I have a sony as well, and you can use it as dumb TV, by not agreeing to their privacy policy. If you want to connect it to wifi afterwards, it points you to the privacy policy again, so it seems like the TV follows that. But I’ve also purchased it 4 years ago, so not sure what the status is now.

So far, I’ve seen no ads. I mostly use it mostly via HDMI and sometimes for watching freely available TV via antenna.

Oh brother, where art thou?

Man of constant sorrow. Nuff said

I think the full phrase is De gustibus non disputandum in contradictorium (declinations might be off somewhere)

Surprised it’s not Nessie

Ha. Today I learned. I read it in a Scottish tone, seemed to fit

I’m also a fan of the Scottish way.

A close second is the ‘no bodder’ from Ireland.

heh, TIL steam keeps lots of patches. I may get back into EUIV, yet. thanks for that!

heh, TIL steam keeps lots of patches. I may get back into EUIV, yet. thanks for that!

Yeah I loved EUIV early on, but have left it alone for a while. Now, whenever I get the urge to play again (and I do), I have a look at everything that popped up in the meantime and it’s just overwhelming. Sure, I could play the snapshot I have but then the game keeps getting patched so you get stunted new mechanics that need the DLCs to function properly. I could revert to a previous patch, but what was the patch in march 2021? Do I still find it in the steam options?

And if you want to bite the bullet and just buy the whole DLC collection it’s around 100 euro for a couple of years. or something like 300 for the whole package? I do appreciate the quality that paradox churns out though.

This is why I’ve been holding off on getting victoria 3.

Aside from the Shub-Niggurath worship (I’m more of an Azathoth person, myself), I agree with most things here. I’d just add to the list, group B I guess:

• aquatic animal husbandry and aquascaping (freshwater preferably, saltwater if you are really masochistic and have money to burn on corals and expensive equipment)
• model railroading

I feel these are more ‘apex’ hobbies, wherein you need a bit of everything (chemistry, electronics, an artistic sense, lots of patience) and they will occupy most of your time. You’d think electronics and aquaria are not the closest things, but just you wait until you feel the need to build an LED lamp with simulated day/night cycles and moonlight, controlled by an arduino.

The barrier to entry is fairly low - there are starter sets available and I’ve found that hobby shops of this sort are usually staffed by very knowledgeable people, eager to help newcomers. And, you can go as deep as you want and still have fun. You will also learn an absolute fuckton of things about what you choose to model with your hobby.

An honorable mention for homebrewing, which I don’t even regard as a hobby at this point, but more of a necessity, like cooking.

5-inch floppies!

my good fellow, you just won 2 internets! congratulations!

add to that that google turned to crap nowadays and just pushes meaningless bot generated content in the top pages… it’s getting almost impossible to use it to find stuff. not sure about other engines because I only started recently being search-engine-curious, so no idea how they were like before

It’s easier to tell people to just use a rubber when on antibiotics rathern than explain to them that it’s only for some unpronounceable substances for most of the population and have them memorize a list of substances for which it’s safe to go on as usual - azithromycin is safe, amoxicillin is not. They may sound fairly similar to a layman.

It’s because some substances (in this case, antibiotics) mess with the units in your body that process them and prepare them for excretion. They may inhibit or induce them, but these units process a whole load of other stuff. Including birth control, which can lead to less activity from the birth control pills because they’re inactivated quicker (in case of induction) or the biotransformation to the active form is slower (in case of inhibition, for prodrugs that are inactive as is, but have active metabolites, no idea if this is the case for birth control though).

A similar thing happens with alcohol, for example, which is why you should always be honest with exactly how much alcohol you drink or what other drugs you take when talking to an anaesthesiologist, or any doctor prescribing you any sort of medicine, lest you risk ineffective anaesthesia or treatment (the first one is worse imo).

Also adding to the list of nice things - a picture of the current dictator on all public offices and classrooms. Work and school weeks from Monday to Saturday and a Sunday in which you had to do mandatory free time activities, like go to communist youth clubs, participate in parades for the glory of the state, or plant flowers or do random maintenance work in the park.

I’ve noticed the arguments tend to center around the notion that ‘that wasn’t true communism’ and that the notions presented by Marx et al. were not properly implemented.

Fair enough, I can agree with that, but I’d wonder what makes us think that we would do it better next time? How do you actually prevent consolidation of power in the hands of the select few (in any system, for that matter, not just the ideal communism)?

Obligatory capitalism is bad too (but at least I’m in less danger of getting vanned in the middle of the night for insulting random great leader - attemtping to undermine the social order or whatever they called thoughtcrimes).