I tried to read The Nightingale and had to drop it because Hannah seemed to simultaneously want to insist on how french everything was (ooo, they’re drinking café noir, not black coffee) but also didn’t seem to understand how a language works.

Like, the main character was reflecting on her mom calling them her little nightingales because their last name is Rossignol, the french word for nightingale, and I’m like… She called you nightingales because your name is literally nightingale, why does this warrant multiple paragraphs of internal monologuing?

The plot and characters were fine if uninspired, but she put so little effort into the setting that the whole thing felt poorly slapped together. Which I guess tracks well enough with this article, too.

Buckshot Roulette is fun. Not a lot to it, really, but a fun loop that I got a decent number of hours out of.

I bought Arctic Eggs after seeing a little bit of a playthrough but haven’t actually played it yet. Seems weird, which I like.

The first few are available on standard ebooks and they’re quick, easy reads, go for it! With the caveat that the standard ebook versions are the original 1920s versions so there’s a bit of weird racial stuff now and then.

I had to put down Fellowship of the Ring for a while due to a cascade of library books, but I’m finally back to it. God I just love how that book flows.

When I want something simpler to read I’ve been going to the Hardy Boys books lately. Read a bunch of them as a kid, they’re still quite enjoyable now. Normally if I reread something 20 years later it’s pretty clearly no longer my taste, but I’m on book 3 and still enjoying them quite a bit.

IIRC New Zealand returned to actual normal, as in COVID was a relative non-issue, faster than many other countries. Their restrictions were more severe and weren’t lifted very quickly, but when they were lifted things were actually fine.

Places like the US and much of Canada dropped restrictions while things were still pretty bad in terms of infection rates and strain on health care systems, and really they hardly enforced them to begin with. You could see this as a return to normalcy since restrictions were gone, but in Alberta they lifted restrictions when we were still dealing with plenty of deaths, severely impacted health care, and on top of that we were still figuring out the implications of the whole long COVID thing. That’s not a return to normal, I don’t think, it’s pretending things are normal when they’re not.

I find pan frying them works best if they’re leftovers, the dough fries up better after it’s boiled and then dried out a little. It’s a very good option for sure.

Potato and cheese is classic, and honestly it hits the spot better than you might expect. Toss with butter after boiling. Keeps them from sticking and tastes great.

Commonly topped with sour cream, green onions, other onions, and/or bacon depending on what you have handy. A nice fatty sour cream with grilled yellow onions is my favourite, especially served with a nice hunk of garlic sausage.

Yeah, half-heartedly doing French in Duolingo for a few years meant that I knew a bunch of words and could read stuff okay, but communicating and thinking in French was incredibly difficult. I took a couple of classes IRL to fill in those other skills, so now I can actually get by as long as people are a bit patient with me. It was easier for me to learn that stuff than other people in my classes because I had Duolingo experience, but Duolingo definitely isn’t enough on its own.

Foddy is a game developer with a history of making games with frustrating control schemes. He originally got notoriety for QWOP, where you use the QWOP keys to control the runner’s left and right knees and feet and run as far as you can. Lately he’s better known for Getting Over It, a rage platformer where you play as a guy in a cauldron who moves by using a hammer to drag/throw himself around.

The description and comments on the video 100% confirm multiplayer. Honestly I’d be excited for the game either way, but I have a lot of fun playing crafting/survival games with friends so it’s appreciated.

On our trip a few years back we got some simple pastries, sandwich supplies, and snacks from Bonus to save money and I never felt like we were missing out on good food. Even as a discount grocer everything we got from there was super good.

It’s one of my all-time favorite books and I’m still not sure I could actually explain the plot to someone. In fact, I’m not confident there is a coherent plot rather than a bunch of related vignettes that just kind of happen, some of which tell a story and some not so much.

My brain just kind of spent so much time trying to understand what the point of any of it was that I eventually ended up with an interpretation that I loved to view the book through, and therefore I ended up loving the book.

Cheese plugs a lot of people up, especially an unholy yet tempting slab like that.

Sometimes if I’m feeling classy I’ll grind the rest and set them aside to make cold brew with later. That’s more forgiving so I do it to use up old, stale beans that I end up with for whatever reasons.

Most of the time I don’t care and I just top off the weight with whatever I’m using next and drink whatever comes out. It’s usually fine, and when it’s not it’s at least novel.

I finished the main story last night and I basically agree with you. It’s got plenty of issues, but overall it’s fun. It is neither the 9/10 game of most reviews I saw nor the 4/10 game that people want it to be.

I think my main issue is that it wants to have a story about the underworld and how you can’t trust anyone and you’re a huge underdog just trying to survive but it doesn’t want to commit to it. It feels thematically janky in places and ways that feel design-by-committee. It fills the shoes of Shadows of the Empire decently enough, but it feels like it was trying to be 1313 and failed.

If you can see a polar bear it’s a threat.

They really aren’t like other bear species. They are an apex predator in an area where basically nothing other than another polar bear can even harm them. They see most things as food, including humans.

As a bonus, Iceland has a pretty wonky ecosystem that needs protecting as is and polar bears aren’t native to the island. They have to swim extreme distances to get there, making relocation extremely difficult and expensive, plus if they leave it be it will entirely disrupt other wildlife in the area, to say nothing of the human population.

As others have said, it sucks that it got shot, but Iceland especially has very limited options on how else to deal with it. Shoot on sight is, unfortunately, a very reasonable policy for them.

I find there’s a trade-off in quality for my bone conduction vs in ear pods, especially if I’m moving a lot, but not blocking my hearing as much is often worth that trade-off. Plus it’s more secure on my head, which is important when running/biking/swimming where it is not trivial to find a missing earbud in the grass however far back it fell.

Highly recommend for exercise, but I would never fully replace my earbuds with them because, frankly, they sound worse and look worse.

I have read some bad fucking Star Wars books in my youth. Still love them. Even Darksaber, where a random hutt builds a death star because it’s actually even easier to build planet-destroying weapons than Disney made it seem.

Yep, it sounds pretty much exactly like what people expected.

Honestly, I’m on a bit of a Star Wars kick lately and it’s been long enough since I’ve played an Ubisoft open world to find some enjoyment, so I might pick this up. But it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s going to blow me away.

Yeah, there was a whole kerfuffle about it because all the files were still on the disc, therefore some jurisdictions re-rated the game to some version of adults only. Rockstar definitely did all the development work to get that sex in the game, they just decided not to show it in normal gameplay.