How to survive gnome
Gnome is the most common desktop environment for linux and I hate it. This article explaining how to fix all the terrible defaults just reinforces this view. I've used a half dozen linux desktop environments and settled on xfce4. xfce a basic DE that stays out of my way and hasn't really changed in the last decade. That being said, I don't really use it anyway, 99% of my time is spent alt-tabbing between alacritty and firefox.
Bad comic art
There are online forums where people gather to highlight bad comic book art, try to fix it, and places where they try to make it worse
I like it because it highlights the mistakes of professional artists and the results can be hilarious.
Wildermyth
Don't be fooled by the cheap papercraft aesthetic, wildermyth is a fantastic game. It's a RPG with a XCOM-like turned based battles. It's labelled as procedurally generated story telling RPG but I don't know what that means. The story builds on the choices you make and it is more extensive than I expected. Characters age and have romances, rivalries, and offspring and will be changed by random events.
I had a character join my party. She was the daughter of my mage. As a warrior she fought with a spear and quickly learned an X-COM overwatch like ability where she could wait in ambush for monsters. As an offensive warrior she paired well with my other, defense orientated fighter. In one battle she spotted a fire spirit and chased it down. The fire spirit gave her a fire spear, which would set enemies on fire and cause an area effect explosion on successful hits.
Later, while exploring a new area of the map we came upon a strange monolith in the forest; two columns of stone with a fire burning between. The other party members thought it was too hot to approach but this fighter only thought it felt warm. She started saying weird things like "Can you hear the stories?" and I was told a story about the sky falling in love with a squirrel and the sky trying to build a tree for it's new lover but incinerating it instead. Afterwards I was presented with the option of letting her stick her arm into the flame. I thought I'd chosen poorly when she started to scream and caught on fire, but then she said it was OK. She gained the ability to shoot fireballs from her hands.
The writing is often strange and full of non-sequiturs. The dreamy quality makes me wonder if it was partially written by an GPT text generator but it could just be lazy writing. This is a shame because if someone could figure out how to hook a generative text engine to a game like this, or even just use a generative text engine to make your procedural game 10-20 times bigger and stranger than everything else, it would blow everything else out of the water.
I've put 9 hours into the game and just started the second campaign (out of 11). It remains to be seen how redundant the game play becomes but so far I haven't seen any repeated events. I think the events are written by the developer and not procedurally generated so the biggest flaw will be how often it repeats itself.
I haven't seen any repetition and the battles are interesting. Your characters level often enough it's exciting to go return to battle and try out their new abilities. I would like to see more classes. Each of the three classes can focus on different things, but it would still be nice to have more variety. Recommended.
Retablos
I found a strange tumblr blog that collects and translates south american retablos.
I, Crecencio Soto, pay, with this retablo, the Virgin of Guadalupe for having worked a miracle of not being drowned by a mermaid who enchanted me with her beauty and wanted to make little mermaids with me.
Cancun, 1980
Felix Orozco gives infinite thanks to the Holy Heart because the bat-woman didn’t suck my blood out. She was very horrible but you saved me.
Oaxaca, 1943
Margarito Navas dedicates this retablo because I was attacked by the crocodile woman. She wanted to attack me and tear my eyes out but I escaped.
Mexico, March 14, 1984
Demetrio Vargas went to swim. I fainted, but a mermaid piggy saved my life from drowning.
Veracruz, December 4, 1955
Shepherd Rodrigo Rivera was looking after his livestock when suddenly a flying saucer appeared. It took a cow and then disappeared. He gives infinite thanks to Saint Charbel for he didn’t suffer any harm and those martian dummies took a sick cow.
Puebla, 1949
I testify for such an incredible story that happened on June 26, 1974, when Mario was swimming in beautiful Tulum and suddenly, from the bottom of a cave, emerged an enormous and threatening creature that looked like a giant red octopus, with enormous tentacles and only one vile eye. It attacked Mario who tried to escape but the beast grabbed him with his repugnant snout. I implore to the Holy Spirit for intervention, and the evil being let him go, so Mario managed to survive.
Tulum, Mexico
After collecting a few I had to know more.
About retablos
Retablos and ex-votos are the votive paintings offered to a saint in gratitude for miraculous help, healing or escape from a dangerous situation. The art of retablo was rediscovered by modern artists in the 20th century. Pseudo-folk retablos have become a form of postmodern art. There has been growing popularity for retablos among tourists and collectors during the last years.
Another answer in the faq says the retablos are real but the stories are fake so I guess they were created for the fun of it - and Mexicans have been doing this for at least the last 100 years?
About fake
These are real retablos, not fake ones. However, the stories are mostly fictional. Although these stories probably never happened, there’s no need to be disappointed because it’s fun.
Nuclear Fusion is perpetually years away
This article gives reasons why we should be suspicious of nuclear fusion
The problem is it's being pushed by private companies who will lie for funding.
Someone on metafilter pointed to this graph, produced in 1976, indicating different timelines for fusion development depending on the amount of funding.
Fusion development was never funded and it never happened.
The infrequently updated blog.