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Cake day: October 18th, 2023

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  • When we were first learning about it, there were some misconceptions about radioactivity and health. There were even business minded individuals who widely sold it as a miracle cure. This public belief was reinforced by the fact that around that time we discovered hot springs have radioactive elements, (and people have always believed hot springs heal your ailments) which lead to a mass conception radioactivity was actually a miracle cure. A large part of that down fall was when the “Radium Girls” started literally dying because they were told it was totally safe to work with radioactive material, began falling apart and then worked for legal pushback.

    I’m not an expert on the matter, so I might be a little off but that is a good overview on why some people have that belief still. As always it’s shitty people looking to make money off of hype. The Radium Girls had a tragic but ultimately fascinating life/story. They would even rub the material on their teeth to glow. Check it out if you’re interested.


  • I would agree with your last statement, but in the case of Xbox i think it is by design. They already excitedly talk about windows handhelds being the future and its because the console market has almost always been a loss, even back to the Sega selling massively under production cost to try and take ground from Nintendo. Games were always what made the profit.

    In the case of Xbox, their business model for a long time has been moving to a live service streaming model, i don’t think they want to be in the console market. If they can move their app on all kinds of devices, they can skip the investment of the console and instead focus on what the real profit driver was all along.






  • I have always loved magic/mages/wizards/locks/witches/shamans in video games. When you have to make tons of alt accounts on MMOs or RPGs everytime i did another mage playthrough I started coming up with names for the memes. Some were okay, some were bad.

    When I went to do a hardcore playthrough of a game and was trying to think of a “sweaty” (sweaty being someone who puts in a lot of effort, for those unaware) pun, sweatyfireballs was born. I was so proud of if it, it became my new go to user name over my long running previous name that I came up with for my mage on vanilla wow. I peaked that day.



  • I’ve been saying this to my friends for a good while. I would take it even further than that too.

    My prediction has long been that since they were thinking about getting rid of it anyway, and they are shifting focus, that what you predict will happen and that eventually either Xbox will not exist or the Xbox of the future will just be a streaming dongle like the firestick. Just a little app store with controller and you stream all of your games over wifi.

    They sell it for dirt cheap and no legit console can compete for basic gaming. Sony will still have a hardcore market, especially with vr and their first party titles, but most of the casual crowd would buy a 50-100 dollar “Xbox” so fast and just pay for game pass. It is a no brainer for Xbox, consoles are always a major loss of money and they don’t want physical media anyway.

    Edit: “We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.”

    While they announced new hardware they were real hush on it, just that it would shake up the industry. While I’m sure they would say that regardless and a lot of people say a handheld, either way I don’t think it’s just a console. A handheld would allow exactly my prediction to be possible but it wouldn’t be as cheap.

    That quote feels like it nails exactly what I expected though. It might be some time but I do think it will happen and their whole narrative seems to be moving away from Xbox being a console.







  • SweatyFireBalls@lemmy.worldtointernet funeral@lemmy.worldFad
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    11 months ago

    The issue with ET, just like today, was circumstance. A bunch of suits came to a programmer with almost no time to develop the game and shoved it out the door. The reason it’s cited as the industry killer is so many people bought that trash game they lost faith. There was so much shovelware back then.

    Nintendo learned from that mistake, that’s why they had their console on lock down. If you didn’t have their blessing, you didn’t make a game on their platform. There was a lot of lawsuits towards Nintendo because of that, but their intense scrutiny is why those games were generally quality and why they revived the home console industry.

    Today we are back to where we were with the Atari, companies that don’t have the skills to develop certain games are being asked to do it, often under extreme deadlines. Look at what happened with Gollum, basically a modern day equivalent to ET imo. The reason the industry almost died is because so many people got burnt by things like ET. You would think it’s bound to happen again, and it might, but then again people still preorder stuff post disasters like no man’s and cyberpunk.

    There are a lot of mistakes that could be learned from in that era of gaming, but damn if we aren’t hellbent on repeating it.



  • I don’t see anything wrong with being gay or a pervert. Might just be me but I’d put my money on most people being “perverts” by any definition a delusional prude could come up with. Nothing wrong with coming onto anyone either, actually. I’ve been hit on by men, and while I’m not interested I was flattered. Respecting their response to your flirtation is what matters.

    The only real thing that could be an issue in this fever dream of a comment is if he repeatedly did come onto him but I have to say there is no shot I’m going to take anyone with all of your bias seriously. Jobs had a few screws loose and I would be willing to believe that the reason he would turn anything down is because he believed his alternatives would cure him. However I’m also willing to acknowledge my own bias, because I don’t think the man deserves the respect he gets, he seemed to do nothing but take advantage of others around him to get what he wanted.

    Step back and ask yourself do you really think that being gay or being a pervert is an issue or are you just told to think it should be? Is it really a thought point you came to on your own? Or maybe when he came out the article you read on it was written by a journalist with homophobic undertones and you internalized the homophobic response, after all it’s going to be easy to do if you already believe that gay = bad.

    It can be scary to think for yourself, especially if the people around you do not try to do so and be open minded themselves. You’ll feel lonely and isolated by the people closest to you, I’ve been there and it was hard. I hope you can change for the better and maybe you’ll be a little less miserable, in my experience I grew to be happier and less lonely in the long run.




  • My own feelings on the matter aside (fuck google and all that) this has been something chased after for a long time. The famous composer Raymond Scott dedicated the back end of his life trying to create a machine that did exactly this. Many famous musical creators such as Michael Jackson were fascinated by the machine and wanted to use it. The problem was is he was never “finished”. The machine worked and it could generate music, it’s immensely fascinating in my opinion.

    If you want more information in podcast format check out episode 542 of 99% invisible or here https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-4/episode-one-piano-player

    They go into the people who opposed Scott and why they did, and also talk about the emotion behind music and the artists, and if it would even work. Because the most fascinating part of it all was that the machine was kind of forgotten and it no longer works. Some currently famous musicians are trying to work together to restore it.

    The question then is, if someone created their life’s work and modern musicians spend an immense amount of time restoring the machine, when the machine creates music does that mean no one spent time on it? I enjoy debating the philosophy behind the idea in my head, especially since I have a much more negative view when a modern version of this is done by Google.