She didn’t have kids already, but she wanted to have them in the future. I absolutely do not want kids, I even got a vasectomy in my early 20s.

It’s not really an issue you can compromise on as a couple, so it was better to part amicably than pursue something with no future, for both of our sakes.

You don’t want to use a wiki that makes your battery start to visibly drain away?

I am childfree, she wasn’t. 100% not going to work, but we ended on good terms all things ocnsidered.

Tropical Connect the Dots.

Give my regards to Winnie.

Shock, the guy who watches racists is a racist.

‘and we aren’t talking about the Chinese people, the Chinese people are good people, we love China, we are opposed to the CCP’?

The white man’s burden bullshit argument. Oh those poor Chinese people can’t possibly really support the CPC, they are just misguided and need us brave foreigners to come save them.

If you want to talk smack about Laowhy then you better provide proof.

Laowhy desecrating remains. His girlfriend (at the time) calls him out on it and he tells her to shut up because it makes good content. Nobody who loves China descreates their dead. You can’t even use the excuse that he was confused or didn’t know what it was, he was told to stop and refuses.

His treatment of his wife. Makes her sit on the floor of the car while he makes racist jokes with his family. Sorry to link to reddit, I don’t keep extensive archives of these guys.

Not expecting you to suddenly change your opinion on the CPC, but these guys in particularly are indefensible and nobody should be encouraged to watch them.

I used it a little bit, not extensively. I watched Diggnation with Kevin and Alex though semi-regularly, as I used to watch TechTV prior to that.

Not many I follow too closely to be honest these days. I just did a big purge of a bunch of my subscriptions so there’s only a handful now.

Gaming/Entertainment:

• Nextlander: General gaming; comprised of three ex-members of Giant Bomb (Vinny, Alex, and Brad).

• Mr. Samuel Streamer: Primarily focused on Rimworld and Crusader Kings, just an extremely witty guy that puts a lot of work into what he does. Often spends 8-9 hours in gameplay and editing to make a 30 minute episode, every day.

• Nilaus: Factory/automation games, like Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program.

• The Jimmy Dore Show: Semi-leftist, has liberal tendancies but is more political comedy than serious commentary, so I categorize him more as entertainment than political. I often don’t agree with all of his takes, but the show can be good sometimes.

• CryptTV: Mini-horror episodes, often with a few recurring monsters. Really well done effects work.

Politics:

• Li Jingjing: China-based journalist, covers China and the global south as a whole. Does both serious stories and cultural/interest pieces. Great for somebody just interested in seeing more China without the anti-China rhetoric.

• George Galloway: Left-leaning talk show host, some reactionary tendancies but he does have a pretty good range of guests from time to time, including the above. He’s been around for ages, very well established.

• The Deprogram: Leftist talk show and podcast.

That’s kind of my entire subscription list at the moment, it has been cut down a lot recenty.

Oh no, not the racist sexpats. Not sure I would necessarily want to be using those guys as your source of news in China. Laowhy is an absolute piece of shit to his wife, and actually made a video of himself desecrating gravesites in Taiwan and laughing about it. Complained that his daughter looked too asian. Just an absolute piece of garbage.

They found out being condescending towards Chinese people sells right now, and that has been their entire brand since they left the country. They’re probably useful in that anything they say, you can assume the exact opposite is the truth.

Living in Japan, this almost didn’t register to me. I have literally never met anybody that didn’t have one. When you move out, you use your family’s old one until you can buy a newer one.

Everyone should have one, absolutely.

Everyone? I have never owned a car, probably wouldn’t come in super useful.

Totally fair. Particularly in survival horror where saves are explicitly limited to highten tension, that makes sense.

I am not the expert on the genre by any means, but would limiting invasions to “only other people on the same difficulty” just segregate the player base too much?

I have definitely heard that argument, and I understand it, but at the same time there are a good number of us who would just simply not play the game then.

I realise it is up to the devs who they want to make their game for, and I am probably not their target audience, but banging my head against a wall until I get through something doesn’t give me any kind of feeling of triumph when I manage it. I just feel frustrated. Whereas the soulslike games I have played where I could turn the difficulty down, I enjoyed way more.

I probably would group those into the Manamement/Tycoon genre. More economic than colony builders, but smaller scale than city builders.

The Two Point games are pretty good versions of those, if you light the more light-hearted atmosphere.

Should try Industrial Revolution 3. Electricitiy is like the third “tier” you get. You have to do burners for a while and then steam power where you are directly feeding steam into every machine.

I have a IR3 game going now, I am sitting around 20 hours with the first two science packs automated and just retooled my whole base around electricity.

Krastorio is probably still my favourite Factorio mod. It hits that sweet spot of complexity and new stuff for me. It’s the only mod I have finished to date. I loved the concept of Nullius, but the byproducts made my brain hurt.

K2 really does feel like Vanilla+, which is a good thing.

I would consider them a few different genres, but they are easily my favourite types of games these days. I cateogrize them in my steam list as below.

-Colony Builders: Games about building well, a colony, often from little to nothing. Often lots of You vs Environment friction, with the natural world. Tends to have a bit more focus on the individuals that comprise the colony. Examples: Rimworld (my favourite game of all time), Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Stranded Alien Dawn, Space Haven.

-City Builders: A bit broader in scope than a colony builder, working more on the macro level. Friction is often economic, sometimes adjusted with the natural world. Cities Skylines is kind of the prime exampe of this, but also games like Timberborn or Anno.

-Automation: Games about building a factory that…builds things automatically. Challenge tends to be logistical complexity but some games do feature combat as well. Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program (my personal favourite), Satisfactory, and Captain of Industry are the Four Horsemen of this genre to me. Techtonica is very early still but seems to have some promise as well.

For many of these games, there is a whole world of content to explore if you are interested in mods. Rimworld players regularly run hundreds of mods, my current game has about 350. Factorio has extensive overhaul mods that can take literally thousands of hours to finish in some cases (Py’s). Satisfactory has a surprisingly robust mod scene for an early access game too.

Finished what is available in Techtonica, so went back to Dyson Sphere Program for a bit to work on missing achievements. DSP is definitely my favourite of the Factory-Automation games at this point.

I still have a Factorio (Industrial Revolution 3) game going too, but am feeling DSP more at the moment right now.

I am kind of used to sometimes poking the bear on this one in particular. It’s what I personally dislike though, I don’t necessarily think they are badly designed. I totally get some people absolutely love that kind of thing in games, and I am glad they have games that scratch that itch. It’s just an instant turn-off for me though.

That said, I have never quite understood the people vehemently opposed to having a difficulty slider though; just keep it on hard and it’s literally no different.

Not a game I hear mentioned much, but man Secret World had so many great things going for it. The best quest design in a MMO* I have ever seen, and a really unique setting too. Shame it was managed so badly, in an alternate world where TSW took off and was still getting content updates, I would be thrilled.

*MMO-ish in Legends.