This has uncovered my shameful Linux confession lol - I don’t understand Docker at all. I think I’m reasonably okay with Linux stuff, I can put an Arch install together without using the archinstall script, I got NixOS up and running without too much trouble etc. but I just can’t get my head around how Docker is supposed to work for some reason.

My favourite recent one is Yunohost, which makes it super easy to spin up a little self-hosted server with a bunch of apps. I’ve been having good fun with that and a spare Raspberry Pi lately.

In the UK a few years back, Boris Johnson refused to show up to a debate on climate change, so Channel 4 replaced him with a slowly melting block of ice.

It annoyed him so much he tried to privatise the entire TV station lol.

I was hoping to sneak that in, get people balling on one conspiracy theory to get in on another one lol

As a non-American, sometimes you open your phone and there’s a meme with no context about a candidate being shot in the ear, or people eating cats, or transgender aliens or babies being aborted after they’re born or the president trying to buy Greenland and you just kind of go “Oh, America” and go about your day lol.

I once tried to get a conspiracy theory going that Flat Earth was a fake conspiracy started by the government to cover up the real conspiracy - that the moon is flat. That’s why we only ever see one side of it and why we were able to land on it. It didn’t take lol.

I’ve been using Filen, seems to work pretty well, it’s got a Linux version of the desktop sync client (comes as an AppImage IIRC) and I dunno if they’re still doing it but they used to have a good price on lifetime plans that were ~100GB that you could stack, so I got a good amount of storage without having to pay a monthly fee.

Yeah you can’t go wrong with Ursula Le Guin IMO. I loved The Left Hand of Darkness too.

Also 'cause I love sharing it, her 2014 book award speech is worth a read as well:

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

+1 for the whole Culture series of books. My personal favourite is Look to Windward but they’re all good.

The only thing I can think of is sending actors out to pretend to be Americans in American TV shows. Australia & New Zealand are strong in this field too, but I think we’ve still just about got the edge on it.

I think they’re falling into the same trap Bioware fell into, whereby they have a couple of critically acclaimed franchises under their belt and are universally praised and all is well, but then obviously that can’t last forever so as soon as the wheels start to wobble a bit, they start over-thinking, over-developing and over-managing their games because the next one needs to be a massive hit, but then what inevitably happens is they end up sabotaging development as they keep throwing out ideas and polishing all the rough edges off. So you actually end up with something that feels under-developed and bland because it’s all designed by committees and middle-managers, and built by underpaid devs on a crunch who just want to be done with it.

Also Microsoft bought them in the meantime, which can’t be helpful.

The A is for “Actually this game is $90 now instead of $60.”

I could, but even the base version here is $90. I’m good to just wait, honestly.

Yeah I feel like you could tie these crises into player actions pretty organically - like if there’s a war and a big enough percentage of Civs get involved, then it triggers a World War crisis, or they could tie something into the global warming mechanic from Civ VI, or have a Cold War come up from excessive espionage actions, stuff like that.

Which is a weird move IMO, 'cause normally you’re supposed to steal the homework of someone who’s doing a better job than you are.

I don’t like denuvo but for me it’s the price that’s the deal-breaker. Nearly $170CAD for the full version is absolutely bonkers, and I simply can’t justify it. So I guess I’m picking it up in a Steam sale in 2028 or something when it’s $40 with all the DLC.

It’s wild, I’m one of those patient gamer types but there are certain games that I’d make an exception for and buy as soon as they came out, and Civ has been one of those games as far back as I can remember. But this is gonna be the first one I’m not going to bother with. Between this and the absolutely bonkers price, I really can’t justify it. Maybe in a few years when the Denuvo is removed and you can get the full thing for like $40 or so, but no way am I paying $167 CAD for the full edition on day one.

I would take it down just on the off-chance that her ghost might use it as a portal to return from the nether realm, Ghostbusters 2 style.

I mean it probably won’t happen but why take the risk

I died in that game from reading a book that was too sad lol

Honestly Season 9 is a banger for me too TBH.