I've had a little of a debate with a commenter recently where they've argued that "donating" (selling, in their words, because you can get money for it) your blood plasma is a scam because it's for-profit and you're being exploited.

Now, I only have my German lense to look at this, but I've been under the impression that donating blood, plasma, thrombocytes, bone marrow, whatever, is a good thing because you can help an individual in need. I get that, in the case of blood plasma, the companies paying people for their donations must make some kind of profit off that, else they wouldn't be able to afford paying around 25€ per donation. But I'm not sure if I'd call that a scam. People are all-around, usually, too selfish and self-centered to do things out of the goodness of their hearts, so offering some form of compensation seems like a good idea to me.

In the past, I've had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.

What are your guys' thoughts on the matter? Should it be on donation-basis only and cut out all incentives - monetary or otherwise? Is it fine to get some form of compensation for the donation?

Very curious to see what you think

First off, sorry if this is the wrong to community to post to - I'll move it somewhere else should it not fit the community.

My best friend quite often is a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, I feel like. Discussing politics, veganism, the problems with using Amazon, what have you, with him is nigh impossible because he insists on his opinion and won't budge. I feel like he just feels superior to other people, or at least to me, in a way that he just won't change his mind, doesn't hear other sides, and argues for the sake of arguing.

Now, in a recent discussion, I asked him if he knew why images aren't displayed properly in my Firefox-fork browser (Mull). He gave an answer and asked why I would use a custom browser instead of Firefox itself to which I responded that it's more privacy-focused and that I didn't like Mozilla's implementation of AI in their browser.

Long story short, it devolved into a lengthy discussion about AI, how the fear of AI is based on ignorance and a lack of knowledge, that it's fine that AI is used for creative projects because in most cases it's an assisting tool that aids creativity, doesn't steal jobs etc. essentially that it's just a tool to be used like a hammer would be.

What pisses me off the most about all this is that he subtly implies that I don't know enough about the subject to have an opinion on it and that I don't have any sources to prove my points so they're essentially void.

How do I deal with this? Whatever facts I name he just shrugs off with "counter"-arguments. I've sent him articles that he doesn't accept as sources. This has been going on for a couple hours now and I don't know what to tell him. Do you guys have sources I could shove in his face? Any other facts I should throw his way?

Thank you in advance

Edit: A thing to add: I wasn't trying to convince him that AI itself is bad - there are useful usages of AI that I won't ignore. What I was concerned about is the way AI is used in any and all products nowadays that don't need AI to function at all, like some AI-powered light bulbs or whatever; that creative jobs and arts are actively harmed by people scraping data and art from artists to create derivative "art"; that it's used to influence politics (Trump, Gaza). These things. The way AI is used in its unmonitored way is just dangerous, I feel like

Recently finally gotten around to playing Lies of P, and I've been enjoying my time a lot - I'd probably put it right between Sekiro and Bloodborne for my favourite Soulslikes. The boss fights have been pretty cool throughout the playthrough. However, the last few bosses, especially Laxasia and Simon, have been kicking my teeth in, so I used a summon to kill both easily.

Now, when people complain about players not playing "the right way" - aka bashing your head in for 10 days straight, using melee only, no summons, magic, cheese, whatever - I'm the first to say that it doesn't matter how people play the game as long as they enjoy it and that they don't have to prove they're "more" of a gamer than someone who did adhere to these self-imposed rules.

After finishing these two fights (I'm at the Nameless Puppet now🫠), however, I kind of feel like I've robbed myself of a "worthy" victory because it was soo much easier with the summons than without them. Like, 30+ tries without and basically first try with a summon. It kind of took away the whole challenge and doesn't feel like I've actually beaten them.

Ultimately, thinking that I've spent so much time learning their patterns and trying to kill them "the proper way", it doesn't feel as bad since I had grown frustrated quite a bit by the end, so I just wanted an easy out. Still nagging on my mind.

What are y'all thoughts on this subject? Is it warranted that I feel like I robbed myself of a proper victory? Should I just get over it? Anything similar happen to you?

Thanks!

Edit: Just remembered that I used summons quite a lot more often than initially thought. I used a summon for both Rabbit Gang fights as well as the Puppet King and the Green Swamp Monster too.

The Rabbit Gang fight felt quite cool like that, especially the first one, since it felt like a real brawl of two equal parties. I consistently got to phase 2 of both Puppet King and Swamp Monster easily but always ended up dying quickly, so the summons took the edge off quite a bit.

Edit 2: Beat Nameless Puppet, probably got a bad ending with Gepetto dying and calling me a useless puppet. But idgaf - I beat that fucker 😎

A couple of months ago, I wiped Windows off my old laptop and installed Kubuntu instead. Now, I was thinking of dual booting Windows additionally for a certain game (definitely not League of Legends, for sure not) and will need to buy a new key. Am I fine getting a copy of Windows 10 despite Microsoft's discontinuation, or should I get a Windows 11 key? I have a different laptop I use as a daily driver (11, Surface Go 3), so this would exclusively be for the game that shan't be named.

Sorry if this post isn't fit for this community - I'll delete it if it isn't.

I've played the game around seven years ago for the first time on my laptop and enjoyed my time a lot. Back when I got my first PS4 around a year later (2017ish), I got the game on there too but ended up not playing the game at all because I couldn't get used to the controller gameplay.

A couple of days ago, I started the game up again for lack of other games to play right now and have, as many probably, started a low-chaos ghost run. For the uninitiated, "ghost" means that you go through the entire game without being detected once. To achieve this, you're either cracked at the game and know what you're doing, or you resort to save scumming, which I also did.

However, I seem to have fucked up in the last mission (saving Emily, getting rid of the two Pendleton twins) and have been detected somewhere without noticing it and loading a previous save. When I ended the mission and was shown the statistics, I contemplated starting the mission over because I didn't ghost through to mission but opted not to.

While I do feel kinda bummed about "messing up" the achievement, I feel like this'll prove to be beneficial for my overall experience with the game since I won't have to keep reloading the same passages for 15 times just to get some arbitrary achievement that doesn't even bear any meaning.

I'll still go for a low-chaos run (not killing anyone), but I won't be bothered to keep reloading saves now: If I'm detected, I run away and hide and take the game on naturally.

How have your experiences with the game been? Which playstyle do you prefer? What games did you ruin for yourself in hindsight because of save scumming?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/29919

As many others here, I have accumulated a bit of a "backlog" over the years, consisting of games that were cheap to pick up on sale, games that I have/had general interest in, or new game releases. Whenever a new game came out, I felt kind of urged to play the new game, drop everything else, and quite often end up not picking up the "abandoned" games again.

Sometime last year, when money was a bit tight, I just started playing games I already had instead of worrying about keeping up with new game releases, and it's been really liberating. I finished Mass Effect 1-3 over a combined ~100h, I platinumed Sekiro, Bloodborne, and started Dark Souls and Elden Ring, I found my love for Frostpunk and have been blasting that for the past months. I'm just having a great time overall.

I think a good help in that regard was a comment I read on the rexxit equivalent of this community where they proposed to see games as countries and giving them a shot is like coming there to visit: visiting a country is cool, but you don't have stay there indefinitely to have a good time; it's always fine to leave the country and go visit another, and not seeing everything the country has to offer does not worsen your experience there.

I don't stress about picking something back up again after having a good time with it and looking for something else to play. I don't stress about new releases (too much - Diablo 4 is currently pretty difficult to stay away from for me lol) because the game won't vanish magically if I check it out a week later, several months later, a year later. I just play whatever I feel like playing and whenever I feel like playing it. If I end up deleting something off the console - that's fine. There's always something else to play.

Not really sure what my point is, really, but felt inclined to get the ball rolling in this community. I like the idea of being a patient gamer a lot, and it's helped me enjoy games a lot more than I used to, so I wanted to contribute too and be a more active part of the "movement".

Thanks to everyone who's part of the community and who's been promoting good vibes!

As many others here, I have accumulated a bit of a "backlog" over the years, consisting of games that were cheap to pick up on sale, games that I have/had general interest in, or new game releases. Whenever a new game came out, I felt kind of urged to play the new game, drop everything else, and quite often end up not picking up the "abandoned" games again.

Sometime last year, when money was a bit tight, I just started playing games I already had instead of worrying about keeping up with new game releases, and it's been really liberating. I finished Mass Effect 1-3 over a combined ~100h, I platinumed Sekiro, Bloodborne, and started Dark Souls and Elden Ring, I found my love for Frostpunk and have been blasting that for the past months. I'm just having a great time overall.

I think a good help in that regard was a comment I read on the rexxit equivalent of this community where they proposed to see games as countries and giving them a shot is like coming there to visit: visiting a country is cool, but you don't have stay there indefinitely to have a good time; it's always fine to leave the country and go visit another, and not seeing everything the country has to offer does not worsen your experience there.

I don't stress about picking something back up again after having a good time with it and looking for something else to play. I don't stress about new releases (too much - Diablo 4 is currently pretty difficult to stay away from for me lol) because the game won't vanish magically if I check it out a week later, several months later, a year later. I just play whatever I feel like playing and whenever I feel like playing it. If I end up deleting something off the console - that's fine. There's always something else to play.

Not really sure what my point is, really, but felt inclined to get the ball rolling in this community. I like the idea of being a patient gamer a lot, and it's helped me enjoy games a lot more than I used to, so I wanted to contribute too and be a more active part of the "movement".

Thanks to everyone who's part of the community and who's been promoting good vibes!