could. The only saving grace the Detective has is if his immunity to supernatural bullshit could work, if it works and is able to nullify his powers, again, all he needs to do is deliver lead upon heads with their gun. However, it must be noted that the detective's powers definitely has limits, there is nothing stopping the POMA MC from fucking off beyond reach from the Detective's Anti-Supernatural Bullshit Power, and once the POMA MC does that there really isn't anything stopping them from tossing a building size boulder to the Detective's general direction. [Data Measurement] By quantifying the offensive and defensive potential of the respective MC into points we are able to measure their respective advantages and discern a general assumption: —The Detective Poma MC can't do shit against the Detective's Plot armor if he challenges them in their home turf (1 point to Wayhaven Advantage) If the detective resistance to supernatural bullshit works against the POMA MC than all he really needs to do is get in range and pull his gun (1 point to both Wayhaven and Other Tales Advantage). Can possibly destroy POMA's MC will to live by showing the British Standard of Living (1 point to Wayhaven Advantage). (Overall Advantages) Wayhaven universe - 3 POMA universe and beyond - 2 Total Advantages: 3 + 2 = 5 —POMA MC Literally invulnerable to all conventional means of harming him. (1 point to Wayhaven and POMA Advantage) Inhuman strength, speed and reflex makes him a superior combatant in close range (1 point to Wayhaven and POMA Advantage). His powers allow him nullify the Detective's power to nullify; nothing stopping Bocchi the Rock from POMA from throwing a fucking building size rock from yards away and killing a non-plot-armor Detective (1 point to POMA Advantage). (Overall Advantages) Wayhaven Universe - 2 Poma Universe and beyond - 3 Total Advantages: 2 + 3 = 5 [Conclusion] Based on the quantifiable measurement, we can conclude that the Wayhaven Detective and POMA MC is generally equal in footing, however, in the case of specific scenarios, there is a noticeable difference in advantages. In the case of the Wayhaven Detective, they have a greater advantage within the confines of the Wayhaven Universe. In the case of the POMA MC, they have a greater advantage within their own and universe beyond their own. That is all, do you agree with my statement? If not then why? Feel free to disapprove and voice your opinions in the comments. I accept all criticism. (•w•)👍 |
2024.06.01 14:25 lonelytunes09 How to assess election results
TLDR: I want to give you benchmarks and scientific processes to understand the outcome of the 2024 election without any prejudice.
There are many opinion polls and analyses that are giving extreme predictions of 2024 outcome like one from Parakala Prabhakar predicts ~150 seats for BJP and some others predict 375. Coming from a family of politicians .Without any prejudice let me explain how the process works and how to get a correct sense of the election. Thumb rules: I will give a detailed explanation later, but please keep these rules in mind. 1. Elections are won by grassroots cadres who bring voters to the voting booth. You cannot win elections unless that happens.
Next in line are charlatans like Yogendra Yadav who with their sweet talk mix data with their feelings. He is taking data from previous elections and mixing his feelings to predict the outcome. I would trust the analysis of Pradeep Gupta or News24 Today’s Chanakya. These people have a very high rate of predicting election outcomes correctly, we need to understand their methods and how they can predict them correctly.
To understand their methods, we must first understand how people arrive at a decision to vote for a specific party.
Every party has 3 distinct types of voters:
Please take these factors into account.
The best-case scenario for BJP is 355 however, 325 would be a rational figure.
submitted by lonelytunes09 to unitedstatesofindia [link] [comments]
There are many opinion polls and analyses that are giving extreme predictions of 2024 outcome like one from Parakala Prabhakar predicts ~150 seats for BJP and some others predict 375. Coming from a family of politicians .Without any prejudice let me explain how the process works and how to get a correct sense of the election. Thumb rules: I will give a detailed explanation later, but please keep these rules in mind. 1. Elections are won by grassroots cadres who bring voters to the voting booth. You cannot win elections unless that happens.
- Voters vote in their best interest and they have clarity on that and the illiterate/poorly educated ones have better clarity. Voters are not stupid or could be fooled or people's mandate can be stolen.
- वक़्त करता है परवरिश बरसों, हादसा एक दम नहीं होता : Things doesn’t happen all of a sudden, it happens over a while. Likewise, people don’t change their minds just because X incident has happened. Let's say on a weighing scale while pouring peanuts on one pan, on the 100th peanut scale tilts on its side so we cannot categorically say that the 100th peanut was historic or there is something special about it.
- Media and money cannot buy votes.
- EVMs cannot be hacked/manipulated.
- In God we trust, others bring data.
Next in line are charlatans like Yogendra Yadav who with their sweet talk mix data with their feelings. He is taking data from previous elections and mixing his feelings to predict the outcome. I would trust the analysis of Pradeep Gupta or News24 Today’s Chanakya. These people have a very high rate of predicting election outcomes correctly, we need to understand their methods and how they can predict them correctly.
To understand their methods, we must first understand how people arrive at a decision to vote for a specific party.
Every party has 3 distinct types of voters:
- Core voters: These voters will vote for a given party even if the sun rises in the west. A classic example is BSP. Its core voters are the SC/ST community and without any effort or presence in media or SM in the 2022 UP election, they got ~13% vote. Every major party has 10-20% (of the total eligible voters).
- Loyal voters: These voters are loyal to a specific party/leader however, they have a defined fault line and if their party/leader crosses that fault line they vote against that party/leader. E.g. a BJP voter has a fault line of Hindutva or nationalism and if they feel that fault line is crossed they would vote against BJP to express their anger because that fault line is crossed. As long as the fault line is not crossed the party/leader engaged in crime or corruption doesn’t matter. The percentage of loyal voters changes each election, but you cannot win unless you have ~15-20% loyal voters. Floating voter: This voter would vote based on his criteria and perception however this kind of voter is usually in the range of 5% of the total voters. Core voters form the bulwark of the party and support the party voraciously even at it’s lowest point, these voters keep the party alive in its bad days, but you cannot win the elections without the support of the loyal voters. These voters along with the floating voters help the party cross the finish line which is usually 30-45%. When an incumbent party loses elections with a major loss, it usually means the loyal voters have voted against them. Floating voters matter when there is regime change because, in that kind of a fight, every vote counts. Bhau Torsekar , a Marathi journalist had accurately predicted 2014 and 2019 results without any survey and wrote books on he arrived at these figures. Let me summarise his methodology. He has identified swing seats, i.e. a constituency where the difference between the 1st and 2nd candidate should be less than 15% or BJP had won that seat in recent part, which he calls fight seats, i.e. seats where a party has a realistic chance of winning. That number was close to 300 and with Modi as PM candidate and Amit Shah as strategist of UP state that swing of 15% was achieved and in some cases even more and that is how the majority was won. Anyone who was closely involved in that election would know what fever was there to elect Modi. I personally remember that my family members who were loyalists of Congress had been angry with Congress since 90s and would say that they would now vote for Vajpayee just before going to vote and for Congress. Despite the disgruntlement and a charismatic leader like Vajpayee, they voted for Congress. The breaking point came when the Congress leadership behaved in a very high-handed manner with my Uncle and refusing to meet him, which was considered as a big insult by his supporters. BJP leadership grabbed the opportunity with both hands, had a series of meeting and scales were titled in 2014 election. 5 lakh voters switched from Congress to BJP and they became loyal voters of BJP. This fever I had seen in my colleagues and neighbours. With all the scandals of the world, bad publicity and wide-scale protests, Modi’s allure, and Shah’s micromanagement, unprecedented rise of 8% in the polls, the BJP’s vote share rose by just 12%. For India alliance to come tilt the scales, they will have to raise their vote share by at least 10% and I see no signs of that happening. Having disgruntled voters is one part, but disgruntled voters are not going to switch parties unless the opposition has addressed all the needs of the voters. Predicting 2024 elections: Please watch this video before making any opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwnnn1M-T5U . Here Shekhar Gupta speaks his observations on how he saw that Modi was able to deliver social benefit schemes to people( meanwhile he was making videos onhow bad modi's defeat would be in 2014 elections.) .
Please take these factors into account.
- 55 swing seats are there for BJP.
- The vote share of the India alliance will fall. Why? Because the cadre is leaving these parties.
- The vote share of the BJP will rise because the above cadre has come to the BJP. Tag this with streamline and tight control of central leadership.
The best-case scenario for BJP is 355 however, 325 would be a rational figure.
2024.06.01 14:25 CrusaderBrox Rise of Nations wont start the match (Winlator 6.1)
 | i finally get to launch Rise of Nations but it always freezes after loading screen and when I check it on Task Manager, the game is always "Not Responding" few seconds later, the game crashes. submitted by CrusaderBrox to EmulationOnAndroid [link] [comments] I always noticed that this emulator are so bad at running Older games. |
2024.06.01 14:21 oatmilk666 [H] humble games [W] games/charity donations/paypal/giftedgames
REP: https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/1bon79d/oatmilk666s_igs_rep_page/
All are humble bundle codes.
Ill gladly take gifted steam games (a la you buy it to me) instead of paypal.
I dont want to do giftlinks.
Im also willing to trade you codes vs a charity donation
to some reputable charity for example UNWRA or Internet Archive (a nonprofit digital library)
or some of your own choosing against providing me a copy of the receipt.
NEW:
Epic Chef
One-armed cook: Gourmet Upgrade
Sugar Shack
Chef: Full Menu Bundle
Cafe Owner Simulator
Abalon (Summoners Fate)
Blood: Fresh Supply
Doom 64
Driftland: The Magic Revival
PGA Tour 2K21
X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC
Dwarfs!?
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Wargroove
Rover Mechanic Simulator
Kerbal Space Program
Eastside Hockey Manager
Endless Space - Collection
Kingdom Classic
Regular Human Basketball
This War of Mine
Vertiginous Golf
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Gremlins, Inc.
MotoGP 15
MXGP - The Official Motocross Videogame
Satellite Reign
Cities in Motion
Cities in Motion 2
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
911 Operator
Train Simulator 2020
Train Simulator: CSX AC6000CW Loco Add-On
Train Simulator: Miami - West Palm Beach Route Add-On
Train Simulator: Riviera Line in the Fifties: Exeter - Kingswear Route Add-On
Train Simulator: Western Hydraulics Pack Add-On
Tharsis
Void Destroyer
Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings
Drawful 2
Majesty 2 Collection
Telltale Texas Hold ‘Em
Beholder
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Beholder
Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition
Galactic Civilizations® I: Ultimate Edition
Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game
Crusader Kings Complete
Crusader Kings II
Crusader Kings II
Crusader Kings II: The Republic
Crusader Kings II: Legacy of Rome
Crusader Kings II: Sword of Islam
Crusader Kings II: Sunset Invasion
Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods DLC
Niche
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission
Think of the Children
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Siege of Centauri
Company of Heroes 2
Hacknet
Satellite Reign
Driftland: The Magic Revival
ΔV: Rings of Saturn
EarthX
Grey Goo
Kingdom: New Lands Royal Edition
The Long Dark
The Final Station
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Idle Champions Celeste's Starter Pack
MEMORIES OF MARS
Kathy Rain
11-11 Memories Retold
Thomas Was Alone
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent 2
Road to Ballhalla
The Walking Dead: 400 Days
Broken Age
Full Throttle Remastered
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Draw Slasher
Machinarium Collector's Edition
Police Quest Collection
NecroWorm
Neverout
Pixplode
Worms
Doodle Derby
Dub Dash
Safety First!
Kingdom
Kingdom Classic
Kingdom: New Lands Royal Edition
Hyper Light Drifter
No Time to Explain Remastered
StarCrossed
Splasher
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
Stick Fight: The Game
Penarium
Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing
GoNNER
140
Evergarden
SpeedRunners
Death Squared
Oh My Godheads
Octahedron: Transfixed Edition
Deadbeat Heroes
Pathway
Deep Sky Derelicts
Gift of Parthax
One Way Heroics
Armello
Book of Demons
LiEat
Orbital Racer
Roarr! Jurassic Edition
Hyper Light Drifter
BioShock Remastered
Tormentor X Punisher
Sniper Elite
No Time To Explain Remastered
Action Henk
Insurgency
Deadbeat Heroes
Stick Fight: The Game
Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Episode 1: Penal Colony
RESIDENT EVIL 2 All In-game Rewards Unlock DLC
GET EVEN
Deadly 30
Pacify
DUSK
How to survive 2
Duke Nukem Forever
POSTAL
Expensive & rare / delisted & removed from steam:
Max Payne 3 (Rockstar games store)
Necromonads
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
Sonic CD
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
beyond eyes
Sam & Max: Season 1
Sam & Max: Season 2
Bone Episode 1 & Episode 2 Telltale Out from boneville & The great Cow Race
HITMAN: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Citizens of Earth
Jurassic Park: The Game
F1 2011
Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Games Series
VR:
Smashbox Arena
Carnival Games VR
Telefrag VR
Slinger VR
Paper Fire Rookie
TOOLS/PROGRAMS
GameGuru
GameMaker Studio 2 Creator 12 Months
Intro to Game Development with Unity
Music Maker EDM Edition
PDF-Suite 1 Year License
Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Standard
Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
GameMaker Studio Pro
clickteam fusion
Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
Free with trade:
Liberated (GOG)
Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG)
Intro to Game Development with Unity (not sure if valid)
................................
WANT:
Open to offers & all kinds of games, let me know.
Possible titles gifted trough steam or willing to overpay for:
Elden Ring DLC
Dark souls 2
Shadowgate
Frostpunk + DLCs
Elex
gloomwood
spintires
snowrunner
Thief: Deadly Shadows
obscure 1 + 2
Blood West
Supplice
shadow warrior 1 + 2 + 3
organ trail
I dont want TF2 keys.
submitted by oatmilk666 to indiegameswap [link] [comments]
All are humble bundle codes.
Ill gladly take gifted steam games (a la you buy it to me) instead of paypal.
I dont want to do giftlinks.
Im also willing to trade you codes vs a charity donation
to some reputable charity for example UNWRA or Internet Archive (a nonprofit digital library)
or some of your own choosing against providing me a copy of the receipt.
NEW:
Epic Chef
One-armed cook: Gourmet Upgrade
Sugar Shack
Chef: Full Menu Bundle
Cafe Owner Simulator
Abalon (Summoners Fate)
Blood: Fresh Supply
Doom 64
Driftland: The Magic Revival
PGA Tour 2K21
X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC
Dwarfs!?
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Wargroove
Rover Mechanic Simulator
Kerbal Space Program
Eastside Hockey Manager
Endless Space - Collection
Kingdom Classic
Regular Human Basketball
This War of Mine
Vertiginous Golf
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
Gremlins, Inc.
MotoGP 15
MXGP - The Official Motocross Videogame
Satellite Reign
Cities in Motion
Cities in Motion 2
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
911 Operator
Train Simulator 2020
Train Simulator: CSX AC6000CW Loco Add-On
Train Simulator: Miami - West Palm Beach Route Add-On
Train Simulator: Riviera Line in the Fifties: Exeter - Kingswear Route Add-On
Train Simulator: Western Hydraulics Pack Add-On
Tharsis
Void Destroyer
Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings
Drawful 2
Majesty 2 Collection
Telltale Texas Hold ‘Em
Beholder
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Beholder
Galactic Civilizations® II: Ultimate Edition
Galactic Civilizations® I: Ultimate Edition
Darkest Hour: A Hearts of Iron Game
Crusader Kings Complete
Crusader Kings II
Crusader Kings II
Crusader Kings II: The Republic
Crusader Kings II: Legacy of Rome
Crusader Kings II: Sword of Islam
Crusader Kings II: Sunset Invasion
Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods DLC
Niche
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission
Think of the Children
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Siege of Centauri
Company of Heroes 2
Hacknet
Satellite Reign
Driftland: The Magic Revival
ΔV: Rings of Saturn
EarthX
Grey Goo
Kingdom: New Lands Royal Edition
The Long Dark
The Final Station
Primal Carnage: Extinction
Idle Champions Celeste's Starter Pack
MEMORIES OF MARS
Kathy Rain
observer_Pesterquest
11-11 Memories Retold
Thomas Was Alone
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent 2
Road to Ballhalla
The Walking Dead: 400 Days
Broken Age
Full Throttle Remastered
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Draw Slasher
Machinarium Collector's Edition
Police Quest Collection
NecroWorm
Neverout
Pixplode
Worms
Doodle Derby
Dub Dash
Safety First!
Kingdom
Kingdom Classic
Kingdom: New Lands Royal Edition
Hyper Light Drifter
No Time to Explain Remastered
StarCrossed
Splasher
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
Stick Fight: The Game
Penarium
Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing
GoNNER
140
Evergarden
SpeedRunners
Death Squared
Oh My Godheads
Octahedron: Transfixed Edition
Deadbeat Heroes
Pathway
Deep Sky Derelicts
Gift of Parthax
One Way Heroics
Armello
Book of Demons
LiEat
Orbital Racer
Roarr! Jurassic Edition
Hyper Light Drifter
BioShock Remastered
Tormentor X Punisher
Sniper Elite
No Time To Explain Remastered
Action Henk
Insurgency
Deadbeat Heroes
Stick Fight: The Game
Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Episode 1: Penal Colony
RESIDENT EVIL 2 All In-game Rewards Unlock DLC
GET EVEN
Deadly 30
Pacify
DUSK
How to survive 2
Duke Nukem Forever
POSTAL
Expensive & rare / delisted & removed from steam:
Max Payne 3 (Rockstar games store)
Necromonads
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
Sonic CD
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
beyond eyes
Sam & Max: Season 1
Sam & Max: Season 2
Bone Episode 1 & Episode 2 Telltale Out from boneville & The great Cow Race
HITMAN: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Citizens of Earth
Jurassic Park: The Game
F1 2011
Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Games Series
VR:
Smashbox Arena
Carnival Games VR
Telefrag VR
Slinger VR
Paper Fire Rookie
TOOLS/PROGRAMS
GameGuru
GameMaker Studio 2 Creator 12 Months
Intro to Game Development with Unity
Music Maker EDM Edition
PDF-Suite 1 Year License
Clickteam Fusion 2.5 Standard
Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 18
Ashampoo BackUp Pro 14
GameMaker Studio Pro
clickteam fusion
Music Maker: Hip Hop Edition
Free with trade:
Liberated (GOG)
Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG)
Intro to Game Development with Unity (not sure if valid)
................................
WANT:
Open to offers & all kinds of games, let me know.
Possible titles gifted trough steam or willing to overpay for:
Elden Ring DLC
Dark souls 2
Shadowgate
Frostpunk + DLCs
Elex
gloomwood
spintires
snowrunner
Thief: Deadly Shadows
obscure 1 + 2
Blood West
Supplice
shadow warrior 1 + 2 + 3
organ trail
I dont want TF2 keys.
2024.06.01 14:20 spacemancoco Opinions needed! Lesser known, but awesome sounding, lightsaber sound fonts?
I'm looking for some saber fonts for a new proffie saber. I prefer "in universe" style fonts with a sound that is unmistakably a Star Wars lightsaber, not something super electronic sounding or with sounds from some other franchise. It doesn't have to be a movie/show specific sound, or one from a particular character, but I like deeper, punchy sounds. If the fonts come with cool blade styles and ignitions, even better. I'm familiar with a lot of the well known ones from the likes of Kyberphonics, Ksith, JuanSith, Jaydalorian, Greyscale, etc., but I'm sure I haven't listened to them all... Anyways, what are your opinions on sweet sound fonts? Free would be nice, but I don't mind paying for good sounds. If you have links to your suggested font, that would be helpful as well. Thanks in advance!!
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2024.06.01 13:51 raqcservices Top 12 Benefits of Outsourcing Quality Inspection Services in 2024
 | https://preview.redd.it/di4lrpn88y3d1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6f5a01c2d44f92f44a19d097b4c7aa82d59ef392 submitted by raqcservices to u/raqcservices [link] [comments] In today's competitive business landscape, ensuring the highest quality standards is paramount for sustained success and customer satisfaction. This is where outsourcing quality inspection services come into play. By entrusting this crucial aspect of their operations to specialized third-party providers, businesses can reap numerous benefits, including cost savings, efficiency gains, enhanced quality control, and access to expertise and specialized tools. In this article, we will explore the top 12 benefits of outsourcing quality inspection services in 2024 and how it can help businesses thrive in an ever-evolving marketplace. IntroductionOutsourcing quality inspection services involves hiring external professionals or agencies to assess and monitor the quality of products or services.This can include various aspects such as conducting inspections, audits, and tests to ensure compliance with industry standards. Growing importance of quality inspection in the business landscapeIn today's competitive market, maintaining high-quality standards is crucial for businesses to gain a competitive edge and build customer trust.Quality inspection helps identify and rectify any deficiencies or defects, preventing costly recalls or customer complaints. As customer expectations continue to rise, businesses are increasingly realizing the importance of investing in quality inspection services to maintain their reputation and ensure customer satisfaction. Top Benefits of Outsourcing Quality Inspection Services1. Reduction in operational costs through outsourcingOutsourcing quality inspection services can lead to significant cost savings for businesses. Instead of investing in expensive equipment, training, and hiring dedicated personnel, outsourcing allows businesses to pay only for the services they require. This eliminates the need for additional fixed costs and can result in substantial operational cost reductions. 2. Streamlining quality inspection processes for improved efficiency By outsourcing quality inspection, businesses can benefit from streamlined processes and improved efficiency. External professionals have the expertise and experience to conduct inspections more quickly and accurately, saving time and resources. This allows businesses to focus on their core functions and allocate resources more effectively, ultimately improving overall productivity. 3. Leveraging the knowledge and experience of quality inspection professionals Outsourcing quality inspection services provides access to a pool of skilled professionals who specialize in various industries and have extensive knowledge in quality management. These experts bring valuable insights and best practices to the table, helping businesses identify potential issues and implement effective quality control measures. Leveraging their expertise can significantly enhance the overall quality of products or services. 4. Utilizing advanced tools and technologies for accurate inspections Quality inspection professionals are equipped with advanced tools and technologies that enable accurate and comprehensive inspections. These tools can include state-of-the-art testing equipment, software for data analysis, and specialized measurement devices. By outsourcing quality inspection, businesses gain access to these advanced tools without the need for substantial upfront investments, ensuring accurate assessments and reliable results. 5. Ensuring consistent quality standards through outsourcing Outsourcing quality inspection services ensures consistent adherence to quality standards. External professionals follow standardized processes and protocols to conduct inspections, leading to reliable and consistent results. This consistency helps businesses maintain their quality standards across different product lines, preventing variations and ensuring customer satisfaction. 6. Meeting industry regulations and compliance requirements Compliance with industry regulations and standards is critical for businesses to operate legally and maintain ethical practices. Outsourcing quality inspection services allows businesses to stay updated with the ever-changing regulatory landscape. Quality inspection professionals are well-versed in industry regulations and can help businesses meet compliance requirements, minimizing the risk of legal issues or penalties. 7. Adapting inspection services based on business needs and demands Outsourcing quality inspection services offers businesses the flexibility they need to adapt their inspection processes based on their ever-changing needs and demands. As your business grows and evolves, so do your requirements for quality control. By outsourcing, you can easily customize your inspection services to ensure they align perfectly with your specific business objectives. 8. Scaling up or down quality inspection operations efficiently One of the greatest benefits of outsourcing quality inspection services is the ability to scale your operations efficiently. Whether you're experiencing a sudden surge in production or facing a temporary slowdown, outsourcing allows you to quickly and seamlessly adjust your inspection services accordingly. No need to stress about hiring and training additional staff or minimizing costs during slower periods. With outsourcing, you can easily ramp up or down your inspection operations as needed, saving both time and money. 9. Allowing businesses to concentrate on their core functions Outsourcing quality inspection services permits businesses to focus on what they do best: their core competencies. You didn't start your business to become an expert in quality control, right? By entrusting this important task to specialized professionals, you can free up valuable time and resources to focus on the aspects of your business that truly set you apart from the competition. 10. Allocating resources towards strategic initiatives and business growth When you outsource quality inspection, you're not only freeing up time but also valuable resources. Instead of spending money on building an in-house quality control department, you can allocate those funds towards strategic initiatives and fuel your business growth. Whether it's investing in research and development, expanding into new markets, or improving your overall customer experience, outsourcing allows you to invest your resources where they matter most. 11. Mitigating risks associated with substandard products or services By outsourcing quality inspection services, you are taking proactive steps to mitigate the risks associated with substandard products or services. Quality control experts can identify defects and non-compliance issues early on, preventing potential recalls, customer dissatisfaction, and costly legal battles. By catching problems before they reach the market, you can safeguard your reputation and ensure your customers receive only the highest quality products. 12. Strengthening relationships with suppliers through effective inspections Outsourcing quality inspection services also contributes to building stronger relationships with your suppliers. Effective inspections not only hold suppliers accountable for meeting quality standards but also provide valuable feedback and suggestions for improvements. By working collaboratively with your suppliers, you can foster a culture of continuous improvement and drive greater efficiency throughout your supply chain. Conclusion: Embracing the Benefits of Outsourcing Quality Inspection Services in 2024In today's fast-paced business landscape, outsourcing quality inspection services can be a game-changer for companies looking to stay ahead of the curve.From flexibility and scalability to freeing up resources for core functions and mitigating risks, the advantages are undeniable. By embracing outsourcing in 2024, businesses can streamline their operations, enhance supplier relationships, and focus on what truly matters ─ delivering exceptional products and services to satisfied customers. FAQ1. Why should businesses consider outsourcing quality inspection services?Outsourcing quality inspection services allows businesses to tap into specialized expertise and resources, leading to cost savings, improved operational efficiency, and enhanced quality control. By outsourcing this critical function, companies can focus on their core competencies while ensuring consistent quality standards and compliance with industry regulations. 2. How can outsourcing quality inspection services help in risk mitigation? Outsourcing quality inspection services helps mitigate risks by ensuring that products or services meet the desired quality standards. Professional inspection providers have the expertise to identify potential issues and ensure that suppliers adhere to specifications and requirements. This reduces the risk of substandard products reaching the market and helps maintain a company's reputation. 3. Is outsourcing quality inspection services suitable for businesses of all sizes? Yes, outsourcing quality inspection services can benefit businesses of all sizes. Whether a small startup or a large enterprise, outsourcing allows companies to access specialized expertise, advanced tools, and scalable resources that may not be feasible to develop in-house. Outsourcing provides flexibility and cost-effectiveness, making it a viable option for businesses looking to maintain quality standards while managing costs. 4. How can outsourcing quality inspection services contribute to supplier relationships? Outsourcing quality inspection services can contribute to improved supplier relationships by establishing clear quality expectations and standards. By conducting regular inspections, businesses can provide valuable feedback to suppliers, enabling them to enhance their manufacturing processes and address any quality issues. This collaborative approach fosters stronger relationships built on trust and mutual commitment to delivering high-quality products or services. By outsourcing quality inspection services, businesses can realize cost savings, improve efficiency, access expertise and specialized tools, and ensure enhanced quality control and compliance. Embracing outsourcing can be a strategic move for businesses striving to thrive in the evolving business landscape of 2024. |
2024.06.01 13:51 Noledgebase 210+ Exercises - Python Standard Libraries ($59.99 to FREE)
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