I’d need more context than a single screenshot and a second of audio. What’s happening leading up to this sound? What came right after? Can you make a video clip with at least 10 seconds of audio to pair with this specific capture? Visual cues and a bit more audio around the event will help make sense of it. As is, it doesn’t sound remotely like whimpering. Or anything recognizable.

Also, The Amazing World of Gumball is an excellent show! I’ve re-watched it 3 times already, and I’m in my 40s. Despite being a kid’s show, it’s highly entertaining no matter your age.

Chronologically, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the first game in the series. It shows Snake’s origin story, which leads into the original Metal Gear 1 and 2 games for the old Nintendo Entertainment System (long before the Metal Gear Solid series). So it’s a perfect place to start if you’re picking up the Metal Gear franchise for the first time.

Metal Gear Solid ∆ is just a modern remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, so it’s basically the same thing but better graphics and controls. I read once that due to the falling out with Hideo Kojima, Konami can’t legally re-release the original MGS3 game, so a remake from the ground up was their legal compromise.

Now Metal Gear Solid 4 is the only Metal Gear game that hasn’t been re-released on any other platform since it debuted on the PlayStation 3. But Konami plans to finally release it for PC and all modern consoles in August this year. Woo!

I had planned to review Metal Gear Solid ∆ for my Lemmy screenshot series, but I was having so much fun with the game, I forgot about preparing a review and just played my way through it. MGS3 is my favorite of the entire franchise! There’s something rewarding about actually trying to avoid detection in a game. It’s easy to go in guns blazing, but sneaking past guards and not alerting anyone? That takes skill and dedication.

TL;DR: “Making democratic threats legible,” i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.

Saved you a click.

I live in a forested countryside in the Northern Midwest. Leaving the windows open invites in bugs and other small critters. Even with screens on the windows, insects crawl through the cracks, and I’ve definitely had several field mice chew their way through screens. I also have rabbits and possums who tend to nest up against the foundation of my house, and if a lower window is left open for prolonged periods, I sometimes find babies nesting in the window frame.

If I open my windows, it’s for a limited time to get some fresh air moving through the house. I’ll turn on strategically placed fans in various rooms to encourage rapid airflow through the house so I can close the windows sooner.

I only open windows in the winter if I need to cool a room quickly. For instance, I’m renting my first floor to a friend and I live on the second floor. But I only have one HVAC unit and thermostat for the entire house. The first floor always stays a few degrees cooler than the second floor (heat rises), so I keep it a little extra hot upstairs to ensure I’m not freezing out my friend. But I’m always hot in general, so I’ll either have fans on me all winter, or I’ll occasionally shut myself in a bedroom and open the window for 15-20 minutes, just to lower my body temp a bit and help me tolerate the hot house.

There have been a few winter nights where my wife and I have left the bedroom window open to cool down our bedroom, while burying ourselves in thick blankets. We don’t sleep well if we’re sweaty and stuck to the bed. I usually get up a few hours later and close the window, so we don’t freeze overnight.

When I was deployed to Iraq in 2007, I worked for a Communications Squadron, which managed the base’s computer network. Someone built a media server in our server room, so we could legally host movies and music on our network for other military members to enjoy at work.

We would borrow copies of DVDs and CDs from our base library and rip them to the server, then we built a rudimentary website where people could browse the catalog and stream content through the site. Nobody could download copies of anything, so we weren’t guilty of government-sponsored illegal filesharing. It was basically a way to digitally access the content from our library.

A part of the server that was locked down just for our squadron included video games we could install and run from our work computers. Our squadron especially liked to close up shop around lunchtime for some “simulated warfare training” and then jump into a giant Call of Duty multiplayer free-for-all map and shoot each other up for about 30 minutes.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to explain that one day, I noticed someone added World of Warcraft to the server. I thought it was odd, considering MMOs needed an Internet connection and our military networks are specifically designed to block most non-work related content. Battle.net would definitely be on the block list.

Still, curiosity got the best of me and I installed it on my PC. And to my surprise, it was a local server instance! I could access all of vanilla WoW, and I was the only person online.

I don’t know what exactly that game mode was. I thought maybe it was a beta instance, but I’ve never been able to get any of Blizzard’s beta or test servers to run locally without an Internet connection. Someone had obtained an actual working offline copy of the game to play!

Suffice to say, that kept me entertained for most of my deployment. Back in those days, there were a lot of griefers online and you didn’t have much of a choice in avoiding PvP (this was before they started making specifically RP servers), so I was frustrated when other players would interrupt my gameplay to fight me. Having a whole MMO to myself was fantastic!

The only downside was that my character was isolated on my local server; all my progress couldn’t come with me when I left Iraq. But I was addicted to WoW back in those days, so it let me continue to enjoy the game while I was unable to access my actual account back home.

I laughed at this joke, then looked over at my end table…

This is why I keep a tablet next to my bed. When I want to recline in bed but watch something, I can do it on a decent-sized screen instead of squinting at my phone.

But my couch also has two “zero-G” recliners on either end of it, which basically means they recline so far, my feet are slightly elevated over my head. So I don’t really need to go to bed to lie down and watch something.

It’s more about if I’m trying to settle down for the night or not. I have wireless headphones for my TV, so I can watch shows late into the night without disturbing anyone, but if I’m gonna fall asleep myself, I’d rather be in bed already so I can just set down my tablet and sleep without any more effort.

The Gary Jules cover of Mad World, for the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Similarly, the original song by Tears for Fears sounds really upbeat and happy, but you’d never know it was a sad song unless you paid attention to the lyrics. I love both versions!

I barely got grandfathered into a pension program with the US military. They went away in 2015. I had served over a decade at that point and they still let me retire in 2022 under that program. The new program is a sort of 401k type system, but I didn’t have enough years in service to contribute to it for retirement, so they didn’t even give me the option to switch over.

Granted, I retired after only 20 years served so my pension is not very big. But it’s money in my pocket every month for the rest of my life, so I’m not complaining. I’ll never starve or go without shelter.

I was gonna say, “what ads?” I haven’t seen a YouTube ad in years now. If they ever force their way through, I’ll just stop watching YouTube videos. I’m not tied to the platform; there are other ad-free places to watch videos from.

I saw this article with a giant photo of Trump’s face and the line, “Later found dead” and I got my hopes up for a moment.

There was a moment in that fight where Pink got killed and dropped a bunch of grenades when he went down (an ability one of your custom uniforms grant you). And we all happened to be grouped a little too close together, so we all got blown up by him. That’s my one death in that mission - a team kill. I wonder if that did enough damage for his score, or if he kept flagging people with his rifle while shooting enemies.

That’s one of the interesting things about this game. Some players have asked the devs for the ability to turn off friendly fire, but they refuse, saying that friendly fire is funny and part of the ridiculousness of the game.

Good to know. I’m always on the lookout for a better, more secure option. eufy is my best option at the moment, but if you (or anyone here) knows a better choice for home security systems, I’m all ears.

This is why I a.) live out in the countryside, and b.) replaced my dad’s old Ring cameras with eufy security cameras.

eufy doesn’t require a subscription service (although you can get one if you want to trust their cloud service). If you buy a HomeBase, you can store all your security footage locally on a small box. Easy to hide and/or grab if you need to get out.

Sure, there’s a security risk of storing data locally. But I trust myself to protect video recordings of my property over some company’s cloud service. Ring complies with police when asked for your video footage, and they don’t even notify owners most of the time. Cops could be looking through your video feed without your knowledge, which is a nightmare if you have cameras inside the house.

And now, apparently, so can your neighbors. Fuck Ring.

In India, it’s a huge taboo to kiss anyone whom you’re not married to. Public affection in general is mostly frowned upon there, and sometimes charges as a crime depending on where you live.

That’s why you never see lovers kiss in Bollywood movies. They always just hug or hold each other at arms length. They would be outraged if two actors who aren’t married to each other kissed on screen.

This is from a video game called “Among Us.” Everyone plays members on a space ship that has been infiltrated by a shape-shifting monster, who is killing them one-by-one. One of the players is the monster.

The players can call a meeting to vote who to eject into deep space, hoping to discover who the monster is and eliminate them.

In this case, one of the members claimed the monster is the red member, but they’re really annoyed by the black member. The whole crew voted to throw out the black member instead. Red is sad for being accused, but happy not to be ejected.

I use Voyager. I have NSFW posts set to blur. I need to open the thread to see it un-blurred.

I do this so I don’t have random NSFW images popping up on my phone while I’m being antisocial out in public. Yes, I could have the app just block all NSFW posts. But then I would miss beautiful works of art like OP’s post.

I was wondering why this was marked as NSFW. That explains it.

Yeah, they must mean the original, since this mod just released today. But if you read their whole review, they don’t directly reference the original game once, they just gripe about all the things they don’t like about this mod.

I love this negative review. Notice their hours on record.