PassingDuchy

Some of the details in these are kind of interesting. I assume the pitcher and plate/bowl it's on were for washing up in the morning. Just fun to see the items put in the backgrounds that were normal for the time and not so much now.

Some of it was DDOS but a lot of it was just server overload which sucked horrifically. DDoS was its own thing because I did have trouble logging in during those times.

ETA: also not to sound like a churl the update about a month in did fix a lot of the lag. Until then it was just really bad and I was routinely running into people in df roulette also suffering from it which just made things even harder. But I will say SE did work on it and put a fix out that resolved most of it within a month. I feel like part of the challenge may have just been I was on the "overflow" datacenter for NA and SE underestimated how much "overflow" we would be seeing. Cause about the majority of people I was paired with in df roulette during this time were travelers which isn't the norm on Dynamis ime.

Can't say how it was for Endwalker, but I did experience a lot more server lag on Dynamis than I did before the launch. Getting in wasn't the problem so much as being in instances and just having minute long multiple lag spikes to the point I was often going from lag to lag. Had this even in duty support. My understanding is this was "better" because I could even log in at all, but it did absolutely suck trying to learn new mechanics where I was in MSQ and learn how to play around entire dungeons being slide shows of lag at the same time.

ETA: I got up to Amaurot about the day after pre-order drop happened and then worked up through Seat of Sacrifice over the heaviest weeks was absolutely miserable with the lag to figure out what was going on. I also do MiNE ex/savage and had a few I'd been progging I just had to bow out from because when we got to new phases I was having so much lag they weren't showing for me and the majority of the time I'd be either killed by something I never got an update to see or last person standing because I was lagging so much I didn't ping into the damage.

If they're trying to do an animated spin off of the live action Barbie movie they have grossly missed the point. People who saw the Barbie movie aren't going to watch an animated movie to see if Ken is finally "kenough". Honestly not sure why they wouldn't stick to the animated movie prescription of promoting their latest line either. It's a toy they can sell and frankly not all of those movies are even terrible. They're not going to win Oscars, but the animated Barbie movies wouldn't have to up their game much to be in the running for animation awards as they're generally pretty meta making them fun for all ages. They had an animated online series (dreamhouse) that was well-acclaimed before the live action movie and actually seemed to inform how some of the live action movie was done.

Really sounds like sitting on a gold mine and then trying to steal the workers' bathroom because suddenly it got the "right" interest via controversy.

Sometimes they just make up whole new stories (Bleach) or say fuck it and go their own way (Fullmetal Alchemist). I feel like the more accepted recent approach though is having a mini-series of an arc which has normal pacing (actually even often accelerated pacing cause they only get 12 episodes) and then just putting the show on hold.

And then you have when the anime affects the manga and the manga starts stretching the story out for "content" (feel like this happened with My Hero Academia and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun). If it was a novel that's being published on a pay by chapter platform you're just completely fucked because they (generally) follow the Mark Twain model of pay per word so once a story gets popular that shit absolutely gets milked into the ground. If you're lucky they waited to do the anime until the comic adaption was half done at which point the novel will hopefully be done...

It's actually on spotify, but you can also find some of them on YouTube, meat fulton's site and audible/general audiobook retailers!

So from the article the Lae'zel ending only happenings if you

Super spoiler don't think there's a spoiler text accepted across all instances yet

Accept becoming a mind flayer and some events thereafter and then follow through with Vlaak'ith telling you to kill yourself. This "rare no one's taken" glitch ending seems to be if you listen to Vlaak'ith, but don't turn mind flayer you can still take the kill yourself ending if you check the mind flayer box ...despite not being mind flayer. Which could only happen through a glitch. So it's just a you could take this path if you'd checked X box but you didn't so can't "ending". I'm not sure what this article is trying to say honestly as it's literally just "if you make X choice you could get Y ending, but if you glitch the game to believe you made X choice you could get Y ending" article.

If you read the article, this isn't a rarest ending like the headline says. There is an ending playing as Lae'zel most players don't take because it's a bad ending that obviously ends the story. The ending being talked about is a hacked ending that was maybe an idea at one point to get to the above ending via an alternative path, but wasn't ultimately implemented. I wouldn't even call this an ending frankly. It's more "there's some game files that can lead to each other if X or Y is marked, but actually can't because Z being marked cuts that path off". More of a glitch than anything.

Going to add some suggestions here for people who might not like the radio personalities setup a lot of podcasts have, but don't have a place to start. Would appreciate anyone with suggestions adding on as I listen to audiobooks more than podcasts!

• Parcast Network podcasts — they have several presenters covering a variety of topics (mainly true crime, disasters, cults, myths/legends/fairytales). This is the blandest, no shooting the shit, no radio personalities, formulaic as you can get. Their presenters are all mild mannered toned and the shows generally follow a format with a few variations (ie some of them give some random bullshit pulled out medical diagnosises to criminals, some are more sensationalized "could the killer have possibly been thinking this?", etc). If you don't like how one set of narrators present an event you can absolutely find a presenter you prefer on the network as the shows cannibalize the same stories between each other. Not the most factual podcasts and in-depth is anathema to them, but if you're just looking for something inoffensive on in the background while you do the dishes they work.
• The Other Half — one presenter, short episodes, well-researched women through the ages. This is a sort of sequel to the Queens of England podcast by the same podcaster. Each season focuses on a specific type of historical woman (current season is royal/political mistresses). The episodes are short, focus on the history, there is some modern contextualizing (in the vein of now that it's not 1304 we can recognize getting up three days after giving birth to go tell an invading army to fuck off was a lot of work lol). Mostly though it's just the history.
• Dan Carlin's Hardcore History — another good history podcast that covers a large variety of topics, but the episodes are long. Doesn't make it a bad podcast, but six hours in length isn't rare. Lot of straight history, but also modern contextualizing (like the Romans didn't see executing criminals in the colliseum for entertainment as bad, but in modern times we would view that as very fucked up) and philosophizing (not sure I'd say getting up on a soapbox so much as this was the Roman's philosophy about this, let's follow their schools of thought).
• The Magnus Archives — horror anthology with an overarching story. Very good production values and even if you're not interested in the broader story there's a ton of great creepypasta type stories.
• Tales from the Stinky Dragon — DND play podcast with great production values and relatively short episodes (think they're like 30min?). This is heavily edited to cut out a lot of the parts of DND that drag as a listener (multiple rounds of that's a nat1, going back and forth on plans, etc) so though there's some discussion between the players/DM it's generally pretty snappy and most of the run time is just straight story. That said sometimes they do include tangents where the players meta joke with each other (this is probably the least offender I've heard for this though, if a tangent happens it's usually five minutes at worst).
• We're Alive — zombie apocalypse story podcast. Has multiple shows, several completed, with great production values (probably one of the best I've heard for sound production). This is a radio play style podcast so cliffhangers abound. Being a zombie "story of survivors" many of the characters are probably going to ping obnoxious at first as part of the genre is survivors learning to work together.
• Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe — so this actually was a radio play back in the day, the company has just updated to the present. These are trippy whimsical stories about Ruby, the interstellar detective. It started in the 80s iirc so expect to hear a ton of synth. The stories themselves run on a ton of puns, a quirky crew of heist characters, abstract philosophizing (in a what do robots dream of and colors taste like way) and trippy music to listen to when you're high.
• Myths and Legends — myths and Legends to lofi beats. Super chill, nothing more going on here, does have a lot of ads read by the narrator hard coded into the podcast so even if you pay for your podcasting service you do have to sit through them (not usually an issue since you can fast forward unless you're driving ime).
• Myths Your Teacher Hated — myths and legends, but told in a Badass of the Week style. Episodes are usually one myth/legend and one legendary/folktale creature. Unlike everything else on this list the narrator isn't really a mellow soothing tone type so if you don't like loud voices not a fit.
• Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! — in-depth podcast on myths with a lot of research and modern contextualizing, big feminist bent. The host does soapbox. Mainly listing this because it's the only "I want opinion discussion, but I don't want to hear five people discussing it between talking about what they ordered from Wendy's" podcast I listen to. That said she talks a lot about her research and goes into the various sources she's drawing from and their differences, so if you're looking for in-depth she's a great stop.
• Batman: The Audio Adventures — honestly way better than it has any right to be, kind of an offshoot of 60s Batman and 90s animated Batman. Does the radio play style intentionally and very well. Even if you're not into Batman you might enjoy it as a noir comedy.

There are podcasts out there that are more to the point. Honestly it's like old radio. Talk shows are just going to be more popular cause like said it feels more like hanging out with friends.

If you don't like that format though look for podcasts with only one person on the cast (or if they have another person it's someone they're interviewing). There's a lot of great history podcasts that are one person presenting, they have a script, they get through it in 20 minutes. You don't have to listen to ten minutes of shooting the shit and "personalities" first, they just get straight to it and edit to keep it tight. Fiction story and play podcasts (ttrpg) also have a good representation in this category too (though they also have plenty of round table discussion ones so you'll have to vet).

Oof I feel bad for his partner had no idea he was in pairs from the way he's been talked/meme'd about....

Most Olympic athletes are young and wear fashion athletic clothes donated by endorsers who help pay them. In addition in the shooting category you're (as I understand it) allowed a certain amount of tech to help you out. This man is older, didn't wear the endorsed fashion clothes or the tech and won ~~gold~~ silver so he feels like a rare "every man" win in the Olympics. He is not an "every man" (believe he's a decorated military and police man in his country), but a lot more people can relate to him winning ~~gold~~ silver than a 14 year old who's been training for this since diapers in a fashion house outfit.