#4 looks like a shoehorn. Is that even concave enough to use as a spoon? Likely not. That’s out.

#3 is definitely not a spoon. No idea what it is, but it’s not gonna work well as a spoon. Not gonna deal with that one.

#2 is actually a spoon, but a small one. It’ll be frustrating to use forever. I’d prefer not to use it.

#1 is actually a decent sized spoon. Oddly shaped, but it’ll hold a decent amount of food or liquid. I guess I could live with that one.

Ooh, I have both of those games in my Steam library but I haven’t played either. That might be fun to check out.

I was hoping to write a review on Metal Gear Solid ∆, as MGS 3 is one of my favorite of the series, but I got distracted on my first playthrough and didn’t get very far. I need to go back and play a bit more of that before I review it.

Other games I’d eventually like to write about include Jump Space, FBC: Firebreak, Hollow Knight, Helldivers II, The Division, The Stanley Parable, PowerWash Simulator, Overlord, Something from the DOOM franchise, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3… and a whole bunch more.

As far as horror games for the season, I’m thinking about reviewing Zoochosis and the Poppy Playtime series. I know there are others I’m interested in, but they’re not coming to mind at the moment.

Wallet, smartphone, headphones, 36 oz water bottle (topped off), keys if I’m driving somewhere.

Oh, and I double-check to ensure I’m fully (properly) clothed and wearing my glasses. I’ve definitely made it as far as my car, before realizing I’m still wearing pajama pants.

And my vision is not that bad, so I can roam my house without glasses. But once I hit the open road, I suddenly realize I can’t see anything.

When I was in the military, I used to carry a multitool (eg. Leatherman) on my belt everywhere I went. But now that I’m a retired civilian, it just causes problems if I need to explain why I have a knife on me.

Even though it’s a multitool, everyone just sees it as a blade. And I’d rather not have someone confiscate it. When you’re wearing a military uniform, no one questions it. But I’ve definitely been stopped in some stores because I was carrying it in civilian clothes.

My wife also bought me a lockpicking set, but I don’t know how to use it yet, so I removed it from my keychain. No sense carrying it around if I can’t use it. Maybe once day…

I’m currently in this rut. I want to play tons of games, but every time I sit at my computer, I end up staring at my Steam library and not committing to anything. I might boot up a game, play for maybe 30 minutes, then log out because I’m just not feeling it.

I started a game review blog here on Lemmy, but I’m having trouble finding games I want to discuss lately. It’s been about 2 months since I last posted. Fortunately, I’m doing it as an unpaid hobby so there’s no pressure to write, but I just can’t get started lately.

Even worse, this is my favorite season so I really want to play some good horror games and discuss them. But we’re a week into October and I still haven’t played anything worthwhile yet.

I think I’m just in a slump right now. Life’s been exhausting lately and I’ve just been going through the motions. Eventually, things will pick up and I’ll be motivated again. Until then, I just need to ride it out.

So use your own homemade pads and fluid. If I run out of pads, a couple paper towels folded over will do the trick. And any cleaning solution that works on floors is fine; you don’t need to buy their name-brand junk.

The flat mop itself is all you really need, and you can buy one of their cheap dry ones. It functions the same as the WetJet. I have the money to throw at their more expensive stuff, but you can do the same for a fraction of the cost.

I spent years using an actual thick mop and bucket to clean floors, which is not very efficient (or sanitary, apparently). So I like the convenience of the flat head mop with replaceable pads. And like I said, anything cheap to use as a pad will work. I can buy a roll of paper towels for a buck at the Dollar Store and use them as pads. Same with floor cleaner.

I’ve just been using a Swiffer WetJet mop. I don’t really need a vacuum; the thick mop pads are pretty good at picking up most stuff. Anything it doesn’t handle, I just use my regular vacuum on bare floor mode.

I asked someone out when I was about 14. I’d never asked anyone out before; it took me all year to build up the courage to do it.

She could’ve just said no. Instead, she publicly humiliated me in front of my friends and classmates. Made a big scene about it.

I never again attempted to ask anyone out.

Thankfully, I was attractive enough that others approached me and asked me out over the years, and I’m married now because my wife latched onto me and wouldn’t let go. But if I ever lose her, especially this late in my life (in my 40s), I’m likely going to die a lonely hermit.

Are you dating Rentaro?

I also enjoyed Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

The whole Hannibal trilogy is one of my favorite series of books. (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal; respectively.)

There’s a fourth book, Hannibal Rising, that serves as a prequel/origin story for Hannibal Lecter. But it was written under duress by the author.

Thomas Harris didn’t want to explain Hannibal’s origin, as it removed the mystery surrounding his character. But Hannibal had become globally famous through the films, and Harris was basically told by the film producer, Dino De Laurentiis, that if he didn’t write an origin story, someone else would. So in order to maintain some control over his own character, he begrudgingly wrote Hannibal Rising.

And it shows. The writing style of that book is very different from the other three. Unlike the trilogy, which has a way of weaving an intricate and mesmerizing story, Hannibal Rising just feels mechanical and methodical, like it’s just checking boxes and getting to the point as quickly and efficiently as it can. It told a basic story, which was immediately pumped out as a low-budget B movie 2 months later.

If you get into the Hannibal books, I highly recommend skipping Hannibal Rising. It’s poorly written and removes the mystique behind Hannibal Lecter.

I’m genuinely surprised to find this article here and not posted to one of the various “FuckCars” communities on Lemmy.

But she’s the Hero™ fighting against the Bad Guys™. Branding is everything.

But yeah, viewed objectively from a third party perspective, a lot of heroes in games and movies are actually borderline villains. Inserting themselves into a situation they don’t need to be involved in, and then the end justify the means. They may murder tons of no-name henchmen, but a greater threat to society has been eliminated!

I actually find it interesting that a lot of superhero characters came from healthy, sane family environments and fight to protect the Status Quo™, while most villains come from hardship and trauma and attempt to change the Status Quo™ that allowed their injustice of a life to exist, so others don’t suffer the same fate.

But some happy-go-lucky hero always comes by and stops them because their plan changes the Status Quo™. And we can’t accept changes to our structured social environment!

Is it a reference though? I’m pretty sure this is just a furry redraw of a Calvin & Hobbes comic panel.

This is where my wife and I differ in our ADHD: I believe in “a place for everything and everything in its place.” I make sure that things find their way back to their home before I move onto something else, so I don’t have to keep track of where they are all the time. Makes it easier to manage my ADHD.

My wife, on the other hand, will just absent-mindedly set things down when she’s no longer focused on them, then walk away from them. Because of that, she loses track of things all the time.

She does this so often, I make mental notes every time I see something out of place, so when she later asks where something is, I usually know exactly where to find it. Which kind of negates the whole point of me keeping everything organized in the first place.

It was an 8-episode miniseries instead of a movie. Basically, a series of sketch comedies in every episode. It wasn’t great.

I grew up in the rural countryside in the '80s, about a 10-minute drive from the nearest city. My skyline looked closer to #5 as a kid.

Nowadays, my night sky in the same location is closer to #7.

As a kid, I loved to lie outside in the grass at night and watch the stars. It was completely dark out then; besides some ambient city lights on the distant horizon, it was completely dark out and you could really focus on the stars.

Now, there are so many lights everywhere. My childhood home has outdoor lights, the telephone pole in the yard has a floodlight on it, my rural neighbors have outdoor lights, etc. My garage has a floodlight that stays very dim and yellow all night, but it turns super bright and blue if movement is detected in my driveway.

There’s nowhere I can go that doesn’t have at least a little ambient light outside, even out here in the countryside. And as such, my night sky is barely speckled with a few glowing dots and that’s it. I miss the night sky of my childhood.

I still clearly remember others’ embarrassing, cringey moments from my high school years, and I’m in my 40s now. I shudder thinking about who still remembers the embarrassing things I said/did way back in my childhood.

I served in the US military for 20 years, from 2002-2022. At least twice that I can recall, they didn’t pass a budget in time and we were told that we wouldn’t be paid until it was resolved, but to keep working like normal and we’d eventually get paid. Both times it was a very short time before it was resolved and we did eventually get paid again. I think the longest time was about two or three weeks.

For members who used USAA for a bank (a company exclusively for military members and their families), the bank automatically deposited our paychecks in our account on time, because they said they knew the US government was good for it. Anyone who used another bank just had to wait for the government to actually pay us.

If you know anything about military members (especially young service members), a decent amount of them live paycheck to paycheck, not because they have to, but because they’re irresponsible with their money. The military pays you well, while also providing food and housing allowances on top of your pay, so your necessities are covered and your base pay is basically pocket money to spend as you like. As such, a lot of service members go out and spend that money and end up with very little in their savings.

So when a government shutdown hits like this, suddenly that safety net of a monthly housing allowance is gone and service members need to pull their own spending money to pay for rent and utilities. Which can be hard to scrounge up last-minute for some.

I was always very fiscally responsible during my service, but most of the people I worked with would go out partying and drinking every week (some every night!) and would be struggling for cash by the next paycheck. Which came bi-monthly for us; we were paid on the 1st and 15th of every month. So there was always a lot of stress and anxiety when the government announced a shutdown.

As someone who is in his 40s and still trying to catch up with all the Star Trek series, I’m actually grateful for the short series. It lets me explore scenarios and relationships in a tight-knit story, without a lot of fluff. Longer than a movie, but not drawn out over dozens of episodes.

It keeps the story more focused and less about a handful of random storylines with over a dozen characters who all get lengthy screentime. I’m likely in the minority, but I feel we need more of these brief kind of seasons.

Granted, it’s easy to say this after the fact when I’m binging multiple complete series, but I do get the frustration when you’re waiting on a new show and it seems like it’s over before it even began.

There’s so much green in this comic, I thought the white guy was just talking to himself until I re-read it.

And I only re-read it because I didn’t understand why he randomly said “forg” in the first panel.

[…] the Internet (it was a written with a capital I back then)

Back then, an internet (lower case “i”) was a small internal network of computers that communicated with each other.

The World Wide Web, being a massive collection of computers across the globe that are interconnected, quickly earned the title of “THE Internet” (upper-case “i”), to differentiate it from smaller isolated networks.

“World Wide Web” turned out to be a mouthful to say, so we replaced it with “the Internet” instead. Although most websites still start with “www” to represent their global reach.

Nowadays, we’ve stopped using the word “internet” to describe smaller networks, so the word mostly just refers to the global network. And as such, if doesn’t really matter if you capitalize it or not.

However, I was there when the web became accessible to the public and the nomenclature has stuck, so I always capitalize the Internet when referring to it.