ELSEWHERE

TIL that the "grapple" (apple that tastes like a grape) isn't, like, an apple bred to have grape-like flavour or a genetically modified product, but just an apple that's been soaked in grape juice. What a wildly disappointing gimmick

TIAL that it's actually "grāpple" and they intend people to pronounce it 'grape-el'. Good luck with that, I'm sure it'll work as well for them as it has for wacom (you know, if the concept survives long enough for it to matter)

 
Oh my god

Always a good sign when you have to include a pronunciation guide on your product

I also note that it does literally show the apple bathing in grape juice, so you know what, fair cop

Gonna track the forecasting for a bit, for data

 
So at 5 o'clock this morning it thought that it would be:
9 AM: 61 (low of 54) - ? (wasn't awake)
1 PM: 67 (low of 53) - x (off by at least 12)
5 PM: 71 (low of 53) - x (off by at least 18)

 
At 12 o'clock this afternoon it was 79, and it thought it would be:
4 PM: 85 (low of 76) - x (off by 4)
8 PM: 87 (low of 71) - o (off by 2)
12AM: 67 (high of 87) - o (low off by 1)

 
At 4 o'clock this afternoon it was 89 (and rising fast, it's already up to 91 twenty minutes later), and thought it would be:
8 PM: 92 (low of 81) - x (off by 7 (low only off by 4))
12AM: 76 (high of 93) - x (off by 8)
4 AM: 71 (high of 92) - x (off by 8)

 
At 7 o'clock this evening it was 88, and it thought it would be:
11PM: 79 (high of 88) - x (off by up to 11)
3 AM: 72 (high of 89) - x (off by between 7 and 9)
7 AM: 69 (high of 90) - o (matches 8 AM, off by 7 for 6 AM)

 
At 8 o'clock this evening it was 85, and it thought it would be:
12AM: 76 (high of 85) - x (off by 8)
4 AM: 70 (high of 86) - x (off by 7)
8 AM: 67 (high of 88) - o (off by 2)

 
At 12 o'clock this morning it was 68, and it thought it would be:
4 AM: 60 (high of 67) - o (off by 3)
8 AM: 71 (low of 57) - o (off by 2)
12PM: 76 (low of 58) - x (off by 10)

 
At 2 o'clock this morning it was 65, and thought it would be:
6 AM: 59 (high of 65) - o (off by 3)
10AM: 71 (low of 56) - x (off by 5)
2 PM: 76 (low of 57) - x (off by up to 13)

 
At 4 o'clock this morning it was 63, and thought it would be:
8 AM: 66 (low of 59) - o (off by 3)
12PM: 71 (low of 57) - x (off by 15)
4 PM: 76 (low of 57) - x (off by 15)

 
At 6 o'clock this morning it was 62, and thought it would be:
10AM: 66 (low of 59) - x (off by 10)
2 PM: 71 (low of 57) - x (off by up to 18)
6 PM: 76 (low illegible) - x (off by 13)

 
At 8 o'clock this morning it was 69, and thought it would be:
12PM: 74 (low of 66) - x (off by 12)
4 PM: 79 (low of 63) - x (off by 12)
8 PM: 81 (low of 61) - o (off by 1)

 
At 10 o'clock this morning it was 76, and thought it would be:
2 PM: 82 (low 73) - x (off by up to 7)
6 PM: 85 (low 69) - x (off by 4)
10PM: 66 (high 86) - x (off by 9)

 
At 12 o'clock this afternoon it was 86, and thought it would be:
4 PM: 89 (low 80) - o (off by 2)
8 PM: 91 (low 74) - x (off by 9 (or off the low by 8))
12AM: 70 (high 91) -

 
At 3 o'clock this afternoon it was 89, and thought it would be:
7 PM: 92 (low 82) - o (off by between 3 and 10 (0 for the low))
11PM: 75 (high 93) -
3 AM: 71 (high 92)

 
At 4 o'clock this afternoon, it was 91, and thought it would be:
8 PM: 84 (high 94) - o (off by 2)
12AM: 77 (high 94)
4 AM: 72 (high 94)

 
At 6 o'clock this evening, it was 89, and thought it would be:
10PM: 79 (high 88) - x (off by 4)
2 AM: 72 (high 88)
6 AM: 90 (low 69)

 
At 8 o'clock this evening, it was 82, and thought it would be:
12AM: 71 (high 79)
4 AM: 65 (high 80)
8 AM: 83 (low 64)

 
At 10 o'clock tonight, it was 75, and thought it would be:
2 AM: 65 (high 72)
6 AM: 60 (high 74)
10AM: 78 (low 60)

I liked today's connections, it was a satisfying one

(attempt to group the items into four categories)

Got stuck in Do Not Feed The Monkeys for a couple days by which I mean I've played 13 hours of it over the weekend. It's fun!

Today I played a bit of ESO with Erika, as planned -- we did a dungeon with seven-ish bosses in it, trying to get pieces for that set I'm farming (still no luck), and then we did Endless Archive which is a roguelike, sort of bossrush-adjacent thing, and got through a few stages of that before dying very hard to an enemy that does an enormous amount of damage in an AOE. Oh we also detoured before everything else to a boss that's two griffins, which a bunch of other people were in the middle of fighting, and died a fair amount to them but eventually won! So that was exciting

The free ESO+ will run out before her next weekend, but we should do it again when I can afford to resubscribe

Meanwhile, Cooking Simulator got a patch out that is supposed to have fixed the bugs that were preventing me from playing, so I played a fair bit of that. I don't know if it actually has, because I haven't needed to make more rice yet, but the game hasn't crashed on me today at all, so that's good. I might restart the game because they're also supposed to have reduced the speed at which you unlock recipes, but I think I'll wait to see if they do any more modifications there in coming patches -- I am Dying for a way to customise my menu and just decide which recipes I want to be on it, instead of Literally Everything being fair game for the customers to order. There's also, bafflingly, a feature that lets you unlock new recipes through a gacha machine and I just can't fathom why I would ever want to. I'm already overwhelmed by the dozens of recipes that I didn't pay for, why would I voluntarily make that worse?

Meanwhile meanwhile, in addition to all the goodwill they've burned with the state of this DLC (and they already had a pretty iffy reputation, but people are livid about this one), they also recently posted an update about Cooking Simulator 2

 
It's, uh. It's AI! And people are Not Happy about it.

I'm really curious about what's going on at the studio -- are they putting out fires or do they just not actually care?

Anyway. Should do things that aren't playing video games, but I think I'll mostly just let myself tonight and do productive things tomorrow. Oh, I should take a covid test if we still have some, I don't think I'm sick but I've been feeling blah for a couple days and my throat's bothering me. Better safe

Gonna go eat more dinner, watch some youtube, and then probably putter around my sushi restaurant some more

If you're curious, this is the "new art"

A generous read is that they made these new character models (though there's some definite whiffs of AI about them, too) and then just slapped them on top of an AI-generated backdrop for the promotional image. But either way it's not a good look

They didn't even pay someone to clean it up, it's a really uncanny valley attempt

The background is extremely bad AI shapes that melt into nothing (the enormous garlic on the left is hilarious though) but the foreground is nuts. Dude's kitchen knife is double-sided, the hands appear to have enough fingers but just look wrong, tons of random textures in places that don't make sense, and omg I just noticed the giant block of ......... cheese???? on a hook???? in the background????

anyways yeah I did peep the reddit to see if there were any threads about it and uh

no but good lord are you guys okay in there