I’ve been listening to The Dawn of Everything, a New History of Humanity the past couple weeks and it’s been quite interesting. Particularly relevant to this topic is how many societies we have evidence for — through actual contact and documentation or through archaeological findings and anthropological research — that either consciously did not develop or later abolished a ruling class, whether as devolved cultural groups or even in cities of tens of thousands. Examples are given for cities in Mesopotamia, Yucatan, iirc north of the Black Sea, and other areas.

Lots of interesting stuff on personal freedom, collective decision-making, community care, agriculture and conscious lack thereof, etc.

All equines originated from North America, at that, though yes they went extinct and were later reintroduced by Europeans.

Similarly, camelids like dromedaries, bactrians, llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos also all originate from North America, their genetic ancestors crossing the Bering strait and moving west or moving south into South America. Those still in NA died in the mid-Pleistocene.

Yeah, I’m not in any vegan groups but I’ve seen (what is hopefully) a vocal online minority of those who use the label for killing-is-wrong reasons come off as angrier at folks using it for any other reason than they are at folks who do consume animal products, and insisting that the other camps should use “plant-based (diet)” instead.

I had Earthworm Jim, some platformer where you’re a clockwork knight toy, a 3-player smash-em-up called something like Three Dirty Dwarves, and the dinosaur fighting game Primal Rage. It’s probably ass but I have a lot of nostalgia for Primal Rage, ha. I’ve gone back to listen to the soundtrack on occasion.

And ducks. I’ve had a couple generations of ducks and they’re so adorable as ducklings, including the newborns. The adults are pretty, though; got one whose black feathers look plain from a distance but are an iridescent sort of deep purple and green closer up.

I wrote a reply earlier but my app was being futzy and it looks like it didn’t send. Apologies if this double-posts.

I wasn’t making an absolutist statement on folks’ tastes in games (or any media). I don’t believe that most Hearts of Iron players are fascists any more than I believe that most Crusader Kings players want to bang their sisters and play eugenics, or that Factorio players want to terraform an alien planet into a concrete and steel wasteland and kill all native life.

You don’t need to be a fascist to enjoy playing as a historical “bad guy”, but, especially as it concerns real-world politics then and now, media centered or themed around the time during which fascism evolved will naturally attract a greater audience of that leaning than media that doesn’t. I personally have a greater interest in the mid 19th-mid 20th centuries than many other points in history due to the rapid sociological, political, and technological advancements of the era – particularly labor theory and uprisings – so I get drawn to games like Victoria for those systems.

I think they’re referring to the observed propensity for those who are “really into” world war II history to be right-wing, so 1930s-1940s-ish. This obviously isn’t ubiquitous, but having a particular interest in the second world war has definitely taken on a reputation.

Anecdotally, playing Paradox’s grand strategy games, Hearts of Iron has more noticeable fascists, or at least players who near-exclusively play fascist nations “because it’s just so interesting”. I have some cousins who mostly play fascist Germany.

Reminds me that a couple years ago I went back to Morrowind for the first time since I was a kid. Lot of nostalgia built up, and I still like it for what it is.

I hit some enemy (one of them little bugs on the trail to Balmorra) and the game’s like “you missed”. Excuse me? No, I didn’t. I modded that out because that system only makes sense in turn-based RPGs or Disco-esque dialog that can easily and visually account for it; not in an action RPG. Damage resistance (or even immunity) can be fine, but attacks that visually hit but the game says miss never feel fair. Definitely a quirk of early games in the genre.

I do overall prefer its expanded skill and gear system over later entries’ more simplified ones, though.

Uranus is Greek; the Roman equivalent would be Caelus.

Okay, so obviously conch shells had to come from somewhere, but I’d never considered what a conch was until right this second.

Yeah, there’s a few subs that I miss — particularly the ones for my city and my state — but r/twobestfriendsplay is top of the list. It was by far the sub that I most enjoyed interacting with since I joined years ago. Lots of power users who I’d immediately recognize by pfp.

The actual group that it’s named after broke up a decade ago — they’ve been disbanded longer than they were a thing — but it was still loosely connected to a couple of the guys’ ongoing careers, particularly two of them who host a podcast and stream separately. More importantly, it was a hub for discussion on games, movies, shows, comics, whatever, niche or popular, even if the relevance to the group was tenuous; the mods tried to block some topics but lost the battle on vtubers after the guys had Mori Calliope on the podcast, lol. I imagine it’s even more lifted now that one of them streams with several vtubers.

tl;dr yeah I really miss some niche communities I’d been subbed to for years.

E

Yeah, I worked grocery for a couple years and we were instructed to do that, but we were also constantly understaffed and discouraged from taking the time to do so, so it often was only done on products whose sell by dates were within a couple months of receiving (dressings and the like).

I vividly recall discovering one night that my coworkers hadn’t been doing this for our coffee section, and my acting manager was a tad passive-aggressive when he found that I’d spent about 30 minutes stuffing over 100 bags of coffee beans into boxes so it could be tossed (or given to a discount store or whatever). Some of the bags were 5 years out of date.

This has led to me checking the dates of every perishable I pick up at the store.

I can read black on white text but it hurts my eyes immediately and will sting for maybe a couple minutes afterwards. It doesn’t have to be AMOLED — grey or dark beige or amber or whatever can work — so long as it isn’t really bright.

Damn, the first time I had it, it made chocolate taste like soap for months. Probably better for my diet.

Unfortunately, ever since the second or third time, raw carrots all taste like soap. I used to eat carrots with half my lunches, and now I can’t stomach them.

It was a somewhat common punishment for swearing or talking back to your parents in the US a few decades ago. You can probably see it shown in American cartoons from the 90s and 00s.