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He's trying to shoot me, all right... Do I know this guy?.. I've got to think!

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Today’s game is Twilight Princess. I sat down and finished it all in one last sitting. I have to say. I was too rough on it I think. I still think I was fair in my criticism that it’s slow too start and it has some forgettable dungeons, but when people tell me it’s carried by its characters and writing I am inclined to agree. That was good. Especially seeing Midna’s character arc.

The sword play was excellent too. Definitely not the best. But it was still awesome to control and some of my favorite the franchise has had.

I do have to wonder if it was rushed towards the end of development. The dungeons for sure felt weirdly linear and small, and they didn’t utilize items nearly as much as I had liked. Most puzzles I felt boiled down to the claw shot. On top of that there were definitely a few parts when I felt like something was missing.

The final battle against Ganondorf was awesome though. It felt like a proper sequel to OoT’s battle. Though Zelda on horse back pissed me off because she had a clean line of sight so many times yet she did nothing. At one point me and Ganondorf were literally riding circles around each other.

The sword battle was awesome too though. Towards the end I used the fishing rod trick just to have some fun before the end. It’s funny seeing him get distracted like a cat or something.

Anyways. All in all I think I enjoyed it. It’s probably earned a spot as my 3rd favorite Zelda game, though it has left me wanting to replay OoT and Alan Wake 2. So maybe those will be coming back again at some point to satiate my desire.

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Turn based strategy

Cheesy plot with JK Rowling tier Character names, like Hel Spites, as the main protag

Rock/paper/scissors style combat, simple, easy to understand

This is already good and I'm about 3 hours deep.

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alternative video upload: https://streamable.com/e/x8htk0

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Southwestern USA, June 2026

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday showed how he had learned to stop worrying about inflation and simply, in his own words, “love” it.

Asked about the new report that the consumer price index in May had jumped 4.2% over the last year, the president took a surprisingly optimistic tack with the challenging news. Trump didn’t dismiss the affordability issue as a “hoax” that was started by Democrats, as he has done previously. Nor did he claim that he was bringing down the cost of living.

Instead, after the government said that inflation spiked to the highest level since April 2023, Trump praised the numbers.

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Do you ever get the feeling that the people running the world are delulu? That the 1% are living in a completely different universe from the rest of us? You’re not the only one. Even some tech elites are starting to worry about their peers’ grasp on reality. “CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis,” Aaron Levie, a co-founder of the enterprise cloud company Box, declared on X last month. His reasoning for this? “They’re sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI. So when they play with AI, they see the happy path results, often not considering the next 10 or 20 things that have to happen to get sustainable results from agents.”

In other words: CEOs are so high up the food chain that they don’t understand the human labour that goes into turning an error-riddled AI creation into something that functions properly in a business context. They are desperate to replace their annoying and expensive human labour with compliant AI models, but grossly overestimate what the technology can do. Meanwhile, the industry is rushing out overhyped AI solutions without properly stress-testing them.

This collective euphoria has resulted in some predictable disasters. In April, an AI coding agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude went berserk and deleted a company called PocketOS’s entire production database, along with backups. Jeremy Crane, PocketOS’s founder, later mused on X that this sort of failure was “inevitable” because the industry is “building AI-agent integrations into production infrastructure faster than it’s building the safety architecture to make those integrations safe”. To recall Facebook’s old mantra: it’s moving fast and breaking things.

Those things include our brains and grasp on reality. There’s a viral quote floating around the internet that quips: “The dumbest person you know is currently being told ‘You’re absolutely right!’ by ChatGPT.” Our tech overlords designed AI chatbots to be obsequious because it’s good business: having your opinions and feelings constantly validated increases user engagement.

But what else does this constant flattery do? While we’re still figuring that out, early studies aren’t reassuring. Research published in the Lancet Psychiatry in March found chatbots can encourage delusional thinking, particularly in people already vulnerable to developing psychotic symptoms. And a recent study from Stanford computer scientists found LLM “sycophancy can undermine users’ capacity for self-correction and responsible decision-making”. There is a pressing need, the study stresses, “to address AI sycophancy as a societal risk”.

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Blue shift (politics) (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 7 minutes ago* (last edited 2 minutes ago) by tonytins@pawb.social to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world
 
 

In American politics, a blue shift, also called a red mirage, is an observed phenomenon under which counts of in-person votes are more likely than overall vote counts to be for the Republican Party (whose party color is red), while provisional votes or absentee ballots, which are often counted later, are more likely than overall vote counts to be for the Democratic Party (whose color is blue). This means that election day results can initially indicate a Republican is ahead, but adding provisional ballots and absentee ballots into the count can eventually show a Democratic victory.

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Bangkok (AFP) – Two Chinese Uyghur men were sentenced to death on Thursday for carrying out a 2015 attack on a Bangkok shrine that killed 20 people, a long-awaited verdict in Thailand's deadliest bombing case.

A Thai court convicted Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed of premeditated and attempted murder for their role in planting a bomb at the popular Erawan Shrine in Bangkok's commercial heart in August 2015.

The deadly blast tore apart the site where worshippers and tourists had gathered, injuring more than 100 people and leaving the shrine littered with motorbike fragments and singed debris.

Multiple Chinese tourists were among the dead when explosives -- apparently left in a backpack -- detonated.

"The defendants committed a single act that violated multiple laws. The court therefore imposed the harshest penalty available under the law, the death sentence," one member of the four-judge panel said Thursday as the lengthy verdict was read out.

The defendants -- both Chinese nationals who arrived in court in prison garb -- were acquitted of charges stemming from a separate bombing at a pier in Bangkok's Charoen Nakhon area.

Following the verdict, Mieraili said: "RIP Thailand's justice system. I don't accept any of this. I didn't do anything wrong."

Choochat Kanpai, the defendants' lawyer, told reporters the defendants "will appeal the ruling because there are many aspects of the case that the court has not fully considered, including the treatment of the defendants during the proceedings".

The decade-long trial over the horrific attack was beset by delays due to coronavirus disruptions and problems securing translators.

The blast came weeks after Thailand's then-ruling junta forcibly repatriated 109 Uyghurs to China, where rights groups say the Muslim minority face cultural and religious repression.

The timing prompted speculation that the attack was part of a revenge plot against a country that had been a key transit hub for Uyghurs as Thailand's then-military leaders grew closer to Beijing.

...

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Guardian review finds group tied to Cleta Mitchell and Heather Honey funded misleading ads in swing states

As the 2024 election approached, advertisements began popping up in key swing states suggesting local officials had discretion not to certify elections.

The advertisements, reported at the time by ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch, were misleading. Certification is not optional, and officials are required to certify the vote once the proper process for any election challenges are complete and an official challenge is complete. The warnings, nonetheless, arrived at a moment when Donald Trump and allies seemed to be gearing up to contest the election results if he lost.

New documents reviewed by the Guardian show that the group behind the advertisements received financial support from a non-profit linked to prominent election deniers with ties to Trump. The same non-profit, the Foundation For Accountability Integrity & Research In Elections Fund (Fair Elections Fund), also paid influencers to promote an anti-voting bill in 2024.

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Song first appeared in this scene from comedy film The Caddy (1953)

Listening and dreaming about another Italy trip… :)

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Caption:

“Now, Grog! Throw! … Throoooooow! … Throw throw throw throw throw throw! …”

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Spoiler

Snaps drinking in Sweden, early 20th century.

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In the Nordic countries, especially Denmark and Sweden, but not in Iceland, snaps (pronounced [ˈsnaps], Finnish: snapsi), among many nicknames, is a small shot of a strong alcoholic beverage taken during the course of a meal.

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