I loved Saints Row 4. I was surprised to see how hated it was, lol.

I’ve stopped buying most media. Almost all my physical books are bought at an extreme discount from overstock, or the occasional sale (Target weirdly has good deals once in a blue moon). Even if I could afford $30 for a book, do I want to?

Keep in mind if you want to own your books, many libraries sell off books (and other media) they no longer need, as well as donated materials (very cheap in my experience). It’s a good way to support your library and buy some books :)

Also, if you have too many books (or other media), consider donating whatever you don’t want to your local library (assuming it’s not one of the ones trying to burn books).

Fun fact. Many libraries have tons of extra services, like help with writing up your resume, genealogy services, access to peer reviewed scientific research, language learning, etc. There’s a lot you can get out of that library card. Check it out!

If Shrinking is the Apple TV show, that’s been renewed for a Season 4.

Finished Legion. Was not a fan, especially of the 3rd season. The Loudermilks were fascinating though, I would have watched a whole show based around them and the Birds. Have to say, never expected this show to feature a redeemed/heroic (?) Shadow King (this seems to be the only point of the show). Crazy that the other X-Men show of the same time, The Gifted, decided to have the incest Nazi twins become heroes too.

Also finished my rewatch of Dollhouse. I was surprised to learn that I feel almost exactly the same way as before. The last episodes are rushed (the early episodes also have their problems), and I hate everything about the 2020 setting. But it’s still a pretty great show with some interesting concepts. The main thing I found on this rewatch was that I think you could cut Paul. After the first season, he doesn’t really add anything. The romance isn’t even half-baked because it never really gets there in the first place.

I’ve finally started The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I’m not sure when I’ll finish it, but so far, it’s much better than I was expecting. At the very least, I hate Danglars and am hoping there’s not some stupid parable of Christian forgiveness at the end, because I want that guy to get destroyed.

I often have a hard time enjoying older books, but I’m surprised so far at how very human all these characters Dumas is writing feel. Aside from the obviously dated aspects of the novel, it feels very much like they could be anyone I know today.

Also recently finished Queen of Faces by Petra Lord, which I picked up by mistake thinking it was an adult novel for some reason, lol. But I gave it a chance since I had it, and stuck with the YA novel anyway because the world was somewhat interesting. Honestly, it felt like it should have been an adult book. It barely made use of the magic academy, which in hindsight should have been a redflag that it was indeed YA. The anime vibe was strange (they kept using ‘manga’ instead of ‘comic’ in a fictional world with no Japan, and their ‘unique’ magic had names). The characters were pretty flat, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to find Ori as the most interesting character. Also, the real villain of the story was obvious. If you like YA, it’s good enough. I’m certainly not the audience, but it was enjoyable for what it was.

I’ve had that feeling with so many books. Glad you’re liking the last bit though 👍

That sounds fun. It’s nice to see a review for self-published stuff, too!

You’re not wrong. ‘AI’ leads a lot of people, whether they mean to or not, to humanize these LLMs. Humans love to humanize inanimate objects, for instance. People name their cars. But AIs are, as you say, not sentient. There’s nothing to feel guilty about. Why should you want to interact with a program you didn’t sign up for to pretend to be human?

If people want that, create their own places where the point is seeing how well they can get the ‘AI’ to interact with humans. But until that AI is real intelligence and has sentience, keep it out of human discussions. There’s zero reason to care about a program that at best is spitting out nothing meaningful.

Core gameplay is the same, but significant things were added to parts of the game, like an island you can eventually visit, 14 heart events for spouses, etc.

Stardew has tons of mods. If the clock is stressing you out, there’s probably a mod for that. You could use cheat mods to get around some of it (teleport home, change the time, change your money, etc.).

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That’s so messed up, but unfortunately it’s not the worst one I’ve heard of.

It’s got nothing on ‘There’s Something About Miriam.’ An early 2000s bachelorette style reality TV show where the woman was trans, but they only reveal that at the very end, and in a purposefully transphobic way (‘I used to be a man’ or something along that quote).

There’s a podcast and a documentary about it. The woman in question, Miriam, eventually killed herself. When you see the reveals, it’s horrifying how she’s treated. I’m not completely unsympathetic to some of the guys, because it is the early 2000s and it would have been rough on them because of homophobia and transphobia (some of those guys just suck though), but anyway, everything about the situation sucked. I believe it never even aired.

Reality TV was a mistake. Just look at that 2000s reality TV show that helped boost a child sex trafficker into government.

It’s very rare and done when considered medically necessary. Note that all these bans specifically have exceptions for cis people (cis teenage girls can get a boob job, just not trans), as well as for involuntary mutilation of intersex children, and involuntary circumcision. They’ve never been about protecting children. They’re about hurting trans kids specifically when they aren’t in any danger in the first place.

Things could have changed, but here’s a reasonably recent article.

He supports banning trans surgery for minors is the main takeaway.

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My old accounts never got banned (I think I have three still usable ones). I have one that was newer that was shadowbanned, but I never really posted anything (it was shadowbanned right out the gate from what I could tell because I used a VPN and a temp e-mail - remember the time you didn’t need an e-mail?!).

I came here simply because I want a better alternative (and to get away from fascist shitheads). Unfortunately, there’s really no engagement for most things here I used reddit for, but where there is, it’s mostly a nicer community (because it’s much smaller on here, plus less power tripping reddit mods).

Also, I can’t use new reddit. It’s awful. I tried again yesterday, and it sucked. The death of old reddit was always going to force me to jump ship. Although I mostly used it for lurking these days with my shadowbanned account, or through websearches for very specific things (old TV episode discussions for instance). Very rarely I log in to an unbanned account and answer a question in a niche sub of mine.

Yep. I really wished anything I used on there actually existed on Lemmyverse, or anywhere else decent, lol. I loathe Discord, but at least one sub has a decent server so I can follow deals on it.

Very sad that they’re destroying years of information, good and bad. It’s not like I wouldn’t have jumped ship before if there was an alternative, but for most things, there really isn’t.

I can’t do New reddit either. I remember when it came out I said I would never use the site again once they inevitably did this. Tried New reddit out of curiosity, and it was so much worse than I remember.

For now, old accounts work for old reddit. I have a shadowbanned (presumably, posts never showed up) account that I use to monitor subs for deals. But at this point, it’s a matter of months, if not weeks. The timing of this, I suspect, is not coincidental either.

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Finished Haunted Hotel S2. Shame it had to come out in this era, it’s a pretty fun show but eight episodes is somewhere between a third and a half of a season. Maybe one day shows will be given the time to breathe again, this show especially has been popular with everyone I know. Even the grumpier ones that don’t generally like this type of show.

Finally started Legion after so many people recommended it to me. So far (a little into season 2), I have a love/hate relationship with it. I’m definitely not the target audience. But it does have it’s moments, and a few of the characters intrigue me. I don’t know what the ending is like, as I’ve never seen it, but based off of the comics, I keep expecting to find out everything we’ve seen is literally just people in David’s head, but we’ll see. That would be a little predictable. Also, this has been the best version of the Shadow King so far (I don’t care for him in the comics).

Almost done with Dollhouse. My opinion hasn’t changed from my original watch all that much, it’s still a great show imo. The creepiness of the early episodes, and the Whedon self-insert dialogue bragging about having enough power to treat women however he wanted aside. Not looking forward to the final episode, though. Never cared for how it ended.

I had the exact same issue when I read it (which was a while ago). The last 1/3 was the best part of the book, at least imo.

But are users who are doing this unsubscribing? Because if they don’t, maybe that’s what Netflix is aiming for. I don’t pretend to understand the way of con artists executives.

It’s not hard to get people to watch. Produce good shows with actual seasons (minimum 13 episodes, preferably somewhere around 20 for certain types of shows). Then let those shows run for multiple seasons to continue to build up a fan base, so you can start to make money on merchandising. Make sure to always film a proper ending and avoid cliff hangers for the series finale to increase rewatchability. In fifteen years, you can have multiple shows that have at least 5+ seasons/100+ episodes, greatly increasing variety and rewatchability.

I haven’t used Netflix in ages, but their UI was horrible. Considering trends for the past twenty years, I can’t imagine it got better. I’ll never forgive them for deleting the reviews. Often, the Netflix reviews were the best reviews (that was not universally true).

But inevitably, they will increase prices, add more ads, then start spamming those 5+ seasons/100+ episodes shows made fully from AI slop.