I’ve finally started The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I’m not sure when I’ll finish it, but so far, it’s much better than I was expecting. At the very least, I hate Danglars and am hoping there’s not some stupid parable of Christian forgiveness at the end, because I want that guy to get destroyed.

I often have a hard time enjoying older books, but I’m surprised so far at how very human all these characters Dumas is writing feel. Aside from the obviously dated aspects of the novel, it feels very much like they could be anyone I know today.

Also recently finished Queen of Faces by Petra Lord, which I picked up by mistake thinking it was an adult novel for some reason, lol. But I gave it a chance since I had it, and stuck with the YA novel anyway because the world was somewhat interesting. Honestly, it felt like it should have been an adult book. It barely made use of the magic academy, which in hindsight should have been a redflag that it was indeed YA. The anime vibe was strange (they kept using ‘manga’ instead of ‘comic’ in a fictional world with no Japan, and their ‘unique’ magic had names). The characters were pretty flat, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to find Ori as the most interesting character. Also, the real villain of the story was obvious. If you like YA, it’s good enough. I’m certainly not the audience, but it was enjoyable for what it was.

I’ve had that feeling with so many books. Glad you’re liking the last bit though 👍

That sounds fun. It’s nice to see a review for self-published stuff, too!

You’re not wrong. ‘AI’ leads a lot of people, whether they mean to or not, to humanize these LLMs. Humans love to humanize inanimate objects, for instance. People name their cars. But AIs are, as you say, not sentient. There’s nothing to feel guilty about. Why should you want to interact with a program you didn’t sign up for to pretend to be human?

If people want that, create their own places where the point is seeing how well they can get the ‘AI’ to interact with humans. But until that AI is real intelligence and has sentience, keep it out of human discussions. There’s zero reason to care about a program that at best is spitting out nothing meaningful.

Core gameplay is the same, but significant things were added to parts of the game, like an island you can eventually visit, 14 heart events for spouses, etc.

Stardew has tons of mods. If the clock is stressing you out, there’s probably a mod for that. You could use cheat mods to get around some of it (teleport home, change the time, change your money, etc.).

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My old accounts never got banned (I think I have three still usable ones). I have one that was newer that was shadowbanned, but I never really posted anything (it was shadowbanned right out the gate from what I could tell because I used a VPN and a temp e-mail - remember the time you didn’t need an e-mail?!).

I came here simply because I want a better alternative (and to get away from fascist shitheads). Unfortunately, there’s really no engagement for most things here I used reddit for, but where there is, it’s mostly a nicer community (because it’s much smaller on here, plus less power tripping reddit mods).

Also, I can’t use new reddit. It’s awful. I tried again yesterday, and it sucked. The death of old reddit was always going to force me to jump ship. Although I mostly used it for lurking these days with my shadowbanned account, or through websearches for very specific things (old TV episode discussions for instance). Very rarely I log in to an unbanned account and answer a question in a niche sub of mine.

Yep. I really wished anything I used on there actually existed on Lemmyverse, or anywhere else decent, lol. I loathe Discord, but at least one sub has a decent server so I can follow deals on it.

Very sad that they’re destroying years of information, good and bad. It’s not like I wouldn’t have jumped ship before if there was an alternative, but for most things, there really isn’t.

I can’t do New reddit either. I remember when it came out I said I would never use the site again once they inevitably did this. Tried New reddit out of curiosity, and it was so much worse than I remember.

For now, old accounts work for old reddit. I have a shadowbanned (presumably, posts never showed up) account that I use to monitor subs for deals. But at this point, it’s a matter of months, if not weeks. The timing of this, I suspect, is not coincidental either.

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I had the exact same issue when I read it (which was a while ago). The last 1/3 was the best part of the book, at least imo.

As a former MMO player, I absolutely hated anything that required playing with a group. I mostly played solo (although back in my LotRO days I had an awesome guild to occasionally play with). I remember this being one of the reasons I liked ESO (I haven’t played an MMO in ages so I don’t know if anything changed or my memory of that is bad).

If something required a lot of group play, I was likely to stop playing it and find something else. It really depended on how easily I could ignore the group content.

I’ve suspected some cover art I’ve seen for books has been AI (but I can’t always reliably tell). Kind of gross that some of it probably is.

Sadly, as much as I see people against gen AI online, people in real life aren’t (at least where I’m at). They’re gobbling up the slop.

I don’t even want to imagine what things will look like in twenty years, when the kids who grew up with this thinks this is the new normal.

Going forward, either you embrace gen AI, or you stick to media produced roughly before 2022 (or before 2019 to virtually avoid it totally). For writing, I’m not sure how the future will look for those who care. At least you can go see live performances of music, for instance, or even watch someone paint something.

For now, maybe writers will ban together and create trusted groups of human made stuff. If we’re lucky, maybe AI slop for the most part will be contained to corporations. Indie publishers could become the place for human made stuff. Assuming the corporations don’t find a way to drown out the indie publishers. But even if indie publishers take off in this direction, for how long will the people actually interested in art/writing free of gen AI care?

Curious to see Nintendo’s numbers in comparison.

And yeah, those prices are insane. At a certain point, just pay for a PC and have access to whatever you want. Plus, you don’t have to pay an additional fee for online features. It doesn’t have to be the best gaming rig ever, especially for most people. And recoup the money spent on a gaming rig by escaping the closed eco system. Wait for good sales on PC games or turn to the high seas.

And honestly, outside of Nintendo, I haven’t seen a console exclusive game on Xbox or PS5 that I’ve wanted to play in years.

Those prices though. People can still game without consoles, and with the way they’re destroying the economy, it seems people are realizing they can ditch the consoles for other options.

This. It’s the poor kids who this targets the most in the first place. Equal access to uncensored media is absolutely essential for any society that isn’t a fascist paradise.

It’s not just libraries either. People need to reject censorship across the board. Why the hell is George Carlin’s ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’ still relevant to this day?

Endless Blue Beneath - Shannon K. English

It was not good, unfortunately. Some cool mermaid vibes, but holy hell that ending. Imagine someone committing genocide telling someone who hadn’t done anything wrong to ‘be better.’ Not to mention, it’s mostly just miserable the entire time, the main character is insufferable and repeats her thoughts about her brother all the time, and then the love interest was a choice. For what little time was dedicated to her in the first place.

Not sure what I’ll read next.

This.

Because generative AI has been built off the backs of everyone, whether they consented or not. Because AI companies (Nvidia, Facebook, pick a company) have pirated enough material to keep any individual in jail for life, and yet they have no consequences and can profit off everything.

If generative AI can not be used for commercial purposes, it also cripples the ability to replace artists, writers, etc., with an AI that stole all their work in the first place and is regurgitating it. Generative AI isn’t the issue, and it won’t go away (I wish it would, but the world doesn’t work that way). It’s the way it’s being used. Take the profit out of it, and we can all (to some degree) benefit from it. Take the profit out of it, and stop them from hoarding and destroying books/knowledge, destroying the environment, destroying your economy.

I’m sure people more well-read into generative AI can give a better example than a layman who is tired of billionaires and trillionaires doing whatever they like with no consequence, destroying our environment, our jobs, our economy, and now our souls along the way.

2026 is so depressing, lol. I’ve noticed this with some (non-gaming) Korean media, where the writing feels very AI (and I’m kind of suspecting a lot of it is considering East Asia’s quick embrasure of it).

All of this is easy to legislate (not necessarily fix because people will just lie and face no consequence if they’re rich). Ban generative AI for commercial purposes.

Anything with art, being that games, illustration, even writing feels tainted these days. Those of us who don’t want gen AI are going to have to find ways to form our own communities (and hope we can trust the majority of people in them).

On the bright side, I’m suddenly feeling okay with not getting to play a lot of the Switch 2 games.

Outside of one community I use to track sales for a niche hobby, my main use of reddit is looking up old threads. There’s nothing new on there that’s helpful anymore. I like looking up old episode discussion threads for TV shows that I’m watching for the first time, for instance.

I wish Lemmy was a good alternative. But without enough people using it, it can’t really come close to a replacement. All my interests are more niche too, and I hate Discord, so it leaves me out here touching grass.

Reddit’s always been toxic, it’s just worse the more MAGA and AI came to prominence (also a lot of what appears to be Russian astrotufing, but that might just be the subs I used).

Unfortunately, Lemmy’s not always better. I’ve been trying to figure out which instances to avoid, because I am really tired of certain people harping on about certain things.

Congratulations on getting a regular exercise routine down! Took me longer than it should have myself.