RunawayFixer

With how Israel has been killing journalists, this is not going to happen. Those mainstream media, that support Israel, know well enough what is happening. It's not like they actually believe their own lies.

I'm going to disagree on this one, at least for me personally using the base functions of the different windows versions was never a problem. Even when completely ignoring the UI changes (including the always increasingly messier system configuration pages), Windows has definitely been regressing.

The user transition from win XP to win 7 was completely smooth for me, it didn't feel different at all. It's only after using it a bit that the downsides became obvious: I remember that file search worked less good, they had made a bit of a mess of config screens and the bloat needed more ram. But it came with a smashing chess program. It felt like there was some minor regression, but it wasn't a trainwreck.

Windows 8 upon first startup was awful since that was the first time that MS wanted to force the user to create a cloud account through dark pattern design. Even if I had not grown up in a time when my operating system did not use dark patterns against me, I would still be pissed off when I encountered it for the first time. Once I got past that hurdle, the Os was usable and problems only emerged when I tried to do more things.

Things like closing a stuck full screen game with task manager, which didn't work because the new task manager would not come on top. Or the new store app, which installed "apps" that were not "programs" and could fe not be uninstalled in a normal way.

From my first experiences with windows 10 I remember that out of the box you could not control when it would update. That pc would wake up in the middle of the night despite the settings saying that it shouldn't and I had to dig deep till I found how to make it behave permanently. Then at a later point I also made the mistake of using the recommended OneDrive sync system for my documents folder and nearly lost all my personal files, fortunately I had a backup on an external hard disk. And the main goal of Windows search was no longer to find files, but instead to trick users into opening bing, to boost microsoft quarterly statistics.

Microsoft has been adding more and more dark pattern design into Windows, it's not a case of "old man yells at clouds", it has really been getting worse and worse with each new release.

And Microsoft firing their qa team and using their customers as canaries is definitely not helping either. So many issues that should have never gone life.

Windows 7 is good compared to Vista, but bad compared to Windows Xp SP 1 or SP 2 (in my memory at least). Windows 10 is good compared to Windows 8, but bad compared to Windows 7.

After a couple more years of MS pushing win 11, we'll probably get a win 12 that is less good than win 10, but better than win 11, so thanks to people's short term memory, it will then be considered "good", but anyone with a memory and some critical thinking ability will recognize it as shite.

It's state dependant.

This article has a few Connecticut examples of the cruelty of the system and some background, from before Connecticut mostly abolished the pay to stay practice (thanks to democrats): https://apnews.com/article/crime-prisons-lawsuits-connecticut-074a8f643766e155df58d2c8fbc7214c

So apart from coercing inmates to do for profit work for pennies (other countries would call it slave labour), some inmates also get to pay for the privilege on top of that.

Here's a more comprehensive article on how inmates and their families are being milked in the USA : https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-dystopian-incarceration-system-pay-stay-behind-bars

So many earthquake zones stop at national borders. From Romanian + Moldavian high risk to very low just by crossing the border into Ukraine. And a similar situation on the nw border of Germany near the low countries and in central Europe. What a nonsense map.

And this map is made even worse, because there exist readily available maps which do contain more accurate information, for example: https://www.epos-eu.org/communication/news/new-european-earthquake-risk-map-and-updated-earthquake-hazard-map-are-available

Not knowing how much is not that big an issue. If it's too much, then it becomes an interplanetary ship. If it's not enough, then it will come down soon enough and we can just try again on an another volcano. It's probably going to require a bit of patience from the crew, passengers and offspring, but eventually there will be a big enough eruption and it will all work out smoothly in the end.

Why has noone ever experimented with placing a very large spaceship in the mouth of an active volcano? And when erupting, the space ship would fly to space without needing any fuel. No resources wasted on multiple stage rockets just to carry up fuel a few km, all that's needed is an enormous spaceship in the shape of a cement plug.

It's a part of good world building to have things make sense. Good world building increases immersion, which makes the stories more engaging for many. It's not a requirement for telling a good story, but it can make a good story better.

Also the inconsistencies of bad world building will be a deal breaker for some, while good world building will be a deal breaker for no one.

How about "Yippee"?

Long-term this is a good thing imo. We are too dominant as a species and offering a same high quality of life to 10 billion people (in 2050) just doesn't seem possible. With less humans, the world would be a better place for the remaining humans and animals. With which I'm not saying that less humans alone will be enough to offer everyone on earth a high quality of life, it just would make it a lot easier to achieve that utopia.

"Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%."

When I first played an rpg with a basic character creator (the demo of bg2 I think, it's been a while), I made a character that was as close to me as possible.

When I was in a period of playing lots of rpg, I tended to make characters that were far from myself and with lots of variation. So more often than not female, but not always.

And now that I play less rpg again, in the rare case that I start a new game, I again make characters that are close to me in looks. Usually an older greyer version, but still recognizably me.