It’s going to suck. There’s no getting away from the fact it’s going to suck. You are going to have a lot of pain ahead, and so is he. You’re going to see people who know you both, and need to choose between which of you they’re seeing, you’ll drift away from some people who he was closer to, and he’ll drift away from people you were closer to. Eventually you’ll date someone else and he will too. You’ll have photos, trinkets and many other things that are bound to him as memories. You likely will never get closure, and just have to let the pain fade.

When I reflect on memories, I often feel that the good ones change how they feel to think about after six weeks; they start to feel that they happened to someone else, a very long time ago. Maybe this is how memories feel when they change from short term to long term, I have no idea. The bad memories take longer, it’s different for each one. You are in mourning, in a manner of speaking, and that’s okay to acknowledge. Give yourself a time to mourn, to leave those items up that make you think of him. Get rid of the photos now, put the digital ones in a folder to be forgotten, change your lock screen, if it’s him, to something you love, a friend, pet, parent etc. Let yourself otherwise have a mourning period and let yourself feel the emotions. Set a date, perhaps a month from today, or a month from the breakup. On this day, clear away those little trinkets you bought together. If they’re valuable or you’ll miss them for another reason, don’t bin them. Don’t go overboard, just because that dress was his favourite, or he bought your favourite book or whatever doesn’t make it his, it’s yours. But some things will only bring pain to dwell on.

A poet, Richard Silken once said “Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.” You are going through something that is nearly a universal pain that every adult faces. Mourning, without closure, about someone who is still out there, who you may see at parties, in the street or with your shared friends. This is a pain we all have experienced, that colours so much of our happy memories with pain and despair. There are people I wish I could hold when they cry who I’ll never speak to again, and there’s people I wish could hold me who I’ll never see too. They may hate me more than the last time I saw them or have forgiven me and wish things went differently, but they definitely have not forgotten me, as I haven’t them.

These memories need to fade into that back part of your mind, and that takes time, and every memory that reignites that pain, perhaps the better word is trauma, will delay it. But eventually those memories together will feel like they’re not wrapped in the same emotion, but the memory of emotion. Until that point comes, it’s okay to let the feelings in, to mourn.

I hope you read every comment, even the worse ones about finding someone else quickly, to rebound. That is a tool to move these memories into a more distant part of your mind faster, but you won’t get to process them. You may never get closure but you’ll get even less if you don’t let the emotions in. Turn to positive distractions, do exciting things, do things with friends and family. Reach out to those friends you’ve seen less because you made so much time for him, they will be happy to have you back. Don’t mask the pain with drugs, weed or alcohol; nothing good comes of that. I had to avoid drinking when I had similar experiences. Seek process therapy, it’s not always too cheap, but this is a terrible pain that deserves professional check in, being young doesn’t make it easier, and most of us can empathize with the pain, and know not much is worse. Let yourself spiral today, this week, this month, but don’t make decisions that close you off from the world. Don’t stop seeing friends and family, do more activities, take up a hobby like the gym that you didn’t find time for when your hobby was time with him. Make your guiding light who you want to be next month, next year. You don’t have to be them now.

In a few months, this pain will be sadness, and nothing more. Let it in now but prepare for that day. Forgive yourself, you’re going to be okay.

In my own opinion, it’s Disney good.

Early Simpsons was slightly edgy, not in a shock factor way, but in a way where it could explore mature themes without any tonal whiplash, while still being entertaining for kids and adults.

As Fox deteriorated, so did the Simpsons, presumably from bad producing and low funding. Pretty much as soon as the Disney acquisition happened, quality began to climb again, and people have been saying it’s good for a few years.

But I can’t shake the feeling that the real feeling isn’t that it’s good, just that it isn’t bad anymore. It’s as inoffensive and bland as many Disney IPs, but doesn’t carry the true badness of Fox. I don’t trust that Disney is able to give it the ingredients for it to be great again.

Maybe it’s luck but I’ve shamelessly torrented in the UK my whole life, I wouldn’t be surprised if in the past fifteen years, I’ve downloaded a petabyte on pirated content.

I’ve never used a VPN and the one time I got a letter from my ISP, I suspect it was a scam anyway. I have used at least 4 ISPs in this period and two mobile networks, I’ve even used public and work WiFis with not issue.

I’m not sure if this a UK thing or if I’m just wildly lucky.

Their success came from it being specifically longer. It’s much harder to visualise a bigger surface area, like how a 10 inch pizza is bigger than two 7 inch pizzas. Subway on the other hand only stretches it in one axis, so the number goes up faster.

I don’t want long burgers, although I don’t know why. Big fan of the circle.

Weirdly I’m always unfairly judgemental when I see someone in very I door wear in public. Unless it’s somewhere lawless like an airport, pajamas or super comfort sports wear in public always irks me. But on the other hand, it literally makes more sense to be as comfortable as possible and for some pointless reason, I feel very beholden to the fashion standards that make it feel weird.

Just to ask, nobody understood the full picture of what they were making? Or was there someone who created the concept but intentional obfuscated it from everyone else via bureaucracy?

I’d love to know how much it costs to build each cybertruck, and visualise the other revenue loss of storing these, designing the machinery to build this shit and anything other costs that were factored into sales.

Also worth addressing that people are using large language models exactly because the ad driven web was enshitified enough that people clambered for this new option.

There will be at least one LLM that’s good for web searching and doesn’t give in to advertising, and in the meantime, we’ll just need to keep jumping ship whenever one becomes awful, as we did with the old web.

I have a surprisingly forgiving opinion on AI. There are many cases that I think it’s purpose is stupid or defeats the point but it has the potential to cause such a large break to employability and capitalism in general that it has it’s upsides.

People are right to take issue with the fact that it is causing people to lose their jobs or be unemployable by no fault of their own, but underlying that issue is the fact that society shouldn’t function on the employment being necessary (which I am aware is an opinion).

Even in its absurd energy and water usage, this is largely an issue with how we currently get our energy and water. Having our technocrats suddenly more invested in new and better forms of energy, even just for powering AI has the potential to be a path to better clean energy options.

AI is fundamentally a neutral tool, but as much as it may be sued for evil, it may accelerate flawed economic and environmental systems to a breaking point where a redesign of those structures will be required, which could be the greatest opportunity to implement better structures that we’ve had since the industrial revolution.

Tragically when I first switched to Lemmy, my friends convinced me to get Instagram to stay in better contact with them.

The difference in how much I engage with Instagram reels Vs YouTube shorts is huge. YouTube shorts suck and I get cripplingly bored or annoyed with them after 2 minutes, where as Instagram reels suck and I lose multiple hours to that fucking app. Fortunately I run a version of the app without ads etc so I’m only rotting myself and not contributing as directly to the end times.

I never tried tiktok and I’m too low willpower to stop using Instagram until they make it too shit to put the effort in, but I do feel that YouTube shorts sre the worst interation of this shitty format.

Back in 2013, I bought an old PS3 + GTA5 for £150 or so just to play the game, then once I had it, picked up two more exclusives, before never touching it again pretty quickly.

Getting a console for GTA6, plus the game, this time may set me back more than my expendable income after rent and bills. It will absolutely sell consoles but I’d wager people are actually able to buy a console much less than in 2013.

I had it from release and honestly, even day 1 it smoked the competition in the city sim genre, releasing with features and scale than Sim City ever had.

The DLC often introduced more systems, but they did feel ‘extra’, the game was perfectly functional before parks or tourism or natural disasters etc.

The reason CS:2 felt so necessary is because the first was bloated and had underlying issues in it’s simulation logic, like unrealistically inefficient driving, or a large expansion to residential areas causing all the new residents to die of old age at the same time, crippling the city. Every part of the GUI and logic just felt clunky compared to modern, polished games.

I moved to a city where the office / recording studio of some YouTubers I was inspired by when I was a teenager are based. Whenever I’d walk by the plaza where their office was based, I’d keep an eye out for them.

Green flame blade is a great horde killing spell while still feeling cool. IMO everyone picks booming blade because it’s more useful against single targets, which is more fun against a larger range of enemies, from bosses to your equals, plus thunder is rarely resisted compared to fire.

Some people implement minion rules where overflowing damage from killing a weak enemy flows on to the adjacent enemy, which of course is simplified and incorporated into green flame blade. One of the hardest things to capture in the standard D&D rules is that in fantasy, the warrior (Aragorn, Holga, Achilles) typically cuts down hundreds of mooks while the mage battles the giant powerful monster who cannot be defeated by a sword (Gandalf Vs Balrog). In D&D, either it’s totally inversed or the mage is better at both, largely because spells like fireball suit both situations better.

Green flame blade is a very easy option to balance this scale, albeit via magic.

The flip side to this article is that most of the criticisms, while really valid, talk about the intended play style for life sim games to be to live through the key points of their character’s lives with immersion.

For literally 20 years, I’ve barely seen it used for this purpose, instead people make themselves, their friends, their dream house, they cheat in money and turn off aging etc. Actually stopping to roleplay your character making friends is the activity most people do when their bored of the regular things they do.

Still, InZoi seeming to not simulate the lives of any of the other NPC’s is a big loss. Even if you’re not interacting with that part of the game, knowing it’s there is great. The Sims 4 (or 3, I forget) strove to reach the dream version of this: You buy a cheap property in a fully open world and ‘functioning’ town and you could walk from your front door to the town center, and the neighbour you see may also drive to town and you’ll see them there. Then as you play, you go from working in the gym to owning it, and can now modify it like your property because it runs on the same rules, the same goes for everything else. The Sims didn’t manage this but their later games clearly launched with this as their design’s guiding light.

I’m mostly interested in the game as a character creator and house builder, but that’s because I don’t expect any game to do a good job of what the article writer wishes for, The Sims included.

The main thing I’ve heard online is that it’s a pro-europe movement, particularly in support or rearming the EU, particularly in response to current US actions.

I was speaking to an Italian guy at the pub on the weekend and he said that’s totally wrong and it’s just protesting general government corruption. I don’t know if he’s more credible than the internet, being Italian is a big plus but being a man at the pub means it’s likely wrong. Maybe there are protests for both.

Sometimes The USA line goes up when the world line does, but sometimes it’s totally inverse, as the world quickly dumps US stocks and invests elsewhere.

The Reddit alternative from before Reddit was big. At one point they were comparable in size and had a friendly rivalry, I believe in the late 2000s. Digg is no better than Reddit, they have had numerous migrations to Reddit from admin issues, if I remember right.

Someone in my work had this happen to them, but it was the “sick of ads? Pay for premium” advent.

It could still be part of a deliberate action but that must be the worst advert to try to sneak ads in.

I wouldn’t be surprised if basically every person with over 1k hours in a game isn’t seeking some sort of escapism, not counting the anomalies like people leaving servers running etc.

I suppose every minute in a game is escapism of some sort, but escapism from dysphoria or something else significant, I think would be common.