Same, honestly. I’d kill for a remaster or a proper sequel.

Loved Freelancer! Did you try the Everspace games? They’re the closest to a spiritual successor that I’ve played.

Call your pharmacist. They’re an expert in the field, and it is their job to give you advice on your medications. You’ve already paid for this service, even as an American.

What is your budget?

On The Art of Dice by the Roman emperor Claudius would be both trivial and fascinating, I’m sure.

Nice! I’m playing mostly enhanced vanilla, I’ll dig into OpenMW at some point though. I had no idea there was a decent multiplayer mod!

Still going on UFO50. There’s still a couple games I haven’t even tried yet.

Also, doing a modded playthrough of Morrowind, which is a TES game that I missed when it came out due to having an underspec PC. Its magic creation system is ridiculous and a lot of fun to play with. I wish they’d put something like that in TES6, but I’m not gonna hold my breath (without making a spell for it, anyway).

I am due to increase to 60mg from next Wednesday and it is making me nervous. Will the impact of the medication reduce a bit over the next few days or is this what it will be like?

Please talk to your doctor or pharmacist for medical information. It’s potentially dangerous to trust random people on the Internet with your health.

The Steam controller is amazing for Elden Ring and similar games. It makes the camera so much easier to deal with.

Didn’t catch any grenades, but I imagine so?

I played last night and showed those young’uns how to use the gravity gun.

Hadn’t played regularly in about 15 years, but the reflexes are still there.

Oh yeah, Amarillo is a big city for the NI-coC. Abilene, too.

The us-or-them situation is exactly what they’re aiming for: isolated people are easier to control. But yeah, I’m not sure if it’s an intentional strategy or just what happened to work out for their purposes.

Well, I grew up in what is known as the non-institutional church of Christ. There are different branches of the coC, ranging from the relatively liberal to the downright draconian.

What made this particular branch of the coC “non-institutional” is that they are independent of each other congregation, so the leadership of each group is separate from every other.

The way it actually shakes out is that every congregation gets super deep into the weeds about arcane interpretations of an ancient text about which they are unqualified to explain while making overconfident proclamations of certainty. Other congregations disagree with a fairly minor point in this reading, and they will become effectively dead to each other. Ultimately, the different churches (they would hate me calling them that) would form a loose confederation across the region with various groups they could live in uneasy peace with.

Within the congregation itself was a religion that taught that the world is a wicked place from which we should set ourselves apart. Evolution was a lie spread by the devil to make us doubt God’s power. Women were not allowed to speak or wear pants during the church service. We did not use instruments to make music during the service, as that was not mentioned in the Bible. Any disagreement with doctrine could get one removed from good standing, and we left two churches (forced out, really) based on the Elders’ strict views on baptism and musical instruments: my father would not agree that immersion was strictly necessary to save one’s soul, or that it was sinful to exceed the Bible’s authority and use instruments.

It is a bit of a weird duck as a cult, but they’re extremely controlling, patriarchal, and reactionary. They’re in most towns, but people usually think they’re an offshoot of the Baptists (of which certain types also dip into cult status in my opinion). I’d place them between the Baptists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses on a fundamentalist belief scale. I think the BITE model is a useful one (but not perfect) for defining cults:

• Behavioral control
• Information control
• Thought control
• Emotional control

The coC did all of these things: they wanted members to live apart from society where only those in the church were acceptable social peers, to limit exposure with “subversive” ideas and science, to make people so afraid of going to hell that you’ll blindly accept the teachings. You were expected to attend every service: Sunday morning & night and Wednesday night.

In short, they wanted to control people’s lives by love-bombing newcomers and then suffocating them until they fit into their assigned tiny little box.

And yes, we were in the end times. Even though nobody knows when Jesus will return. Wink.

I feel equal parts pity and exasperation that they’re ignoring critical crises like global climate change to focus on superstitious nonsense.

I grew up in a cult, so my whole life.

Yamaha makes the best guitar for the money.

The instrument I probably play the most is a nylon string Yamaha with a great dual pickup/mic that I got for $100 at a pawn shop. It has some cosmetic wear, but that’s a bonus in my opinion.

deleted by creator

American English doesn’t use “flat” in this way, but the UK does have the word “flatmates.”

Get some canned chilis in adobo; that sauce adds a nice smoky flavor.

Also if you want to thicken it up, crumble some tortilla chips into it.

The cables are extra long so they have plenty of slack, too.