Audiobookbay, but you could also try Soulseek since many people include audiobooks and audiodramas in the music libraries they share.

I saw ‘Brothers’ (2009). It’s good but the messaging about military veteran PTSD/trauma feels undermined by the extreme lengths the writers take to (for lack of a better word) create the PTSD. They concoct quite an unlikely and unusual scenario instead of using a much more realistic and commonplace trigger such as live combat, survivor’s guilt or the loss of a friend. It makes this one family’s story seem highly unusual when really the point should be the complete opposite. A young Bailee Madison is particularly good as one of the daughters, her crying is some of the most convincing I have seen from any actor (child or adult).

I also watched ‘The Good German’ (2006) earlier in the week. Another Tobey Maguire film, although he has a smaller role in this one. Very stylish visually but unfortunately lacking the plot or the drama of the classic noir crime films it tries to replicate. Cate Blanchett outacting George Clooney in every single scene is another problem; her performance fits the era perfectly while his doesn’t feel particularly different to anything else he’s done.

I’m sure this will die down pretty quickly like every other gamer “controversy” or “massive backlash”, but all power to the no-lifers who live for this neverending cycle of anti-game developer ragebait.

It’s not a red flag. It’s just an easy out for that person because they can run the “lol bLoG aRtIcLe” line to instantly dismiss any evidence that exists to the contrary without ever having to read or engage with it. Their entire argument is still just based on a couple of brief tweets and they have never backed their read of them up with anything, yet somehow when other people also develop a counter-argument based on a much larger and wider source of public material and collate it on a blogging site it’s a “rEd fLaG”.

This is such a bizarre take when your own position is based on one or two screenshots of social media posts and the reddit hivemind’s reaction to them. You are asking for someone to disprove/debunk your social media pile-on, which had almost zero substance to it, with some kind of in-depth, long-term New York Times investigation which deep down you know will never happen because this shit isn’t relevant in the real world. That way you can just instantly dismiss the evidence that actually does exist to the contrary, done by regular people and published on their blogs, without ever having to read it or engage with the counter-argument.

It makes a lot of sense if you actually take the time to read his explanation of the context behind his position.

During the Biden administration, the Democrats lead by Schumer (whose family members are lobbyists for big tech) refused to bring antitrust bills Proton campaigned in support of to a vote. Additionally, the only invited senator to show up to a 2024 antitrust meeting was a Republican - Vance. Those are just two examples he cites of Democrats failing in this area and Republicans stepping up in their place.

The crazy thing is that Yen’s argument, that the Democrats have been captured by the corporate donor class, would be supported in any other context by people on reddit and particularly Lemmy. It’s the same thing you guys constantly complain about everywhere else (i.e. Sanders), yet in this one specific instance you ignore all of that and pretend that the Democrats are the good guys who can do no wrong because the idea that they could be as bad as, or worse than, the Republicans in this very specific area triggers you so hard.

How does it compare to other handhelds, though? Slower than the original Switch is bad, but if these smaller panels are less responsive in general then I’m not sure I care if they compare poorly to larger PC monitor panels. I am not buying a handheld to compete directly with my PC.

Has the potential to be a more interesting film than the first one, given how much has happened in the years since.

More broadly, I would say public P2P stuff - at least in its current forms. I’m not sure it can survive some of the generational shifts that have been occurring in society, since it relies so heavily on community and sharing and demands general technological literacy (not just touchscreen/smartphone/app literacy). Those that do actually have the literacy seem increasingly interested in the instant gratification direct download or torrent streaming stuff, to the detriment of traditional methods of P2P file sharing.

The Proton CEO thing was vastly overblown. He is a privacy advocate and expressed support for Trump’s appointment for head of antitrust, as well as criticism of corporate Democrats who stand for big business which was misrepresented as a love of the Republican Party. The only mistake he made was to publish those statements using the official Proton account, which he later apologised for.

Some people, especially the American left, love to virtue signal and predictably they tried to cancel Proton as a result of this pretty minor and irrelevant social media drama. There were some good write-ups at the time which exposed how counterfactual the “pRoToN lOvEs mAgA” arguments were, but I guess feel free to skip over Proton if it really concerns you. It is objectively one of the best choices if you value both privacy and functionality (Proton still has support for port forwarding), which I think are far more relevant areas to be looking at when choosing a VPN for piracy.

I think it’s mostly a combination of a) Hollywood liberals love to elevate safe non-white celebrities who don’t rock the boat and b) there hasn’t been much variety in leading men over the last decade (regardless of cultural/ethnic background) so people are enjoying seeing a new handsome face alongside the usual sex symbols like Ryan Gosling and Jake Gyllenhaal. I agree that Pascal is not really worthy of this level of hype on his performances alone.

EDIT: Also he has done several high profile geek things now (Mandalorian, The Last of Us) which is always going to lead to widespread praise/recognition in online spaces.

Why didn’t they cast Scarlett Johansson?

It’s very fun. I have played football all my life and always wanted a game like this to play virtually with other people at home. A couple of years ago I had to give up the sport due to a bad knee injury, so to be able to play again albeit in an arcadey video game is so satisfying.

It’s probably not as fun for people who aren’t football fans or players, as I think a lot of the enjoyment comes from aspects that are unique to the sport rather than traditional video game elements. A good comparison is the Camelot Mario sports games on the N64. They weren’t hardcore simulations or anything, but were still focused largely on the core principles of the sport, as opposed to newer Mario sports games or the Mario Strikers series which are very silly and not really designed for sports lovers.

I’ve started playing Rematch, a new small-sided PvP football game where you control one player on your 3v3/4v4/5v5 team (it’s all players, no AI). It seems like something that could run on the Switch 2 in the future, but for now I am playing on PC.

I’ve only played Ever 17, but it was very good. I hope you enjoy it too!

Who is praising Game Freak? The video is quite critical of the studio.

Kinda looks like a Rareware game, although maybe I’m just making that connection because I played Donkey Kong 64 as a kid.

I was also on the fence for a long time because I detest console shooters as a result of playing a lot of PC shooters (inability to aim as consistently or as quickly just feels terrible to me), but at the same time, the novelty of a Nintendo-developed PvP shooter always interested me. In the end I couldn’t make a decision myself so I put it on my Christmas/birthday list and a family member bought it for me. I’m glad I tried it, although I don’t like it enough to play regularly.

I can’t keep up with all the various instance wars/feuds but they are amusing nonetheless.

and accusations of everyone being a communist / not communist / slightly communist / whatever else seems to get thrown around on Lemmy.

So true lol