Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@Yousef- How are you sis? Having a good weekend? I saw you mention on here that you are on Ps4 atm, I was just wondering if you are at all interested in investing in a Ps5 at some point? Or just happy sticking with your Ps4 at this point?

I am thoroughly enjoying reading through Dr. Cornel West's works @Th3solution , I understand that he is making waves in the States at the moment, are you familiar with him at all?

I am perpetually reading his stuff when I'm not volunteering, listening to hip hop or farming in Elden Ring. (Before I am op and can actually enjoy PLAYING the game, if you get me). Also got a jazz gig (watching/listening/not playing at) coming up soon. The guy doing the gig is one of my favourite jazz musicians and I used to play along to his music. Not gonna say who it is as that would give away my location at that time, but he's great.

Back to you now, Sol, how are those real life quests that are keeping you away from DSII going? Also, seen any good sports games lately? Australia just beat us in the ODI Cricket. But we were close! 😢

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I am embarrassed to say that no, I was not familiar with Dr West, not his works, politics, or philosophy. I didn’t even see the Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolutions. 😅 But I did a quick internet search and scanned the info on him and he seems an interesting individual. As for his candidacy, the success of third party and independent candidates in the U.S. is disturbingly small. The two party system dominates, unfortunately. But there’s plenty of influence that people of his stature can promote to enforce change, even without actually winning the election.

Hope you enjoy the jazz concert. Sounds like fun. As for me, I’ve had some nice trips, some business and some pleasure, but I see things starting to slow down… maybe. The holidays are around the corner and things start getting busy around that time of year. Once we hit Halloween, it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years within a blink of an eye. Honestly, I don’t really like it as much as I used to. Bah, humbug!

As for sports, we’re knee deep in the NFL season and I try to catch a game here and there. Baseball playoffs are starting and the Hockey and NBA seasons are about to get going. October is actually the busiest time of the sports year for Americans.

Can anyone help me ketchup on the “day before” saga? Feels like an entire storyline gone by right under my nose.

Do you want fries with your sauce Madame?

Does this help fill in the blanks?

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2023/12/the-day-before-dev-dr...

@JohnnyShoulder oh thank you very much
Can’t believe they steaked their entire game on this

@Th3solution @Jimmer-jammer And anyone else interested in the topic. Does anyone else feel like, at some point in the 20-40s age bracket it is pointless to put any effort into discovering new music? When you already have up to 1000 albums saved in your streaming catalogue, is it pointless to acquire any new favourites? You'd clearly/ideally have to jettison a few of your old favourites/stuff that you've listened to too much, but when there's so much variety in your collection already, and if you are rotating correctly, surely the number of albums you're "bored" of will be at a minimum level.

This is how I currently feel. Jon Connor, the rapper, was the last artist I added to my Spotify library and I don't feel like I have any internal emotive/intellectual/artistic capacity to consume/store any more!

Edit: I felt like I was searching for new music for the last 20 years or so, steadily building up a collection, moving from genre to genre for two main reasons:

1)To become a better musician/guitarist
2)And this one is more complex, to socialise and build a sort of community with like-minded people who like the same sort of music and may share the same music-adjacent activities/interests as me.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN not at all. I’ve been discovering lot more J-pop, j-rock and hiphop than I used to, all instantly being added to my line of favorites!

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN It’s an interesting question, and one that could be applied to all recreation and media I suppose, including video games, movies, and books.

But it’s most apparent with music, in the sense that we tend to acquire a library of music and artists we like and then stick with them. I do have new music that I experiment with, but I’d say the vast majority (70-80%…?) of my music listening is restricted to artists and songs that I like from the past. But I don’t listen to music as often as most people. Sometimes several days go by that I don’t use my music account.

Still, whenever I hear a song I like on TV or in a game, or if a friend recommends a song, then I’ll check it out and sometimes that makes it onto my playlists and it sometimes opens up interest into a new genre.

But yeah, most of my playlists as older songs or at least bands and artists that I know. And there’s certain genre’s of music that I’m just close-minded about. Can’t tolerate Bluegrass, for example, and most country-western.

@Th3solution it depends on what you’re willing exposing yourself to.
I thought I was getting tired of games when I kept playing similar platformers and Metroidvanias.
But exploring the shooter genre again helped me unconver a newfound appreciation yet again.
I was thinking Christian metal was slowly losing its appeal for me, but all I had to do was listen to J-rock as a way to “reset” my senses and cancel out the fatigue.
Romcoms felt like something I could consume forever, but then I took a break, watched more actions shows and historical/political dramas and that gave me the fresh new restart I needed

You just can’t keep exposing yourself to one thing and be shocked when you find yourself fatigued or tired

@Yousef- Agreed… for the most part. I’ve actively been attempting to diversify my gaming. Every year I include a gaming goal that stretches me a little out of my comfort zone. (That reminds me — time to update the New Years Resolutions thread for the final quarter of 2024…)

But with music it’s been harder to do. I follow some of the suggestions the AI algorithm drops into your feed from Spotify / Apple Music (I’ve used both) and it’s hit-or-miss (more often miss). I’ve asked friends to recommend me some new music and they don’t fare much better.

But I do love the Shazam app because I’ll be sitting in a shopping mall and hear a song or be watching a movie and hear a song in it and I’ll Shazam it really quick to add catchy tunes to my playlist. Also, when I run around with friends and they play their music I’ll always ask about an artist or song that they are playing that I like the sound of. It’s just hard to find new music without some kind of exposure. And I don’t have time to sit and scroll through random new songs trying a shotgun approach to the search for something new. There’s a lot of rubbish out there.

@Th3solution music is generally a tougher medium is expand your horizons overall so it’s quite understandable, really. There’s not just a lot to listen to, but a lot you don’t know how to get exposed to.
One of the weird contradictions of discovery is the necessity to discover the thing that’ll enable you to discover new things in the first place.
If you don’t find that seed, many things will be cut off from you right under your nose and you might never stumble across that specific frame of reference that explodes into multiple tiny new discoveries unless by sheer coincidence which is crazy to think about.

There’s the added hindrance of how music isn’t something that instantly clicks without repeated exposure under different contexts.

On a side note thanks for informing me about that little resolution thread. Could be a neat thing for me to use.

Alright guys this is it. As per the request of @Ravix (actually they’re expecting it in hot takes but who the hell would consider the following a hot take by this point) I’m gonna write the down a summary to help all reading here ketchup on what happened recent with The Day Before (The Scam After).

If you don’t know, it’s a kicktaurtersauce game by Fntastic snore, a new game dev in the scene. They had the mustard plan to steak all their crowd funding on this one indie game, but their ham-fisted attempts backfired, and they replied with quite the corny retort saying it was the “gamers” fault. Yeah, sure, sure, buddy. Once they realized their big miss steak, they pulled it from steam and refunded everyone. Sadly, they’re still planning to return. There’s apparently 38 “backers”, but they’re probably just acquaintances trying to sell the cheesy illusion that there’s some secret sauce hidden there. You can tell these guys are trying have their cake and eat it as well.

EDIT MADE TWO HOURS AFTER I POSTED THIS:
If anyone would like me to help them ketchup on any events they missed or anything they’re not familiar with, drop me a word, I’ll do the research and I’ll be back. I’m the mustard of proper summaries.

@Yousef- @Th3solution @BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN @Jimmer-jammer @JohnnyShoulder Is it just me or has PSN been down for several hours? Been getting a notification on PS5 saying "The servers are busy. We'll be back shortly!"

@WiiWareWave don’t use psn these days but I can check the phone app! It’s probably active in Kuwait. Hopefully it’s back for you in a minute! Also, hello been a while!

@Yousef- It has been awhile! How have you been?

@WiiWareWave I’m doing great! I hope you’ve been fine as well, friend! I appreciate the earlier ping btw. Glad you remembered me xD.
Chats here have been lively lately.

@Yousef- Oh and yes PSN has been down for several hours globally, but the PlayStation app appears to be the one thing unaffected so if you're on PSN on your mobile device, that explains why you still have access.

Edit: It does appear to be a DDoS attack, but it's not 100% confirmed as such, quite yet.

@WiiWareWave that’s messed up. Hopefully it’s resolved.

@Yousef- And no problem you're always super friendly so it's easy to remember you. There are only a handful of people here that I remember unless I see them, mostly longtime members, but you're one of the few newer one's I recognize due to your fantastic posts and consistent activity in the forums!