There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

• Isaac Asimov, 1980

There were people warning against the glorification of ignorance in the US nearly half a century ago. It’s nothing new; it just reached critical mass (also thanks to social media where ignorant people can self-organise).

Had to log on my PC to see these comments; Sync is not showing them on my phone. I’ve noticed this issue a few days back. Some posts work, but they are usually much further down the list, so they may only have comments that were created before a certain date or change.

I’m personally not sure how it works. But when we were upgrading our bathroom, the tile shop added the VAT to the quoted sale price. I then asked a friend of mine who is VAT-registeted to buy it for us, and he got it from the same warehouse for the non-VAT price.

I agree overall, but VAT is not all that difficult to evade, at least in the service industry. Paying handymen in cash is common in many countries, and that’s a means to evade VAT. Hell, even using them to buy the building or landscaping materials for you (being a registered business they purchase for prices without VAT) saves you on most of the tax. Then there’s service barter. I did it only once, a long time ago, but it can serve as an example: I did family portraits (photography) for my physio, in exchange for a number of physio sessions. If we charged each other, it would have cost each of us, say, 250 Euros, but we’d only see 200 each, and the state would get 100. So, savings of 50 for each of us.

Got me good. Thanks for the laugh.

Civilisation, the original one. Got it in the 90s, and none of my computers was without it. Even now I sometimes launch it for a guick, half-day game.

I’m sure other Microprose games from that era, in particular UFO: Enemy Unknown, are on my top 10 most played games.

From modern games, I probably spent the most time playing Civ4 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

Similar in Ireland. Had my kids’ passport applications co-signed by their school receptionist.

For running, get thin gloves that keep out the wind chill. Your body will heat itself up, including your hands, so all you look for is decent wind protection. I did some trail running in down to -10C, and thin running gloves were sufficient.

If you want bells and whistles, get gloves with reflective elements. In winter, chances are you’ll spend some time running in the dark.

HoMM is a turn-based strategy game, not RPG (with the notable exception of HoMM IV where you had real hero development). That said, there was a genre of RPG’s, which used to be very popular in the 80s and 90s, and which all but disappeared. Those were party-based first-person RPG’s with turn based (or close to it) combat. Popularized by Wizardry, and followed by Might and Magic, they inspired other series like the Ishar Trilogy. Other games employed real-time combat, but slow enough or pausable, to mimic turn-based. Popular series were Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Dungeon Master, and others. Nowadays, I occasionally see one of these games from independent projects, but it seems that the golden age of this sub-genre has passed.

Don’t know how the law is worded, but you won’t find plastic straws in physical shops or restaurants, and all juice boxes come with paper straws. I don’t have any issues buying plastic straws, both regular-size and for boxed juices, from Amazon.

Selling plastic straws is not permitted in the EU anymore, so I’m buying them on Amazon. Don’t know whether these regulations apply only to physical stores or Amazon doesn’t give a damn, but you can go around such laws quite easily.

Just to be pedantic: we’ve had a hell of a time implementing dynamic resizing of svg’s in Firefox. Works fine with Chromium. We spent far too much development time to keep our 4% of users happy, but eventually we did it. Perhaps newer versions of Firefox changed this, but there are customer-facing oddities the bank’s customers may experience.

Ireland uses a variant of ranked choice voting. In essence, voters get a list of candidates for their voting district, and rank as many of them as they want in order of preference. When votes are counted, the candidate with the lowest votes is eliminated, and votes of those who ranked the candidate first are distributed to their second choice. Rinse and repeat until only as many candidates remain as there are open seats in the constituency.

There is still some inertia, especially in rural areas (“my dad always voted for this candidate, so I’ll vote for his son”), but the system still lends itself to more informed voting. From what I’ve seen in other countries, on average Ireland does a better job at electing more reasonable candidates than the US or EU countries.

When I was still buying new games, I’ve had development studios I preferred, and others I avoided. Those were simpler times (and simpler games), when one small studio did everything.

Later, additional external companies got involved, and some tried to hide their presence. I remember when The Adventure Company started using a very customer unfriendly sort of copy protection, and I started using a list of affectted games, so that I could avoid them.

These days, multiple companies are involved with game design. As a consumer, it’s only normal that I’d like to know who had their hands on developing a game I’d be interested in. I haven’t played any games Sweet Baby was involved with, but if I did and had a strong opinion (negative or positive) about their work, I’d appreciate a list of games they worked on, to make a purchase choice that would suit me best.

Blue pill. I’d miss my wife and kids, and even if I were transported back in time, I doubt I’d do all the required steps to get to them again.

Dungeon Master. I refuse to use a guide, so even though I’ve been playing it for almost 25 years, I still haven’t finished it. Always run out of food…

I lost count of the number of games in my backlog, so a while ago I tried a similar spreadsheet. Mainly to stop me from replaying game I already finished multiple times and focusing on others instead. However, that felt too close to work instead of fun, so I gave up and went back to my favourite classics.

I’m close to 50, been running for decades, and still pull over 2k miles annually. Almost all that on asphalt. Haven’t experienced any joint problems yet. I credit three things for that. First, modern running shoes are designed to soften the impact, and recently they have gotten ridiculously soft. The extreme cases give you 50mm (about 2 inches) of soft foam under your feet, but even more normal running shoes have advanced foam and bouncy elements in the outsole to soften the impact. Second, proper running form is not rocket science, and most people fall into a decent running form naturally. This form is the most gentle on the joints. And finally, if you are serious enough about running to go the distance where hard surfaces could be a problem, you are already likely to supplement your running with strength training, which further helps to protect your joints.

The top three games that started it all for me. They not only introduced me to my favourite genres, but I’m still replaying them to this day.

• Civilization - the first refined 4X game. Manual the size of a book, plenty of strategies and just enough random chance to make each game exciting. I played the series till the fourth one, and I’m still spending too much time with Civ I and IV. I also branched out to Master of Orion, Colonization, Alpha Centauri and others.
• Dungeon Master - A wonderful and challenging dungeon crawler, which convinced me that the best RPG mechanic is party-based first person. This was my launching pad for numerous games and series, in particular Wizardry, Might and Magic, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, the Ishar Trilogy and Realms of Arkania.
• Warlords - 80 castles, 8 factions, lots of unit types, magic items and a complex way to fine-tune the difficulty level makes this endlessly replayable. This game launched its own turn-based fantasy strategy series, but it also introduced me to other series I still play, such as Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders and Disciples.

Honourable mentions:

• UFO: Enemy Unknown - turn-based tactical combat with a good mix of budgeting, manufacturing and research. I also appreciate other series, like Incubation and Jagged Aliance, but I’m always returning to UFO and its successors for the economic simulation.
• Panzer Commander - This game dumbed down historical strategies for me, to the point where I would actually enjoy it. The whole series is brilliant, and I still occasionally replay it.