Today, I'd like to recommend everyone who likes a deep and tragic story to take a look at A Story Beside.

As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated at all with the studio or promo. None of that. I don't even have a yt channel to promote.

I just happened to play this game 2 years ago and it still haunts me with both joy and sadness.

To make it clear how much I loved it : I played it on the high seas, finished it, knew I was never going to play it again (for me, that's the kind of story based/narrative game you only play once), and still bought it on Steam the day after and bought it for a few friends.

While the gameplay is simple and the gfx are nothing to write home about (rpg maker, my first game of the kind), the story is superb and highly emotional. It has a simple point and click interface (definitely NOT my type of games), choices with heavy consequences and mostly non genderlocked romance, IIRC.

But what cracked my heart the most us the VA. It's beautiful behind words, haunting and powerful. It made me understand how VA is important in a game. Some sentences from this game are still with me to this day and randomly pop in my thoughts.

So do yourself a favor and play this one of these days.. Just make sure you have someone you trust close enough, because it can be really heartbreaking sometimes. Or beautiful. Or happy. Depends on your perspective.

Edit : typo in the title of the post >.<

P. S. : If I had one criticism about this game, it would be that some choices are quite obscure. A little thing you said, did or forgot to do at one point can have cataclysmic consequences later on, and it can be frustrating because back then, you didn't even know you were making a choice. I started blind, got a heartbreaking story event, restarted from the beginning with a guide to avoid the.. err.. bad endings.

Hello everyone I am an avid practitioners of martial arts. Started with Judo and Jiu Jitsu. Then my health and phisical condition degraded due to external causes. I switched to Aikido for three years and now Tai chi chuan, which I am now strongly committing to.

Aside from obvious positive effects (balance and agility) I wonder what you all think about inner martial arts.

I tend to ingest as little taoist folklore as I can, not because I think it's not interesting, but I want to avoid the exotic sounding mysticism tailored to impress westerners as a kind of new age marketing strategy. Fortunately, my teacher is a medical doctor working in the field of work related injuries.

I know I love Tai Chi Chuan and I truly mean to get better at it, but I can't ignore all the... weird stuff connected to it (no, Mr. Grand Master, I refuse to think that you single handedly pushed 10 people by the power of chi mastery). At the same time, I've been impressed by how, sometimes, finding adequate balance can make you able to sustain a strong push without even making active use of muscular strength.

So Il just wondering how you feel about this (or the other) inner martial art.

For me, it's a demanding and rewarding practice, full of great health and self discipline benefits and a few truly impressive perks, but with a..weird decorum I can't begin to understand.

Do people trust Ghidra? How come it's been developed by the NSA? From an outsider perspective, that sounds so weird!

Thanks in advance to anyone able to enlighten me!

Omg, I suppose ERB was producing their Biden VS Trump rematch video when the democratic nominee changed. That means we may not get an electoral battle this cycle. My day is ruined.

Why do it seems that pedophilia is, nowadays, percieved as the most vicious crime, along with terrorism? Why not, for example, sexual assault?

I mean it as an actual question, but first I should clarify my intent :

-I'm not advocating for normalizing pedophilia

-I have been a victim of it myself. Luckily, I've mostly recovered from it and live a happy life.

-Because of my political commitments, which are totally unrelated to this question, I've met some old people from the 70s who advocated for the depenalization of consensual sex between minors and adults (if such a thing exist, which can legitimately be doubted).

-I'm friend with one of them but I could never understand how that idea came to their minds. She knows I oppose the very idea. But it got me curious.

What I want to ask is, what, in contemporary history, contributed to make pedophilia the #1 vicious crime, surpassing rape in most consciences (if I'm not mistaken), in your opinion?

Feel free to delete this if that's not acceptable. Also, I didn't include the word "pedophilia" in the title to avoid triggering people who may have such experiences.

Poto sérieux change de code

Well, as a guy, I've been asked multiple times why I systematically play games female characters in video games, to the point of skipping a game if I'm forced to pay a male one, with a few exceptions (I really liked Albus from Troubleshooters for example). Whenever there's romance in a game, I'll also take the F/F route. Yet, I don't think I fetishize those in general. There's a thing about not liking most M characters in games, but also something about playing someone really different from who I am. We've had an interesting conversation about this with my gf who always plays F characters and woyd never play M.

Although I'm a straight guy, I've always more identified to female friends and characters, although I have a few male friends too. So I'm wondering who else does that (playing a character not matching your gender), and if you found your own explanation.

Edit : It's not really an oversexualization drive for me, I try to play a female character that looks like me, even though I've never thought about actually becoming a woman.

Edit 2 : So far, I think we have, hmm..

1. Playing someone that differs from one's irl identity
2. Physical Attractivity
3. Male character writing and design
4. Lara Croft effect
5. Lady Dwarf

As per title. This is such a great feature, included by Eternity, Sync, Connect and a few others. A very nice QoL which a few users desperately want in their app. I'm one of them! Good luck with the development of Boost!

A community for those interested in ethics and particularly about the work on Spinoza. Anyone is welcome, you don't need a degree. Gatekeeping is not allowed.

If you are curious or want to share you examples, memes, discussions about how Spinoza's Ethics are relevant to you, of if you're curious and just want to learn a thing or two about it, come and discuss!

!spinoza@lemmy.world

I've been thinking about writing this following a discussion on atheistmemes because it gave me a lot to think about.

The idea is quite simple. I acknowledge there are multiple visions of atheism but never really took the opportunity to discuss it with people.

So here are the main cornerstones of my vision of atheism. Do you share them or reject them ?

-Gods, as religions define it, do not exist. There might be some kind of metaphysical supreme entity, but it would be more akin to an abstraction.

-Spiritual beliefs, per se, are not a good or bad thing. I admire quite a lot of religious minded people. Abolitionist quakers, anarchist christians, muslim thinkers, poets, activists fighting for emancipation from colonial/theocratic rule, etc. That being said, I believe I'll live and die as an atheist.

-Religious institutions are quasi-inherently evil. I write "quasi-" because I don't know enough about all beliefs system. What about animist/pantheist institutions ? I don't know. I come from a family of African immigrants and I hear mixed things about those.

-Being an atheist do not make you better or worse than being a believer, and, quite importantly, not "wiser". Wisdom is earned from character and mind. That being said, being a fundamentalist and being wise are mutually incompatible imo.

-I deeply hate and resent all missionaries. Religious ones, especially fundamentalism of all shapes and forms, for sure, but also atheist ones. I believe there's no god, I don't need my friends to accept this. If they want to learn about atheism, I'll tell them. I often question them about religion, because I sometimes have trouble understanding how they can be great people while believing in what are basically myths to me. But that's all. That's just me who don't understand. I don't think they would be "better" as atheists.

-I have an ambiguous relation to Islam. While I reject it as a set of institutions, like all other religions, and absolutely despise it's fundamentalist current, I do understand that some large part of anti-Islam movements are actually ethnoracists in (a bad) disguise. I tend to favour alliances with muslim individuals/groups i'll be able to talk with without it being infuriating. Tbh, the only fundamentalists I actually talked with irl were Christians and Jews. But that's just my social position. If I was born in another context, another place, another family, it who would be different. I don't doubt all religions produce fundamentalism in a somehow equal measure.

-I truly think reason is not a quality which is restricted to atheism. Even if, like wisdom, I think some conceptions of religion bar people from living according to reason. But I can't respect people waving the "reason" flag like a title, an honor or an automatic consequence to being an atheist. Reason is a way of life, certainly not an authoritarian one, it's hard earned and always fragile. And it's certainly not restricted to "maths". Although mathematics are a part of it. Understanding what's good and bad for your own complexion is, for me, the beating heart of reason. Easier said than done.

-Despite all I said, I understand and won't criticize a very strong stance against any religion from someone who's been oppressed by them. Although, and take it with a grain of salt because it's only my experience of those people, I don't feel like they're the first ones to wave atheist as the flag of a nation or a pride backed by a superiority complex.

To end this wall of text, here's a summed up version of how I was raised. My parents are far from perfect, but this they did fine.

Both were religious. Jewish and Muslim, with various degrees of adhesion/rejection/deviation from their faiths (quite complicated for my mother). They had us participate in both religious rituals when we were young. We sang prayers (as we sang folk songs, we didn't make a difference). But they didn't give us any kind of religious education. When we were 14 or 15, they gathered my siblings and I and basically told us this :

"We are religious. But that's just us. You've experienced what is religion. You should make a choice about it. Either now or later. There will be no consequence to your choice under this roof."

There were three of us. We all choose to be atheists. They acknowledged our choice add we never once discussed that again.

That's it. I'd like to hear your opinions about all this, if any. Thanks for reading !

Edits : typos

Well ironically, sorry if it has been posted already (and I think so), because I'm currently using an app which allows to hide posts on scroll. That's the only important feature liftoff is missing imo and I hope you'll consider it !

That being said, the app is wonderful. Good job !

Hey everyone, I wanted to share my experience with you all.

It's strange you know. I stopped smoking in november 2018. After a lot of tries. But there's a context. I was smoking like 20 cigarettes and like 15 joints per day for 10 years.

I had surgery (unrelated to tabacco/weed), and the surgeon told me : "There are two roads ahread of you. Either you continue smoking like you do and we can already book another surgery in 6 months. Or you stop and there's 50% chance you won't need to come back".

I was ready and stopped 2 weeks later. Weed and tobacco at the same time. I had surgery. That surgery had a major impact on my everyday life. I could barely walk for a whole year and had to take very strong painkillers every day. Had to stop sports, and had trouble going to work in constant pain. On top of that, I started vaping and consumed incredible amounts of sugar to cope with frustration.

In the end, I did it. But as a consequence to withdrawal and forced immobility.. I went from 70kg to 90kg.

And today, more than 4 years later, I still struggle to lose those kgs. And it's so frustrating, and I'm so estranged with my new body, I started again smoking from times to times. Still resisted the urge to buy a pack, but for example, when I'm waiting for a train, I ask people for a cigarette. I constantly think about my weight.

That's.. a weird feeling, and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I used to do a lot of Martial Arts. Now I'm learning Tai-Chi and I love that. Doing a but of jump rope once or twice a week. Paying major attention to what I'm eating.

Well, here I am now. It all seems a bit ironic. But it's not all so dark. Yesterday, I picked an appointment with a dietetician. Hopefully, it will help me in this complicated moment.

I wish you all good luck !

Still a few ones..!

I think no comments are necessary. We have most of the emergency memes now.