Gooning is a more specific subtype of masturbation.

Masturbating is the act of physically stimulating one’s happy parts, solo. It may involve porn, or it may just depend purely on the physical sensation to lead to orgasm.

Gooning has a much closer association with visual stimulation because one would generally goon at something or to something. It also has a strong implication that it usually lasts for a long while; that the point of gooning is to stretch out the pleasure as much as possible and to push away all thoughts until you are nothing but a drooling mess of ecstacy.

So it really is quite different.

I made a helpful table

Writing from language.

A lot of other animals besides humans use vocalisations, and those vocalisations can have quite specific meanings. This makes them a form of communication and demonstrates that encoding meaning in sound is a phenomenon that develops quite readily in nature.

We can also see then that the history of language in humans is those vocalisations becoming increasingly complex and able to represent more numerous concepts and thoughts until they eventually become something we recognise as a full language.

Written language is a mechanism to encode spoken language, but it’s spoken language which came first.

I watched a youtube a while back that posited a version of the Bourne Identity where we see the whole thing from Jason’s perspective only, learning things as he learns them, going on that journey with him. And it honestly feels like the version of the movie that should have been, but never was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdcSFsQRsnc

I can totally forgive the photon torpedoes and shuttlecraft counts because I don’t see Voyager as being a strictly serial show. It kinda straddles the line between episodic and serial without being fully either - and on that basis I’ll allow it some degree of ‘reset’ between episodes.

Where Voyager certainly is serial are the show’s characters, and their change and growth as the seasons progress. That’s the real story in Voyager, versus whatever problem-of-the-week the ship finds itself in.

24-hour format when written

12-hour format when spoken

The thing that makes me upset isn’t that it’s not for me.

I accept that plenty of games aren’t for me, and that I shouldn’t play them. I’m never going to get into Dark Souls or Elden Ring, because they aren’t going to be my thing.

The part that makes me upset is that Hollow Knight very much was for me, and was a game I enjoyed and have very fond memories of. I was very much looking forward to Silksong, but the difficulty is so much higher that I can no longer engage with this world I once loved.

It feels in TV terms like watching Season 1 of a show and really getting into it, and then when Season 2 comes out, you excitedly start watching - episode 1, episode 2, but your TV somehow stops working every time you start the third episode. Or any episode after the third. Everyone is talking about how great the show is and you’ve seen clips and you want to experience it, but no matter how much you try, you can’t.

If I hadn’t seen Season 1, I’d just give up after those two episodes like “That show’s obviously not working for me” - but I have seen Season 1. I’m invested, yet now I can’t see it through.

That’s why I’m upset.

I loved the first Hollow Knight incredibly, and I really wanted to love the sequel Silksong just as much, but the problem, you see, is that I am Not Good.

The first game had an OK difficulty and plenty of charms to help so I made it to the end, but all the first game DLC was so crazy hard I couldn’t even. And that made me sad.

I hoped Silksong would be a return to a more accessible place, but while it started reasonable it quickly got to a difficulty where I couldn’t keep up, no matter how much I tried. Way more than the original game.

So fuck you, Silksong. I love your world and I love your music and I love your vibe and I want to love you but I hate you.

I’ve recently been playing a lot of Minecraft.

I can’t quite identify the point at which this turns from real to parody

I’ve not read the books or seen the movies or anything, so I don’t have a clue what Edward is like.

The ‘minor’ issue is one thing (eek) but if I had the power of telepathy, I can only assume I’d be pretty fascinated by someone I couldn’t read.

Human interaction is kinda built on the supposition that you can choose what you share with others and keep private things private, and getting to know people is the process of getting comfortable in sharing more about ourselves. We feel happy around our friends because we feel we have a sense of them and know them, and that’s an earned process.

If you always knew what anyone was thinking, it would make life very bland.

I think it’s even simpler than that.

Back in my first year at university, I lived in halls of residence. We had no control over how the heating was set, and in the winter it was pumping max heat constantly. So almost everyone had their window cracked open 24/7, even if it was snowing.

And let me tell you, that felt truly luxurious. You get to be all toasty-warm while still enjoying fresh air, and a nice breeze. And you aren’t the one paying the heating bill.

I suspect our animals feel exactly the same. They want to enjoy the smells and the freshness of outside, while still having the comfort of inside. From our perspective it looks like “whenever they are out they want to be in, and whenever they are in they want to be out!” but what they really want is both at all times.

Pets have no concept of “the heating bill” (or A/C if you’re somewhere warm) so they don’t understand why we insist on closing the door constantly, instead of letting them sit right in the middle like they want.

Since the API exodus, yes.

I made a very conscious choice to leave reddit at that time, due to that particular bullshit, and I don’t regret it.

Doesn’t mean I don’t miss reddit though, because I do. Reddit has a lot more traffic which obviously means a lot more content in the sort of niche communities I really love.

But I made the right choice. I don’t want to be part of that any longer. And the more of us make this choice, the better things will be for us all.

The ‘game’ is playing with your mod load order until you find a combination that doesn’t crash.

Then you add more mods and play the ‘game’ again.

The whole “discard if damaged” is likely just standard cover-your-ass legalese which the lawyers will copy-paste on every single product they sell, including this one.