I’m feeling somewhat better than I did yesterday.
But that raspy feeling in my throat and lungs keeps slowly getting worse. I feel like my immune system is gradually losing a war of attrition. Hopefully, a good Denny’s dinner full of healthy B12 and other nutrients will set me right.
My mode of speech has become more British lately. Must be from all the UK accents in the dialogue in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Ever noticed how there’s no Americans in fantasy settings? It’s like on some deeply cultural and/or genetic memory level, we all have this assumption that naturally, in the past, everyone WAS British.
Because if your ethnic origins are English, that’s true. In a way.
The alternative would be to have all your fantasy characters speak some invented language of their race or culture, with subtitles, and wouldn’t that be tedious.
Not to mention a serious pain in the ass for the (voice) actors.
Speaking of BG3, I have managed to get rid of all the crashing (knock on a whole forest’s worth of wood).
There was one crash left – at the peak of a particularly key cutscene – but when I realized there was no way around that cutscene, I dove back into Googling the issue, found a suggestion about changing a setting on my graphics card regarding a certain pesky overlay later (overlayer?), and that got me through it.
So now it runs without crashing. It runs very badly, but it runs, and I am having a lot of fun with it despite long load times, jerky animations, and various other glitches.
If things continue to run smoothly, I will bump up the graphics settings and see if I can get away with better graphics.
They will still blink, freeze, and twitch, but they will do it in higher resolution, and with dynamic lighting and shadows.
I still feel stupid for having bought the game for full price and so close to its release date. It’s chock full of bugs. I am far from the only person who got a lot of crashes. Every time I Google an issue, there are thousands more of us.
Pretty big fuckup for a game this high profile. I wonder if it’s just happening to those of us whose computers are only sorta good enough to run it?
That would explain why the reviewers went gaga over it. They all have high end PCs. And I know this to be true because if I reviewed games, that’s what I would do with all that money and clout.
And if that’s not what you would do, are you even qualified to review games?
I still need to get the proper memory for this machine (DDR3, not DDR4) and after that I will look into upgrading the CPU.
Might have to upgrade the motherboard at the same time, at which point this will basically be the Computer of Thebes because I will have replaced everything.
Well, except the HD. But I will replaced that with an SSD (solid state drive, basically a giant thumb drive) some day.
After that, all that will be left is the case!
More after the break.
The suffering of the world
It’s been on my mind a fair bit lately. Possibly because of my own suffering.
It’s a spiritual concept that describes the truth that there is a great deal of suffering in this world and most of it we can do very little about.
This is the first great challenge of empathy. Once the soul is mature enough to look beyond the bounds of its own personal experience and into the lives of others, the truth of all that pain and misery comes rushing toward it like a tidal wave and the individual can feel like it will obliterate them because it is so much bigger than they are.
This prompts a crisis. How will the individual handle this flood? How will they preserve themselves as people while awash with the pain of others? Pain which naturally stirs within them the desire to reach out and help ease that suffering?
The lowly and unevolved response is to close one’s heart to the world. To embrace every excuse to stop caring one can find, no matter how tawdry, flimsy, or debased, and use that excuse as a sword to cut great swaths of humanity out of your heart and sever all connection to them as human beings forever.
To the unevolved,. this is self-defense, because they mistake their own desire to reach out and help others for thousand of needy hands reaching out to them asking for help and threatening to tear them apart.
The evolved response is to accept the truth of the suffering of the world and let it into your heart, knowing that when the tides recede, you will still be there, one human being doing one human being’s worth of good for the world,. unharmed and with a new understanding of the true nature of the world.
This, instead of provoking a mad urge to block one’s empathy, will expand it. It will humble the evolved person with its scope and size, and evoke in them an understanding of just how fragile and weak we all are, and thus how important it is that we embrace our differences and learn to work with and love one another so that together, we just might make it through the long cold night.
See how petty and small all our “big” problems look next to the magnitude of our suffering? See how we share the same suffering as those we consider enemies? See how under the skin, we are all frightned children trying to make sense of it all?
Trust me. It may not seem like it, but it is safe to care. You will not be destroyed. You will not be swept away by a raging torrent of other people’s pain. You will, in fact, be left stronger, deeper, and wiser as the waters wash away false barriers and give you a precious glimpse into the world between souls, where all our spirits live.
You will learn that you are not alone. All of humanity is with you.
All you have to do is open your heart and let them in.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.