HipPriest

That’s great! Since most of the people I play with are scattered geographically we play with the app and I actually learned via the app before getting a chance to play it on the table. It’s definitely a game where a lot of thought has been put into the tutorials

Love his Thursday Next books to bits!

It depends on the game, character etc. I mean I suppose it adds to the escapism slightly?

I play all sorts of different games though, some where you’re not given the choice (Life Is Strange for example) and I don’t feel like it’s that big a deal

I finished Consider Phlebas on my commute - I still don’t rank it quite as highly as the others but it came to life more at the end. My favourite bit was when Horza was trapped on the cannibal cult island. Completely irrelevant to the plot but some excellent wtf storytelling!

I only noticed this comment now, I’ve been reading the Culture series too - I enjoyed the world building in Consider Phlebas a lot but after a while I just wanted it to finish. So I skipped on and read a few others in the series then came back to finish it.

The Player Of Games was brilliant, enjoy!

I’ve been reading The Culture series by Iain M Banks. I gave up on the first book a while back, which I’ve heard is quite common, but I plan to go back and finish it.

I’ve just read The Player Of Games and Excession and both are exceptional.

I had no idea of this - I just googled it and it’s almost exactly like something out of the book.

I really enjoyed Yellowface, it’s a great read and a bit of a black comedy in places!

Beautiful artwork for a beautiful album

Typical jocks.

VPN subscriptions in the UK will be a lucrative market then for people wanting access to, let’s see, Wikipedia…

I’m interested to know what the Signal President meant when she said she’s much more optimistic about working with the government than she originally was.

The thing is it obviously does come from good intentions, and it’s very rare you’ll find me saying that about something to do with the Tories. But it’s so obviously the wrong approach and yet here we are. Thanks for nothing. Yet again.

The Precession To Calvery was hilarious from beginning to end.

You beat me to it because this game is genius!

Someone else mentioned Procession to Calvary - an adventure game set in a cut and paste world of renaissance art with a very surreal plot and sense of humour. Pythonesque.

There Is No Game is pretty hilarious, the voice acting always makes me crack up.

Agatha Knife is a funny point and click adventure game where you’re a 7 year old girl who’s a butcher and needs to set up her own religion sacrificing pigs in the basement for… Reasons.

I like the part where they point out that writers probably have more leverage than they think about having a say - but then maybe many writers don’t consider the ebook side of things when thinking about getting their work published.

It’s obvious that ‘they’ are out to demonise IA as something like Pirate Bay whereas it really, really isn’t. Aside from the massive amount of obscure reference material, I found BBC documentaries on there from the 80s about some history which is otherwise unobtainable. I can understand if there’s some legal points which need to be worked out between both sides in order to keep the site going… but that obviously isn’t what the publishers are going for.

I mean my take on ‘safe spaces’ when it comes to forums/communities/subs whatever largely comes from disability support groups where the ground rules are generally along the lines of:

You can offer support but try to steer clear of unasked for advice. Never offer medical advice.

Don’t be dismissive of other people’s experiences - everyone’s experience is different, and if it doesn’t match yours that doesn’t mean it’s invalid

No personal attacks, derogatory language, racism (etc)…

You could argue that because everyone is joining a Mental Health or Epilepsy group the shared experiences will be similar enough to give it an echo chamber quality (‘me too’! ‘I had that!’) But then that’s part of the point, to make people feel that they’re not on their own. People aren’t going to challenge people on these forums very often unless there’s clear evidence they’re not who they say they are which is once in a blue moon rare.

Anyway we’re not pushing for new societal norms in these communities, we’re seeking refuge from societal norms, where we can talk with people who ‘get it’ because others don’t. I think that’s what the purpose of some of these safe spaces serve

I’m on Kbin and subscribe to some Beehaw communities and enjoy interacting with them (in a good way I hope!). Generally for the fedi to work I think people need to forget about where people are posting from and deal with comments and users as they stand on a case by case basis

I think you kind of say this yourself:

For the most part I feel like this community lives up to that; users of this instance are generally thoughtful with their responses.

Basically things are generally working except for a few people who have just started using Fedi instances. Maybe discuss with them, report them or whatever but defederation when things are more or less working out seems a bit OTT to me

I’ve read Dante and enjoyed that a lot. It’s interesting how Dante also puts a lot more of his contemporaries into the various parts of the afterlife then I was expecting; so footnotes can veer from talking about Greek mythology to minor figures from the civil war that had led to his exile. Which can be a little jarring sometimes!

This is on my to read list. I have an annotated copy to help because I’ve heard it’s hard going but I know it’s hugely influential and so keep meaning to get to it!

I studied it at university, it’s an absolute classic. And it stays with you, I’ve not read it for over 20 years and can vividly remember small scenes

This is crazy, I’m in the UK and we have to do it ourselves, I didn’t even realise it was a thing that people packed your bags for you just buying your food. For me that feels like a service you should tip for.