Interesting. Malls around me seem to cater mostly to young adults with expendable income. Lots of non-traditional cuisine (commercialised of course, not high-brow places), wine bars, etc. Places where you’d go to on a night out with the gang.

Now that you mention it, they have stopped catering to the youngest demographic. I think the laser tags closed down before the pandemic, and the arcades have been gone for a decade. Unless Chuck E. Cheese has some, I haven’t been. Maybe we’re catching up, then. I still see young teens, around the age I was when I visited those places, walk around. No idea what shops they go into though. Maybe the ice cream places, and the food court.

So I’m not in America and might be able to offer some insight. Others have mentioned big box stores, online shopping, and lack of money as the main culprits. I’m fairly certain big box stores are not it, and the fault may lay almost entirely on amazon.

Where I’m from, malls are still the place to go for new things to buy, including electronics, clothes (of varying degrees of quality and price), drugs (the legal kind), and home decor. Businesses like Walmart (as in, supermarkets that sell things other than groceries) have shops inside those same malls. In the whole city, there is one standalone Walmart, in the emptiest part of town with middle-upper class suburbs around it. The one exception is Costco, which has two franchises in town, not inside a mall, but the demographic that goes there is decidedly middle class families and businesses.

We can order stuff from amazon, but it ends up being about the same in terms of cost, and takes up to a month to arrive. Money is tight for pretty much everyone at the moment, but we all still go to the mall from time to time, for one reason or another.

For example, I’m overdue a visit to get my eyes checked again, my glasses need replacing. And I’ll probably stop by the radioshack (yup, remember that?) and nab some rechargeable AAs.

America, americans, or american politicians? I’ve got different opinions. The common american may be misguided or misinformed, but they’re not hateful. America itself, has done incredible damage to the world, all while claiming they’re all for liberty and freedom after being dragged into the most clear-cut good vs. bad war almost a hundred years ago. Ever since, it’s has been dragged kicking and screaming towards progress, and fighting very hard to go back to the stone age. American politicians are nearly all wastes of skin.

For reference, I’m latino.

Nah. Went over to Liverpool and London, there’s good food. Just avoid low-end british cuisine, high end is fine, but expensive. Lebanese places in particular seemed to be all-around great, with good prices, tasty food, and friendly people.

One caveat to this: make sure it isn’t a game you know inside and out. You’ll go by memory instead of actively trying to interact with the language. At least that’s the way it goes for me.

Oh, music theory? How intro is it? I’ve wanted to learn some for some time, enough to maybe understand why my favourite songs work.

I took classes when I was a kid but wasn’t interested, several years later I was really into classical and jazz and I was able to play by ear but it literally takes me a minute to recognize notes on a sheet, nevermind recall notes. Some of the inside baseball stuff might as well be binary, too. Just incomprehensible.

Hm, Lenovo? Cus you just described my experience with them.

Family problems, health problems, carreer problems, and just GAD piling up on me. Someone took my pulse and it was running a sprint while I was sitting. Hands were absolutely numb and my fingers were twisting by themselves into weird poses, I couldn’t hear a thing and I couldn’t breathe.

That was the worst one I’ve ever had, and thankfully, the last one. Over a year ago. Every now and then I can feel one coming up but I’ve learned how to calm myself down in therapy.

Hard work does not always lead to success. Most of the time, it just leads to more work.

VHS player when I was a toddler. Was in the daycare and saw a cord, so naturally I pulled it. It was on top of the TV, which was bolted to the wall high up. Shattered on impact. Nearly fell on my head too.

1. E-reader. I’m not reading 4-5 books a month as I did before but it reignited my desire to read after losing it in college (plus: it’s way cheaper).
2. Chemex. I was used to burnt gas station coffee and it gave me a new hobby.
3. First DSLR as well. Helped me think about composition more in my paintings, as well as contrast. I haven’t touched a camera in years though. Little opportunity or desire.

Idles, Ghost, Wind Rose, and Parquet Courts. For musicians who are no longer around, definitely John Coltrane and Audioslave/Soundgarden. They all seem like they put on a hell of a show and the people who listen to them seem to not be assholes for the most part.

Binge info. I look up whatever random question was bugging me earlier that day/week/month, and try and read everything even tangentially related. By the end I’m distracted enough I forgot about being sad.

Not a solution though. On the upside, I got to learn a bit more.

IMO the problem at this point is leadership. They’ve realized people will buy their shit if they sell a cheap, surface-deep fantasy with interesting visuals and let folks do a very limited number of different things in a single playthrough. Because of that, there’s no nuance to their worlds. They want to make a sandbox game with no reactivity.

Unless leadership resigns I won’t expect anything else than the equivalent of a gas station meal.

Hm, imma look into it. Shame it isn’t FOSS. Thanks for the tip!

Obsidian.md? Did you get it from GitHub?

I’m a new DM (and new to TTRPGs in general). I’m using bard and chatgpt to keep track of homebrew stuff.

I’m running an almost completely custom system, adapted to ASOIAF. Races (renamed to origins), classes, backgrounds, feats, etc. extra mechanics like duelling systems and large battle simulations, and faction interaction systems. It’s a lot, and I find it easier for me to have the bot spray solutions to whatever issue I run into, then grab the one that might work, and refine it until it might sound fun. I need to get a system in order to keep track of my campaign, though. Tried WorldAnvil and honestly, I don’t need that many tools. Might go back to Notion and keep track of all the factions and characters that way. Gonna be a lot of work though.

Sorry for the late, late reply. Haven’t been able to log into my ml account on mobile. I’ll check them out, thanks!

Word of warning: the game is jank personified, but once you get past the animations, visuals, and weird storytelling, it has a lot of charm. It does quite a lot differently to other RPGs and survival games, and because of that, it has a hell of a learning curve.

Playing it makes me remember how I felt when I played Morrowind, for some reason. Not because it is the same caliber of game though, that much is for certain.

Have you tried Outward? It is built with co-op in mind. The solo and coop experience is exactly the same, maybe a bit tougher solo.