Fuck Paramount for what they've done to Star Trek.
Second thing that is amazing and sad to me:
The Maori got to New Zealand maybe around 1350-1400. European settlements started in the late 1700s. The Maori were on New Zealand for approximately 400 years longer than the European populations, but they have a special right to the land, etc., forever?
The Maori practiced cannibalism. They were smart and brutal warriors. One Maori king visited Britain, bought a bunch of guns, came back to NZ and promptly slaughtered his enemies.
The Maori devastated local New Zealand wildlife when they arrived. The giant flightless birds -- the Moa -- didn't make it 100 years. Most of the animal extinctions occurred before European settlement (though, to be fair, more occurred since then).
Maori are very proud of their heritage, their language, and their past.
If they can be proud of cannibalism, slaughter, and driving countless species to extinction, why can't Europeans also be proud of their heritage without being called racist and white supremacist?
For what it's worth, I do admire the Maori in many ways. They put up a hell of a fight and were very clever in their tactics. Compared to many other native populations (e.g., Australian aborigines), they seem a cut above.
Visited New Zealand within the last year. Really nice place. Nice people, nice cities, beautiful scenery.
Seems fully in the grips of globohomo though. You know things are bad when your Arab immigrant driver (of 25+ years in NZ) is complaining about how many foreigners Ardern's government let in. This one guy was hardcore--wanted to expel most of the foreign immigrants from the last 10 years. So they were making Auckland a shit hole.
Anything worth watching after season 1? I binged it, thought it was great (love that intro music too), but when I started season 2 I lasted less than an episode before I bailed. I just wasn't ready to move on from season 1.
99% sure my boys and I did this exact same thing...more than once.
Boys simply like "things" and especially things that can be tools or weapons. It's not taught, it's 100% innate.
Any praise for The Witcher was for on reason and one reason only. (Do I need to say who I'm talking about?)
Actually, "Toss a Coin to your Witcher" was pretty cool too.
Pretty good video, below. I stopped watching long before this episode, but wow it looks bad !
For example I was watching this guy doing a trip through France/Spain all the way to Africa just for the lulz. He was clearly getting harassed by those migrant car washers at some point and just went okay do my helmet ( He was on a scooter ) and decided to go "Wow what an experience" instead of call it like it is. Now we all know why they fucking do this, it's because inevitably they're hoping for sponsorship by travel companies and they're not going to get any money or could get demonetised if they went I'm not going to France ever again those migrants made everything hell.
Wow, France has Squeegee Guys? One of the things Giuliani did as mayor was get rid of them. What a blight.
Actually the "X" is ancient and from the word for Christ and Christians.
In Greek, the first letter of "Christ" is an X -- a chi. If you look at ancient church artwork you will see many "X"s. You will also see X+Rho (XP). My favorite is ICXC, often seen in Orthodox artwork.
Yep, the intentions are clearly disrespectful here in not spelling out Christ or Christian, but the "X" as shorthand goes back to the early Church,
Beria is really, really fascinating. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole once reading about Beria, Stalin, and that whole era.
Before ~25 years ago, PC games were rarely patched, and if they were, you had to get a replacement floppy disk. Others would know better than I, but I think Xbox was really the first console with game patches? Maybe Dreamcast?
I remember being able to track down some update binaries or other patch-type files for some games in the mid-90s, either getting physical disks from friends or even downloading files from a BBS, but it was really widespread highspeed Internet that made patching feasible.
If you were releasing a game in 1990, you had to be SURE the game would work. There were of course bugs—always—but the game had to work.
Great summary. I find it loathsome, but the enemies of Kiwi Farms (namely Elliot Liz Fong Jones) found a strategy that got some traction--goes after the low level networks. It is awful, antithetical to a free and open Internet, and it should be exposed for the totalitarian tactic it is.
In the meanwhile, apply it against the same people people who came up with the strategy. Fuck them.
Yeah, right there with you. Warcraft is a great game for grinding and farming. I think that's my problem with Dragonflight--the grinding is too complicated, gated, etc. I think you nailed it...the mixing it up all together ruined it.
Some of the most fun I've had is late expansion world stuff or previous expansion farming.
I did play some hardcore before the official server was released . It's fun. I've gotten to 30 twice before making getting ridiculously unlucky once and ridiculously stupid the second time.
I don’t quite know what it is about Dragonflight. It seems like it should be a good expansion, but I just didn’t enjoy it. I do know there too damn many systems, currencies, reps, etc. I logged in after the new patch came out (not having played for a couple of months) and I don’t have a clue what is going on.
Kudos for getting to that level of raiding. I’ve been a filthy casual for a lot of years at this point.
AI-related tech is coming to many areas.
Here's an Addon for World of Warcraft: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/voiceover
It's gigabytes of pre-generated AI voice to make every NPC in the game fully voiced. It's pretty amazing. Is it as good as a good voice actor? No. Is it better than a shitty voice actor, better than voice in 1990s games, and better than nothing? Very much so. It's only get to get better too.
I got ~3/4 through but never finished it! I've spent a lot of time playing with mods, random exploring, etc. Maybe I should go back and finish it..
I had totally forgotten that game! MAy have to up how many NES games I played. I never owned many, but between sharing with friends, Blockbuster, etc., it's go to be up there.
So many weird games too. A Boy and His Blob? (Apparently has a 2009 remake)
That's a lot on Steam! For me it's been mostly buying up games I couldn't play--but wanted to--when I was a kid.
I own Skyrim for PC, Switch, and Oculus, have played many many hours, and I have yet to beat it :-)
I haven't logged in for a while, and I'm sure I'm not at 1500 days (!), but I have a still ridiculous number of hours in WoW. Played consistently through vanilla, BC, and WotLK, started taking some breaks during Cataclysm and Pandaria, and have played very sporadically since then. I still like to check out new expansions.
Kids today get chromebooks. Fine for browsing the web and accessing Canvas, but severely limited. It's kind of sad, and you can really tell that kids today are not learning the same fundamental computer skills that we had to in the 90s/00s (and earlier, though fewer people were regularly using computers in the 80s and before).
Unless you're an autist who has recorded every game you've ever played or a savant with perfect memory, this is a guess.
For me, it's been a fun walk down memory lane, and it's interesting to hear stories of how people got into gaming.
Damn that brings back the memories. One of my earliest computer and game experiences was getting a book from the library that had 600 lines of GWBASIC code for some kind of alien shooter game. I spent hours typing that and I never got it to work.
It did get me interested in programming and trying to understand why it didn't work!
It's almost as if the people who lived through that era, and in many cases witnessed things firsthand, have different impressions than people born 50 years later.
And yes, I do think the numbers are probably inflated, and yes I do think that the Holocaust is still used as cudgel to bludgeon nationalists and Europeans and Christians and yes I think it's annoying that every school kid in America has to read the Diary of Anne Frank and Night and no, I don't think the fact that a bunch of German fucks going genocidal is an excuse to take land from the Muslim and Christian Arabs of the Levant, but idea that the Holocaust is a "myth" is ludicrous.