-Free Stars on steam, used to be called Star Control 2. Old school space adventure. And it is literally free as well.

-Imperialism 2 on GOG, 4x game set in the age of exploration and industrialization.

-Civilization 4, the best of the series in my opinion, I’ve played them since the 90s.

-Beyond Good and Evil, comes to mind, don’t remember much about it, except that it’s good.

-To the Moon, indie adventure / puzzle game. Has great reviews by the developers aunt, among other things.

-Banner Saga 1-3, holy Nordic inspired epic tactical strategy, batman.

-Jagged Alliance 2, another tactical combat game, modern time, funny, realistic and really difficult.

Eh, realized that only the first one is free to play. But the other ones are old (or very old), so you can snatch them on sale on steam, GOG or Epic for less than a chocolate bar and get dozens of hours of enjoyment from them.

I’m on the side of the Vietnamese

Shit, you just reminded me my passport is expired

And I will better the instruction. -Shylock.

Stop it, Valve! I can only get so erect!

Historically occupations tend to be troublesome affairs. The west spent 20 years in Afghanistan and got nowhere. I agree that the mafia state must be dealt with, but going by the west’s ability to run an occupation that doesn’t turn the inhabitants against them, is practically nil.

It is my belief that high inequality leads to many societal problems. It is the job of government in our current system to alleviate both the problems it causes, but also the inequality itself. Losing these people is an acceptable cost.

The (claimed) problem is that the wealth tax unfairly punishes Norwegian owners, which means that foreign owners will outcompete and take over ownership of Norwegian businesses. Perhaps the logical solution would be a tax on foreign ownership as well.

It is kinda funny that these wealthy people who have earned their fortunes in Norway, find it impossible to live there because of the wealth tax. They then move in protest, to Switzerland, one of the the two other countries in Europe that has wealth tax.

I think for some people the scale of God simply doesn’t compute, which is why old man with big beard image persists. Look at the size of our galaxy, and the size of the universe as a whole. If any being was the creator of such a vast and complex universe as ours, that being would be to us like we are to a “Hello world” script.

The analogy is flawed, but that is what we are saying if we believe in a being capable of creating our universe, defining its laws and bending them to create us. We could not truly begin to comprehend such a being, and largely we are left to our own. However, if you believe, then this being does care about us in some way. And it has shown us this through inspiring humans to share its path for our improvement.

That is the reason I believe in the teachings of the Christ. The path of loving your enemies, of caring for everyone as one would your own family, forgiveness, that is the path to a better world, revealed to us through a man and his story. I am unable to fully live up to such ideals, but like Data says, the struggle yields its own rewards. Those who take such ideas to heart are worthy in the eyes of the creator, because if all people were such, there would be little suffering in our world. We have the means to reduce our suffering, but we choose not to. God could, remove it for us, but then we will not become the free and good beings we are meant to be.

You don’t need God to have such ideals as the Christ demonstrated, but I find such ideas so much better than any of the alternatives, that I suspect they have divine origin. And even if they don’t, if I follow them, then I will contribute to making the world better regardless. God could take away my struggle and suffering, but that would leave me still flawed and unable to improve, and so it would be for all humanity as well.

Funny, cause here (Norway) half of political parties and discourse are going ape over this. Otoh, which is my perspective, wave as they leave, if they’re too poor to live here they can F off.

Only a Russian would misspell ‘bed’ as ‘bad’. Nice try kaputchnik.

I have the ungrateful job of teaching English. I have two types of students. Screenies and non-screenies. The former are like this meme, they pick up a lot from popular culture, games, etc, and are often bored with classes. Then you have the latter group, they have very little exposure to English and usually very little interest as well. A third group exists, and they’re the kids that are in between and do the work in class.

Now one would think that getting everyone into the first group would make my job easy, however, those kids are usually a special subset of kids who will learn independently just from their interests. The other two groups could do hour for hour exactly the same as the Screenies, but they would never reach that proficiency level without other instruction. On the other hand, a lot of screenies do poorly at formal English, like grammar, spelling and word choice, because much of their learning is casual.

So long story short, to the meme, yeah, I know.

Which part?

The main idea as I understand it, is that the workers produce value and that value will never be fairly distributed back to them unless the workers themselves are in charge. This is an analysis of human nature, the owners are fundamentally selfish and will try to maximize their profits, workers to them are merely a means to that end. Therefore workers will be underpaid for the value they create and in the worst case, horribly exploited. I agree 100% with this analysis, as it can be seen a thousand different cases of in history.

The answer to this according to communism is that the workers, who are the majority, take over, become themselves the owners, and distribute the value they create fairly. As a person who believes in democracy, not just in the political sphere, but also in the economic sphere, this seems a good idea.

Communism then branches into multiple factions on how to achieve that goal, coercion and violence, or use elections and the power of the state. In the former cases, such as the Soviet Union, such situations open up for power grabs and authoritarian leaders, which I dislike.

The latter tactic created the European, and especially the Nordic welfare states, through democratic means. These states are not communist, as they abandoned the goal of workers in charge, and went for regulated capitalism instead. While better than most, these states now struggle, as even regulated capitalism distributes wealth from worker to owner.

In these states the workers are again exploited for the benefit of the owners. This is not explicitly understood, because this understanding and its terminology is considered a failed system, reference the Soviet system. Instead the exploitation is warped into other grievances, such as anti-globalism or anti-immigration, leading to a takeover of power by the political fringes. The fringe supported by the owners will have more funds and therefore better chances. And while that fringe may portray itself as pro worker, it will in fact represent a true capture of the state by the owners, leading to the opposite, based on the analysis of human nature as mentioned above.

Tldr: don’t ask questions if you can’t be bothered to read the answer 😅

Is it just me or are these studios failing a cash-thrown-at-them situation? I know I get my anime from dodgy websites, but if there was a Netflix (2017 version of Netflix that is) for “all” anime, I’d pony up and so would my pony and most of his friends…

35 For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. 36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

37 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

40 “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,[a] you were doing it to me!’

There are many parts of Christianity, but these are among the clearest words of its founder. Wherein this admonition do you find a framework to do bad?

My point is not that we don’t know yet, my point is that we can’t know. All our knowledge is based on studying the natural universe, if something is beyond it, then by definition it would not be knowable by studying our universe. Perhaps at some stage we could reach a way of examining and understanding the supernatural, but for our intents and purposes it’s outside the box, while we are inside, and our only way to relate to it is to choose whether we believe in there being something outside the box or not.

The answer that any person who has thought about it and not rejected the idea is: If a being that has created and shaped our universe exists, it exists (at least partly) outside of our universe. Like a programmer doesn’t have to follow in his life the limitations of his code in programming, such an entity’s existence would be so far outside our modes of thinking that “who created him?” would simply fall flat as a question.

To begin to answer such a question one would have to have some knowledge of the plane of existence where the divine resides, and as that is outside the realm of what we can understand through physics and the natural world we live in, the question becomes unanswerable.

The question then becomes, can something exist on another plane of existence? The answer is of course, we can’t examine anything outside our universe, so, the answer must be, we don’t or can’t know.

I suppose then, the next question becomes, do you want to believe that there is something /someone outside the natural universe that gives meaning to our existence?

How you fit your parents in law in microwave?

Finland has social democrats / socialists who have been in power, right? And decent labor unions, I thought. Must admit, I assumed Finland was similar in politics to the other Nordics, but I’ll stand corrected if not.

I get off on people watching me wank. Joke’s on you camera virus dude.

The English word depressed comes from Latin roots and means pushed down. An old Norse term for the same condition was called hugsott, which translates directly into thought-sick. To me the latter term is more useful because the person suffering has the chance to change his own thoughts, while the former term implies that the condition is caused by factors outside the person’s control.