Is No Man's Sky a good game after all the updates and fixing and adding all the stuff they promised?

I love space stuff but am not the biggest fan of Minecraft style crafting/mining. I don't mind it in Stardew and factory games are a favorite genre of mine, for reference. Basically I like the mechanics but it matters how they are implemented.

I've been trying to find a game that I can just turn my brain off and chill after a long day and right now Stardew is starting to get a bit stale(or I'm just dreading winter since there isn't much to do).

The game looks beautiful and I did spend maybe 100 hours on Starbound, which is like 2D NMS I think, but even on sale, it's at the upper limit I'd like to spend.

The other game is Hyperlight Drifter and it's $6 right now so I'm probably gonna get that one regardless.

Edit: I went ahead and grabbed it. I think my kid will also enjoy watching me play it.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3855446

So I have an interview coming up sometime in the next 2 weeks and I have to do a few coding and SQL problems as part of it. I wanna start practicing now because I've gotten a bit rusty on algs and such. Does anyone have any suggestions on like array sorts and such to work on or like code golf sites to use? I have Leetcode pulled up and will be working a bit through that today but I just wanna get in as much practice as I can leading up to the interview. I donno when the interview will be but I just heard through the grapevine that there will be one.

I've been working on my own webdev stuff but the most I've had to touch JavaScript for is basically conditionals and loops, so I feel like I've fallen down on the other stuff a bit.

TIA

I already bitched about this in the vegan theory club cooking discord bub I'm still bent the fuck out of shape over it.

Ok, so my kid's birthday party was yesterday and the last 2 times I wasn't able to eat the cake because it was made with extra helping of animals. I just sat their on my phone and took a few pictures or whatever. I helped with set up and tear down.

We are also going broke because I'm too fucking stupid to hold down a job and after over a year and a half of trying to find a job, we are at the point where I am considering getting rid of the rest of our streaming services and pull our youngest out of daycare. We are barely surviving on a teacher's salary right now.

In the past, my partner has gone all out on our kids' parties but I was working so it was fine. This time, I wanted to try to save money where we could. In the past, my partner would get a cake from a local bakery that costs like $80 and only 1/4 would get eaten and I'd throw the rest away 2 months later because it got forgotten in the back of our garage fridge.

So this year I wanted to kill 2 vegan birds with one stone and make my kid's birthday cake. I could make it for way cheaper and also sub in vegan ingredients.

I buy all the ingredients and plan on making it Saturday. My mother-in-law decides to offer to make a cake for my kid after finding out we aren't spending $80 on a cake. I already bought the ingredients so I politely say no thanks. Because I am saving money, not wasting it. And because I wanted to enjoy cake at my kid's birthday party.

I got up early yesterday, put my earbuds in and threw on some baking metal. To be fair it was a box cake mix and the frosting was also pre-made. I was gonna do this as a test run before autistic hyper-focus takes over and I proceed to deep dive into making the perfect vegan cake. So I mix it up and bake it and do the toothpick test and it comes out clean. I wait for it to cool and frost it and it's good. Life is good. We good.

Well, It was on the softer side of done. My mother-in-law goes to cut the cake and it crumbles. She then proceeds, in front of like 15 people, to tell me that my cake sucks and I should have just let her make it because it wouldn't suck. In front of me, my partner, our kids, our friends, etc. So that's great.

I spiral, because I do that. and I'm still processing it. She seemed like she wanted to go out of her way to make a deal about it because she knows I'm vegan and likes to call it weird or whatever when she can.

I know this is all over a stupid cake but she really could have just laughed it off when it was falling apart instead of slopping it on to everyone's plate like she was a lunchlady in the 6th circle of hell or something.

That's it. That's my rant. I'm mostly just hoping that I could get it off my chest and move on.

I am always looking for recipes so if anyone has a good cake recipe that can adapt to flavors like vanilla or chocolate and such, I'm definitely interested. A tiny caveat is that the cake mix and frosting used palm oil and I'm really trying to avoid that because of how palm farming wrecked the environment.

Background: I suspected I was Autistic for quite a while. I've always felt a connection to Autistics online and NDers at large but never considered I was ASD until I started reading askreddit threads about people on the spectrum and had more than a few "wait, that's me" moments. I read more, obsessed over articles and online tests, and finally got my soft diagnosis from my therapist a few months ago.

My diagnosis is actually ASD, severe depression(which I already knew), social anxiety(samesies), and posible ADHD.

My wife also got diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, and anxiety, and a bit of PTSD.

Our oldest is also very much ADHD

So suffice to say, our household is a giant mess of neurodivergence and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I spent a few months in a sort of buffer mode after my diagnosis and decided to read Unmasking Autism ahead of the planned reading group. The book sort of changed my life. In reading it, I felt at times Devon Price, the author was speaking directly at me. At other times, he was talking about my ND friends and family. I got a 10,000 foot view of what Autism and neurodivergence was and I got an intimate view of who I think I actually am.

The book visits something called Divergent Design. It's the concept that rather than trying to live in a Neurotypical box, design your living space around you. Figure out what works for you and own that.

I hate clutter and visual noise. My wife is a clutter bug who loses her keys after setting them down 2 seconds ago. I used to get mad about it but I completely understand now. I'm gonna try and spend 2024, redoing our house set up with Divergent Design in mind.

A few ideas I have for myself is to redo my "Me Space." With 2 kids and the complete anarchy that is our lives, it's hard to have a spot for me. But my computer desk is that spot. I'm fairly territorial about it too. But looking at it, I have come to accept that it's in a states of organized chaos. I bought some bins and a stack of drawers on wheels to hopefully help me get my clutter out of sites but in an equally organized way.

So for example, I wanna put most of my fidget toys in a drawer along with this stack of gift cards I have accumulated. I will know where they are but I won't see them. I will keep my main fidgets at hand for when I find myself wanting to stim. I will be able to swap out fidgets as desire dictates as well.

This will also work with my 7(yes seven) mechanical keyboards I own. Same for my 4 handheld emulators. I figured even though I like collecting these things it doesn't mean they need to be in my face the entire time, distracting me from being productive.

I have 3 sets of flashlights and knives that I carry when I leave the house, but I don't need all of them in a pile under my monitor I can pick a set for a week or 2 and hide the others away where I will know where they are at. I can leave my 2 Rubik's cubes that I am currently maining within reach and put the other 7 away.

This helps tackle me but I am working with my wife on what will work for her.

Right now there is a pile of clutter on my "fermentation station", a currently quasi-defunct hobby, there is a pile of clutter on our dining table(that is actually in our living room which is based btw), There is clutter on the shoe rack part of our combo coat rack that we bought to keep organized(rofl), and she has 3 half-started project in our mail sorter/key peg combo that was supposed to be for mail and keys. I have a few ideas but I don't really know what will work and won't work. One idea is to get a drainable tray to put in our shower on the floor as a "target" for her to put her shampoo bottles back and maybe a waterproof reminder note to remind her to re-adjust the showerhead before she gets out since she is a shower sitter and I am a stander.

I am still working on a few other things to run by her but am putting my foot down on buying one more dry erase board that either won't get hung or will never be used. I want systems that will finally work for her. Maybe have a few "target spots" that she can put her keys, for example. Functional women's jean pockets would be great but, alas, we like in a fascist patriarchy...

I also want to start exploring "radical visibility" from that book as well but not sure where to start yet. I'm a 40 year old man with a beard and I started painting my fingernails again occasionally so that's a start. I am basically always stimming but also usually have a fidget toy in my pocket whenever I leave the house, not sure if that is socially acceptable since a lot of my toys are unique and not a fidget cube or spinner. I like loud clacky tactile stuff so I have 5 sliders and a few haptic coins and such and love them.

Share ideas if you feel obliged but I wanted to post this more as a positive post instead of the negative ones I normally do on social media.

But yeah, that's the post. I think in my head, if I put it out on the internet, it will be more concrete for me instead of "I could do that maybe" type stuff.

Oh! I am also trying to become more active in ND spaces online and kind of wanna explore the possibility of setting up an org or something in my city. Disabled, queer, trans, NDers, and other marginalized people aren't just invisible here but in a lot of cases are flatout hated and I wanna see that fixed.

Got my new retro handheld emulator. It's an Anbernic Arc-D. Just got 50 GB of roms loaded from my personal currated collection and I kind of think I wanna jump into some jrpgs I can play on the couch when I wanna decompress. Right now I'm looking at starting with GBA titles since I missed that whole era but I'm mainly looking for any suggestions up to PS1 era. I've played all the main ones like Chrono Trigger and FFVI but open to anything.

My current line up is looking like Mario RPG, Mother 2 And 3, and Golden Sun.

What are some other bangers I should definitely check out?

Also the Arc-D is dope as fuck. Stock firmware isn't even that bad.

E: thanks all for the suggestions! Gonna currate a list this morning and probably start with Golden Sun before diving into the rest. A lot of gems I recall missing out on when I was a kids too that I'm eager to jump into.

Basically title. I'm easing into my 1 year anniverary and wanting to come up with something that I can make and take to the in-laws since I don't want to put them out too much for my sake. They all eat omni and I don't expect them to cater to me. Last year I did tofurkey sausages and they were ok and they might be a fallback if I don't come up with something else. I was gonna get a Field Roast roast but it's $19 at Nat Grocers and yeah, I'm not spending that kind of money on something that only I am gonna eat.

I'd like it to be close to traditional but am open for alternative suggestions since, well, I love food. Right now I am thinking about doing vegan mashed potatoes since that is easy mode and I can scale it down to 1 or 2 helpings.

But other than that idk. Welcome to all ideas, so what you got?

Disclaimer: literally zero allergies or food aversions so I am open to anything. TIA.

Will check back after church crap...