WTF Happened November 2024
This is the seventh recap post, affectionately titled "WTF Happened." This is a monthly news post of sorts. I use these recaps to briefly cover cool, exciting and also not-so-good and downright terrible events which happened in and around the past month. I'll cover things like world news, movies, TV shows, tech, VR, personal projects (like this blog), cool game releases, and anything I find out during the month that I personally think is worth mentioning. I ask or at least search around on social media and news sites toward the end of each month for ideas, and I may or may not steal credit for the news I place here! I will cite references when it suits me! Moving on....
OK! Phew! I dug myself out of a rut this week after what seemed like the end of the world! Well, the end of the U.S.A. I grew up in. All us progressive thinkers and even middle-of-the-ground signposts are all biting our fingers about the next four years about an unpresidented - I mean, unprecedented - election victory that basically spelled out misfortune for practically everyone in the States and everyone who deals with us... aside from maybe Russia. Anyway, I wrote a rather sad post, titled "Taking a Break", about the election and showed a side of myself that I don't typically show: my vulnerable side. After growing up here for nearly four decades, this is the first time I've actually doubted not just our election system but our justice system as well. This marks a really dark time in U.S. history, so I'm going to continually mention it for the foreseeable future in all WTF Happened articles going forward. I'll try to be creative about my I-told-ya-so's. 
Start treating women better, guys.
After the Trump victory, there was a surge in "4B Movement" sentimentality all over social media for several weeks. It seems to have died down now, mind you, but it's definitely something to write about. For those unaware, the 4B movement is kind of a retaliatory movement against men who don't appreciate and respect women. The idea is to basically refrain from sex, dating, marriage, and anything else that comes from those things. Of course, this kind of movement is ridiculous on a number of levels, but I can see why you'd be into it. Men have become quite deranged lately, moreso than usual. At least, that's how I see it, and I'm a man. I'm married, so I got no skin in the game, but single men should be worried about this and take note. Start treating women better. It's not hard. Or maybe that's your problem? *cough-ED-cough*
There's a lot of politically charged news surrounding the election and Trump's cabinet picks, but I'll just let you look up the rest of that on your own.
Warning: It's stupidly stressful.
There are a lot of good things happening, though!
"The Supreme Court heard arguments today in a landmark case on transgender rights. The justices are weighing whether a Tennessee law barring gender-affirming care for minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution," Geoff Bennett said according to PBS News. This case could further transgender protections for the Trump term, but it's still an on-going hearing and a final decision had not been announced by the time of this article. That said, it's nice that people are still fighting the fight, even in red states. Everyone needs to understand that we should not give up after a loss. That of course doesn't apply to casino gambling. The House always wins.
Tor, the popular privacy-focused browser, has put out a request for 200 new volunteer web tunnels by the end of the year. This comes as no surprise considering the previously mentioned election results. These are trying times, but there are good players on the field.
Unfortunately, we lost another old soul who made the internet great back
in the day. The voice of AOL, Elwood Edwards, died at the age of 74 on
November 7th. His iconic voice lives rent free in my mind since I was but a youngling.
In gaming news...
The Steam Autumn Sale happened November 27th to December 4th, and it was a pretty decent sale. It wasn't as impressive for some genres as it was for AAA titles. We saw pretty much every Sony published title drop 50%! That's huge! There was also a pretty good deal on the lower tier Steam Deck hardware, and similarly, we had a Black Friday sale on Legion Go pretty much everywhere else. I grabbed a Legion Go for my wife, because it's the first Windows 11 handheld PC and can actually run The Sims 4 and a ton of other games she loves.
At the same time as my wife got a Legion Go, I got a Playstation VR2! I waited and waited for the PSVR2 to go on sale, and it finally hit a really convincing price point at $350 for a bundle deal including the PSVR2 hardware as well as the one exclusive game I wanted to play since day one but was resisting: Horizon: Call Of The Mountain. I wrote an article specifically to cover this great deal early on, so check that out if you're interested... but the sale on PSVR2 is still going on for the rest of December!
By the way, the Legion Go pricing has been all over the place since its initial sale of $500. It's original price was $800. At the end of the sale, the original retail price was reduced everywhere to only $700, and soon after that, it had an even lower price of $470, and a day later, it was back up to $540. Wild. Anyway, even at $800, I'd highly recommend the Legion Go. My wife loves it. Amazon link here.
Gotta keep your pizza warm, and that's why there's now a Pizza Hut-themed 3D printable pizza warmer that utilizes your PS5's heat to warm your pizza. You can get the 3D print files here. Unfortunately, the site requires you to fill out a form to get to the files.
The exact time this print design was made is still a mystery to me, but I started seeing articles about it on November 11th, so I'm assuming it got an official release then. It was hinted at well before then, mind you. I can easily find YouTube shorts about it back on November 4th.
Anyway, 3D printers are cool. You should get a Bambu Lab A1 Mini.
In VR news, there's a lot happening as well! We have an official release date for Arken Age - January 16th, 2025 - and we also got the release of Meta Quest 3S on October 15th. The Quest 3S came bundled with the new Batman VR game, too, which I'm still slightly salty about but whatever. I'm going to be a patient VR gamer and not get the Batman game until it's heavily discounted despite everyone hyping it so frickin' much!
Behemoth had its release date announced, and it was kind of a stealth drop on - well, it releases tomorrow, guys. That's right, December 5th! Sorry. I wasn't prepared for this, either. Releasing right after a major sales event is not a good idea, but Behemoth is such a behemoth of an IP that we will probably only ignore it for a couple days and grab it on payday. The only question left is whether to get the Quest 3 version or the PSVR2 version, and I honestly think it might be better on PSVR2 at launch at least because of an upcoming day one patch. The Quest 3 version's patch is likely to be delayed to day seven according to RoadToVR.
There's rumors of a new Steam Controller as well as a new Valve Index controllers sequel that looks like Quest 3 controllers. The new Valve controller design looks very over-simplified and concerns me greatly... but it's ultimately a rumor and not yet confirmed by Valve to be their Index upgrade. The long awaited Index 2.0 or 'Deckard' headset continues to be awaited.
I'll cover more gaming news in the upcoming Most Interesting Games article, which I'll link to in this article later. In the meantime, there's a lot cover here.
Macaulay Culkin joined the cast of the Fallout TV series for season 2, slated for a 2025 airing. This probably matters little to most of you, my loyal readers, but Culkin's one child star that gets better with age, and I think he'll fit right into the Fallout universe. I just hope he's cast properly and isn't made to be a hero character. He's likely going to play a supporting role and not a big one.
The "Superman & Lois" TV series had its season 4 finale this past weekend. Gruntled, one of my gaming buddies, thought it was a great finale, so I'm giving it a mention here. I personally didn't watch past season 2 and kind of dropped off the bandwagon for a while, but I guess I'll catch up now that its narrative has wrapped up. If you want spoilers, you can read about the finale here, but I find that reading about a finale robs you of an experience building up to it.
The Onion News Network, a satirical news media parody site which has been around for a long, long time, bought Info Wars! I know, I know, more politics, but come on. This one's funny as hell. Super ironic move by The Onion. Well played.
Recently, there's been a huge push to leave Twitter/X, and the best alternative has ended up being Bluesky. Some coined this phenomenon as a mass X-odus. You can find me at Bluesky, but you can also find huge celebrities there, like Mark Hamill.
It's quite impressive how quickly this site has grown, and it's now my primary social media platform. There is also a growing movement to actually leave X and stop posting there. The European Federation of Journalists has 295k signatures to leave the platform and never post their news articles there again. That group includes major publications, like The Guardian.
It's not just Bluesky benefiting from this, though. Reddit has also seen massively increased use, overtaking X app in popularity over the past week. - TheLondonEconomic
I honestly don't know of a better piece of news to end on for this month. Follow me on BSky!
As always...
Stay fresh, frogs!
