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so did Mao, see this comment

is the paris-berlin route really that slow?

vienna-munich travels at around 200 km/h…

actually, i think you’re wrong about the ultra-rich being “essentially normal people”.

by all evidence they seem to have developed a serious mental disorder, a kind of trained sociopathy.

I’ve never seen it put in such clear nonchalant terms as in this interview .

give it a watch, it’s extremely interesting and really puts into perspective how…just utterly inhuman the minds of the ultra-rich really are…

alright, then we’re talking about slightly different things: i was talking exclusively about the similar kind of government contracts…those are, afaik, almost entirely gone.

the EU contracts i know nothing about, but it’s gonna create the same problems if they’re structured similarly to the local governmental ones…

government employees rarely make more than private employees.

what they are getting mixed up is that some tenured positions get paid about 2x that of a new employee, because there are still some old contracts around that are simply much better than newer one in terms of pay raises over time.

and those older government contracts frequently include provisions that make these employees contracts impossible to terminate, resulting in some government employees that simply sit out their time on a stupidly inflated salary that nobody can fire…yes, that’s as bad as it sounds, but those contracts are, as far as im aware, no longer being offered anywhere, and the last ones to get those contracts are going to age out into retirement very soon. most are already retired.

it’s not related to corruption at all either, these contracts used to be standard in many governments all over the world, europe just happened to have some of the cushiest jobs associated with them…

but it is true that these employees generally contributed a LOT to governmental inefficiencies…which is why they’re no longer available.

Multiplay games won’t work with it

that’s not actually a guarantee: BG3 has multiplayer and works just fine without the launcher. as do plenty of others.

kurzgesagt is a bit…controversial…when it comes to their “current affairs” content:

for example: their climate science content is blatantly misleading in almost all videos.

they push a kind of “tech optimism” at the cost of presenting practical solutions among other “solutions” that are just straight-up greenwashing bs.

here’s a video that lays it all out, there’s a LOT to cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI

that said, their “what if?” and futurology content is excellent!

just have to stay skeptical about anything related to capitalism…including climate change and green tech.

“women’s only cars” aren’t really much of a thing… there’s like, a handful of places in the entire world that have them; they’re super rare.

the salt isn’t bait for hunting: it’s just for nutrients.

the local hunters always leave salt out, especially in winter near the feeding stations.

it’s super common to supplement diets of all sorts of game with salt. it’s purely for the health of the population.

so it’s a) not illegal (wtf, why would it be?), and b) not for hunting at all…at least not directly

why would deer be illegal?

would be nice, but isn’t true according to Douglas Adams himself:

Inspiration for the number 42

Douglas Adams revealed the reason why he chose forty-two in this message .

“It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ‘42 will do’”.

personally, i think it’s way funnier that it is actually, completely, deliberately meaningless ;)

I love that trilogy.

i mean…technically it’s like 15+ Books…but who’s counting? ;)

sidenote: Stormlight Archives Book 5 is coming in December, i think?

FYI: it really shouldn’t…

thank you very much!

also: ha! i’m doing the same thing! currently at book 2 ;)

you probably already know this, but for anyone else:

The Cosmere Series (of which the Mistborn Saga is a part of) does heavily feature Sci-Fi as well as post-apocalypse themes alongside (mostly) fantasy (Sci-Fi: the sunlit man, tress of the emerald sea; post-apocalypse: Stormlight Archives, Yumi And The Nightmare Painter), which made me think OP was talking about this series specifically.

In some of the other books it is mentioned that all of the powers originally came from a being called Adonalsium (basically God). what fuels all these manifestations of powers is called Investiture. Each Shard of Adonalsium manifests different Powers, Allomancy is just one of them.

so it’s a unique mix of classic fantasy, sci-fi, and post-apocalypse genres in a single gigantic saga, in which the sci-fi and post-apocalypse themes are intentionally kept vague and in the background.

highly recommend all of the other books!

they are great in their own right, and also give a LOT of extra bits and peaces of the overall lore!

what’s best about the series is, as you’ve already explained, the “hard-fantasy/sci-fi” approach to powers: all power requires some kind of source, everything comes from something.

best to do the Stormlight Archives after Mistborn (either order works), then the rest; order doesn’t really matter, although i recommend Tress of the emerald Sea and The Sunlit Man to be read last, because they contain a lot of sci-fi lore, which is best enjoyed last (imho)

also: Stormlight Archives Book 5 is coming relatively soon, i think it’s december?

all of the words you listed that use a soft g are loanwords from other languages (pretty sure they’re all french) soooo…yeah. no wonder those have different pronunciation.

when you look at anglo-saxon words the difference becomes clear:

• gift
• graveyard
• ground
• gay

all hard g’s.

mixing up languages is the common denominator here.

the G in GIF stands for graphical, neither english nor french in origin, hence the confusion about pronunciation.

alternatively; English is a terrible mess, and the only “correct” pronunciation is reached through general consensus. if the majority pronounces something a certain way, that’s how it should be pronounced.

Orconomics (Dark Profit Saga, Trilogy) for the exact same reason!

excellent fun to read, incredibly funny!

the DLC are pricey, but they’re also proper, old school expansions adding lots of content that actually enhances the game.

it’s perfectly playable without the DLC, and there’s a LOT of DLC-sized mods on the workshop!

kind of a fundamental problem with modern DLC: they generally don’t get cheaper over time (remember when that was an actual thing? not just sales, but actually lower prices for older games?).

if you keep up with the releases it’s super okay at about 20/25€ once a year, maybe twice, bur if you’re late to the party it’s a whole lot of cash all at once!

exactly why paradox introduced a subscription for Stellaris’ DLCs at 10€/month… honestly kinda worth it, if you know you’re just gonna play for a while and then move on…still wish stuff would just get cheaper at some point again…

“debunking” requires a source… otherwise they just put forth a claim