The first game is much creepier than the second, I think due to a combination of the character designs, the writing and the general plot. The second game feels more akin to Danganronpa, in that the characters and setting are a bit surreal. Because it was a 3DS game, it also uses cartoony 3D models that make everything a bit lighter and less gritty than the original game. I haven’t played the third one yet (still need to get around to 100% completing the second game).

I found 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors to be very unsettling. I played it in bed at night with headphones on and it totally sucked me in. I guess this is a different type of horror to many of the games suggested here, which I personally don’t find scary.

You might not have the lifestyle to do this, but I find taking a short nap (like 20 minutes) in the early afternoon helps reset my brain and boost my energy levels. It doesn’t even need to be a nap, just taking that 20 minutes to lie down and close my eyes can help a lot.

It doesn’t need to be coffee, or even high quality coffee, but I agree that having a routine you devote a small amount of time to every morning for a reward at the end is a great way to start the day. It combines meditation and achievement, which are both great boosts to your mental health. Like you, I do the coffee thing but I know other people like to start their day with a run or a workout which has additional health benefits and leaves them feeling more upbeat about the day ahead.

The variable refresh rates on my newest one do make it more viable for other tasks like web browsing, that’s true.

Yeah it is pretty cool, I agree!

Gaming mice, in particular those designed for FPS players, have improved a lot within the last decade. They are incredibly light now and wireless mice are as responsive as wired ones. You can get well built mice with great sensors for very cheap, and there are loads of different shapes and sizes to choose from. It’s actually getting really difficult to buy an objective bad mouse now.

Interesting take. This is a technology that is often claimed to be a slow mover, so I’m curious what you’ve seen that suggests the opposite.

That seems like a lot. Elsewhere Sony was apparently planning to release 12 live service games by the end of the 2025 fiscal year (now halved to 6). The world of mainstream game development seems to be absolutely nuts at the moment.

There is no such thing as “universally bad at being funny”, as I explained. Humour is subjective.

Focusing on the people and communities, since takes like “Lemmy has no ads” or “reddit has more content” are so obvious that there is zero point in sharing them, I would say Lemmy is better. I think the quality of discourse is a lot higher and people are more likely to type longer, thought out and educated (or well intentioned) comments. If I were to put it really simply, I’d say Lemmy’s community is more centred around discussion, whereas reddit is centred around reaction.

However, one issue with Lemmy is that fringe groups and views are overrepresented (particularly left-leaning ones), which can result in an echo-chamber effect in many discussions. I find pile-on attempts, or accusations of fascism, Nazism and right-wing trolling, are a lot more common here towards users who don’t immediately join in with a far left circlejerk or attempt to bring a little more nuance or critical thinking to a discussion. Dylan Marron, host of the podcast ‘Conversations With People Who Hate Me’, once said in an interview that social media pile-ons from people who are actually on your own side hurt a lot more than pile-ons from people who fundamentally disagree with you and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It frustrates me that some Lemmy users shutdown and try to “other” people the moment they have a minor or semantic disagreement with them, instead of taking the time to hash it out or just politely agreeing to disagree. It’s kind of ironic that federation allows communities to isolate themselves, yet instead these people remain federated with everyone and then get really offended and outraged when they’re confronted with world views that even slightly differ from their own.

But anyway, that type of person is still a minority and Lemmy is, for the most part, a significantly better environment than reddit for polite and intelligent discussion.

If you’re explaining every single joke in the same sentence as the joke (which is what /s is), it’s not funny. Humour is not, nor has it ever been, about inclusion. It is about being funny. Not universally funny; just funny to people who understand and appreciate the joke.

I think the disabling of downvotes on Beehaw and similar instances really helps. It reduces the pile-on effect, which in turn makes people less defensive and more open to proper, good faith discussion. In general I think the solution is to not find “uplifting” communities, but rather to replace whatever communities you’re currently visiting with better equivalents. The world is not as depressing and scary when the people you’re talking to about these big issues are genuine and/or educated (and by educated I just mean “took the time to read the article before commenting”).

Don’t kill your time. When you’re in the final moments of your life you’ll most likely wish you had more, so make the effort to be thankful for every second you have now.

I engage a lot more with general communities than I used to because the quality of poster is so much higher here. People are more likely to engage in good faith discussion and offer more than just those low effort redditor joke comments that site has become notorious for. There is just no point commenting in larger communities and threads on reddit, because you’ll get buried by lazy meme comments and the one person who does sort by new is mostly likely looking for conflict rather than a conversation.

lol

I agree with your second paragraph, but the appeal to nature is not a good argument and routinely gets exposed as such in debates on the ethics of meat consumption. There are very clear differences between a lion and a human.

‘The Wandering Moon’ directed by Lee Sang-il and based on the novel by Yuu Nagira. The story contains some controversial themes but it’s beautifully shot and put together with a lot of care and love. At two and a half hours it’s a really nice length to just sit back and allow yourself to get fully immersed in the visual experience. It has that sort of slow, melancholic beauty that appears in a lot of modern Japanese art. If you’ve ever read a Murakami novel you’ll know what I mean.