Amazing novel but this is neither a direct adaptation nor faithful to the novel's message and ideas. It's a modern walking simulator with a the most surface level veneer of what we now consider retro futurism but otherwise modern in its messaging. I'd rather they kept the core and modernised the paint.
It's a perfectly valid point of view IMHO. The game is called The Invincible and marketed as being based on the Lem book, which builds up certain expectations which the game doesn't deliver.
It's a decent game / visual novel on its own, but it has absolutely nothing in common with Lem's Invincible except the name and that one core idea (which by now has become a common science fiction trope anyway - like most of Lem's ideas).
It also pulls a future Cold War scenario out of thin air which (as far as I remember) isn't even remotely mentioned in the book (which is more like a whodunit scifi crime novel which then becomes a tech thriller).
Also the decision to use a retro-future lollipop art style similar to The Jetsons is 'controversial' to say the least.
All in all, interesting and decent game (or rather "interactive graphics novel"), but marketing it as being based on Lem's book when in reality it's something entirely different (not just a book adaption with 'artistic freedom', but something entirely different) is a bit too much IMHO.
I played the game and didn't like it, you're welcome to disagree and engage with me by showing examples that disprove my assertions from my original post.
I think I'm on safe grounds calling it a walking simulator. The gameplay is limited to walking down a linear path and clicking on things until all combinations are exhausted - western equivalent of a visual novel (but with less branching).
Making pixel art is not about low resolution. AI is finally getting close to being able to do it. If you could do it with a crystal it wouldn't have taken 30 years of trying to automate pixel art creation.
Base SDXL can't do it but with some Loras you can get something that after putting through Photoshop to regularise pixels and palette would pass the pixel art Touring test.
I got into woodworking so I could renovate my house. Ended up building a workshop in my garden and furniture for our house. Can't wait to retire from SWEngineering.
Stereotypes reflect statistical reality pretty well - I did bouldering for a long time before I gave up due to fears of injuries (met so many older people there who kept doing it despite acquiring permanent injuries!).
Speaking of memes: get Japanese chisels and hand-saws, just trust me on that one, it's a meme for a good reason. A less known Japanese set of tools that is worth getting is measuring tools instead of ones made by woodpeckers - the monster cable of woodworking world. Their average measuring tools are basically the same standard as our premium brands.
Need someone to create a platform agnostic sponsorblock for any podcast app, just for the convenience of automatic skipping. Perhaps like a proxy for the RSS feed that spits out edited audio files? Edit: looks like someone has thought of this, if the podcast is hosted on YouTube: https://github.com/ericmedina024/podcast-sponsor-block
But yeah, I'm fine with using the skip x seconds in my podcast app as well for now.
The challenge with that is that unlike those things that sponsorblock is skipping, most podcast ads these days are dynamically inserted at time of stream/download. This means that some listeners get them and some listeners don't.
They are also dynamic based on geographic location from which you download, which results in drastically different ad loads based on where you live. This is probably one of the reasons that a sponsorblock-for-podcasts has not yet happened.
Modern beer, even the industrial lager you despise is much better that what 99% of people drank in the past. There is almost no bad beer, the standards for water quality and hygiene are high, the process and technology is well understood and we can replicate the same beer batch after batch, year after year.
Then why is an organisation based on opposition to that industrial lager, and improvement of beer quality more generally, probably the most major/successful/historically important single-issue consumer organisation, to the point that most other ones have modelled themselves on it?
I don't have to read the article to know it's Toyota. That's the kind of brand awareness only years of great track record can buy. If you're playing the long game, money invested in reliability gain you more than marketing.
I would hazard a guess that Toyota and Lexus have very similar real-world reliability - most of them share platforms. However this article shows that Lexus owners perceive their cars to be more reliable than Toyota owners.
>However this article shows that Lexus owners perceive their cars to be more reliable than Toyota owners.
Maybe they get better maintenance than their Toyota cousins on average?
BMW often ranks high but there's a bias when asking a BMW owner -who often likes cars- how good their car is, compared to a Dacia owner who often just needs to get from A to B and see a car as strictly transport.
Lexus is Toyota’s up brand, like Acura is for Honda and Audi is for VW. They share parts, designs, often factories, but just better interiors, higher end engines, exterior trims, etc…
I have wasted an obscene amount of food trying to preserve it. This is the kind of skill that used to be learned at home when you were a kid but as I was growing up this was only passed onto daughters - us boys were taught different skills and my wife grew up in the city. Trying to learn this from books is terrible. Most of the time I call up my mom to teach me over a video call but some things are easier taught in person, especially ones that require manual manipulation of things.
I worry that enormous amount of nuance is lost when transmitting skills through written down form instead of in person.
Canning is easy - it's a straight forward recipe and instructions. You just have e to ensure the recipe is from a good source. Occasionally you'll have a few lids that don't seal. Or you'll try a recipe that results in soggy pickles.
Curing is pretty easy too. Using equilibrium cures and leaving it refrigerated removes a lot of concerns. Curing for room temperature storage is a little trickier but is mostly about having a good environment to store it in.
Dehydration is easy - basically just slice things and pop them in the dehydrator at the recommended time and temperature.
Fermentation is the one that I've wasted the most food with, which still isn't that much. I've made a few bad batches of beer and wine. I've also had a batch or two of sauerkraut turn out bad. These are usually due to bad quality ingredients, like cabbage that wasn't that fresh, or to waiting too long to bottle beer.
The big thing is to try stuff in small batches and learn. Ensure that you follow the directions from a reputable authority so you don't get sick. When in doubt, throw it out.
For fermentation, you don't want very small batches. Fermentation can be sensitive to small variations (concentrations of salt, sugars, etc.) Also, fermentation is spoiled by access to air. Both are helped by working with a larger container. If you have trouble with small batches, maybe try a larger batch for once and see how it goes.
Stuff that I ferment regularly: sourdough bread (for example, pizza dough -- for up to two weeks in the fridge), cabbage (sauerkraut), cucumbers, beets (I love good borscht, what can I say), jalapeno peppers (I love to add them to scrambled eggs and always have a batch in the fridge), and habaneros (I make mean habanero sauce and it is best when I use my own fermented habaneros for this).
I wouldn't do very small batches like 1 jar. But something like doing 1 gallon of wine vs 5 gallons, or doing a 1-2 gallon crock of kraut vs a 5-10 gallon crock.
If you see a lot of failure, it is not normal. Things do fail me, but very rarely, and usually I can track it to some concrete reasons.
Some reasons for fermentation failures:
- too small concentration of salt. You need to count water both in the liquid and in the thing you are fermenting. And yes, you need to weigh your salt and use calculator to figure out how much salt you need exactly. And a scale that allows you to weigh it precisely enough.
- not enough sugars. Fermentation needs to run to a point where the liquid is acidic enough to stop other things from invading your food. This usually means there needs to be enough sugars so that fermentation can run its course and stop after the solution is acidic enough and it ideally should coincide with all sugars being depleted. This is the perfect stopping point, if you have too little sugars it will stop before it is acidic enough and if it has too much sugars some bacteries might still be able to live on it. Out of two, it is better to have too much sugar than too little.
- wrong temperature. You want correct temperature so that your choice of yeast can invade the food faster than anything else. If it is too warm or too cold, some other living thing may be more efficient than yeast and your food will spoil.
- Oxygen. You want Oxygen out of your fermentation liquid. You want to use airlock . Use super salty water in the airlock to prevent contamination by liquid splashing back. I am also using using carbonated water to make sure right from the start there is little or no oxygen dissolved in the liquid, and as it bubbles out it also removes Oxygen above the liquid.
- once fermentation runs out, keep in a cool place. I keep it in the fridge. My jalapenos last for a year in a jar I open from time to time. I have not tried for longer because I just replace it with a newly fermented jar of jalapenos every time there is season.
- cleanliness. You want to keep stuff clean, as much as possible. Make sure you get your fermentation glass to 100C for some time (don't just flush with hot water, actually submerge in a pot of boiling water). Try not to use plastic that is scratched and can harbor bacteria (although I am using PET bottles frequently with good effect, but I am not reusing them afterwards). Wash your food well and maybe even wash with boiling water if it makes sense.
- slow start. If your food is in large chunks and not releasing sugars to the liquid, it might take for too long for the fermentation to start which gives time for it to spoil. Mash/crush some of the food so that some of the sugars can be released and start fermentation.
- too much liquid. It really is not enough sugars point, but for some foods that do not have much sugars in them in the first place, you may want to consider really pack them tightly.
It's certain strains of lactobacillus, not yeast. Yeasts are probably-to-certainly present in small amounts in fermentation but they aren't critical to its success or failure either way.
The containers should be clean, no biofilms or visible grime obviously, but wash-rinse-air dry is plenty. Clean enough to eat off of. The fermentation lactobacillus are tolerant to salt and will dramatically outcompete everything else in a salty environment. The careful sanitization is for brewing where the yeasts don't have this advantage, or canning where botulism complicates it. For fermentation alone it's not a concern.
The vegetables on the other hand you don't want to clean too meticulously. You want them clear of dirt, debris, bugs obviously. But the bacteria you're using to ferment are naturally present on the vegetables and it is the only effective source of them. You can see this with ginger, a lot of which is irradiated, virtually bacteria-free, and notoriously inconsistent to ferment alone for that reason.
I taught myself canning ten years ago and found it pretty straightforward. I used this website and the Ball book, and have done many batches of jams, pickles, and veggies.
I think I only fully wasted the first batch of 8 half-pint jams I made, which were basically fruit leather, otherwise things have turned out pretty well. I give jam as holiday gifts, and in years where I haven’t made any I get people asking for it, so I take that as a sign I’m doing something right!
Not everyone who cans is necessarily scientists or chefs or writers, etc. Nuance may be lost when folk chefs try to write down their process, especially if they don't fully understand the process or which exact steps are important. This isn't because nuance is lost when you write this stuff down, it's because they aren't trained writers or don't understand the process enough themselves to explain in well enough in words.
I think learning this stuff from books is easy. It's not about the subject, it's about both your learning style and starting from good material. Preserving by Ginette Mathiot is good material.
Both. Especially fermenting often resulted in barely edible pickles. Nowadays the only fermentation I do is alcohol. I leave the rest to my wife who's picked it up more successfully than me. I help with pasturising although there's not much to do now we bought a pasturising cooker.
Right - my wording was confusing. I meant that I've tried other people's homemade lactic acid fermented food and didn't enjoy it very much so I haven't been inspired to try it myself.
