Today, Austin, Rob, Patrick and Danielle discuss a very serious matter, brought on by a reader's related query: coffee or water. Oh, they talk about other things too, including Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Battletech, Stardew Valley, the TV show Barry, and much more. But the core question remains.
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Iâm not much of a coffee person, but it is my understanding that to make coffee, you need water. Without water, youâd just have the coffee beans, or the grounds⌠Huh.
I have not listened to this podcast yet and have no idea whats happening but who needs water when you can make coffee with any hot liquid? Iâll brew my coffee with your fresh red blood you water drinking cowards!!!
Damn how did i miss that Eurovision is this weekend? Apparently the entrant from Australia this year is â[our] answer to Beyonceâ which is a hell of a claim for someone whoâs main claim to fame is âwas on Oprah onceâ.
Iâve always accepted the whole âCranky Kong is Donley Kongâ thing, but Austin asking how that fit into the Mario canon caused my brain to explode. Felt like Idle Thumbs-level Mario Lore.
Also I have this mental image of Hotdog behind a rock with the mech parking break on, leaning back in his chair in straight-up pajamas or something, eating Space Junk Food, and lazily punching in coordinates letting loose giant missile salvos. Itâs very good.
Hard disagree with Patrick on the KONG letter mechanic. They exist in the level to tempt the player into making risky choices, which would be undermined if the player could just die after picking one up without worrying about it. It adds a small degree of tension to the level design.
Iâll also defend the puzzle pieces because of how much they encourage the player to slow down and try to poke at everything to look for them.
listening to the pod now and will say, as someone who never had anything to do with Battletech, hasnât played any mechwarrior games, etc., that Battletech is great and worth getting into if you like tactics. Watched the first video Waypoint put up before playing the game but pretty much figured everything else out (outside of a few questions, where this forum/the stream chat has been very helpful with) on my own. Even stuff like the mechbay which looks daunting at first became quickly accessible, and I was pretty quickly at the point where I was customizing mechs to fit my playstyle.
Thatâs not to say that it came without errors; I didnât understand how the rangefinding mechanic worked at first and completely missed the evasion pip mechanic until one too many pilots just got shredded, but the basic gameplay/loop is pretty easy to figure out, and most of the other stuff isnât critical to know at the outset. The tutorial maybe isnât the best but the UI is good at communicating basic things like the range of certain weapons and the armor/structure health of body parts, so after just playing through a lot of missions most of the finer details that Rob/Austin sound like theyâve picked up due to knowledge of the Battletech universe become apparent.
So if youâre in the slightest bit interested in Battletech or the conversations around it I would recommend the pick up. I have a tendency to have little patience for games that donât explain their mechanics or explain themselves poorly, but found myself both hooked by the game and also found that the game did just enough explaining of the basics that as a player you can keep yourself going and learn as you play; so much so that Iâm a little surprised by how a lot of the discussion around the game deals with how mechanically complex it is.
(As an aside, itâs becoming a gaming pet peeve of mine to describe games as being unfathomably complex; Iâve been turned off by games without trying them before because of how âdifficultâ they supposedly were to get into- games like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, and now this that I now consider to be among my favorites. I just think of how the discourse around those games had kept me from trying them for years, and how much I might have missed because the way they were being described intimidated me so much I didnât give them a chance.)
clear liquids/water, no contest, if I find myself in a post-apocalyptic situation and all the water from even the purest mountain springs isnât clear Iâm fine with dying and if clear water still exists I donât want to be sitting on a mountaintop with a stream rushing past me going âdamn shoulda looted a lifetime supply of food dye from grocery stores on the way hereâ
If I donât find myself in a post-apocalyptic situation I just drink water too much and donât drink coffee. I drink tea, and the plant matter stains the water so thatâs probably out and that sucks bc a lot of my water consumption is in tea but realistically Iâd rather bring water with me on a hike than almost anything else but tea, and even when I bring tea I bring water too (and sometimes even tho Iâd prefer to bring tea there might not be a container clean to keep the tea warm and I just go with water). Too much of my life has water in it! Also tequila? Vodka? Sake? Soju? Thereâs just so much good ass clear alcohol out there.
Okay so Austin was very adamant that youâre not allowed to dillute things down to the point that theyâre âbasically waterâ, but what about powders? What about stuff like Tang? If I choose âcolored drinksâ can I drop a single grain of instant coffee into a glass of water and drink it?
Not much of a coffee drinker, but on the clear/colored divide, I drink a lot of fruit juices and teas that are colored to some degree. Also milk! That shit ainât clear!
I mean if you wanted to get technical about it, there could be some test where you shine a light through the liquid with a photosensor at the other end and if a certain specific threshold of light were not blocked, it would/wouldnât qualify. What that threshold should actually be is outside of the purview of people arguing on the internet, I think.
The base case is an interesting one to think about though. At what level of dilution does a watered down cup of coffee count as transparentâŚor the converse, at what point does a glass of water with coffee added to it count as non-transparent. If the dilemma proposed is a reasonable one then I would imagine there are no beverages that somehow one is not allowed to drink no matter which choice one makes. But that implies this inflexion point of a single molecule either side of which would be imperceptible to taste buds and could be tilted by the process of natural evaporation.
Water and coffee are my primary drinks in life, but if you would do without one forever I would cut coffee, you can still get cocoa and coffee flavoured things, and caffeine from other sources, but you canât live a fulfilling life without water, I donât even see how itâd be a choice, and I LOVE coffee.
I also drink no alcohol or soda so the other part of this conversation was a bit lost on me.
The questions basically becomes do you only ever want to drink water, a handful of clear sodas, vodka, and gin for the rest of time, or every other liquid on the planet. Thatâs not even a choice.
