I don’t have a screenshot handy, but I still vividly remember Fallout 3 stepping out of Vault 101 for the first time and feeling the awe of talking my first steps into a fresh new world and also immediately afterwards seeing how destroyed it really is.

Which ones have you tried?

I don’t know about yours but I had a very similar store near me years ago, which was exclusively batteries but then eventually expanded into bulbs as well.

Fixing one’s use of filler words is orders of magnitude easier than learning a “better” language. Doubly so for convincing everyone you know to also put in that effort for the same “better” target language.

Not OP but I take it that you’re asking because you’re trying to figure out why they weren’t visually assumed to be a foreigner and why they were assumed to be able to speak Japanese?

A friend and I have this small game we love called Shadows of Doubt where you’re a detective solving procedurally generated crimes in a procedurally generated world. I think the game’s pretty fun and very unique, but I also acknowledge that once you get a feel for how the game works then it starts to get pretty same-y as there’s not a large variety of ways to figure out what’s going on and there are quite a few ways to kinda cheat your way through some mysteries.

The idea we had was a procedurally generated detective game but set in a fantasy world. I’m talking trying to figure out who sent poisoned food offerings to the dragon lording over the area, taking down the local death cult sacrificing people to some god of chaos, tracking down dangerous wizards who broke out of jail right before being executed, and whatever other silly, absurd, or creative ideas they come up with for crimes to be committed or be solved in a high fantasy setting.

I think the game should have enough variety in the types of crimes to be solved that it shouldn’t really run into the issue of getting into a routine of how things work, but I also feel like this could be addressed by having it so if you start getting into a routine of mechanics you engage with then it starts nerfing those mechanics. Keep using mana sensing to find the people at the crime scene? New crime scenes will start to have more muddled mana so it’s harder to detect or isolate exact matches of people. Keep using eye witness testimonies? People start having trouble remembering exactly what they saw. Keep using company/government logs to track who could have been involved? They become less cooperative as time goes on as they start to think you’re leaking that info OR the next criminal heard you did that so they specifically damaged those logs so you can’t use them.

I can’t remember which game it is but I’m thinking in the same vein as that game which adapts to how the player disposes of enemies by identifying you’re doing a lot of head shots so giving enemies helmets, or body shots so body armor, etc.

I’ve somewhat recently been to some fairly small cities in both of those states and while I’ll agree that Texas had some of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen, the areas I went to didn’t look pitifully run down unlike Louisiana. Of course much of this is just anecdotal since I only went to a few locations in both states, but every single Louisiana city I saw felt much more morbid and sullen to me than any city I saw in Texas.

As far as policies go, I’ll agree that I don’t think they’re making great policy choices in Texas but I also think they get more headlines than Louisiana which (from my very limited experience) appears to just quietly sink further into poverty.

I’ve never understood why it is that so many companies make trying to get proper tools to actually do the job you were hired to do is like pulling teeth. That same job I mentioned never wanted to buy me a proper screwdriver set because we had a lot of random junk coming through which could potentially include screwdrivers.

Convincing management took showing them how many computers I had to pass on because the random screwdrivers I can find will basically never include the dozen or so sizes of torx bits, triangle bits, square bits, or random other security bits that those computer used.

My proposed solution was to get one nice screwdriver with a nice varied set of bits meant for computers so that this one purchase can cover as many computers as possible and do it well. The set that I proposed would include 100 or so bits (overkill, but they’re not expensive so why not), would include a nice screwdriver that could reach deep into weird spaces, and would cost about $30-$40. The benefit would be that it would allow me to work on hundreds of dollars of machines every day that were otherwise being wasted.

After literally months of me asking about it on the regular, they came back with a $10 harbor freight ratcheting screwdriver with 10-20 bits that was too bulky to get recessed screws.

One of the most stressful times I’ve ever had at a job was when I was disassembling old tech to remove hard drives and batteries like this one, particularly when my boss wouldn’t understand that inflated batteries are a huge fire risk and are very much pressure sensitive.

After hearing all of that he picked one up as if it were some phone and tossed it around in his hands looking at it all over meanwhile I’m trying to simultaneously tell him to stop that immediately because of the fire risk I just told him about and simultaneously create distance between us in case it does go off.

Knowing what I know now it would have been very fitting if it popped on him, injured by his own stupidity and inability to listen when people are telling him what to do or what not to do. Eventually he put it down then I had another stressful month or so waiting for a proper disposal method to be implemented.

Many public libraries these days have 3D printers, and some of them are pretty nice. You could always check out your local ones to see if they have one you can use for your project ideas to avoid the investment.

On a related note, this is one of my favorite quotes: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” -Aristotle

You say that like it was unprompted. Like OP didn’t very literally ask for these types of comments. If we were talking about some chess discussion that turned into anti-catholicism, you might have a point however you’re literally pointing at a thread asking “why do people dislike my religion?” as evidence for “this is why I’m prejudiced against.”

Someone asked for reasons, people supplied reasons, and now you’re bemoaning that reasons were supplied. I don’t know what exactly you were expecting to see when you opened this thread especially considering it’s about a historically very controversial group that’s existed for millennia, but I certainly wasn’t expecting an outpouring of unanimous support.

Religious prejudice will presumably continue to be a popular pastime for the next millennium as it has been for the last few.

Persecution complex much? I mean it’s not like atheism, homosexuality, or even left handedness were literally beaten out of people for centuries by religious leaders. No no no, you’re still so persecuted like you have been for centuries the way you can’t celebrate your faith (or lack thereof in other faiths), or marry the person you love regardless of gender, or use the hand that’s more natural for you.

Pointing out reasons to be against your religion (even if they were blown out of proportion, which they aren’t) is nothing in comparison to the centuries of shame, abuse, and death caused by your religion. Bemoaning those complaints as millennia of “religious prejudice” only further reinforces the existing image many Catholics create of being tone deaf crybabies.

“Guys, please, it’s just eating the body of a man and drink his blood, it’s not cannibalism. I mean like yeah you are eating flesh and drinking blood, but really it’s not like in a cannibalistic way.”

Truly the logic behind each of your counterarguments is staggering.

“Lemme see why people hate my religion… Oh no, they brought up a reason why they hate my religion! I know the perfect way to counter this argument!”

Yeah that’s exactly the reason I was so baffled by his instructions. I just stared at him and said “but this isn’t a mechanical issue, it’s an electrical issue” “oh well that’s what I do most of the time and usually it works”

Seeing first hand how he couldn’t diagnose a basic issue like that and how he just trusted some catch all solution to fix his problems (for that particular part) really connected the dots to why exactly he seemingly didn’t trust scientists or the scientific process at all.

Fair enough, that being said the problem in question was with a solenoid where the coil has broken insulation allowing a short to ground. He was instructing me to shoot a bunch of WD-40 into the solenoid housing with the core and spring where there were no electronics.

One of my jobs I was working next to an older man who didn’t believe in climate change because “they told us dinosaurs had scales and now they’re saying they have feathers!” He also once told me to fix an electrical component by “spraying WD40 on it” as if the electrons just needed some lubrication before they’d start moving again.

Both of those incidents helped me to realize who not to go to for help with that job and shortly afterwards he was let go after having an entire week with no work completed.

Last TV I had (besides my current CRT for retro games) I used an RPi 4 (later upgraded to the 5) for a media center and a steam link (purchased for $1 during a bundle sale) so I could game off of it from my desktop. I did also have a Chromecast but honestly with a wireless keyboard I would have been fine with just the steam link.