I remember very vividly when they redid the special effects in the original Star Wars trilogy and added this dumbass ring coming out of the Death Star explosion. It completely broke immersion for me because I was like “wtf is that supposed to be?”

Me, from the USA:

I don’t know the exact date but it was a spring day a little over 20 years ago now. I was in my early 20s and spent a lot of my free time hiking, camping, etc. At that time I was really heavily into caving, especially vertical caving where we would use ropes, harnesses, etc to explore chasms.

This particular day I was on a several day camping trip to a really popular area in a national park. In the night a big rainstorm came and everything flooded. I had been there several days with my friend and we didn’t get the memo about the storm coming and were curious why nobody else was camping there when it was usually packed that time of year.

The next morning we awoke and this campground (on the banks of a river) was halfway underwater. We soon learned that our road out was also underwater so we were trapped at the campground. We had plenty of supplies as we had been there several days with intentions to explore caves, etc.

Now from this campground there was a really popular hike through a canyon with stone arches, cool caves, waterfalls, etc that was normally packed. Since we had the place to ourselves we decided to do the hike. I should mention that this was quite dangerous as the first mile or so of the trail was now under 2+ feet of moving flood waters. We had wetsuits (for caving) and ropes so we geared up and braved the flood waters.

Dear reader it felt like such an epic adventure. I knew the landscape well from being there many times but this time was magical. There were massive waterfalls everywhere rushing through the green spring foliage. We had to use our technical rope skills to safely cross rushing white water streams but everything was so beautiful and dangerous.

I haven’t done it justice of course but it was just this perfect day where everything came together. I was young and healthy, I had my best partner with me, we had all of the right gear, the road being underwater meant we had the whole area to ourselves, and everything had been magically transformed into a waterfall adventure park for us to play.

I’m still chasing that feeling of pure joy I had that day.

What if he’d had an allergic reaction on his way to the guillotine? Wouldn’t that be awful?

/s

I started the same thing earlier this year when my subscription to Prime was expiring. So far it really hasn’t been a big problem and has the nice perk that it encourages me to shop less at Amazon.

* looks around and gestures broadly in agreement*

+1 for Winix. I’ve had several of the 5500-2 units for 2-3 years now. They do a good job and I appreciate that they have HEPA + charcoal filters so eliminates more than just particulates. My main complaint is that the lights don’t fully turn off at night so I always have to cover them with something (usually a T-shirt). Otherwise I really like them.

Plane went down over the Atlantic during mysterious circumstances.

I believe that it is illegal, yes (I’m not a lawyer). But that is the point. They can “buy” a bunch of cheap useless stuff from him instead of giving him money. That’s the essence of money laundering. Do something that superficially looks legitimate so that you can move a bunch of money that would otherwise be illegal.

For sure. But of course dude tried a coup on live tv and we are having trouble getting the justice system to hold him to account. So getting proof of the NFT scheme that I outlined as a hypothetical is probably going to be harder.

A lot of his value is tied up in assets that aren’t liquid (real estate). Also he is probably not worth as much as he says.

But the main reason is that these “cheap crap” things you mention are probably vehicles for money laundering from foreign actors. The best example are the NFTs he was hawking for awhile. Costs next to nothing to make and foreign states can buy a ton of them to give him money without it being easy to detect. Even if it is detected it is still legal to buy silly NFTs, right? Certainly more so than a foreign government giving a candidate bags of cash for nothing.

This trailer is my favorite even though it’s old now.

I generally like the picture quality from my LG OLED but the interface is not great and you are sooo right about the updates. My SO constantly complains about turning on the tv and it needs an update.

This is a perfect analysis that was thoroughly ruined by not ending it with:

aNy qUeStIoNs?!?

This sounds well and good but it depends a lot on your kid’s personality. I’ve tried to always be open and honest with my kid about every topic they have questions about but I don’t go out of my way to put adult content in front of them. That said I feel like I’ve had to learn over time when to temper my responses because I felt like I was contributing to unnecessary anxiety.

Having a young child worry about pandemics, nuclear weapons, etc just isn’t really productive because their mind isn’t capable of weighing risk and likelihoods the way an adult can. My kid refused to go outside and play for two days because (he asked) I told him that C. botulinum lives in the soil outside. Triggered a full blown panic attack that we would get botulism if we left the house, despite having been outside many times before that.

So yeah, I’m not trying to set my child up for a “the future is all rainbows” but I am now trying to be a little more moderate at what and when I introduce topics.

I’m confused - doesn’t everyone just leave Satisfactory running to increase production??

/joke

They almost made a truck with the Silverado EV but then they had to turn it into whatever the Avalanche is supposed to be with fins coming off the cab that get in the way of things. Anyways, not to sound bitter but some people like to be able to put camper shells, tool boxes, or other accoutrement on the back.

R1T is decent, just really expensive.

You talking about Tortured Poets Department? Jokes aside about recommending a popular artist as an ‘unpopular’ opinion - I actually do disagree. I’m a pretty solid Swift fan but TPD doesn’t really do anything for me. I’ve listened to the whole album a couple of times and I found the songs all kind of samey and forgettable.

If you want to introduce people to Swift, I’d vote for “All Too Well” which I think is just such a brilliant, relatable song about unrequited love.

Edit: Currently relistening to TPD and I have to admit Florida!!! is better than I remembered.

Haha oh man that is such a nice sleek layout compared to….whatever is happening on my planet. Truth time - I’m really bad at this game but I have a blast playing it. My layouts are not slick at all. Thanks a lot for the link!

Thanks for this tip, I was thinking maybe I could just sort of deal with the biomass stuff by hand until I reached coal but I took a chance tonight and built a line for biomass production like you described and it works well. Cheers!