Yeah, that’s certainly one odd aspect. Also, there’s a ton of other methods to handle labour shortages. Like activating underused groups, such as women. Or offering retraining so people can switch to different jobs. And higher pay for sectors with shortages doesn’t hurt either, considering the already very low pay in Greece.

Running your existing workforce ragged is NOT the way to deal with this.

But hey, maybe we’re missing some cultural or political piece of the puzzle as to why they went this route.

The Greeks are insane for going along with this. Revolutions have started over less. Clearly their politicians no longer have the best interests of the Greek people in mind.

Sometimes it can be really fun when developers take an existing IP and completely flip the script on it. For example, when most people thjnk about Metal Gear, they think about sneaky stealth missions in real time. And yet there’s also an actual turn-based card battler in the series. Two of them in fact: Metal Gear Acid 1 & w. Came out the serie era as Doom RPG.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Acid

Ever played 2005’s Doom RPG? That’s an oddball title for sure. It was a pretty early phone game. Supposedly there’s some wonky software that lets you run it on a PC, but I never bothered with that. It was really fun when it originally launched.

https://youtu.be/tY3xi0HPrbs?si=MIr-eH2c1Gc5Pr7T

Heck, I enjoy platforming as well - in platforming games. Absolutely love games like Uncharted for example. And I wouldn’t complain if Eternal had SOME platforming, like 2016 had as well. Some verticality is nice to have. But Eternal was just too much and too challenging to be fun. I really don’t want to redo a particular jump-dash-dash-jump-dash sequence ten times. Most actual platforming games aren’t THIS brutal.

I’ve certainly seen a fair few topics with this sentiment, so I know others were put off by it as well.

All I want is none of that fucking platforming from Eternal. I’ve finished 2016 a bunch of times, but I still haven’t seen the end of Eternal because of all the unnecessary and annoyingly difficult platforming sections. I could deal with a few, but that was just too much.

If they put in platforming, it’s a no-buy from me.

When you can pack the peak amount of players into a decent sized ballroom, that’s never a good sign for your game’s future.

At this point they’re probably better off just refunding buyers and shuttering the game entirely. Doesn’t feel like this is a salvageable situation.

God I’m so glad drinking isn’t my thing. I absolutely hate being around intoxicated people, much less the ‘get blackout drunk and don’t remember half the shit I did’ types. It’s so cringe people do that for fun.

There’s more of us… but: we are a rare species.

We got a brand new nine screen cinema back in december 2022. They actually run movies in the morning. Not all of them, unfortunately, but you certainly have good options around noon.

I love movies, but people not so much. So I usually pick the quietest showings. Sometimes I’ll see a movie in a completely empty theater. Friday afternoon around 4-5 PM is good for that.

I’ve actually got an unlimited movie pass, so I can see everything when I want. Usually the day or week it comes out. I’m seeing the new Planet of the Apes in… three hours.

Oh absolutely. Frankly I can’t imagine it being any other way.

Whenever possible, I schedule things as early as possible on the day. I’ll take that 8 AM dental appointment or whatever. And it’s not just unpleasant things either. I also prefer a cinema visit as early as possible for example.

I definitely feel like my day is ‘on pause’ whenever I’m doing a thing later in the day. It’s very annoying not to be able to enjoy the rest of your day because of it. So, early it is.

Well that’s certainly one way to kill a game. Heck, I HAVE a PS5, and I still would be annoyed as fuck by that.

Sure, you can offer to link an account for things like progress tracking. But it certainly shouldn’t be forced on anyone.

This fucking dingbat. Even if he was just a random citizen, he should know by now that you need to bring ID. And it’s always good to check if you have it when going to your polling station.

Here in the Netherlands, we’re VERY strict on ID. No ID, no vote. I’ve been witness to a fair few elections as a reporter, and it always gets drilled into the people who run the polling stations: even if the King himself walks in, you ask him for his ID and tell him to bugger off if he doesn’t have it. I’ve seen city mayors turned away at polling stations in their own council buildings for failing to produce ID. And they all perfectly understand why those strict controls are necessary.

You sneaky fucker. Thank god it’s a song I love.

Also, this exists:

https://youtu.be/3AeN-5PXaaQ?si=1j5cZb3B-F31yjXl

It really is. I’m going to gush for a minute if you don’t mind :D

I like movies, but buying tickets is expensive here in the Netherlands. Up until last year, I’d usually see about three, four movies per year in the theater. Things that I’d really want to see and that I knew I’d love. We had one movie theater, located just outside our city. It’s expensive and did not offer any sort of monthly pass.

In december 2022, we got a SECOND movie theater from a different chain. I’ve got the most perfect situation possible: the theater is about a five minute bike ride away from my house. Much more convenient than the other theater. They’ve got nine screens, all filled with luxury recliners. And they offer a monthly pass. Which I got shortly after the theater opened.

The pass costs 20,50 euros per month, so about 20 USD. It allows you to see an unlimited amount of movies with basically no restrictions. I can see as many movies as I want, when I want. Want to see five movies in a day? You can. Want to see Ghostbusters six times in a row? Go nuts. They even program classic movies for us movie buffs, they do marathons, exclusive screenings, foreign movies… if you like movies, you’d love this theater.

Since individual movie tickets at that theater cost between 10 and 14 euros depending on the day and time, you really only need to see two movies per month to make it worth it. But I’m not seeing two a month - I’m seeing at least three per week. I see Every. Single. Movie. that I could want.

Movie streaming / piracy can be convenient, sure. But there’s really no replacement for a state-of-the-art movie theater with bangin’ Dolby Atmos system. Not to mention those recliners are so comfy you can sleep in them if the movie’s a bit too boring.

I’m reaaaaaallllly loving my movie pass as you can probably tell.

For me personally, that never really worked. Whenever I was watching a movie at home, I was always multitasking with a game or something else: doing just one thing felt somehow wasteful when I could be doing two things.

But unfortunately I also felt like I wasn’t really enjoying movies like that. So, I got an unlimited movie pass for my local movie theater. I now see three, four movies per week and actually enjoy them FAR more than when I was doing the multitasking.

I also now see pretty much every movie the week it releases, which also effectively makes me bulletproof in terms of spoilers.

Ooff, that doesn’t sound like a good time. Haiti’s always been rather problematic, with the colonial history, dictators, extreme poverty, disasters, several coups, etc. Etc. In 2004, the UN also sent folks there to keep the peace. They were there until 2019 and accomplished…?

So now we’re back to another round of UN intervention probably. It really feels like Haiti will forever be incapable of proper self-governance. The people deserve better, but I doubt they’ll get it.

Good to hear at least sometimes things like that work out well :D

At least ice skating and running are fairly normal sporting activities that average people can partake in. But some of those other facilities they build really have no use for most people.

My own city has a soccer stadium. It was built with taxpayer money. It has 30.000 seats, after it was expanded twice. It had 13.000 when it opened.

The club who uses it has been a financial mess for ages.

The stadium gets used for soccer matches and… nothing. That’s the only use. You can technically rent part of it for say, a wedding reception or business event, but by and large it sits unused most days of the year.

Now imagine if this had been an even larger, even more expensive Olympic stadium. There simply would be no way to make it economically viable to keep it around post-games.

And a stadium is at least potentially multifunctional. But something like an indoor cycling track or high diving pool has fuck-all reuse potential.

Yep. About the last thing people should want is for their country to host the Olympics. Because YOU as a tax payer are footing the bill for all that infrastructure, all the event costs, while seeing no real income from any of it. And once it’s done, it’ll keep hurting your economy. And let’s not forget all that useless infrastructure that you had to build. That needs to be demolished after all…

If someone suggests bringing the games to your country, you should boop them on the nose until they reach sanity again.

Even back in the early days of recycling, it was pretty well known that this wouldn’t work. Think about how much plastic you use in your daily life. For recycling to work, a considerable amount of that would need to be reused plastic. But it isn’t. Because a lot of it simply isn’t able to be recycled, as the article points out. So every day we end up making way more new plastic than reused plastic. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you might as well not recycle….

We really should’ve stopped single use plastics decades ago. Simple as that. Except for straws; there’s nothing else that works as well as a simple plastic straw. That’s the one thing we should’ve kept.