The US Constitution gives the Executive official responsibility for the enforcement of all federal law.

I know someone up there in years that enjoyed the Far Cry series. Didn’t really expect that. shrug

More generally I think it’ll commonly be something that relates to their interests when they were younger. Someone that retired 20 years ago from aerospace engineering might actually really enjoy Kerbal Space Program or even Outer Wilds, a former industrial foreman might like Factorio, for a retired military historian, bring on that Total War.

I can see games like Big Game Hunter and Truck Simulator being more broadly popular with certain segments. Some sports games maybe, like a tennis game or some golf thing maybe, I don’t know much about those. A simpler, realism-leaning racing game maybe. Flight simulator works great here.

The main thing is I’d avoid games with lots of layers of game design and abstraction. It should do what it says on the tin, and there shouldn’t be many steps or abstract mechanics between them and getting into the meat of the game and the core gameplay loop.

Minimal menus is probably a good idea. Like, a Paradox Interactive game would probably be a poor choice, just because they have so much you need to learn to become a proficient player. Fine text can be hard to read too, so menus and tooltips and complex status interfaces are usually gonna be pretty meh for most people. Can’t play Starcraft if you have to squint and lean in every time you want to know how many minerals you have.

Want that learning curve to just get into the initial gameplay to be pretty gentle overall. The experience should be fairly intuitive to real life, and real life doesn’t have that many menus and buttons. Usually, depending on their former career I guess.

Kudos for doing this btw.

(oh, and sorry I couldn’t answer your core question)

How about Venice?

I read it as scenery. Probably because the thread is about travel.

There’s a principle in alcoholics support groups called “fake it til you make it”.

Fake is a sort of meaningless word. You are the sum of your own choices, throughout your life. There is no such thing as some sort of “true” you that is inherent and unchangeable, all of your attitudes, emotions, likes/dislikes are like clothes you wear. They can be changed with a pattern of choices that fall under your overarching will.

It’s not easy, though, not by a long shot. So, one technique is to fake it til you make it. Pretend at first, fake whatever trait you are trying to establish. You’ll find over time your willpower turns that into the new “true you”. You can change various aspects of yourself, it’s all under your power.

It’s a hell of a steep hill to climb alone though, so you might want some help along the way. Addiction support groups serve this purpose for people trying to get past their addictions. You might need some pharmaceutical assistance though, if you have a chronic problem, so a doctor might be a wise move.

Going for a walk can sometimes scratch that itch. Instead of checking the news of a national or global scale, which you can’t ultimately do a lot about anyway, you’re checking “the news” of your immediate environment with your own eyeballs. It usually doesn’t change a lot, but what else is new?

Not a big fan.

Frankly though I think Snowden gets way too much credit. Anyone with any sense that looked at the Patriot Act knew what was going to happen, and people were raising alarm from the beginning. He just confirmed what already should have been very obvious.

https://youtube.com/@realryanchapman

This guy is pretty good.

Oh, is this the new Scientology doctrine now?

a^2 + b^2 = c^2???

Lies.

I think the term ethnic cleansing is underused. It’s a strong term with a clear, unambiguous meaning that people can still stand against. It does not run afoul of the fact that when many people hear “genocide”, they don’t think of formal definitions, they think of WW2, trains and gas chambers, and attempts at thorough extermination at a large scale.

Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, begs simple questions, like, what is the ethnicity being cleansed from? Simple answer: their land. How are they being cleansed? Killed, driven away or assimilated into another culture. What, exactly, is being cleansed? That group of distinct people right there, their name is whatever.

It’s clear, concise, and very hard to argue with from any sort of semantic position.

…egg salad?

tbf, salad can come in many forms, and is often served in a bowl. Wrap is a bit of a grey area, but a salad in a wrap is a thing.

I don’t think you know very much about plexiglass.

If the concern is safety during an evacuation, just make them breakaway at a certain amount of pressure. They could just fold down and fall flat or something.

Also good to never underestimate human negativity bias, where the brain remembers bad things far more than it remembers positive things.

Look at air travel. We invented it over a century ago, and have made it safe enough that a single failure out of thousands of successful flights becomes newsworthy.

The statistical likelihood of stupid-yet-capable aliens happening to fuck up that badly is very small.

The universe is big enough that life probably exists in other places. Anything advanced enough to reach us (an extraordinarily difficult feat) would not be dumb and incompetent enough to fall under the control of people, and people just want to believe in something fun to compensate for how boring modern life can be.

That does slot rather well into increasing senses of isolation in the modern world.

Side question.

As a marketing expert, do you happen to have any takes on what makes Kremlin propaganda so effective?

Science does not draw firm conclusions until irrefutable evidence is provided, so the actual answer is “don’t know for sure, but evidence points to a natural origin”.

Importantly though, it doesn’t really matter, since if it was some kind of lab escapee, there’s absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Overseas bio-engineering is not something that can be policed, since its functionally identical to the practice of studying certain aspects of medicine.

So, it’s kinda a waste of time and a red herring to care about it. The sort of bio-engineering that could theoretically create epidemics is absolutely happening, and cannot and should not be halted, since the same studies can also help cure diseases.

It’s not too different from a nuclear program, which can make weapons and/or civilian power plants. Except nuclear facilities are extremely hard to hide due to being huge and radioactive, where bio-engineering tools can be found in every major hospital.