• 18 Posts
  • 47 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Ok here’s my take from someone who hasn’t played them in probably close to 2 decades, didn’t actually own them but just played with a friend who owned it. But I did love the series at least enough that I still have impressions of my feels from over 20 years ago.

    I remember loving playing Twisted Metal 2. I can remember sitting in front of the TV plating the single and multiplayer. I can’t remember the specifics of much more beyond very basic mechanics but there is a very positive emotion. My memory of Twisted Metal 3 is just disappointment and blandness.

    I didn’t get much time with either game but I remember having the choice between them and choosing 2 over 3 consistently.

    If a large chunk of people are in a similar situation as me, only vague limited impressions from long ago, give their opinions you their opinion over more than a decade you build a very negative image.

    Throw in people just discovering the games and being told 2 is good and 3 is bad. They then compare maybe minutes of the gameplay before deciding which to play and reinforce the narrative. You can end up with a fan base with an unjustly harsh view.

    I can honestly see 3 being just kind of mediocre and just being judged awful because of how good 2 was.








  • “Oil deliveries to Pakistan have begun. There is no special discount; for Pakistan, it is the same as for other buyers,” Russian state media quoted Shulginov as telling reporters on the sidelines of an international economic conference in St. Petersburg.

    That’s not what economists are usually talking about with discounts in this context. When talking about oil, or any commodity discount, it typically means against a baseline product. For oil you compare to the price of Brent. Think of it as the price difference between buying generic vs name brand at a grocery store.

    There’s no details on the actual trade in the articlebut comparing Urals vs Brent shows it’s still trading at a roughly 20% discount today vs the ~2% discount preconflict.

    I actually think the article titled misses the bigger part of the story.

    agreed to accept Chinese currency as payment

    I would expect increased trade between the three countries of this becomes the norm.





  • “I refuse (voiceover) work that states they’ll take my voice and make an AI model from it,” voice actor Brad Ziffer told CNBC. “The best way to protect myself is to just stay away.”

    As you should. There is a big difference between narrating and giving away personality rights.

    But the article kind of negates the title.

    However, experts say seamlessly replicating the way a human talks with AI is still a ways away. Human beings offer unique intonation, cadence, and emotion when they speak.

    Voice artist narration for big title releases isn’t going away anytime soon. And if it does the job is going to be replaced with technical/artistic jobs fine tuning the generated narration.

    What I actually see happening in the short term is it becoming profitable to do generative narration of smaller authors and books that would be profitable using traditional voice work.

    In time I could see this working it’s way up the budget ladder into larger projects but that’s still a way off.



  • I think it’s next to impossible to write a guide on how to transition. It’s so multidimensional and personalized that any guide saying do x, y and z is going to be wrong for someone. But maybe something very, very general can be written.

    You’ve actually been at this longer than me so maybe you have a better idea of what transition is to you but I split mine into three broad categories; mental, social and medical.

    Mental transition is working on how you view yourself and how you fit into the world. For me it mainly involves reflection on what exactly do I want, how do I get it, and why haven’t I. Usually unpacking internalized transphobia for me but also involves integrateing ‘girl me’ me into my view of myself. Slots in with medical transition in that you may want to talk to a therapist to assist you with it and helps you decide if and how you want to medically transition. Fits in with social transition in it is how you decide to transition and overcome inhibitions to transition. Maybe the hardest easy thing to do.

    Social transition is changing how you interact with the people and the world around you. Probably the first thing most people think of when they say transition. Covers a huge range of things like how you groom yourself, clothes, pronouns, voice training and many many more. How, when and why someone does one thing or another is going to be very personal and specific to them.

    Medical transition is basically anything you need a doctor to help you with. I include feminizing HRT here even though you could technically do it by yourself in a lot of jurisdictions. I would also include any mental health consoling here. My advice here is to basically get in line the second you have an inkling that you are going want or need help from the medical community. The wait times for it can be months or years depending on location. If when you get to the front of the line and decide you don’t want anything you can always decline and they’ll go to the next person.



  • No idea. I can see not up voting it. I think it’s a bit of a non-story. Country looks to maybe join a group containing it’s some of it large trading partners. This group might or might not do something on the future. Only interesting bit is it’s the BRICS.

    But a down vote just feels unnecessary. The story is factual. The source is fine. It might be relevant to someone.





  • I wouldn’t call it selfish. They want tools for more granular control on their instance. That’s perfectly fine. If they limit who can post or comment based on the instance they are from. The other instances are perfectly free to limit their users as well in response or for their own arbitrary reasons.

    There seems to be a distinct lack of controls across lemmy as a whole. The only option for them is all or nothing at the moment.

    I think the big take away is for users to think about what instance they create their accounts and communities on.



  • I think this article is overstating the report’s findings. From the executive summary of the report:

    The research findings in the biomedical area are inconclusive. Studies which make conclusions on pre- and post-hormone replacement therapy (HRT) advantage held by trans women athletes have used either cis men or sedentary trans women as proxies for elite trans women athletes. These group references are not only inappropriate for the context but produce conclusions that cannot be applied to elite trans women athletes. Further, there is little scientific understanding about the attributes or properties of HRT, namely testosterone suppression and estrogen supplementation, on the physiology and athletic ability of trans women athletes. This ignores the potential for estrogen supplementation to reduce Lean Body Mass (LBM), and for testosterone suppression to produce holistic health disadvantages.

    Which in my reading basically says all the current data is invalid for elite level athletes and shouldn’t be used for policy making. That’s not quite as powerful as the conclusion as saying there are no differences.

    I hate to say more research is needed since it’s an argument made by people who just want to exclude trans athletes until it can be definitely proven there are no advantages, but I don’t feel like I can’t come to a conclusion from this.

    My gut feeling is that there is probably a very complex relationship between an individual historic hormones and their performance in any given sport. And that performance is probably very dependent on the sport in question as well, e.g. any potential difference between trans women and cis women will present differently in long distance running vs weight lifting.