Fun fact, the Moon actually has a very low albedo, meaning it’s actually not all that reflective. The surface differs a bit, depending on the composition. But overall it’s quite close to a dark asphalt.

Our eyes (or more our brains) are very good at high dynamic range and discerning details. That’s why a Moon rising may look huge, bright and beautiful. But when you try and take a picture, it looks terrible.

Now this isn’t to say the moon isn’t actually bright when standing upon it. The Moon is at the same distance more or less to the Sun as the Earth and the lack of atmosphere causes the contrast to be higher. We all know standing outside on a bright day will be pretty damned bright. Even when looking at a darker surface like a road, it can be bright out. Thus we wear sunglasses, as did the astronauts, just integrated into their visors. And our eyes adjust to let in less light, as to not blind us.

And our cameras need to be set differently, to prevent the picture from being blown out. Usually automatically, but with fancy or old cameras manually. The astronauts did the same, making it very hard to estimate how bright the surface actually is. If we were to lock our camera on Earth, taking a picture of the bright Moon in the night sky. Then go to the Moon’s surface and take another picture with the same settings, the brightness would be the same. However the picture would be a pretty terrible one.

Humans are terrible at estimating things like brightness, because our eyes and brains adjust to the light level. This is required to make us better at seeing the world and thus surviving, but not as good at being scientific measuring devices. Thus we’ve used our tools to create actual scientific measuring devices and have mapped the albedo of the Moon. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s all perfectly consistent, who would have thought?

This is the thing about all these Facebook conspiracies. They are often based on actual real mismatches. Things that make you go: “Hmmm that IS weird!”. But then instead of doing the research and finding out the answer (which usually takes about 5 mins of searching), they abuse the confusion to promote their bullshit theories. Sometimes it will be just straight up lies, but sometimes it’s actually an interesting thing that lies beneath.

I’ve also noticed a lot of them can also be easily defeated when they claim stuff, that it only supports their case if it were always the case. Like for example flat earth because no plane routes that travel between certain places on the southern hemisphere. That would be a strong point for them, except 1 min of googling shows there are actually active plane routes that would be impossible on a flat earth. With live tracking available and people posting on social media getting on and off these planes. Or for example the Earth only being 6000 years old because dino bones are plastic in museums. Sure if all dino bones were plastic, that would be a strong point. But in a lot of cases there are a lot of actual bones. Augmented with plastic to show a full skeleton, where only a partial one was dug up. Which is often plainly stated next to the bones, if those idiots could read of course. Or the skull being hung at the top made from plastic, with the real actual skull in a display next to it, so people can look at it closely.

Flat earth is so dumb, it can be disproven in a billion different ways in very little time. I’m not convinced anyone actually believes that crap. They also do basically nothing to disprove the round(ish) Earth model, they just say it’s nonsense because they say it is. And invent crazy dumb shit for their own “theories” that aren’t even internally consistent.

What has ever happened to George to make him so fucking based. It’s as if he was hit with the based stick at some point in his life or something like that.

Man fuck those Ninja Gaiden birds

I haven’t done a whole lot with the crests as I found the starter crest to be very versatile and I got used to the moveset. I have played around with the Beast crest which is really fun, allowing you to just go ham on enemies. However I found against bosses the Beast crest doesn’t work at all, as the damage taken is too large for the lifesteal to overcome. Unless you are dodging and weaving, which defeats the purpose of the Beast crest a bit.

The patches that have been release will probably help a lot of people with the bosses as, if I understood correctly, they’ve decreased the contact damage. This will help a lot with the feeling if boss fights being unfair due to hits taken are often compounded by subsequent contact damage. On many occasions I’ve gone from 4 health, doing OK to dead in less than one sec. This can feel very unfair. Especially after going through a long and annoying run back and then 2 easy phases, just to get to the hard part and die right away.

It feels like if one were to simply be able to practice the hard part, bosses would be defeated much faster. The runbacks (which often include shortcuts it must be said) combined with long easier phases contribute to a feeling of unfair difficulty. It also makes things take up more time than needed, leaving people to feel like the game is wasting their time. Or difficulty for the sake of being difficult. As the video stated, difficulty is a tool that most be wielded carefully.

When doing for example a SL1 run in a Souls game, the player must play at a high level without many or even any mistakes. Boss fights will take longer and the stakes go up. The difference is, one chooses to do these challenges. Often only after already mastering a game. For many people Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end, without being able to properly swim.

You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1, just like the video did. The things you are talking about are in act 2. I’m glad to see it gets better in act 2, however I’m not as far into that yet. Most people running into these issues will quit before beating act 1 most likely, so it’s kind of a moot point.

I simply can’t believe those damage numbers. I was talking about the nail upgrade in the town. Is there some other upgrade I’m not aware of? All the low level enemies seem to take the same number of hits. In Hollow Knight the upgrades to the nail were very noticeable. The nail upgrade in Silksong felt like it did nothing at all. Bosses might have gone from 16 hits to 12 hits per phase, which is still a whole lot of hits. Especially as windows for damage are brief and far in between and bosses have 4 phases typically.

Edit: checked the damage output and whilst sources provide conflicting information, it does appear the first upgrade is 80% as stated. However it does not decrease the number of hits enemies take, due to a poor lineup in health and damage. So only a few enemies actually take less hits with the nail upgrade, making the upgrade feel pointless. For bosses the difference is obviously huge. But with perhaps the exception of a single boss, usually you fight the boss with the damage you’ve got. Very few people would be counting the hits (although I did at times to see if I was progressing). So there is little frame of reference in this case.

I agree with a lot in this video, but disagree on one key point. You can go explore somewhere else and get upgrades and stuff.

I really liked this aspect in Elden Ring, where the bosses could get pretty hard, but you could always just go explore. Explore the lands, level up, find cool weapons and upgrades to get really OP. Then return to the boss and kick their ass. Once you’ve put 500 hours into it, you do challenge runs like SL1. But if you only want to put in 100 hours, you can easily beat it, no matter your skill level. The exploration feels great, the world is interesting and there is a lot to find. As compared to the previous Souls games where the game would just put a big roadblock boss in your path and good luck getting past it. Or a game like Nioh that gives you a tutorial boss, with which one struggles a bit but then beats pretty fast, only to almost right away throw in the next boss which is so hard about 70% of people quit on him (according to stats I’ve seen).

However, I feel like this doesn’t apply to Silksong at all. You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless? You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all (haven’t looked it up, but feels like 15% maybe?). The different crests are really cool, but won’t help you beat bosses. There is maybe 1 full mask or 2? But as everything does 2 damage, that’s only 1 extra hit. The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.

I consider myself pretty good at these kinds of games. Not great, but pretty good. I’ve played the fuck out of DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Nioh 1. I’ve done SL1 runs and all sorts of challenges in DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring, I’ve done randomisers etc. I’ve beaten Hollow Knight 3 times, the third time I did 112%.

For Silk Song I’m about 20 hours in, I’ve beaten Act 1 and did pretty much everything I could find (not spoiling myself on anything). I’m part of the way into Act 2 and I don’t know if I want to play anymore. Every enemy is a bullet sponge, requiring a lot of hits to get out of the way. Everything does so much damage. Simply exploring and finding shit feels like a slog. I’ve had many completely unfair deaths where I got booped by an enemy only to fall into a pit of spikes and die. You go from full health to death very fast. And the bosses just keep on getting more difficult. It feels like a grind instead of fun.

On the other hand, I love the way the game looks, I love the boss music (not as much a fan of the level music, too much atmospheric, too little actual music), I love how smooth it feels to play. And I love the world and want to explore it all. That’s where I disagree with the video, I’m not in the rage quit phase, I’m in the this isn’t fun to play phase.

Maybe I’ll continue, I know I have the skills to beat the game. But if I’m not having fun, what’s even the point of playing anymore?

It’s like browsing the Amateur section of Pornhub and coming across an Adriana Chechik video.

Or so I’ve heard…

Whatever you do, don’t look up Gandalf Big Naturals online, trust me.

That’s super cool! I absolutely hate the way it sounds, but still really awesome!

Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?

The one we used to have for our cats would make a little jingle before dispensing the food. Whenever that jingle went off the cats came RUNNING!

Please note he’s driving a power limited car, so he won’t really be in any competition. The goal is to just do the laps and get the requirements to get a license. He needs the license to drive a fully capable car, so he can do the Nürburg 24h next year.

Isn’t he just like a rich douchebag now? Why do we care about this asshole? And why does he do this kind of thing? I’m sure the injured people will be happy some rich fuck in his castle says he cares.

The one in the back is already sleeping. The one in the front on the left is sleepy but down for some wrestling in between. The one on the right can’t sleep till he gets the mischievous demons out of his system.

Did you just happen to come across it or did you, like me, get reminded by a recent video from Matt Parker?

https://youtu.be/b6S5gHjuN48

Meanwhile astronauts using Windows:

No, there isn’t any atmosphere to keep in the water. If you heat up the ice, it will sublimate directly into gas. Since the gravity is so low, it will stream out and create a trail all around the orbit. The solar wind would blow it away from there.

There’s more to having liquid water than just temperature, pressure is needed as well.

Also Ceres might be small for a planet/moon, but it’s still huge. The amount of energy needed would also be huge. And without an atmosphere you’d also be losing a lot of energy due to it radiating out into space. I’m not a 100% sure, but I think Earth is actually an iceball from where it’s located in the solar system. It’s only due to the atmosphere it’s mostly non frozen (and if we keep pumping the CO2 and methane like we are, in the near future it won’t be frozen at all).

One of the most important ones that a lot of people use every day are the huge advancements that have been made in creating modern chips. It might not be something new and exciting, but it actually involves very groundbreaking work and huge breakthroughs. Not just the crazy machines that ASML makes, thought to be breaking the laws of physics just years ago. But also advancements in manufacturing, being able to create super advanced 3D structures and large scale manufacturing at a very high level, yet with a surprising consistency in quality and low cost. Not just for ever bigger, more efficient and faster chips, but also things like MEMS at tiny sizes and low cost.

Often it’s taken for granted what we have. People saying stuff to the sentiment that this isn’t the future, everything is boring, we haven’t got flying cars or people living on Mars. But the fact we all got this ultra powerful computer, with a high resolution high framerate self emitting screen, no active cooling, a bunch of sensors, lots of memory and storage and hyper connected to all sorts of networks, all powered by a high capacity high power low wear battery should be mind blowing. And not just that, but it fits in our pockets and they are so cheap everyone has at least one. Just because we’ve chosen to spec our tech tree into the small stuff instead of the large stuff, doesn’t mean we haven’t come a long way.

I think people look at the past at new “inventions” and think that’s the way progress is. New revolutionary stuff. It’s why people often invest in crowd funding of obvious scam products. They want something that changes the game. In reality it’s a lot of little steps that create a big change over time. And imho this has always been the case. We always hear about the Wright brothers “inventing” the airplane. Like they had some magic sauce and thought of something nobody else thought of before. Then made it and bam the world was changed. In reality they didn’t invent anything, they developed it. They made prototypes and iterative refinements. And they were far from the only ones working on the exact same concept. If they didn’t finish first, someone else would have within the same time frame. But the romantic story of two American blokes with the right stuff changing the world all on their own just sounds good.

So let’s also celebrate the thousands of smaller breakthroughs that got us where we are today.