#quality of life

[gent-illmatic]

NATURALLY.✨🤎

[overseer-picard]

The look they give you when you’re just a little robot trying to do your job but you’re also developing sentience 😳🫣

[lobautumny]

So like, there's some really shitty video that this toy saw a while back about QoL mods in Terraria and how if you install all of them and then crank all of their settings up to the maximum, then the game basically plays itself. The whole video was weirdly hostile and vindictive and effectively just made fun of the concept of QoL features/mods as a whole. But it stuck in this toy's mind, not because the video itself holds any value, but because the core topic of how quality of life & accessibility features have a tangible impact on a game's design is really interesting and nobody talks about it with any kind of nuance.

So like, Terraria is obviously a very different game from what it used to be. But all of the raw content (hardmode, bosses, biomes, weapons, NPCs, etc.) that always gets the spotlight in updates only makes up a relatively-small portion of that outside of, like, the tinkerer’s workshop from 1.1, and damage classes being added in 1.0.6, both being relatively-early additions. The plethora of things that were changed/added to make the game look nicer also aren't the core thing responsible, obviously. So what is the biggest reason modern Terraria feels so alien when compared to 1.0.X versions, or even 1.1?

It's the quality of life features. Inventory management got exponentially easier/more efficient, you have a minimap at all times, smart cursor lets you expend far less effort mining and dealing with backwalls, there are special equipment slots for grappling hooks and light pets, grappling hooks are bound to a hotkey instead of being an item that you need to manually select and use, you can use items directly from your inventory instead of needing to place them in your hotbar and then select that hotbar slot, you automatically walk up 1-block inclines and open/close doors as you walk through them, there’s a plethora of features to make getting around the world trivial, the start of the game moves way faster due to the player getting access to better equipment faster, block-swapping exists… This toy posits that this is all why Terraria feels like a fundamentally different game. In old versions, it felt like you had to fight tooth and nail to get anything accomplished, but nowadays, everything feels all buttery-smooth. The main friction you encounter in progressing through the game is with boss fights, as Re-Logic obviously intends.

Now, obviously, it would be insane and stupid to claim that Terraria is a worse game, right now, than it was all the way back in the 1.0.X era, and it would be even stupider to claim that it’s worse because it has QoL features. However, this toy does not believe that every single QoL feature added to the game was inherently objectively positive or correct from the game's inception. Rather, they were natural, smart conclusions for Re-Logic to come to with the direction they decided to take the game in as it continued development. But this was not the only direction Terraria’s development could have taken.

There’s a very unique feeling to old-ass Terraria versions, and it sucks that tracking down and playing these versions is so goddamn hard. You only ever have a vague idea of where you are because there’s no map to use as reference so you’re heavily encouraged to keep most of your stuff on the surface, and to build infrastructure to connect important things underground/in the sky so you don’t get lost. Everything is so unwieldy that building a simple house and making it look remotely nice feels like a herculean effort, enemies kick your ass way harder earlygame due to decent gear being much harder to access, and there’s a lot more gravity to the choices you make in what gear you use, because it’s a lot harder to hot-swap your armor and accessories when you're not actually at your base, which is harder to get to/from due to the world being far more difficult to navigate, as a whole.

This all leads to an exponentially slower game than modern-day Terraria is, where every single thing you do needs to be deliberate and well-thought-out, and everything takes a much longer time to do. This toy remembers spending weeks as a kid building housing for the meager number of NPCs that were in the game back then, alongside farms for all of the potion-making herbs and a big obsidian generator, and all of that could be accomplished in a single play session in 1.4.X.

There is a universe in which Terraria saw minimal QoL updates and instead leaned really hard into this direction, making a slow, exploratory game where the player’s power level very slowly increments upwards and you’re encouraged to build largescale infrastructure rather than the (relatively) fast-paced boss rush where your power balloons out of control immediately and your infrastructure is a fast-travel teleportation network that takes minimal effort to set up that the game currently is, and that version of the game would not have been wrong, inherently. It would’ve been more niche, for sure, but it wouldn’t have necessarily been bad, or even worse than the current game is.

This is what makes this toy sad that old Terraria versions are so difficult to get ahold of, as well as what fascinates it so much about the retro Minecraft community. Speaking of, let’s switch gears and talk about Minecraft for a bit.

Minecraft, as it’s sure most of the people reading this are well-aware, has recently been having something of a renaissance in its retro community, the people who prefer alpha and/or beta versions of the game to the modern game. A handful of complete overhaul mods have come out for these versions (notably, Better Than Adventure and ReIndev) that put interesting spins on the game’s design, basically asking the question, “What if Mojang decided on a different direction for Minecraft to take from this point in time?”

A lot of these mods cast aside the instant-gratification convenience and linear progression of modern Minecraft in favor of slower-paced, more survival-ey gameplay, placing more emphasis on the act of exploring your world and gathering resources as the core gameplay loop as opposed to… Well, modern Minecraft really doesn’t have much of a core gameplay loop to speak of, and that’s sort of the problem, now isn’t it? This toy doesn’t want to get too far into all of this, though, as its thoughts on Minecraft’s game design are not the focus of this essay. Rather, it wants to put the spotlight onto Minecraft’s community.

An ever-increasing number of people have been growing more and more critical of Minecraft over the last 5 or so years. It’s obviously always had its detractors, but in recent time, there have been more of them that have gotten more vocal, and it’s become pretty normal to have the take that Minecraft has been getting worse lately. And a big culprit that people keep pointing to is QoL. One of the most common criticisms of Minecraft online is that quality of life features have made it way too easy to trivialize the process of blasting through the game’s content, getting obnoxiously overpowered enchanted diamond (or netherite) gear, reaching the End, and getting access to elytra and shulker boxes.

Despite both being excessively popular games that have been made far easier through their QoL changes and overall polish, that have both been in constant development for over a decade at this point, the critical responses to those features in Terraria and Minecraft could not be more different. This is amusing, and gets at something deeper with regards to game design that this toy doesn’t know it’s ever heard anyone actually say: Quality of life features are fantastic tools for reducing the noise that gets in the way of a game’s vision, but when you add them haphazardly and/or with no real vision for what you want your game to be in the end, you can very easily wind up accidentally removing a large portion of what could’ve otherwise become compelling parts of your gameplay loop. They need to be used intelligently, or they can, in fact, harm your game and make a significant contingent of your playerbase enjoy it less.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A new economic report from TD says Canada is falling behind the standard-of-living curve compared to its peers.

According to the report published last week, Canada has been lagging behind the U.S. and other advanced economies in terms of standard of living performance (or real GDP per capita), despite recent years of “headline growth.”

“Economic growth does not necessarily equate to economic prosperity,” TD economist Marc Ercolao wrote

Aside from considering GDP, Ercolao explains, standard-of-living quality is an important factor in understanding Canada’s economic performance.

In the 10 years before the pandemic, Canada was pretty close to the U.S. in terms of average growth, just over two per cent per year, which hovered above the 1.4 per cent average for all G7 countries, Ercolao says. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[friendbreakfast]

a very small, unimportant yet useful quality of life feature i think the next Ace Attorney game could benefit from is marking with a ✓ any piece of evidence youve already presented to a specific character during investigations if presenting that piece of evidence will not result in new dialogue.

that way, people who like me enjoy presenting every single thing to get extra dialogue arent ever in a situation where they forget what theyve already presented so they get the same lines of dialogue over and over again.

i know its trivial to just press the B button to skip through already-seen dialogue which is why i said this is a small unimportant thing, but it still takes time to do so for longer strings of dialogue so it would be nice if players could just avoid it altogether.

plus, sometimes the same piece of evidence being presented to the same person actually results in different dialogue because of the story having given more detail to it or whatever else, so the ✓ no longer being there could be a good tell for the player that theres new dialogue they could get from it so they can choose to present it again to get that sweet, sweet extra dialogue.

[blackcoffeedreams]

[magicspun]

Disabled people shouldn't have to explain themselves. If you wouldn't question an able bodied person, why are you putting a disabled person trial over every little thing?

There's an argument over disabled people using Doordash. And people are using all sorts of explanations on why it's accessible.

Because we want the same convenience.

The issue shouldn't be about why. But why not? Those on financial assistance shouldn't have to explain themselves. They should have the same quality of life as others.

They're already on disabled income. They've already "proven" themselves. They don't need to be needled or scrutinized. If you're mad you're not getting paid enough or not enough free time- that's your issue and fight elsewhere.

[akindplace]

I've been doing little things to improve my quality of life and I have to keep reminding myself that I deserve these little treats, that other people do that too and that restricting myself will not make me humbled, it will make me sicker and sadder. I've been taught restriction all my life regarding everything (I come from a very poor family where every penny mattered for a long time), and I have to remind myself that buying scented candles and cake will not make me completely broke or spoiled rotten.

Restrictions don't make me stronger as a person. They make me weaker. It is okay to accept good things, to have good things, to treat myself in little ways because those little things do go a long way and they do turn out to be a big deal in life. They build up.

So this is your reminder to treat yourself, to give yourself good things, to accept nice things, to feel deserving of them because it is you right as a human and you are no exception to having the things you need and want. This is your reminder to build up your life quality in any way you can, if it makes you feel a little better, laugh a little bit or makes you feel warm and cozy and wholesome, please do it. It is not indulgent, there is no guilt in doing little nice things for yourself to make your life a little easier, a little better. Feeling contentment is healing. 

[gent-illmatic]

Generous Friends

[charlignon]

For those who don't know, XKit Rewritten is a browser add-on that provides a diversity of quality-of-life features for the Tumblr website, for a better and more customisable user experience. It is available on Firefox and Chrome.

And if you are an Android user, you can get it on Firefox Nightly as well ! It requires a few technical steps but it's definitely doable :)

[earthkeyper]

If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep on being what you've always been. Nothing changes your perception unless you make it change.

[waytoobiased]

btw we don’t even need to get rid of market economies to remake society around the radical notion that our lives matter more than year-over-year quarterly profits

[william-r-melich]

My Mind Is Opening Up - 04/25/2024

Something wonderful is happening to me. About a month ago I decided to quit using marijuana, but I thought quitting cold turkey would be too difficult, so I decided to limit my usage to once a week. After my first week from that decision, I noticed a significant improvement in my cognitive and writing abilities. My thoughts were coming to me with much more clarity. I'm finding it much easier to figure things out and creatively express my thoughts more effectively. These last few weeks have been very interesting. In that time, I have created 9 riddles and wrote one of my most entertaining and interesting article which I posted here last week entitled, "What You Really Need to Know About the Trump Trial in New York But Were Afraid to Ask." My thoughts and emotions just poured out from my mind, expressing my frustrations at the current situation involving Trump and his legal battles, as well as the declining state of our once great country. The riddles began with my first one I recalled from memory as a question I asked myself about 20 years ago, which I was never able to find an answer to until about two weeks ago. The question, which I decided to use as a riddle was this, "What is both the smallest and largest thing in existence?" Not only did I find an answer, I found 50 of them, which can be found on my website; RealitysReal.com, at the end of the Poetry & More section. The process of my reasoning was very interesting, as I found myself using the same line of thinking for other areas of consideration. As an example, in reference to the riddle I just mentioned, as I was going through a process of logical analysis, I discovered that the word, "everything" is slightly different than the word, "existence."

Existence only contains everything that actually does exist. Everything is closer to reality in the aspect of having both abstraction and the concrete. Although abstraction does exist, since it is an abstraction as a form of energy produced by the mind, its existence can't be completely independent as inherent since it's originated form something that can. For example, the idea that not anything is real would wipe away everything including itself because the idea as an idea and not what it represents is real, but not true.

I went on to describe some of the answers I had decided to use and others to eliminate, and I'll not disclose those in case you're interested in trying to solve the riddle yourself. In an earlier analysis leading up to the conclusion that everything and existence are different, I was considering two particular words, "theory" and "words," as answers to the riddle, which I had decided not to use. This is what I wrote.

Words? That's sort of like theory. Those could each erase themselves out, but they don't have to. That's like suggesting the possible representation of the smallest and largest. Does that qualify? No, not really. My other words can't just be anything in relation to how they would apply to the riddle, whereas "theory" can be immediately disqualified by the suggestions of alternatives or implied modifications. The word "words", however, being as universal as existence itself in what they can represent, that they can be applied correctly. And since that being accurate is or should be the goal of using "words", as is the goal of "theory", they merely work as a potential, but not exclusively as an actualized one as they can be mistaken. Whereas a universal word like "existence" can only be as it is. Therefore, "theory" and "words" do not work.

This was quite a process of reasoning in determining the answers to my riddles, and one riddle in particular kept me up all night. I find what's happening to me as my mind continues to expand to be very interesting. I must remain sober so that I can further advance in this enlightening journey I'm on. Where it leads me is yet to be discovered, I suspect I will create many more ideas and expressions of meaning and purpose. My mind is on fire and my desire is to keep rolling with it so I can bring to the world something of value that will positively inspire my readers to improve their quality of life. I really do believe that thinking adds value in many immeasurable ways...

[feehippielove]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Have you ever come across the study conducted by Raphael M. Bonelli and his colleagues?

Published in 2014 in the journal "Social Science & Medicine," the study is titled "Religious affiliation and health outcomes in the United States: A population-based study."

It investigates the connections between religious affiliation and health outcomes in the USA, utilizing data from the National Health Interview Survey—an annual survey gathering information about the health and lifestyle of the U.S. population.

The study found that individuals who identified as atheists had a lower risk of the following conditions:

Cardiovascular diseases: Atheists had a 14% lower risk of heart attacks and a 12% lower risk of strokes. Depression: Atheists had a 26% lower risk of depression. Suicide: Atheists had a 33% lower risk of suicide. The study also revealed that atheists enjoyed a better quality of life compared to religious individuals. They were more satisfied with their lives and experienced a stronger sense of joy in living. What do you think of that study?

I haven't come across that before. My Google-fu isn't working as I haven't been able to find the study. This is possibly not helped by the fact English isn't his first language.

I've checked his website, Google Scholar and some other locations. If you've got any links, a DOI or even a copy, I'd like to take a look.

https://www.raphael-bonelli.com/wissenschaftliche-publikationen/

https://sfu-at.academia.edu/RaphaelBonelli

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=EJe7IVcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

[salisburyautisticcarerealestate]

Salisbury Autistic Care - How Housing Options Impact Quality of Life?

Empowering Autistic Individuals

Did you know that one in every 100 individuals is on the autistic spectrum and there are around 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK?

While most of the time focus is on early diagnosis and treatment, individuals on the autistic spectrum face many challenges in their day-to-day lives. This is because we are not sensitive to their needs, and our social spaces are not designed to factor in the challenges they face. That is the reason why specialised homes for autist people become all the more important. It provides them with a safe space to relax and be at ease.

In this blog, we delve into this topic further and also learn how Salisbury Autistic Care: A Sanctuary of Support for People on the Autism Spectrum is working towards making autism-friendly homes.

Importance of the Right Housing Environment

As is true with most people, the housing environment affects an individual’s ability to thrive and lead a fulfilling life. Autistic people need to have spaces where there is no sensory overload. Be it in terms of bright colours, light, or loud noises. They thrive in spaces where there is minimum exposure to stimuli. Therefore, creating homes with muted colours, natural lighting, and sound insulation enables them to feel comfortable and at ease.

Support Services

Adults with autism may require ongoing support with their daily activities. Therefore, housing arrangements where they can find support but still have their own independence is the need of the hour. In addition to this, ensuring access to behavioural therapy, life skills training, and other services helps them cope better and gradually build self-confidence.

Inclusive Community Living

Although people with autism do not like sensory overload, meeting with new people and developing strong bonds within the community helps them thrive. It also helps reduce the stigma associated with autistic people and promotes inclusivity and understanding. Inclusive community living arrangements, such as group homes or intentional communities, offer opportunities for social interaction, support, and belonging. By fostering a sense of community and connection, these housing options can combat feelings of isolation and promote social integration for individuals with autism.

Person-centred planning

Person-centred planning prioritizes the autonomy and agency of individuals with autism by involving them, their families, and support teams in decision-making processes. This collaborative effort results in tailored plans that address the individual's unique strengths, challenges, and aspirations.

Salisbury Autistic Care

Salisbury Autistic Care - Empowering Families: The Impact of Autism Care in Salisbury. We are not just providing housing – we are nurturing spaces where individuals on the autism spectrum can truly feel at home. Through our thoughtfully curated properties, we create safe, supportive, and comfortable environments where residents can thrive. From incorporating sensory-friendly features to offering personalized support services, we prioritize the well-being and happiness of our tenants above all else. With a commitment to understanding the specific requirements of each individual, we strive to foster inclusive communities where everyone can flourish and lead fulfilling lives.