Here’s The Thing: I Love The Horror AESTHETIC, But I Hate The Horror MOOD. I Find “fear” And “horror”

diet talk is so inexpressibly nonsensical the instant you know anything about "the human body" or "nutrition" or if you think about it for three seconds

That’s a cute foot fetish you got there, would you mind keeping it 25796323689432 feet away from me?

Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna take 4 russet potatoes. You're gonna peel them and dice them. You're gonna set them in a bowl of cold water so they don't oxidize. Then you're gonna cook a half pound of bacon until crispy and set it aside. You're gonna melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a dutch oven. No more, no less. Add some diced onion and garlic to that. Saute it for a couple minutes. Then you're gonna add 4 tablespoons of flour and make a roux. You're gonna add 3 cups of milk to the roux. Slowly. Don't get in a hurry. Then add 3 cups of chicken stock. Add plenty of salt and pepper. Bring it to a boil. Add your potatoes in. Let that simmer for 20 minutes. Then you're gonna add some sour cream, the chopped up bacon from earlier, and some grated cheddar. You're gonna stir that together for 5 minutes. And then garnish it with a little green onion and shredded cheddar. You got it?

POV you’re about to play one of the most vile games ever produced

Titan Souls is one of the indie games in development that were unveiled during Sonys E3 conference, now known to be coming to PS4, Vita, PC and Mac.  It’s a very tough, pixel art action adventure game that tasks you with taking down a variety of large Shadow Of the Colossus-style titans, armed only with a single arrow.

Needless to say it’s a very tough game, you’ll need to learn the titans attack patterns and use perfect timing to make your arrow hit the mark.  The pixel art graphical style is excellent, with the game playing like a super hard, one-hit-kill 2D Shadow of the Colossus.  Combat is a pretty tense affair, leaving you extremely vulnerable during the time it takes firing and retrieving your arrow.

The new gameplay footage revealed at E3 looks excellent, promising lots more Titans and building on the original Prototype that was created for Ludlum Dare #28, with the combat retaining it’s simple yet extremely tough nature (with a major change being that you can fire in more than 4 directions).  The Prototype is well worth checking out, it can be completed in under 20 minutes, but due to the amount of times you’ll die it’s likely to take much longer!

Play the Prototype, Free

Stardew Valley Character Creator

So for the past while, I've been working on this project with Poltergeister (whose art you've definitely seen if you play with Expanded and/or Seasonal Cuter Characters), and I'm really excited to finally be sharing it with you guys!

I would like to address something that has come up several times since I relaunched my computer recommendation blog two weeks ago. Part of the reason that I started @okay-computer and that I continue to host my computer-buying-guide is that it is part of my job to buy computers every day.

I am extremely conversant with pricing trends and specification norms for computers, because literally I quoted seven different laptops with different specs at different price-points *today* and I will do more of the same on Monday.

Now, I am holding your face in my hands. I am breathing in sync with you. We are communicating. We are on the same page. Listen.

Computer manufacturers don't expect users to store things locally so it is no longer standard to get a terabyte of storage in a regular desktop or laptop. You're lucky if you can find one with a 512gb ssd that doesn't have an obnoxious markup because of it.

If you think that the norm is for computers to come with 1tb of storage as a matter of course, you are seeing things from a narrow perspective that is out of step with most of the hardware out there.

I went from a standard expectation of a 1tb hdd five years ago to expecting to get a computer with a 1tb hdd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd to expecting to get a computer that came with a 256gb ssd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd, to just having the 256gb ssd come standard and and only seeking out more storage if the customer specifically requested it because otherwise they don't want to pay for more storage.

Computer manufacturers consider any storage above 256gb to be a premium feature these days.

Look, here's a search for Lenovo Laptops with 16GB RAM (what I would consider the minimum in today's market) and a Win11 home license (not because I prefer that, but to exclude chromebooks and business machines). Here are the storage options that come up for those specs:

You will see that the majority of the options come with less than a terabyte of storage. You CAN get plenty of options with 1tb, but the point of Okay-Computer is to get computers with reasonable specs in an affordable price range. These days, that mostly means half a terabyte of storage (because I can't bring myself to *recommend* less than that but since most people carry stuff in their personal cloud these days, it's overkill for a lot of people)

All things being equal, 500gb more increases the price of this laptop by $150:

It brings this one up by $130:

This one costs $80 more to go from 256 to 512 and there isn't an option for 1TB.

For the last three decades storage has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, to the point that storage was basically a negligible cost when HDDs were still the standard. With the change to SSDs that cost increased significantly and, while it has come down, we have not reached the cheap, large storage as-a-standard on laptops stage; this is partially because storage is now SO cheap that people want to entice you into paying a few dollars a month to use huge amounts of THEIR storage instead of carrying everything you own in your laptop.

You will note that 1tb ssds cost you a lot less than the markup to pay for a 1tb ssd instead of a 500gb ssd

In fact it can be LESS EXPENSIVE to get a 1tb ssd than a 500gb ssd.

This is because computer manufacturers are, generally speaking, kind of shitty and do not care about you.

I stridently recommend getting as much storage as you can on your computer. If you can't get the storage you want up front, I recommend upgrading your storage.

But also: in the current market (December 2024), you should not expect to find desktops or laptops in the low-mid range pricing tier with more than 512gb of storage. Sometimes you'll get lucky, but you shouldn't be expecting it - if you need more storage and you need an inexpensive computer, you need to expect to upgrade that component yourself.

So, if you're looking at a computer I linked and saying "32GB of RAM and an i7 processor but only 500GB of storage? What kind of nonsense is that?" Then I would like to present you with one of the computers I had to quote today:

A three thousand dollar macbook with the most recent apple silicon (the m4 released like three weeks ago) and 48 FUCKING GIGABYTES OF RAM with a 512gb ssd.

You can't even upgrade that SSD! That's an apple that drive isn't going fucking anywhere! (don't buy apple, apple is shit)

The norms have shifted! It sucks, but you have to be aware of these kinds of things if you want to pay a decent price for a computer and know what you're getting into.

Ummm byee

VPNs do not make you more secure

here's how they work!

first of all, most of your internet traffic is already encrypted via TLS (Transport Layer Security). Things that aren't encrypted are usually videogames or less important applications.

a VPN encrypts traffic between your computer and the VPN server you're using.

your Internet Service Provider (ISP) sits in the middle of that transaction.

cue the MS paint diagram

Without a VPN:

With a VPN:

the traffic between your VPN server and the rest of the internet is not encrypted any further.

things that VPNs are good for:

bypassing geo-blocking

bypassing website blocks set up by your ISP

obscuring network traffic from your ISP

things that VPNs are not good for:

browsing the internet without having your activity logged. every company that gives internet service logs the activity, it's half of how they make sure they're not being hacked.

hiding information from the government. VPN providers WILL bend to subpoenas, they WILL turn over logs of your network activity.

cybersecurity. VPNs can't save you once the traffic is between them and the final destination. they don't analyze your traffic to detect and stop hackers, they don't add any encryption where it matters.

VPNs are not a shortcut to security. you cannot pay 15 dollars a month to forgo all responsibility for your own digital privacy. do your research, use a password manager, stay safe.

my friends i hope you find this information useful. you have been sold a lie. remember to show extreme skepticism to youtube sponsorships and journalism websites which sing their praises.

sources: i have a certificate iv in cybersecurity

How do you do pixel art animation? What program do you use? These are so beautiful and I really wanna learn! Thank you!

I wrote a free post about my process here, hope you find it useful 🙏