Just to add another factor to the ongoing discussion: artistic talent isn’t uniform and never was. Just because only/mostly “immature” art survived from a certain century of human history, doesn’t mean that there literally was no realistic art present at the time. Since you mentioned the statues already…

These are from the same era (around 200 BC), but as you may have guessed, made by different artists =P The statue is called The Dying Gaul by the way.

As for painting examples, I guess the Rothschild Canticles^[1] book illustrations represent best what most people nowadays would call medieval art. Not exactly realistic, a little goofy … perspective? Never heard of it. Proportions? Who cares. And who needs shading anyway?! As long as you can still distinguish a human from a cupcake, it’s “eh good enough”.

I guess that was also what you meant by “immature” art, because it is the same art style as those goofy weird pictures of knights fighting giant snails and rabbits riding cattle into battle and the like.^[2]

That book is dated to be around 1500–1520 so it would be easy to assume that people at the start of the 15th century didn’t have a realistic art style yet. But you know what else was made in that same era?

The Mona Lisa (1503–1506).

One dorky meme-esque style, and one realistic, modest and easy-on-the-eyes style in the same century, probably even the same decade. But they were used by different artists.

Now you might be thinking that those art styles might have been intended for their respective purpose or something along the lines: that the goofy, simple art style was used for nothing but amusing little pictures, and the more realistic style was for “proper” art, because noone in their right mind would spend 100+ hours painting highly detailed nonsense just for sh*ts and giggles, right?

May I introduce you to Joseph Ducreux?^[3]

I guess most of you will have seen that meme by now, but this is a real painting made by a real artist - and it is far from the only one. Ducreux created an entire series of similar self-portraits in … unusual poses and situations.

… so yes, at least that one guy DID indeed spend dozens if not hundreds of hours (plus material costs) painting amusing nonsense for his own entertainement. He was, in a way, the victorian era equivalent of a shitposter (and I mean that in a good sense!)

Long story short: one can’t just claim that “they didn’t have X art style in Y century” because the truth is much more facetted than that. It is way more likely that each and every era of human history has had people with insane talent who were able to create art as realistic as possible with whatever tools their lifetime had to offer, and also a bunch of “eh good enough” art or stuff that was deliberately stylized for fun. How we percieve said art today depends mainly on what artworks have survived up until now, and/or how popular the surviving art is. (Everyone and their grandma knows about the Mona Lisa, but how many of y’all knew about the Rothschild Canticles?)

If we don’t know about any realistic art from a certain period of time, it doesn’t automatically mean that there was no realistic art. It may have been lost, forgotten or it exists but it’s just not popular enough to be well-known.

Wikipedia claims they’re quite popular.

created various identical communities on various instances…most of which went on to gain no traffic whatsoever

I just want to add here that users can adopt abandoned communities to give them a second chance. So if, in your example, the mods of !nerves@lemmy.world would rage quit and just squat on the name out of spite / indifference, then someone interested in cleaning up the mess can go to !support@lemmy.world and request to adopt the community. The admins can then decide to either directly transfer mod rights to the new user, or purge the community so another one can reopen it again, so there is technically no need to create additional communities in such a case.

In case of a direct transfer, no posts or comments get deleted either, so you won’t lose content that you would otherwise have to repost or crosspost to the “new default community”. ;)

Breath of the Wild. Every time Link steps into the light after opening the shrine, the camera pans over Hyrule, with that glorious music … I always get goosebumps and can’t wait to get the runes, catch a horse and start “exploring” again, even tho I pretty much know the entire map by heart already.

Ohh okay. I really misunderstood your point then, but thank you for clarifying ;)

I’ve talked my way into jobs I can’t do, then failed badly

Failing at something is not the end of the world. Sure it sucks at first, and possible setbacks in life aren’t exactly cool either, but you DO sound like someone who refuses to stay down whenever life decided to knock you down, and that is something not everyone can do. That requires an inner strength and determination that a lot of people simply can’t muster.

And you know what? Your idea of working in the social sector sounds like an excellent goal - it IS a hard job with little pay, but since you fought your way up from the bottom already, you have a completely different, deeper insight into related issues than someone who knows homelessness and its struggles only from a textbook. You will be able to understand clients in similar situations on a completely different level, and they in turn might be more inclined to trust your advice. You might be able to actually help people that simply fall through the cracks elsewhere.

Good luck, friend. May your spark never fade.

Like others have said already: it sells. It’s the same reason why seemingly every single fantasy/adventure game is called an “RPG” regardless of whether or not it contains actual RPG elements, like creating your own character.

… drr drr drr …

The thing that really scares me though is the way the problems change at the higher levels.

In case you find yourself in the situation, tell your employer. It may sound awkward to them at first that someone wouldn’t want to be promoted, but in the end it is in their best interest to keep employees who ARE good at doing their jobs, instead of creating a situation where the same employee is suddenly no longer able to do a good job. This is no shallow talk by the way, but a well-documented, scientifically proven effect called the Peter Principle (which basically boils down to “everyone gets promoted until they reach the point of maximum incompetence and then get stuck in that position”)

We as a society are trained to percieve “climbing the corporate ladder” as the main/only goal of working jobs with a hierarchy, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with staying at the level you’re comfortable at. ;)

There are only seven very specific cases which can trigger a PBM, most of which the player has no control over (audio and texture loading issues). All listed in the guide.

The guy who wrote that guide is still on reddit (u/leoetlino to be precise) and has had the same discussions for years in r/breath_of_the_wild ^^° I’ve even argued with him myself back in the day when I didn’t know better, but since he’s a dataminer who reverse-engineered most of the game code, I’m now inclined to believe that he knows what he’s talking about.

However, I don’t blame anyone for not knowing better, since there are just way too many flat-out wrong but “real looking” guides claiming to know how the gameplay mechanic works, so it is ridiculously easy to fall for false info (I did, too). Heck, even the “Complete Official Guide” claims that the regular Blood Moon happens every seven days and can be forced to happen via skipping time at a campfire, which is super easy to disprove but still widely belived to be true, because how can a book with THAT title be wrong, right?

(Still, walking into a wall is worthless either way, lol … but it WAS a theory once, regularily posted as a tip/trick for the Mija Rokee Shrine on reddit and gamefaqs, and parrotted by IGN who still haven’t updated their guide even 7 years later and probably never will)

A common misconception is that blood moons help replenish system memory by resetting enemy kill flags. This is however total nonsense, because enemy kill flags are just GameData flags, and all GameData flags are loaded at bootup and stay in memory forever

From the exact same source you just posted.

Rosenmontag is a German holiday that does not seem to be well-known in the rest of the world. Just put a Narrenkappe on Lemmy’s head and you’re good.

Chinese New Year might be another interesting one, but as I’m not exactly well-informed about its holiday customs and traditions, I’d like to leave design ideas to people who know more about it than me.

Machete, Water Purifier (provided it does not need electricity to work), German Shepherd and the tent. If the water purifier requires electricity, I’d opt for the body armor.

Stuff that requires fuel, electricity or ammo will become obsolete after a certain amount of time, so the flashlight, crossbow, motorcycle, chainsaw etc. only have limited use and become dead weight eventually. The first aid kit might help with “regular” injuries, but is likely useless against zombie bites getting infected with whatever virus is responsible for their mutation. The respirator mask is only useful if there’s something dangerous in the air, and will only stay useful until the filter gets too dirty / too old and needs to be replaced.

“You just turned 100 today - what’s your secret to a long life?” - No matter what the answer will be, I guarantee you that there are millions of people in the world who do the exact same and still die young. But yeah, of course aunt Margharet only managed to live an entire century because she ate three cans of surströmming every week, no doubt. Genetics, healthcare and lifestyle have nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

Edit/addendum: Weird specific example

Something similar was also my no.1 pet peeve on reddit whenever people argued about how the Blood Moon works in Breath of the Wild. It’s an in-game timer of roughly 3 hours, but the game does not tell you about it, nor does it display the timer, and back when the game code wasn’t cracked yet, there were a LOT of outrageously weird theories about how to allegedly make the Blood Moon appear.

So you just “made” a BM happen by running straight into a wall for 3 hours? Yes you got a BM, but not “because” you were running into a wall for 3 hours, but because the effing timer was up. The game does not care for WHAT you do in that time.

So you reloaded and ran into a wall again and the BM happened again? It is STILL not because you ran into a wall - you rewinded the effing timer by reloading a save file from before the event you’re trying to trigger, and then the timer was up again. (They never bothered to check whether it would happen if they did not try to trigger it with their chosen tactic)

It is really really hard to try and convince these people that they’re wrong, because once they’re convinced that a specific action yields a specific result, they WILL keep doing it over and over again until it “works” and then see it as proof. But by the same logic you can also throw tomatoes at a wall until it starts to rain and then claim that the rain happened because you just threw 547 tomatoes against a wall. And then you continue to throw tomatoes because it “worked” last time … and if it doesn’t rain then you just didn’t throw enough tomatoes yet.

The most recent one: EA. I had disliked them and their practices for quite some time now, but there was a game on sale that I found interesting enough to purchase … it was like 2 Euro or whatever, so no big loss. AFTER the download they wanted me to sign an electronic agreement to basically harvest all of my data and requiring me to be permanently online in a singleplayer offline game at all times so they could monitor me, and if I didn’t agree I wouldn’t be able to play the game. No refund. I uninstalled it and will never purchase anything from them again - that was the last straw, the last ever chance I was willing to give them. And no there was no warning of any kind before the purchase - they deliberately waited until after they had my money to “ask” for that bullshit.

Good luck. It’s not an easy feat to consistendly walk that fine line without burning out, especially in the holiday season … take care.

Exactly … there would not even have been a shortage if everyone just kept shopping the normal amount instead of trying to hoard stuff. Especially for TP it was completely unneccessary unless your entire family planned to shit themselves eight times a day for weeks on end, yet people acted as if their lives depended on it (and even stole rolls from the public toilets, bought paper towels as backup and the like).

Another delicious “FU” moment, that I was sadly not personally present for but got told in great detail, was when one customer tried to return 100-something packs of TP for a refund after the first wave of Covid was almost over. Turns out he and some buddies had the genius idea to buy “one pack per person” multiple times each day for a couple of weeks (he had a giant bundle of receipts so we know when the packs were bought) and then resell the TP online for profit, but noone bought it… and since TP is a “hygiene article”, we don’t take those back for safety reasons, just like underwear, swimsuits and everything else that is meant to come in contact with human bodies. He was so furious that he started throwing things, screaming about how “we ruined him and will pay for it”, and threatening employees to the point that police had to be called to remove him.

Not the shop security, but actual police. A report was filed and a shop ban issued.

Because of toilet paper.

Cashier here. I managed to outwardly stay friendly and nice during the first wave of Covid, even tho at least 70% of our customers had managed to turn into the most insufferable nuisances in the history of mankind. It was especially exhausting when they started to bulk-buy toilet paper and literally everyone had some sort of super lame excuse why they NEEEEEEED eight packs at once and why we definitely SHOULD make an exception to the “one pack per customer” rule specifically for them.

If you have the same old discussion fourhundredandeightyseven times a day, it gets old pretty fast. But you can’t just tell them to STFU without risking your job, soo … well. It was simply exhausting.

One day I had a proper Karen at the register, who tried to tell me that she was buying the second pack for her poor old neightbor lady which allegedly had a broken hip and couldn’t walk to the store herself (you know, because if you have a broken hip you DEFINITELY stay at home instead of the hospital and definitely also use the toilet yourself, no issues here …) and she simply refused to leave the register. I was honestly contemplating whether I should call security and have her removed when the guy behind her looked at me and said:

“Well, that lady definitely needs twice as much toilet paper as others … because judging by the amount of shit that just came out of her mouth, she’s got assholes on both ends.”

It took all of my remainig willpower to not laugh. Imagine the “Biggus Dickus” scene from the Life of Brian for a mental image of how hard I tried to keep a straight face. Karen got red, huffend and left without buying either pack, and that delightfully snarky guy has been my favorite customer ever since. I might or might not sometimes “accidentally” swipe my own tag across the scanner to give him an employee discount…

The mosquitoes are dead.

In addition to what others have said already;

• Results are rewarded. If you do something right in-game, you usually get something like “good job!” or an immediate positive rating, useful items etc. as a direct reward. That way you immediatly feel like you accomplished something good. In the real world, you do the task, check out and go home - no positive feedback, no feel of accomplishment. You just completed a menial task, that’s all.

• Virtual customers are easier. If you do your virtual job right, they will be happy and nice. In the real world, you can do everything right and still get yelled at for the most bullshit reasons (I work in customer service so I might be biased a bit here) which makes it hard to maintain a positive attitude. In games, you usually don’t have to deal with someone trying to return clearly worn underwear for a refund and then throwing a loud, childish hissy fit when you tell them that you can’t do that.

• Games ususally don’t randomly throw unexpected setbacks at you at the most inconvenient times. They’re predictable, easier and overall more structured. Someone mentioned Truck Simulator in the comments, for example - I haven’t played that game but I highly doubt that it features 3 hour long traffic jams while your virtual avatar desperately needs to pee, the sudden appearance of an angry hornet or giant spider inside the driver’s cabin, flat tyres, naked methheads trying to climb your truck or your virtual boss calling you ingame to yell at you for something that is out of your control.

• Games ususally omitt the nasty parts and enhance the pleasing parts. Example: the curry cooking minigame in Pokémon SwoSh - you select ingredients, throw them into the pot, stir it for a while and your 'mons will be happy to get a nice meal. What you do NOT have to do: chopping and cleaning the ingredients, sorting out rotten food, cleaning the pots and pans, picking up Pokémon poop after they’re done digesting what they ate, getting IRL back pain from having to carry 427 cans of cream around at all times, setting up and maintaining the fire, disposing of garbage like packaging material or fishbones. You never have any picky eaters refusing to even taste the curry, you never have any ingredients go bad, your utensils will never break and you didn’t have to buy them in the first place as they magically just appeared in your inventory the moment you unlocked the ability to cook curry. and what you cooked always, always looks aesthetically pleasing unless you deliberately fuck up real hard, whereas even the most delicious tasting curry in the real world can look like slop, which just doesn’t feel the same. It is kinda easier to feel satisfied with a virtual steaming hot plate of pretty food.

Also German here. The lack of English(!) dubs on anime sold in Germany pisses me off more than it rightfully should, but if I want to watch Mononoke, Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle and the like, the DVDs always only have the options of German or Japanese audio with complimentary subtitles. I actually prefer the English dub in most of these.

It was also extremely weird to hear Phil Collins sing German lyrics for Disney’s Tarzan. I knew the (English!) soundtrack before I watched the movie and it completely caught me off guard.