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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • I feel like this pattern of people lying to doctors and doctors adjusting things to account for it really messes with rigorously honest people.

    A little while back I was reading how when they ask you how much pain you’re in, with 10 being the most pain imaginable, they pretty routinely have people calmly say “12”. So, if you’re actually using the scale where you’ve probably never experienced more than a 9 and would be sobbing at an 8, so you say 7, they automatically assume you’re in basically no pain because you said less than 10.

    Kind of wish we could just speak accurately and take each other literally instead of playing games where we try to figure out exactly what lie to tell to convey the truth, but I guess that’s not how most people are wired.



  • randomsnark@lemmy.mltoScience Memes@mander.xyzLichens are things
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    1 month ago

    For anyone else who was curious about lichens covering “a not insignificant amount” of the earth’s surface, a quick google tells me it’s about 7% (according to e.g. new york times, scientific american, etc)

    Edit: oh and estimating the age of an exposed surface by lichen diameter is called lichenometry. I’m seeing stuff about it being used in geological contexts but it makes sense that it could work for old buildings too





  • You might enjoy crpgaddict, a blog that is playing through every computer roleplaying game in chronological order, providing scores for each one on various metrics. The reason I bring him up is that he doesn’t rate on a curve, or give things marks for being “good for its time” - if pool of radiance scores higher than skyrim, it’s not because it was influential or good for its time, but because he thinks it’s outright better regardless of age (just an example - I’m not saying he would actually rate those two games that way, and he has not rated skyrim). There are early 80s games that he remembers fondly and had a huge impact on the industry that he rates as like 23/100 or whatever, because the scale leaves room for the Witcher 3.

    It takes a long time to get through all those games, so he’s currently up to the early 90s, having updated his blog regularly for over a decade. But his list of highest rated games might be a good place to start.

    Oh, and while we’re talking about old-ish RPGs that would score well on his scale, I might as well mention Morrowind and the Baldur’s Gate series (before 3, obviously), which he won’t reach for a long time but has been known to hold up as solid examples of the genre. Personally I still think Baldur’s Gate 2 is great. I’m also a big fan of the quest for glory series, which crpgaddict has rated, but might not make his list of top scoring RPGs, because they’re a hybrid adventure/RPG, so not all of their strengths appear on a scale designed for pure RPGs.


  • As someone who didn’t play them back in the day, I feel like SotN holds up but Super Metroid doesn’t. Just as another opinion. I couldn’t really get into metroid fusion either. To me it feels like the moment-to-moment action gameplay is too clunky in the early metroid games I’ve played, even if the exploration element is neat. I did enjoy playing SotN for the first time a couple of years ago though. It’s been a while since I played either, so they’re not totally fresh in my memory - I guess it’s possible that I’m just more forgiving of clunky melee combat than clunky shooting.

    Tangentially related, always amuses me how “metroidvania” has become the genre name, when originally it was just a way that reviewers poked fun at the big change between SotN and earlier castlevanias. They were like “this isn’t what I expect from a castlevania, it’s a great game but maybe they should have named it metroidvania”, and the name stuck. Another odd fact about that terminology is that according to interviews, the SotN designer never played metroid - they were inspired by the non-linear exploration with different routes opened up by items/upgrades in Zelda games (although obviously adding that to castlevania’s platformer gameplay makes it more closely resemble metroid). So it should probably be considered a zeldavania.





  • “Inconvenience” would be the verb for causing an inconvenience. So in the sentence you’re going for, “inconvene” would have to be replaced with the passive “be inconvenienced” (“we’ve gotta be inconvenienced and grovel to google a bit”). I don’t believe we have a separate word for “endure an inconvenience”, although it seems like the kind of thing some languages might have a single word for. Stylistically I’d probably restructure the sentence to “we’ve gotta put up with the inconvenience” rather than just using the passive verb, but yeah.

    I think you’d most often see this verb in the stock phrase “Sorry to inconvenience you”.





  • If you’re in a state that you know will vote exactly the way you would (by such a large margin that it can do it even if everyone thinking like you stays home), check what local candidates and propositions and such are on the ballot and whether there are any of those where your voice needs to be heard.

    Of course, the answer might still be no - I’ve sat out elections in the past where I could see that my vote on every issue would just be running up the score on the side that had already won (and this did turn out to be correct). But it’s worth checking just to be sure. There’s more to elections than just congress and president.




  • Is there a generic name for this kind of product? I figure I’ll be interested in these at some point in the future, at which point I will have long since forgotten the list but will be able to google them up given the right terminology. Other than “raspberry pi alternative” which would inevitably center the results around how they relate to the rpi rather than the products themselves.