I can't quite pin it down, but maybe the BG3 characters felt a bit "glossy" compared to Owlcat's? Or perhaps it's a side effect of voice acting making complex conversations drag, and lose a lot of the descriptive depth that text allows - not that they did a bad job of it!

I didn't really like any of the characters in WotR or BG3, but in WotR they felt more interesting - ah! Part of it was definitely that all the BG3 characters were like a parody of inappropriate backstories, "You would know me as Fuckslayer the Legendary Badass, Level 1", "I'm actually an Archmage, but I got knocked out in a cutscene and all my XP fell out of my pockets".

Yeah, it just isn't happening without a massive cooperative effort over generations. Not just the time for each generation of volunteers to be monitored, but also the work needed to address age-related entropy that isn't purely "lifespan" - no point splicing yourself into tortoise-person if you spend the next three hundred years as Joe Biden.

That's a selfless undertaking for tens of thousands who will never see the benefits and might suffer some real nasty side effects. Leaving aside whether or not it should be done in the first place, it's just not compatible with the Rich Man Afraid of Hypothetical Screaming Void impulse which drives modern life extension nowadays.

Agreed, but e-scooter rollouts have basically fuckall integration with the existing infrastructure/forms of travel in a city or with standard driving education.

While they're great in theory, they should be being introduced as part of a massive overhaul of personal transportation infrastructure, education, and regulation... or at least some supervision with actual teeth behind it. But we're probably past the age of doing stuff like that, so as is it's just letting random companies step in to extract money while impinging on the rough grey area created by existing safety systems.

Eventually that'll work itself out, sure, but in much the same way that we started mandating lockout switches on Giant Blending Machines after The Incident With the Giant Blending Machine.

It's not a story the Confucians would tell you.

Dungeon Meshi is getting an adaptation, and has a great dwarf character.

I don't think it's necessarily healthy to try to take it all in. Most things that occur are the expressions of larger systemic flows, once you have some grasp of the shape of it, tracking every event is - while still absolutely real and important to those experiencing them - more distracting (or depressing) than truly informative.

A glimpse under the hood of a large language model trained on 4chan.

The question at the heart of Atlas Posted, "Who is John Tankie?".

Watching TOS for the first time just now and (as you say, grading on a curve) I'm greatly enjoying it.

Even though I frequently disagree completely with the cast, the way that they're able to discuss alternate philosophies, change their minds through experience, and admit to being unhappy when their solution is imperfect - it shouldn't come across as refreshing as it does.

And it's just fun whenever Spock goes smash and starts crumpling props.

Irenicus' backstory and the overall plot post-Spellhold are random and silly.

Irenicus' voice acting and most of his lines are great.

That perilous yellow haze in the photo proves it to be the work of that dastardly paragon of scientific cunning - the Fiendish Dr Food Munchu.