Is this battleship from the cereal box?

EDIT:

BATTLESHIP: SURFACE THUNDER!!!!!!!!

THIS WAS SO FUN

Just to clarify, the neurons are "playing Doom"

Doom is not running on the neurons so as of yet no, it doesn't run Doom.

(Sorry)

I was recently in Calgary and know ppl that live there. I would like to stress it is absolutely a conservative town but it's not without a large queer community and out and about queer folks having a good time.

The voting record is as Canada's conservative heartland but it has long history of radically progressive and humanist ideas as a bulwark to the business and theologically motivated conservative base.

The food scene is really good too.

I don't know much about Edmonton other than Calgarians think they're better and there's a mall in Edmonton.

But ya know, it's a clown show like anywhere else. The provincial government is actively attacking queer awareness/visibility/speech with book banning measures that the Unionized librarians and plenty of other Albertans are fighting back against hard.

It's still quite a small pair of prairie towns and are the biggest towns for a very long distance from anything as close to as big as them. As a result some fresh produce can be hard to find because there is not much grown locally.

Would be remiss to not mention nature. It's got some of the biggest parks of any city I've ever been too and you can see those damn pretty mountains and go to them if you own/rent the basically required car.

TLDR

I kinda liked it 🤷

This was a General Mills promotion where you'd get one of a bunch of games as discs in cereal boxes.

Battleship, Hasbro Board Game collection, and Wheel of Fortune was what I got.

I picked up a ps5 from the local shop because it was 100$ cheaper. I figured it would be wise to get it if I wanna keep socializing with my friends and before they get stripped for parts.

I got Dragon's Dogma 2 and the 2k25 tennis game (we had a tennis game for the SNES so it felt right) from the library and I guess Siege for free.

Dogma 2 is like Dogma 1 but more and prettier still weird in the same way.

2k25 tennis is playable if you're not connected to the Internet, there's training and free matches you can play no problem.

Yet to buy a game for it, been tons of fun. The free to play games are free too if you just don't buy anything.

Redsec is what I play when I do cardio, the gauntlet mode is good enough I'd say.

My little cousin was over and he said "the finals" was pretty good which is also free.

I'm putting my name on the list for the astro bot game with the library because the DS5 is genuinely neat and it seems like the only game with design dedicated to using it. Will be getting the couple of sports and GTA 6 because that's just how I do a lot of my hanging out. Will end up being cheaper then the drive and the flights 😅.

TLDR.

Always buy a console with a disk drive and check out your local library

Anecdote:

Played team sports all my life, still do. Explicit queerphobia has come down to the point I haven't heard anything discriminatory in years (mind you, grown adult co-ed rec league, don't know how it is for youth rec. It was not good when I was a kid for sure) but it's still one of the last places I frequent that I feel uncomfortable being out.

Sports fans who don't actively play sports seem to be more explicitly Trans misogynist and broadly queer-phobic from my experiences. I think the lack of participation in group sports where you rely on others, you're humbled by your own limits and it's for FUN and EXERCISE (95% of all sports ppl play) makes some ppl think all sports are like pro-world class sports. Pro level sports of course are the most commercialized, culturally accessible, and most inherently misogynist so they become an easy intersection of people who participate and benefit from discriminatory acts, practices and institutions. So if sports is defined for someone only through that pro lens then def one is gonna find themselves being informed by other ppl who enable and gain from the inherent toxicity of entertainment pro sports. I think.

The latter is also going to feed into the former, so even if rec sports are probably better than they were (low ass bar) there are still good reasons for queer ppl to voluntarily stay out or in some cases, start our own explicitly queer friendly leagues.

Edit: re-read my comment, yeah shit's depressing AF

I vaguely remember the ways in which 1980s hyper homophobic hysteria made its way into rec sports via people in positions of power (men who were coaches managers or even refs). Sports were where people went to define their most toxic masc ideals by having grown ass men yell slurs at them or their kids for "fun" and "to build character". Def is still ppl who grew up with that in all kinds of levels of sports too.

I purchased a new video game for the first time in a while. I got it from an (the only?) independent store in my area. It's the NBA 2k game. I got it so I can socialize with friends around the country and so I can use it's terrible "pay to not grind" mechanics to my advantage. I play it on the elliptical machine for like an hour or when I want to catch up to some podcasts (just have to turn the game volume all the way down).

I could stress over the fact that 2k and take 2 is awful. There's a lot of gambling mechanics baked into the multiplayer. There's also a casino/slots aesthetic that permeates the whole thing (this is ostensibly a game for kids). There's been the union busting thing as well which is despicable. I try to remind myself that I've been avoiding contributing to the most profitable and cruel of the existing big gaming conglomerates for a good amount of time. It can be very discouraging what exists in the big budget pop gaming sphere. Ugh.

But there's good things about it too. The gameplay, the physics, the AI and controls are probably some of the best I've experienced in terms of dynamic sports games. My only alternative experience has been the EA NHL games so it's not that I've had the bar set very high. There is also a story mode with a story that is somewhat compelling! Not as good as NBA 2k16s Spike Lee story (yes that's real), but still it offers some good narrative motivation, decent challenges, and new ways to control the game (NHL could never).

The socializing has been good too! I used to play the Call of Dutys with my friends but those were not sitting well with me and my friends and we haven't gotten the latest ones. So I get to be back on an old habit of weekday evenings playing games with the homies!

It's Thanksgiving dinner day plus delivering juice for my grandfather's wine supply. I was able to help out with my local food bank's Thanksgiving dinner special service. It was very inspiring, I was dishwashing for the kitchen but got to see what a very professionally run dinner service looks like but without the waste of a for profit type of fancy dinner service.

I'm also trying a task manager program on my desktop called "Super productivity" which had me thinking about my outstanding "projects." Turns out I have a lot of projects in various states of incomplete.

I'm not sure how effective setting up a personal ticketing/project management system is going to be I've tried pen and paper and physical agendas but it never stuck. I like it so far, I chose it because it's free and open source without pushing any privately hosted subscription add on (no AI or cloud service unless you go out of your way to integrate them).

Anyways Thanks!