I’m disappointed I didn’t see a piracy parody of this before seeing this. Come on internet.

Gaming LoFi, Gaming Metal, Gaming Jazz, Space Folk

Nice! I read another of her’s without realizing it: The Loom saga. I enjoyed it and would read more. It seemed a lot less YA, though. So if it lines up to get it again, I’ll see how she handles that audience.

And perfect timing, it’s been a few since I checked on Lemmy.

Sounds very little like Shadow and Bone, but good try ChatGPT. Especially after the edit, so might have been an even better try initially.

It sounds like the world of Cinder Spires meets Shadow and Bone with a hint of Golden Compass, but not enough like any of them to remotely be a match.

How was that series? I almost picked it up via Audible sale, but I wasn’t sure at the time. It looked like it could have hit a few different levels of quality.

“Oh man! We screwed up and sent out potentially deadly food to customers, isn’t this a great opportunity to gather their marketing information?”

Hmm…

So I only use Brave for YouTube. I definitely won’t be recommending it, but I’m torn between whether I’m being a leech of ad-free user generating what should be near zero revenue or if I’m being valuable as a number to ad to user counts.

Never mind. See below.

I left last year having read exactly and barely my goal of 100 books (including manga, shorts, and mostly audio books) with no goal for 2023.

This year I had more in-office time plus a commute and am on track to have read a book for every 2 days in 2023 (183). Which…has now only become a goal in the last month or so.

Reserving books at the library and having short Audible Plus stints really drove urgency from time to time, especially where I struggle with visual reading. But I just found a lot of good books this year: 11 Tchaikovsky, 17 Pratchett, and 15 Sanderson-related (Dan Wells and Janci Patterson collabs), and lots of solid manga and sci-fi series that kept me juggling the next available book for a few series at a time. It’s been a ride and I’m only more excited for a lot of books and series in 2024.

So, I’m unsure if I should goal out fewer or more next year or just go with the flow again.

Aldi’s Clancy’s chips. Name brand are just too greasy for me. Also, I just tried their garlic bread chips and those are dangerous.

Came here to say The Locked Tomb is FANTASTIC meme humor and so witty in almost every way. However it’s a series that I’m convinced I’ll never actually understand. I’m on Nona now and things are barely better. Harrow had me second guessing every fact and almost pulling out a cork board, pins, and string to just understand when what happened to whom.

One of my favorite new series, though. And it’s been a delight to buddy read with my wife.

Gold Mario and Gold Kart parts. It started as a self brag (I usually just play solo) then turned into a challenge, then turned into my main. Mainly due to weight and speed.

Petey Piranha and Wiggler have recently shown up as contenders for weight and speed, though, so I might end up trying them more and more.

I’m a few hundred dollars in and I’m actually on my way out thanks to their grossness this spring. I’m too slow to have gone for many modules, but rules books were super fun and thus a money sink. I’m trying to move my group over to PbtA (cheap by comparison) or Genesys (have you seen the cost of those DICE?!).

My wallet is happy I can’t manage to get groups together to play games and justify buying more games. I’m not.

That’s definitely my hope.

It’s less the repaired retail market (which they control on Amazon at least) and more the “I could repair this for cheaper than half of a new phone” lost sales. They’ve been quietly letting that group slip by for years of progressively more expensive to “repair” (read, “swap modules”) while people who could get a basic repair done for cheap are pushed to buy new phones instead.

Same. And Manga too!

70 audiobooks, Manga volumes, and more already this year—All free through my library, and all so much easier to find, categorize, tag, and use than something like Audible.

Every book marketplace I’ve used is focused on selling you what they want to sell you, not what you want to get. Libby just lets me keep track of books on my own terms in my own way. It’s a better experience and through my library. It’s great.

What are the holes that can be poked into this as written? I firmly believe Apple is still against repair that would eat into their new sales. So where does this, as written, give them the room to keep that going?

Is it just that they can continue to make their “screen issue = replace whole top shell of laptop” and similar the default and draw the line there, standardizing high-cost repairs even if it’s just a wire or small component replacement? If they don’t allow ANY standard repairs more granular than swap module for module, they don’t have to provide more granular resources than that. I’m not fully up on what repairs Apple authorizes.

This is definitely a win to some degree, though. But when your opponent goes to your side and draws a line, that always gives me the chills.

I use liquid body wash and shampoo. I pour on a hand, lather with both, then clean where needs to be cleaned. I can feel what’s dirty and I’m washing my hands immediately.

So, ignoring the fees involved in making it happen at all (which I assume the person did, because wow.) Say they spend ⅓ the price of the car to get ⅔ again as much use out of it. That’s a profit. They’re probably looking at replacing the car and not the battery when thinking about it, so it’s really good then. And they probably assume the device is transferable, so they can get more than one use out of the investment.

So they’re selling themselves on almost 2x performance that they can apply to all future batteries or cars and thus they extend the life of each car in the fleet by a lot.

And if it’s doesn’t live up to the claims, they pay ‘nothing’ and reap any benefits they managed to get out of it. And SURELY it would give at least SOME benefit, right?!

It’s absolutely stupid and foolish, but it’s not one single thing that makes it stupid or foolish, it’s a cascade of assumptions and estimations that makes something stupid sound plausible. There’s a world where the person “logic-ed” their way into buying this scheme—and either way it was a scheme—that was sold to them as no-lose.

They just had to forget all the other associated costs. The real world is probably either that they were completely incompetent and bought “battery rejuvenation technology” or that they tried to payout to a buddy and were had.