#29.9.23

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Been playing Final Horizon most of the day, having a good time by and large, lots of positive things to say. But! I'm gonna save those for later, because right now I'm in the mood to bitch. See, I think many of Frontiers' mechanics, as they are, don't always facilitate the level of difficulty Final Horizon goes for. Or in simpler terms, game too hard :(

As a semblance of necessary context I'm playing the game on hard mode and found the entire first playthrough of the game plus all of the first and second updates' content very easy. This isn't a fact that bothers me and I didn't like specifically need the game to be harder, but like I wouldn't have minded it tbf. Final Horizon by and large has been harder in pretty good ways, primarily just with tighter platforming sections that ask more of the player, and more involved Island Challenges with actually strict timers. These bits are kino. I'm really enjoying them a lot. No complaints at all.

But the part where I'm bitching is the changes made to Guardians - for a tl;dr they just do more damage and have more health (plus some new attacks tbf), so now even playing as maxed out characters they take several minutes to defeat because they're arbitrarily spongy as fuck. I think the combat in Frontiers is pretty fun and disappointingly the base game made it a bit too easy to max out and then combat encounters were over in seconds, but this is a bit of an overcorrection - as it stands I actively dread Guardian fights because it's just "oh hey can't wait to spend like 7 minutes fighting the same enemy with the same few attacks" and knowing that if I take too much damage I'll just like run slightly away and cyloop for a bit. It's not really an engaging or rewarding challenge at all and I think either the combat needs to have a lot more mechanical depth to facilitate fights of this length or they should just not make bosses this strong lmao.

The other way in which the game is being a bitch is with specifically the M120 island challenge - in which you align some statues so they light up, cyloop some torches so they activate floating platforms for you to run along, and then you use those platforms on a timer to chase down a flying orb which you mash the attack button until it, uh, you finish the challenge. The flying orb challenge thing is honestly the worst type of challenge in the game anyway, it's finicky and not that clear what you should be doing and the button mashing sucks, and yeah no this specific use of it is just too fucking much dude. Am I supposed to be mashing really fast? In a certain rhythm? Some other bullshit? It genuinely doesn't feel doable to me on the timer you have, and I've tried to cheese it through other means but just haven't found success. The target reticle doesn't even always stay on the thing so sometimes I just randomly end up attacking because uhhh fuck me I guess. Like it's so shitty and tedious and I'm aware I'm gamer raging because the game got the best of me but I just think this specific puzzle type is ass bro.

By and large most of the difficulty increases are super enjoyable so far but yeah nah fuck these specific parts lol.

[phoebebabyarchive]

Phoebe on her IG story 🎀

[muttslife]

- left the house for foodie friday after being ill and hidden since saturday

- bumped into boyfs sis in law and brother

- bumped into his friends who i had NEVER met before (lots of them)

- watched raging bull

- now i am currently overwhelmed and slightly unable to breathe in a mcdonalds god bless my earplugs

[zeitlosigkeit]

zeitlosigkeit · Ztlsgkt.1497......JOIE DU PIANO III : ' at night, she sleep, i am drunk....29.9.23.

[thebozoarchives]

🐍👑

29.9.23

background and uniform reference ↓

[frenchiepal]

29.9.23 🍁 gloomy challenge

only two days left until i'm leaving for france, meaning i need to start packing :') apart from that life is still fairly chill rn, gotta love how the leaves are slowly turning orange

mood: 9/10

[angelexotica]

29.9.23 ✨

[deerr95]

29.9.23

[ramayayi]

Date: 29.9.23

Had odissi class and I am learning Sritakamala which is a dance piece from Jayadev's Gita Govinda on Krishna/Vishnu

The Krishna Kalia naag fight will be in the next class and I am kinda excited for it because come on who doesn't love being a hero

Sometimes when I dance to and about these godly pieces, I feel the distance between God and a human decreases. This might not make too much sense but with the number of items and dance performances I do and watch it feels more like being a part of it and imbibing their qualities.

Also Battu requires a mental prayer before doing it especially in front of my teacher.

[kaunisbaby]

via vertigo_co's tiktok, 29.9.23

[do-androids-dream-ao3acc]

Blind Guardian / Stuttgart 29.9.23

I've been at the Blind Guardian concert yesterday ❤️ This was absolutely a dream come true. Some of you may know I named most of my fics after their songs and often use their lyrics as chapter titles. And they played some of my favorite songs 😁 I had a blast. 10/10 can recommend.

[phoebebabyarchive]

Phoebe on her IG story 🎀

[minnies-bub]

[29.9.23]🐶📸

Stray Kids JAPAN SEASON'S GREETINGS 2024 "Air-ful"

Unit Teaser Image 🐿️&🐶

[dailytextprompt]

29.9.23

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[theoptimisticpatriot]

‘Ministers like control, but Labour must offer radical, irreversible devolution

(First published on LabourList 29.9.23.)

Labour has promised a ‘Take Back Control Bill’ in the first King’s Speech. Aimed at England, it must bring to life Keir Starmer’s promise of a ‘whole new way of governing’.

But what sort of Bill? Will it entrench a fundamental and irreversible shift of power away from Whitehall and the UK government to England’s localities? Will it embed new constitutional rights for the people of England? Or, will it be more piecemeal tinkering of the kind we have come to expect? 

Disregard for norms means we are sleep walking into a crisis

Those questions are sharpened by a new report on the UK constitution published by the Institute for Government and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. As well as seeing a growing crisis as political leaders ignore unwritten rules and norms and constitutional checks and balances, they argue that parliament does not treat constitutional issues seriously enough.

They conclude that constitutional legislation should be clearly identified and given much closer scrutiny than happens at present. Once given constitutional rights would be significantly harder to remove. 

Will the Take Back Control Bill be such a ‘constitutional act’ with all the protection of rights for England’s citizens that implies? 

Labour’s devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland empowered the peoples of those nations. (Our incorporation of the ECHR and the Freedom of Information Act empowered people across the UK).

Will the people of England also soon be empowered in this way? Will they now know that the local authorities they elect, and the combined authorities those councils form, will have the right to exercise devolved powers they need, rather than by the gift of the UK government?

Does England sit in a constitutional blind spot?

England has no constitutional status, and while England is not the main focus of the Bennet Institute’s report, it does conclude that ‘England is over-centralised, lacks coherence and does not have sufficient accountability mechanisms, creating a democratic deficit….(and that) there is a disconnect between Whitehall’s increasingly Anglo-focussed operations and its continued insistence that it governs at a UK-wide level, with a failure to differentiate between its UK wide and England-specific functions.’

Gordon Brown’s report for Keir Starmer also argued that the “confusion of the government of the UK with that of England… does a disservice both to the devolved nations and to England itself” and advocated constitutional autonomy for local authorities.

Reforms are certainly needed in Whitehall. Former Permanent Secretary Philip Rycroft, and I have recently set out what these should be. But the Bennett/IfG report also calls for a new English Governance Bill to clarify the powers and responsibilities of different layers of government. This, surely, is what the Take Back Control Bill must do.

That would make it a constitutional Act, not a simple piece of enabling legislation to extend current powers.

To understand why this matters, we can look at the successful return of franchised buses to Greater Manchester after 40 years. While the BeeNetwork rewards the ambition Mayor Andy Burnham set out six years ago, those who claim it as a triumph for the mayoral model do not realise  that the legal and constitutional basis for the exercise of these powers is shaky.

It is determined by and dependent upon decisions taken by the Conservative central government, not on the leadership of individual mayors.

Without a constitutional fix, progress could be reversed easily

If ministers wanted, a simple legislative change could take away these franchising powers irrespective of the wishes of the people, councils or mayor of Greater Manchester.

In fact, the Conservative government has arbitrarily restricted franchising powers to the ten Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCLAs). Other local authorities and combined authorities – often covering much bigger geographies – would have to ask permission from Ministers with no guarantee of agreement.

More fundamentally combined authorities and their mayors do not have same legal status as other local authorities, or the London Mayor and Assembly. There is no collective status of being a combined authority – each has bespoke powers given at the whim of ministers.

Even the powers they have by regulation do not give them defined rights to exercise them, receive money in relation to them or enjoy financial autonomy in how they exercise those powers.  Local authorities themselves do not have the right to establish combined local authorities (instead having to jump through Whitehall hoops). Local people have no say on these arrangements or even whether they want a mayor at all. 

Labour could build on the current flimsy structure of ad hoc deals, perhaps making them simpler and offering some more powers, but keeping the real power over devolution in London.

Or it could see the Take Back Control Bill as a constitutional change, as Bren Albiston of the Society of Labour has argued, that empowers local people to take more decisions, draw down more powers and control more resources as a right, rather than by the whim of Whitehall. 

We must learn from history and beware an ad hoc approach

The first option may be attractive to new ministers who want to enjoy tight control. But ten years of English ‘devo-deals’ has shown that this ad hoc approach devolves too little and in far too few places.

Not even the most powerful MCLAs in Manchester or the West Midlands have anywhere near the power they need to counter the impact of historic austerity, let alone reshape their economies, public services, or communities for the better. 

Radical and widespread devolution will be critical to the delivery of Labour’s five missions and to making the best use of  limited public finances. This means that the Take Back Control Bill should become the first step in placing England’s governance on a proper, devolved, democratic and decentralised basis.

[letterswithumlauts]

29.9.23