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  1. 10 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

    I've read or listened to a bunch of random stuff this year.  Child of God and The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, Red by Jack Ketchum, Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker, a David Sedaris book, and a couple King books to nearly close out that library (The Talisman and it's sequel are the only one left now) @Murray 

    Right now I'm reading The Terror by Dan Simmons and it appears to be the runaway winner.  Very gripping.  Reminds me of the movie The Descent where there is a monster/Boogeyman, but the most frightening thing is the terrible situation these people have willingly put themselves in.  Buncha crazy mf'ers.

    I quite enjoyed The Descent, still thought it would have made a better video game than movie 🙂

  2. The Coma Recut is an updated version of The Coma: Cutting Class which is an indie Korean survival horror. The game meshes Lovecraftian horror with a uniquely Korean twist, which is great! First thing you'll note, the graphics are beautiful. This is you --

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-14-16-55-04.png

    You are a typical very stressed-out Korean student -- note that part of the game is based upon the developers actual high-stakes high-stress high school experience in Korea. You have a crush on the very buxom teacher Ms. Song --

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-14-16-55-28.png

    Things quickly take a dark twist when you end up in "The Coma" -- without spoiling anything, it's an alternate reality. One with very Lovecraftian vibes --

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-14-17-01-43.png

    Unlike Silent Hill, which to be fair is NOT an indie game, your character has NO weapons! I feel this is refreshing. So, what can you do? You can dodge, you can hide, you can regain health, and regain stamina. That's about it! Also, you're limited to what items you can carry, and you purchase items at a vending machine --

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-14-16-58-13.png

    The vast majority of the game, you will explore your surroundings while attempting to not get killed. At the start of the game, most "enemies" are easy to avoid, but quickly you come across the main antagonist --

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-14-17-00-25.png

    Here is where the game starts to get a bit stale. First, the "Killer" above is unstoppable. This is not new, Resident Evil certainly used that plot device as well as other games. Nothing wrong with that. However, the Killer shows up at random places at random times! If you are hit, you lose anywhere from a little health (early on in the game) to a LOT of health (later in the game). In fact, later in the game you can take one hit, the second will kill you. To make matters worse, the game is not very responsive. Youngho (the protagonist) feels clunky. What you need to do is run, then hide, then wait until the killer vanishes, then continue to explore, then rinse and repeat. The game would have greatly benefited if the Killer only showed up at certain instances. However, again, it's entirely random.

    There's not that much for you to do. You basically learn the lore of the game from notes --

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-14-16-56-16.png

    The story is okay, nothing particularly exciting. I will note that the story is MUCH improved and fleshed out in the sequel (The Coma 2).  And in fact most everything is improved in the sequel! That said, this first game has a certain charm, and a certain frustration. The game is also short, you'll finish it in about 5 hours, perhaps less. There are multiple endings and achievements, so there is arguably some replay value, but very little. There are some nice cutscenes throughout the game, again the artwork is fabulous, but the gameplay quickly becomes rather mundane. Also, with regards to the music, it's very forgettable. The music and sound effects are adequate, but nothing more. You certainly will not be rushing to purchase the soundtrack.

    At the end of the day, I would recommend this game to fans of survival horror, but most people will probably find it rather uninspired and arguably a bit dull.

    Final Grade: 6.25/10

    Bottom Line: Worth playing if you are a fan of survival horror, but other than the lovely artwork there's nothing particularly inspiring about the game.

  3. 7 hours ago, T-Pac said:

    Thanks, dude!

    I feel like this thread is fine for now. It's not terribly active anyway - plus I wouldn't consider my writeups "reviews" so much as "my thoughts on what I just read".

    [T-Pac]

    Well I appreciate your thoughts which I feel are very ruminative 🙂

    • Thanks 1
  4. 2 men charged with blowing up woman's home, planning to use large python to eat her daughter

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/2-men-charged-blowing-womans-home-planning-large/story?id=108073142

    Two men have been charged after allegedly bombing a woman's home and planning to release "a large python into the victim's home to eat the victim's daughter," according to prosecutors.

    Stephen Glosser, 37, and Caleb Kinsey, 34 -- both from Richmond Hill, Georgia -- are alleged to have used electronic communications to place the unnamed woman under surveillance from December 2022 until January 2023 "with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate," before using an explosive device to blow up her home, according to a statement from the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia.

    Can't make this up!

    Data Coding GIF by DataCamp

  5. Migrant Children Sell Candy on the Subway. New York Has No Solutions.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/nyregion/migrant-children-selling-candy-subway-laws.html

    Of all the manifestations of human misery that the two-year-old migrant crisis has brought to New York City, few trouble the conscience more than the sight of children selling candy on the subway — sometimes during school hours, sometimes accompanied by parents, sometimes not.

    On trains and on social media, New Yorkers have asked: Isn’t this child labor? Is it illegal? Shouldn’t someone be doing something to help these children?

    The state Labor Department said it was “difficult to determine” whether the practice of children selling candy in the subway would violate labor law, which generally “regulates employment relationships (i.e., between employers and employees).”

    The city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, said that anyone who sees a child in a situation that seems unsafe can call the state child abuse hotline.

    But the State Office of Children and Family Services, which runs the hotline, said that a child selling merchandise or panhandling would not be considered maltreatment or neglect unless there was a specific concern about possible harm, like “children selling candy at a dangerous intersection.”

    Children's Services in my experience is basically a waste of money. I knew people that were abusing children and when called CS did NOTHING. It was so infuriating. This happens over and over. Something as obvious as helping kids like this, and what does CS do? Again, NOTHING. Not surprised NYC has no solutions, they have had no solutions for most things for decades. But hey, as long as the money is flowing in... 😠

  6. 5 hours ago, T-Pac said:

    image.png.1435b0f33c19b7e51997058ca775bdda.png

    Finished reading The Defining Decade by Meg Jay.

      Hide contents

    Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist, and this is essentially her call to action for “twentysomethings” based on what she’s learned working with numerous early-adult clients. I’m admittedly a bit late to a book like this, as I’ve only got a few “twentysomething” years left myself - but it was an insightful read regardless.

    Jay explores work, relationships, and health as they all pertain to those starting out in adult life, and her overarching appeal is to work toward establishing all of these life-facets in your twenties rather than living aimlessly in the assumption that everything will fall in place later.

    I was relieved to find that my career so far has been in-line with Jay’s suggested approach: making a definitive decision on what you want to do and taking strides toward it now. The difficult part here is knowing what you want out of a career in the first place, but any professional experience builds skill-capital for wherever you ultimately end up. And feeling sub-par or unqualified here is not only normal, but expected - since it typically takes years to establish yourself in your field. The important thing is not to give up and run away to an “easy” job just because you feel inadequate as a novice.

    The most poignant assertion in The Defining Decade, at least for me, is that your twenties are a time to establish the major habits you want to keep throughout your adult life. The twenties are apparently the second and final period of major neural-network building in the brain (the first being early childhood), meaning it’s the time to solidify important connections and habits for navigating adult life before your brain prunes its “unused” links in your thirties. 
    I’m not entirely certain what lifestyle I want to establish for the years to come, but I’m motivated to figure it out now, in the “use it or lose it” neurological period of my own brain development. I can’t know everything now, but there’s something encouraging in the idea that what I do in my twenties actually makes a difference for my future. Here’s hoping I take these last few “twentysomething” years and make the most of them.

    [T-Pac]
     

    I really enjoying reading your reviews! Spot-on. Do you think we should start a "book review" thread?

    🙂

  7. Screenshot-from-2024-03-12-23-45-41.png

    Screenshot-from-2024-03-12-23-45-07.png

    Muhammad is "fully autonomous" and did not deviate from his "expected behavior," the makers said.

    This is coming from a country where women were given the right to drive only in 2018! Also, women can't play sports or travel without permission from a "male guardian"... is anyone surprised that the robot did not deviate from expected behavior in such a country!

  8. 9 hours ago, Tyree_Cooper said:

    Yeah you're the only one that does this on my side, not just this thread. I think it's the way you embed pictures. Been like this forever, but always been too lazy to let you know.

    Untitled.png.36628c15d9e202bec6cbb6af54534c1e.png

    Sorry about that 😕

    It does seem to work for others, and I've never had a problem seeing the pics on various browsers/machines. As @spacepup noted maybe its your setup?

  9. 61nez7-Ed5q-L.jpg

    I did play the original Coma, and it was an interesting Korean indie, which is what made it actually worth playing in my opinion. The overall horror elements were well done. However, the mechanics were not great,  and it got old just always hiding from an enemy you could not hurt. The worst aspect of the game was the very ending sequence, where (if memory serves) it was instant death if you did not do everything exactly right. Overall, the first game was about a 6.0 out of 10 for me. So far the sequel is much more interesting and streamlined -- clearly they learned 🙂

  10. Suspect in NYC subway attack that left woman's feet severed was arrested in violent 2017 home invasion

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/suspect-nyc-subway-attack-left-womans-feet-severed/story?id=107978186

    So apparently this Christian Valdez, the man who tried to kill a woman on the subway was arrested in 2017 for --

    Valdez is the same man who was arrested in September 2017 for breaking into an apartment in the city's Bronx borough, stabbing a woman who lived there and attempting to throw her 3-year-old daughter off a fire escape, police confirmed to ABC News.

    Normal Person: How can someone who threatened to murder an innocent 3-year old be on the streets?!

    NYC: he'll get better, yeah, that's it.

    Valdez was convicted in 2020 of second-degree attempted assault stemming from the Bronx attack and sentenced to eight years in prison, according to court records reviewed by ABC News. Valdez was released from the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, on Jan. 9, 2023, according to records. He was on parole at the time of Saturday's attack.

    The police everywhere love to say "murders are down" but no one is feeling safer, and how could you, when there's a revolving door for violent offenders --

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/nyregion/new-york-crime-bernhard-goetz.html

    Seventy percent of those living in New York City indicated that they were concerned about becoming the victim of a crime, and 17 percent said they had bought a firearm for self-defense during the past 12 months

    • Agree 1
  11. On 3/8/2024 at 9:32 PM, G-type said:

    Fair point, but El Salvador is extremely poor --

    The poverty rate in El Salvador remains one of the highest in Latin America (28.4% according to 2021 official data). More shocking is that 1.8 million Salvadorans are living in extreme poverty, without access to basic food requirements.

    Perhaps cryptocurrency will work in El Salvador. But it's certainly not a "first-world" country. Also, I think most of us view cryptocurrency in this light --

    https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/16/cryptocurrencies-have-failed-the-test-of-digital-money-mas-managing-director-says/

    But in Menon's opinion, cryptocurrencies have failed the test of digital money because "they have performed poorly as a medium of exchange or store of value, their prices are subject to sharp speculative swings, and many investors in cryptocurrencies have suffered significant losses."

    • Agree 1
  12. On 3/8/2024 at 12:31 PM, DefaultGen said:

    The guy with the pieced together Kickstarter Akalabeth that got pulled from HA listed it on Facebook for $40,000. So yeah, no need to save money for that anymore, lmao. Got the next best thing.

    atBjEGo.png

    Interesting! Why did the listing get delisted? Also, what is he trying to sell that he thinks is worth $40k?

  13. 14 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

    A couple of months back I ran into a local author at Barnes & Noble, promoting his new book.  He was wearing Stephen King and Clive Barker schwag, so we started up a conversation about all things horror.  I ended up buying his book, a horror anthology, and got him to sign it.  Figured I'd support him, and I'm a sucker for short story collections.  The next day he did a promotion at my friend's book store, which was also pretty cool.

    Finally cracked it open, and OH MY FUCKING GOD, it is the most unreadable shit I've ever come across in my life.  Clearly the only editor he had was his wife or girlfriend.  And he's read a lot of books, but I guess he never actually gleaned any writing tips from any of them.  And the publisher?  Googled 'em, and they're just some bullshit vanity shop that dupes talentless hacks into paying them money.

    I feel bad too, cause this dude is all about this thing.  He really thought that he had "made it" and that he was gonna enter the pantheon of great writers.  

    Here is a sample.  This is basically every page.

     

    PXL_20240305_054410911.jpg

    Did he ask you what you thought? If he did, what did you say? If he did not, what would you say?

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