I think my all time favorite is the N64. Some aspects haven’t aged all that well — the controller is obviously weird by modern standards — but it was such a huge jump from 2D gaming. It was new and exciting in ways that are almost impossible now.

And I still like how weird it was. There was tons of experimentation by developers while figuring out how this new era would work on top of the usual fun, Nintendo quirkiness in the first party games. The PS2 and Xbox ended up setting the standard for modern gaming controls, optical discs, and all the rest but the N64 lived in a weird, fun transition space between retro and modern.

I’ve never really found turn-based games to be all that fun. A few have had a good enough story or some other mechanic to make them interesting but it’s just not really my thing, for some reason. (It’s not just a video game thing. A bunch of my friends play poker or complex board games and I’d usually rather watch than play.)

So, something like the Final Fantasy series or Pokémon games would be my answer. Everyone loves Final Fantasy and Pokémon. I’m clearly the weird one. And I probably would love them if they were more action-oriented.

I wonder if Lemmy could easily do content warnings like on Mastodon. I don’t know if it’s part of the ActivityPub spec but it’s definitely a thing that’s been implemented elsewhere.

Tomorrow is the year 1446 on the Islamic Calendar. But it’s 1445 until then. (I’m using the Moroccan calendar.)

And a huge proportion doesn’t.

Dont underestimate how many people join the military at 18 for financial/career reasons and often end up living overseas and meeting people from different backgrounds. It’s not as conservative as people might imagine.

When I was a kid, Strokin’ by Clarence Carter was a super popular wedding song (at least where I grew up) and it had a fun line dance so we all knew every word and had no idea what it was about.

Aside from small scripts and stupid joke images, I used ChatGPT on a vacation for extra details about the area I was in. It was when it first came out and Wikipedia and Google were obviously better for facts or finding restaurants but being able to ask follow-up questions was sometimes useful. You can be more vague and slowly zero in on what you’re actually asking about.

So, I don’t rely on it for anything important but it’s handy for a number of edge cases (sometimes, if only to figure out what you need to do a regular search for).

My favorite drink is usually a crisp white wine like Pinot Grigio but I’ll order a Sazerac or Old Fashioned (or a specialty cocktail) at nice places. At a dive bar or music venue or whatever, I typically stick to gin and tonic or vodka soda, the main reasons being just that they’re simple for a busy bartender to make and also don’t make me as miserable the next day.

In 2003, The Onion had an “article” with no text that was just the headline “Taste Acquired” and a picture of empty beer cans.

I suspect the main upside will be that you can argue shitty regulations aren’t valid. Like if Trump decides to allow the dumping of poison in the waterhole, it’s very clear that the the EPA is allowed to act when somebody poisons the waterhole.

Or maybe it’s just a Calvinball ruling where they decided the Supreme Court is the only branch that doesn’t have checks and balances. It is a mystery.

There’s an awesome Afrobeat collection called Nigeria: The Definitive Story of 1970’s Funky Lagos. I don’t know if it’s streaming but it’s a good next step.

This is a way more chill recommendation but I love Mayra Andrade from Cape Verde for music to relax to.

The perfect plan. The only thing that could screw it up is if the climate somehow changed.

I would take a class if I were you. Not necessarily at a college but an art, cooking, or dancing class. Whatever you’re into. You mentioned running so maybe try to train for a marathon (or whatever your distance is).

The only other way I know of time traveling is brown liquor and you definitely don’t want to go that route if you’re depressed and lonely. A class will help you meet new people too.

I ran some trail and road marathons when I was younger and trail runners are always super interesting and a bit nuts in a good way. It’s a solo hobby at times but there is a community. Trail running isn’t about your time since every trail is different. No one really compares anything except distance and even then, finding a cool trail is more important. So, it tends to be about the process rather than the outcome.

Definitely not 9-5, M-F. Most billionaires inherited substantial wealth to begin with. But executives, in general, don’t have “hours” in the same way as rank and file workers. It’s more about knowledge and meetings — well, hopefully knowledge — so you might have an 11am meeting, a 2pm call, and then a 7pm dinner with a potential investor or whatever. You don’t really “work” in between those obligations unless it’s a small company (where you probably aren’t a billionaire anyway). At most, you need to make a board report or PowerPoint for a presentation or something like that.

Billionaires who just own things and aren’t in the C-suite don’t work much at all. Even if you’re on some boards, it’s not much in terms of actual obligations. There’s definitely tasks to do but it’s also definitely not a job. So, a bit like being a landlord.

Meh. I’m an American and I don’t hate it here. But I’m from (and moved back to) a culturally distinct place (New Orleans) so I don’t really identify with the dominant culture. I loathe the politics/corruption and how our government is structured. (The amendments are the best part of our constitution and maybe we should think about that for a bit.) I’m deeply ashamed that we’re the world’s biggest arms dealer and oil/gas producer.

That being said, we have beautiful landscapes and individual American people are usually kind, decent people, at least on an interpersonal level. The corruption of companies and elected officials doesn’t usually extend to the middle class. (Like, you don’t have to bribe someone to get a driver’s license or permits or whatever.) There’s obviously loads of advantages to being an American citizen, just as there are to being an EU citizen. I love our national parks. Just the western half of the United States contains enough varied forms of amazing landscapes to keep a person occupied for a lifetime.

So, I wouldn’t say I like America as a political entity. It’s definitely in my top 30 or so countries to live. I wouldn’t give up my citizenship for a random place but, having travelled extensively, there’s a lot of countries that have a better form of government and a healthier balance between oligarchs and labor.

I grew up poor and I think a good measure of whether someone is poor or lower middle class is “Did your parents help you financially or did you help them?”

Maybe the Technology Connections guy is an heir to the General Electric fortune. He certainly has a lot of access to old toasters. 🤔🧐

/s

Incandescent light bulbs burned out at the speed they did because of an agreement between light bulb manufacturers to not make them better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

When I was a kid in the 80’s and 90’s, you only owned a few games if you had an NES or SNES (or Sega equivalent) even if you rented/played a lot of them. So, I got insanely good at the few games I owned. After I beat Street Fighter II with every character on the highest difficulty, I decided to beat the game using only one button (plus the D pad, obviously). Finally did it with Chun Li and X button.

With Super Mario World, the hardest personal challenge I did was beating every level except the switch blocks. There’s a bunch of secret exits where switch blocks are supposed to be the way. It took a lot of cape+blue Yoshi shenanigans to get that one done.

Now that I’m old (or least older) and games are way longer, my biggest accomplishment is actually finding time to play a game all the way through, much less do side quests. I made time for BoTW, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, and Hades. But if I stop playing a game for awhile, I forget all the controls and that’s the end of that game.