Episode 485 - How Cold Should Milk Be?

Rob's been having some bad luck with home appliances recently, and as unfortunate as that is at least it makes for some good Content(tm). Before we get to that though, Rob, Patrick, Ren, and Cado discuss the current wave of unionization efforts across the US, including the ones beginning to crop up in the video game industry. Then, Patrick and Ren have been checking out the thematically resonant Hardspace Shipbreaker, a game about dismantling ships for scrap under contract for a corporation, and has some great writing and pointed criticism of labor practices and physical labor under late stage capitalism. After the break, well, we deal with a break, the potential breakdown of yet another large home appliance in Rob's house. Then, Rob tries to distract us from this tragedy with tales of his campaign in Daemonhunters, which is... almost certainly on the start of a death spiral. Then we enter the Cado Corner, where they talk about Multiversus, the Warner Bros. attempt at a platform fighter that doesn't feel particularly well tuned for the high speed play it's movement would suggest. On the bright side, Cado's been having a great time in the new Destiny 2 sea... wait no, not that, we're actually gonna talk about Roller Champions, the new free-to-play roller derby meets basketball game that actually feels really fun to control.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://shows.acast.com/vicegamingsnewpodcast/episodes/episode-485-how-cold-should-milk-be
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I’m here for any episode with “Rob’s [appliance] debacle” in the show notes

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I’m personally higher on MultiVersus than Cado is, and I spent a lot of time with Super Smash Bros Ultimate. I do think it does feel very different from other Smash games, but I think it really shines if you’re able to play it with someone, even if you’re not talking a lot. I hated playing 1v1 but I think things like the slower pace and support abilities really shine in 2v2.

One gripe I do have is how complicated some of these movesets are, even if there are technically less moves than in Smash Ultimate. There are lots of status effects and cooldowns that aren’t as prevalent in Ultimate, and it can get very confusing, very fast to know what status effects you have at a time.

I hope Rob is able to fix his fridge soon.

To answer the question posed by the episode title, I’m not saying milk should be ice cold, but I want Mr. Freeze to break down my door demanding an ingredient for his wife’s cure

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I feel Rob’s pain exquisitely. I too just had my LG fridge die on me. I had a brief moment of hope where I assumed everything in my fridge was room temperature because one of my kids had left it ajar all night, but no. I left a grill probe inside and it never got below 66 degrees inside meaning it wasn’t even sort of working. Some amateur sleuthing and handy work pretty much confirmed the compressor was shot, all the other components were working as intended. Of course the compressor is the most expensive piece to fix and between the part and the labor it’s knocking on full replacement cost anyway so… I Costcoed myself a new fridge.

Typically most modern fridges are smart enough to know when they’re left open and shut themselves off. Is it possible that the door is janky in the right way to fool the fridge into thinking it’s closed and running nonstop? Sure, but it feels somewhat unlikely. If it’s still cooling but not quite enough cleaning the coils should help, and you should check all the fans to make sure they’re blowing the right way.

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If the fridge is still cooling at all it should be repairable.

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I am starting to become a little concerned for Rob’s finances.

I am loving Hardspace Shipbreaker’s gameplay and story. I agree that the “work” in the game being fun doesn’t conflict with its message. One of the things that radicalized me was cooking in fine dining restaurants. I went into the industry because I love to cook and wanted to work at the high end so I could work with other passionate and dedicated people. I found those people and a business model that prey upon that passion. Me and my coworkers did a huge amount of difficult, highly technical, and mostly very rewarding work. Work that made a lot of money, which we saw almost none of because our labor was “unskilled”. The problem wasn’t the work itself, it was the system around it.

There is push for unionization and workers rights in the restaurant industry, but it’s going very slowly. In the meantime I, like many others, have moved on to jobs where sitting down isn’t seen as a sign of weakness. I still love to cook, but I’ll probably never do it for money again.

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I would be inclined to agree if it wasn’t for the 2 year old whirlpool microwave that my landlord put in shortly after we moved in that can not tell when it’s open or closed. So sometimes you open it 15 seconds before it’s done and it keeps going as you reach inside…

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Oh for sure, I’m just saying that at least in theory, the fridge has devices in place to stop it. Modern fridges should, in theory, have multiple failsafes beyond the door switch like sensors in the condenser itself to see if it’s running too hot/long/whatever. Life happens and I’m sure these failsafes are the cheapest they possibly can be so…

If the fridge at least cools there’s only so many things that can be wrong with it if it doesn’t cool fully, and a completely shot condenser is in my limited understanding the least likely. Unless some but not all of the coolant has leaked out, the condenser is, stereotypically, an all or nothing kind of thing. Depending on what tools you have on hand you can do stuff like check the voltage flowing through or shoot an infrared thermometer at the coils to get a better idea. Bare in mind I’m an extremely amateur handy man trained mostly by reading a bunch of manuals and watching a bunch of videos, but I have managed to repair an old washer, dryer, fridge and oven from various problems over the years which is impressive purely to myself for not managing to screw it up royally yet.

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I feel like alienation isn’t discussed enough in these contexts. Labour is great, actually! It’s work that sucks. When the labour is being done to someone else’s specifications (including things like enforcing or encouraging poor safety practices) and for the purpose of enriching some random asshole, that’s a recipe for misery; but the entire mundane simulator genre wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t satisfaction and pleasure to be found in doing tasks outside of the constraints of work.

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Concur with both of you. One of the most toxic myths the rich often perpetrate is that people are lazy and default to not working. Nonsense. In my experience, people everywhere like to work, find work satisfying, and are always finding ways to optimize and improve the work they do. Many bad work situations can suck all these benefits out. Binding labour with excessive rules and micro-management is a tacit admission of failure by management. Rather than doing the challenging, often awkward labour of working with your individual reports to remove obstacles, encourage and advise and to recognise and support individual skills and collectively shore up weakness, they resort to petty timekeeping and one-size solutions.

Anyhow, I’ve been having a lovely time with Hardspace: Shipbreakers. Deeply satisfying. A lovely tactile physicality to every interaction. Being presented with a whole, functioning, lived-in machine, and slowly reducing to nothing piece by piece is both delightful and slightly melancholy. Very much one of my games of the year. I also think how enjoyable the core game is is crucial to its narrative. Labour struggles happen because there is something worthwhile to defend.

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