VTuber wandering the shadows of games, culture, and life. Delivering sharp critiques and no-nonsense opinions. Come for the streams… stay for the cult!
Joined December 2020
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HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Montana has a real chance to elect its first Libertarian to the Legislature in one week!
@DruKoester is running for Senate District 41 and faces only a Democrat. There is no Republican on the ballot. Vote for Dru to send a true third-party voice to Helena, break the two-party lock, and force conversations outside the usual partisan script.
Vote Dru Koester for Senate District 41 before November 3!
People out here calling the US fascist, mean while the UK government is out here treating its population like literal daycare attendees.
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Parents protest the cost of day care.
Government says: “We’ll pay!”
But government money comes with government rules. Those rules make day care WORSE.
“Those rules... don't end up helping kids as much as raising costs," says @carrielukas of @IWF.
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
I can guarantee that the founders of D&D and the first commercial RPG, TSR, that we worked harder, longer and with more elan to establish, against strong headwinds then, a before unheard of industry, first on the block, than the idiot ideologues at WotC have done in destroying and purposefully mutilating all of what we accomplished. It's a joyous chore to create something born of vision and nurtured and sculpted by unselfishness and hard work, but it takes little energy to deface and suck the life out of same.
Postmodern robber barons suck don't they? They have infiltrated the entertainment and arts industries right down to their various fandoms, the latter whom cheer on the takeover of once highly regarded franchises with the same hope of being something along side their new leaders that none from each group are: creators, nurturers and honorable custodians.
The recent BioWare debacle is on-point comparable to what has happened with Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro regarding their custodianship of D&D. The timelines, trajectories, their separate rises, their mystifying and beleaguered course changes which defied their once successful and merged creative<>business models, and their ultimate falls. EA wasn't swallowing it for BioWare as Hasbro continues to do for the D&D brand, the latter company which has a 3.4-1 debt to equity ratio and should be in shareholder revolt mode.
And this is but one such example, from beginning to end. There are myriad other examples out there; and they are not nonsense. Far from being that, they are the battle lines formed on one side by the uncreative, uncaring, and manipulative robber barons versus the creative, reasonable, vision-workers on the other.
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Come join me as @FracturedFilter and @TwilightLinkabl as I play Skyrim
In less than 56 mins link below
Continuing my playthrough of my favorite JRPG, Shadow Hearts!
C'mon in and hang out for a while!
Abysmal Classics: Shadow Hearts (Retro JRPG) xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1dGYlaqWr…
Abysmal Classics: Shadow Hearts (Retro JRPG) xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1dGYlaqWr…
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Prop one in Idaho must never come to pass. This abomination will not stand.
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Just wanted to remind everyone that tonight at 7PM EST I’ll be doing my birthday gaming stream 😄 I’ll be playing some Ash Vs Evil Dead, Anime Shop Simulator, Pokebonk and more. youtube.com/live/G41RwqpamFM…
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
From the article:
…
“Koester, who owns an HVAC firm with her husband, called for a loosening of local ordinances that impede housing development — rather than providing state incentives for affordable homes. “If you reduce the burden of the regulations on the developers and on just the regular business people, you are going to see an increase in housing.”
…
ehmonitor.com/state-senate-c…
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
NARRATIFY is BACK!
After promoting Relooted and claiming it was a success, they've got plenty more to say about gaming.
But can we make their latest presentation entertaining, or will boredom finally defeat us?
Premiering TONIGHT at 7 PM PT: youtube.com/watch?v=w8TStbw_…
ALT Gaming consultants have a remarkable talent for making video games sound boring. And NARRATIFY might have just given us our favorite example yet. Welcome back to Psycho-Babble! 🦇 This week, We react to Mickaël Newton of NARRATIFY and his Games for Change presentation, "From Extraction to Transmission: Building Authentic African Narratives." We've covered NARRATIFY before, particularly its promotion of Relooted, but this time we're sitting through its ideas about authentic storytelling, cultural representation, narrative consulting, and the role consultants should play in video game development. Along the way, we discuss Ubisoft, Resident Evil 5, Sweet Baby Inc., Relooted, cultural consultants becoming decision-makers, and whether these presentations have lost sight of what makes games entertaining in the first place. There's also a strange hypothetical walking simulator, an unfortunate-looking island, an unexpected glue-related mythology lesson, and plenty of increasingly sleep-d
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Honorable Chatters, unfortunately I won't be at Youmacon this year
I was really looking forward to this one, but it came down to sponsor concerns
If you bought a badge for my panel, you can email [email protected] by noon ET on Wednesday, October 28 with your order number, name, and email for a refund.
Thank you all for the support
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Looks like I'm gonna be doing some poetry reading.
Sorry, can't be helped, absolutely compulsory at this point
This is kind of the thing. When you look at who Robert Service was this wasn't some pampered college professor who has never swung an axe or tossed a hay bale - he was, for quite some time, living out in the sticks in Yukon... And writing poetry about it which sticks in your head for a lifetime.
People think of poetry as being some kind of pastime for college professors, angsty teenagers, or people who swig overpriced coffee between protests. It's not - or it doesn't have to be. There's a poet in the soul of a lot of people who might split their time between hunting, watching football, building things, and working with their hands. As a culture we seem to have forgotten that - and man do I hope we remember it because we're missing out on a lot.
Poetry is - or can be - for everyone. You find the right poet and it'll move you to your core whoever you are.
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Montanans shouldn’t have to jump through hoops for privacy in their own homes.
@MTAGKnudsen
You have several in your own home listening to you and your family. This affects everyone and an investigation is warranted.
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.cf/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
“Stop AI or we’re all going to die!” shout protesters.
But what if stopping it COSTS lives?
“Most of us know somebody who has died early … from something that AI could cure,” says @AlexEpstein.
In our full interview, what we risk giving up:
I watched that trailer looking for the hourglass big titted body type and came away immensely disappointed.
Can I sue another poster for false advertising?
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Grok estimates 200,000-300,000 Samsung Smart TVs are located in Montana.
It might be worth @MTAGKnudsen’s time to take Samsung to court for them spying on a quarter of the population of Montanans.
Your smart TV is watching you back.
Not with a camera. With a feature most smart TVs ship with, and that most owners agree to during setup without reading a word.
It's called automatic content recognition, or ACR. Your TV takes frequent snapshots of whatever is on the screen and matches them against a database. That covers streaming apps, cable, your game console, even whatever is plugged into HDMI. The data can then be used for ads and recommendations.
Texas sued 5 major TV makers over it. Samsung settled. More lawsuits were filed this year.
A privacy researcher told me: "It takes about 2 minutes to turn off. Most people have no idea which menu to look in."
Here's how to turn it off on every major brand, plus 6 more settings to change tonight.🧵👇
HorrorAmorata🌌🦑✨The Abysmal Critic retweeted
Washington has a pattern. A new program promises to help, falls short, and then asks for more of your tax dollars to fix the shortfall. Liberty breaks that cycle by trusting you to make your own choices and keep the rewards. I make that case every day in the Senate, and I will never stop fighting for liberty.
