eochaid

joined 2 years ago
[–] eochaid 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (25 children)

This is the most disingenuous comparison I've ever seen lol. You basically took a picture of a babbling Brook at noon and a waterfall at night and are somehow confused why they don't look the same.

First of all, your still shot is purposefully omitting the movement of the waterfall, the fact that it actually behaves and moves like a spray of liquid and gas particles, you know, like an actual waterfall, rather than just a moving block with a shader texture applied to it.

You also took this picture at dusk, when the plaza is draped in shadow and there is no sunlight directly bouncing off. If you'd even been to a waterfall this tall in such conditions in real life, you'd know they actually look more like this - like a non-descript spray of gas - than the Elex screenshot.

If you were to take a picture of the water in the day time, you know, when there is sunlight to bounce off the water particles, it would look absolutely beautiful. Which is also why nobody goes to waterfalls at night expecting a goddamn vista.

This game isn't perfect but one thing it is, is absolutely beautiful (with the exception of some well documented and unimportant NPCs). And calling Elex a better looking game than Starfield is the dumbest take I've heard yet.

[–] eochaid 21 points 1 year ago

Ironically, pumpkin spice has absolutely no pumpkin in it. Its just Cinnamon, nutmet, ginger, cloves, and allspice.

[–] eochaid 2 points 1 year ago

Making sonic memes and saying bazinga is gay because anything outside of the actual sexual preference is socially constructed "performance norms" and I can make up whatever the fuck I want.

[–] eochaid 105 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The answer isn't nostalgia for school. The answer is to improve work with the "perceived" benefits of school. 30-hour work weeks, 6 weeks paid vacation, paid holidays including bank holidays, occasional half days after the end of a big project, chatting with coworkers that aren't stressed out of their mind and actually given the mental space to be chill with you.

That's the real dream.

[–] eochaid 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Okay, but they give you DRM free downloads. If EPIC kills them, you still own every album as long as you download it. I'll be sad if Bandcamp dies, but I can still play all music I got from it. That's the way it should be.

[–] eochaid 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

The better comparison with Spotify is that it's a mafia that you pay $11 / month for the rest of your life and they give you a bunch of free music but if you ever stop paying, they'll bust into your house and take it all away.

Vs. spending $10 for an album you might not like but you can sell it, give it to a friend, or put it in storage for 10 years until you find it during a move and realize your tastes changed and now this album fucking rocks (happened to me with a few things).

Oh and Bandcamp ftw. You can listen to most albums free for a few times and when you buy it, you own it forever w/o DRM - plus if you buy a hardcopy, you get a digital one included. I used to use Napster like that - as a shit quality preview of an album I might end up buying later.

[–] eochaid 2 points 1 year ago

No, this is not news to us - our accountant has certainly mentioned it - but there's a lot of oddities in her situation that make this a little more difficult - like the fact that she's not an actual freelancer but it's just the compensation startegy that this grant-funded project she works for was built around.

Its not impossible though, and certainly something we need to look more into. Thank you for bringing it up especially for anyone else looking at this in a similar situation.

[–] eochaid 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You also have to pay the 15% (of net) self employment tax that your employer normally pays when you're a W-2. That effectively means you're paying double the tax rate of a W-2 employee.

Oh and you can deduct your "business expenses" to try to reduce your tax burden, but you shouldn't even try to itemize unless your yearly expenses are higher than the standard deduction ($13,850 for single / $27,700 for joint / $20,800 for HoH). Itemizing doesn't add to your standard deduction, it replaces it.

Source: My wife is a contractor and taxes for us are a whole fucking ordeal. We're just glad I have a W-2 job thar offers benefits and the option to pay a lot more than I need to in tax withholding.

[–] eochaid 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They never said "star trek in space" because, first of all, that's redundant, and second of all, would invite lawsuits. I'm not even necessarily saying that they're copying star trek in any way.

I'm using Star Trek as an illustration of the positive sci-fi genre and the tone they were putting out in their marketing. No, its not literally star trek - but unlike their other titles that are either distopian sci-fi or a semi-dark epic fantasy, this one has a more positive tone - there's a sense of hope and compassion that even persists in more distopian areas like the well, cydonia, ryujin, and ebbside. And furthermore, the main story's focus on the excitement and wonder of exploration, and traversing the unknown, is a love note for Star Trek and all the sci-fi novels strewn about the environment.

And though this clarification is quite separated from it's context now, I only brought this up to say that this game is far more hopeful and optimistic than their previous games and I feel like their marketing illustrated it quite well. And the reason it matters is beacuse the lack of the "darkness" and "grittiness" you are looking for can be explained by this difference in tone.

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