Decisions are made by those who show up; it really just comes down to that.

And if the other side is better at getting people to show the fuck up…. You need to make an effort to do the same. Even if it is a far from ideal choice.

Yep, absolutely loved it. Decent story, excellent action, well acted…. If you like action movies, you’ll love this one. Saw it the day it came out because of how much I liked the trailer.

Thankfully i haven’t had any bad experiences like with that chair. Even as kids, we were always very specific with the gifts we wanted. Parents likewise. Mom will straight up just send me 10 items she wants for mother’s day or her birthday. That suits me just fine.

Buying things that fit someone else’s interest is tricky at best. I have very specific hobbies and interests. Usually, if it’s ‘cheap enough for you give as a gift’, it’s certainly cheap enough that I’d have bought it for myself if I wanted or needed it. It’s also difficult for people outside of that interest to judge what is a good value or what an item might cost. I.e. to me, a 50 dollar dildo sounds expensive. It’s a piece of rubber after all, how much can it cost? Most casual people wouldn’t know that a thing like a 250 dollar dildo even exists. So while they think they’re doing you a favor by buying something they consider ‘expensive’, it might not be what you want or need.

Gift cards are just silly. It locks you into a specific store and some cards even expire or are otherwise really inconvenient to use. COMPANIES really love them though - because people just don’t always use them or let them expire. That’s free money for a store, and a wasted gift…

Ironically, personally I do like to give physical gifts. But I only do it when the person has no gift expectation and only with items that I’m personally familiar with. For example, interns at our company always get a really nice pen when they depart. I like to tailor the specific pen to the intern, based on their writing habits, favorite color, etc. Usually I give people Lamy Safari fountain pens or rollerballs, in their favorite color. It’s a way for me to introduce them to a hobby that I like, while also being a meaningful gift. After all, everyone can use a good pen, right? You might not buy one for yourself, but you’ll certainly enjoy using it.

Seriously though, it’s pretty much the best gift you can give if you simply don’t want to pick the wrong thing. Which is much, much more likely to do if the recipient doesn’t outright tell you exactly what they want.

If someone wants to buy me a physical gift, I always give them exact suggestions: buy x, version Y. Shop at this store, pay no more than Z for it. That way it’s pretty much impossible for them to fuck it up. Can’t get it done? Give me cash instead.

If it’s acceptable to give a gift card, it’s acceptable to give money as far as I’m concerned. It’s the universal gift card without the restrictions.

Sometimes it can be really fun when developers take an existing IP and completely flip the script on it. For example, when most people thjnk about Metal Gear, they think about sneaky stealth missions in real time. And yet there’s also an actual turn-based card battler in the series. Two of them in fact: Metal Gear Acid 1 & w. Came out the serie era as Doom RPG.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Acid

Ever played 2005’s Doom RPG? That’s an oddball title for sure. It was a pretty early phone game. Supposedly there’s some wonky software that lets you run it on a PC, but I never bothered with that. It was really fun when it originally launched.

https://youtu.be/tY3xi0HPrbs?si=MIr-eH2c1Gc5Pr7T

Heck, I enjoy platforming as well - in platforming games. Absolutely love games like Uncharted for example. And I wouldn’t complain if Eternal had SOME platforming, like 2016 had as well. Some verticality is nice to have. But Eternal was just too much and too challenging to be fun. I really don’t want to redo a particular jump-dash-dash-jump-dash sequence ten times. Most actual platforming games aren’t THIS brutal.

I’ve certainly seen a fair few topics with this sentiment, so I know others were put off by it as well.

All I want is none of that fucking platforming from Eternal. I’ve finished 2016 a bunch of times, but I still haven’t seen the end of Eternal because of all the unnecessary and annoyingly difficult platforming sections. I could deal with a few, but that was just too much.

If they put in platforming, it’s a no-buy from me.

Couple years ago, I visited a historic grand prix that featured classic F1 cars. They also had open pits, so you could walk up and ask questions and literally stand next to the cars.

I was standing next to a 70’s F1 car when they performed an engine test. I was wearing thick, professional earplugs and the biggest Peltors you’ve ever seen. When they fired that thing up, I lasted all of five seconds before I walked out. At that point, it was no longer sound but sheer pressure. You could feel it in your chest.

As for how the mechanics do it? Easy, they’re all deaf as a post. Even the best earpro can’t prevent that kind of hearing damage, especially if that’s your chosen career. If you’re worried about good earpro not being enough, best advice is to put distance between you and the object/career path involved.

That game is dead to me. I really loved it when it was actual humans playing, but I checked out years ago when the bots started taking over. Some days you couldn’t get ANY actual match in, since bots would straight up vote-kick you off.

Valve doesn’t seem to really care or they would’ve fixed it on their own. So I doubt a petition will have much effect.

Which is exactly what everyone does. At least in the US. And every side is equally wrong about it.

The loudest voices always draw the most attention. And I don’t know any other vegan voice that’s as loud as PETA’s. That’s kind of the problem.

There’s also the ‘guilt by association’. Look at organisations like PETA: they even complained about things like the treatment of entirely fictional animals in video games, like Palworld. Basically, you can’t even argue that ‘they look like real animals so it encourages real-world mistreatment’ like they usually do.

That does not make you look particularly sane. I’m sure they do good work as well, but that sort of thing isn’t helping their cause.

Well, here in the Netherlands we definitely need far more energy in the near future. We’re moving away from natural gas for heating and fossil fuels are going away in favor of electric vehicles. Add in things like heat pumps, more people getting airconditioning, data centers and other growing energy needs.

Basically, right now we have ‘just about’ enough electricity available, but soon it won’t be. We already import quite a bit of energy from other countries, which makes us inherently vulnerable.

Nuclear plants are expensive and take a long while to build. Which is why I hold politicians responsible for not pushing them through years ago. The best time to build a nuclear plant was ten years ago. The second best time is today.

Even the link itself mentions how it’s not really a good metric to use as it doesn’t factor in whole lot of externalities. I.e coal is cheaper, but when it creates air pollution that shortens your lifespan, is it worth the tradeoff? Nor does it factor in things like energy density: a nuclear power plant is far smaller than the amount of land needed to put up enough wind turbines to match its output.

Basically… LCOE looks like a neat gotcha, right up until you look past that first diagram.

https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood

Absolutely that’s scary. Heck, we’re seeing the effects of it every day. If more nuclear means less coal and other polluting options, I’m all for it.

I’ve got solar panels on my roof, and being Dutch windmills are in my blood. But I’m also not blind to the reality that both wind and solar will only get you so far. And there’s already a lot of opposition to wind farms - they ruin the view, endanger birds and there’s health concerns due to noise and shadow projection.

If we just build even one nuclear powerplant, we could basically just… not do wind. And we’d have pleeeenty of power for the coming energy transition, change to electric vehicles, etc.

But noooo… nuclear is scary. Especially to the people who only cite Fukushima and Chernobyl in regards to safety. That’s the same as banning air travel because of 9/11 and the Tenerife disaster. Nuclear power is safe, cheap and we owe it to the planet to use it wisely instead of more polluting alternatives.

Well that’s… certainly understandable. Not gonna argue that one :D

That was my understanding of it when it first came out. Which is something I’m wholly not interested in as a concept. It’d just retroactively ruin the series for me.

Close. The latest one is Fast X, which is actually the 11th movie.

I’ve seen the first three or so when they first came out. I don’t really hate the series as such, but loathe the wider cultural impact that it had. For example, it ruined racing video games for quite a while. Everything suddenly needed to have modded rice rockets with underbody lights, driven by annoying dickheads with boring, cliche back stories. It effectively ruined the Need for Speed series.

I didn’t even bother watching the last one. Don’t think I’ve ever even met someone who’s seen it either… But hey, apparently it made enough to warrant another movie, so what the fuck do I know?