My cat just finds the nearest big idiot to yell at. That’s usually me.

JK Simmons was the objectively correct choice. 100% perfectly cast.

I mean, to any creature that weighs 3 pounds or less, he’s right. If you’re a field mouse a house cat is a terrifyingly effective predator.

More tuna are eaten by house cats than lions.

A grill should run on charcoal. It needs to get very hot and that’s literally it.

There’s a universe where I attach some electronic controller with a PID loop or something to a smoker, to maintain consistent temperatures via damper control. I’m not buying that off the shelf built into the machine though.

General Aviation is still using magnetos. The typical GA airplane is hilariously primitive.

Shellac dissolves quite readily in alcohol at room temperature.

For an electric kettle, which is usually a simple resistive load, I’d feel safe plugging it into American 240V60Hz.

I can fix her.

I mean, it sounds like an Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Corporate fuckery is not a good smell to gamers. Smells like month old genital pus.

Just starting an article by explaining “Unknown Worlds Entertainment has been acquired by Somebody Interactive, the parent company of Hunka Chunka Studios and Rumpy Pumpy Inc” and we’re already suspicious, because corporate acquisition means the game now has more parasites to fund - layers of upper management, investors, etc.

Then we hear about major names that are the people that had the vision for the original game being replaced “immediately” in a press release full of bullshit corpowank marketing boilerplate…it means this game is almost certainly going to be cancelled, the studio shut down and the staff laid off, probably after a lot of players have purchased the game in early access.

There’s quite a bit of overlap in Subnautica and KSP’s player bases, and we’ve already had our asses burned by Take Two Interactive.

So, I’m not going to be joining any early access campaign. I’m not paying for the game before it is finished, I’m not playtesting it for free, I’m not pre-ordering anything and I’m not buying any merch, and there’s a reasonable chance I’m not buying the game at all, because it has already been smeared with the aforementioned month old genital pus.

I don’t think I want to buy games from companies that have parent companies. Parent companies make everything fucking suck.

“Corsi-Rosenthal Box” sounds like it’s some theoretical physics thought experiment, but no it’s some filters and a box fan.

Be tempted to build one of those for my shop.

I read that as “our-SER-uh-pee” at first. I now have a new adjective.

Amateur mayonnaise practices until it gets it right.

Professional mayonnaise practices until it does not get it wrong.

I never got rid of my pickup truck, but I have owned a few small displacement two-wheelers that I used for commuting year-round for several years in my 20s. Mind you I live in North Carolina, so A. I’m going to use miles per hour and miles per gallon, B. the climate here is warmer year round than almost all of Europe, and C. when I talk about any legalities like licensing, that’s what I’m talking about.

I owned a Yamaha Razz (an ancient 50cc 2 stroke scooter), a modified Aprilia RS50 (rare bike to find in the US, by the time I got it this is a 75cc 2 stroke motorcycle, 6-speed manual transmission) and a Kawasaki Ninja 250F (250cc 4 stroke 2 cylinder, 6 speed manual). The scooter I mostly stuck to roads with speed limits of 45mph or under, and still that was pretty sketchy as in most cases I could not keep up with traffic. The other two bikes I’ve driven all over creation on every kind of highway we have.

Performance

The Aprilias 75cc two-stroke was just barely capable of pushing the bike to about 80 mph; it is my understanding that the RS50 is often limited to 30mph in the UK, and wide open it could do about 50. A two-stroke engine with nearly no torque isn’t great for stop and go traffic; this bike was best on the backroads where you would stay at 45 to 55 mph. It made around 60 miles to the gallon, it did consume oil, wasn’t that easy to start in the winter, etc. Cruising on divided highways and interstates was asking a lot of an engine that size. I did occasionally carry a passenger, which was a LOT to ask of that bike.

The Ninja 250 is a perfectly adequate machine for highway use. The chassis wasn’t quite as sporty as the Aprilia, with a more upright riding posture, which just made it more comfortable. It was easily capable of over 100mph, it held nearly 5 gallons of gas and made 70 mpg, so it had tremendous range. I still haven’t found a motorcycle that can do what that bike did. It was easy to handle in traffic and quite capable on the freeway. Carrying a passenger on this bike could be a challenge with any cargo; it was kind of a choice between saddlebags or a passenger, not for weight but for space.

I would estimate that a 125cc four-stroke with a CVT would perform about like the Aprilia or worse, probably more torque but less horsepower, you’re probably locking yourself out of long distance commute by major divided highway.

Practicality

I only really started doing things like grocery shopping by bike when I got the Ninja. I had both a tank bag and saddle bags for that bike, which were frequently used. If I could do it again I would do permanently mounted and weatherproof saddle boxes. Some scooters come with trunk space under the seat but others are full of fuel tank since they often keep the space in front of the driver empty.

Weather

I rode bikes through 100 degree summers and in freezing rain. None of my bikes were really equipped for shielding the rider from the weather. The coldest I’ve ever been was in the saddle of that Ninja. If you don’t like being rained on, commuting by bike isn’t for you.

Riding gear is essential. I would budget about $1000 USD (about the same in euro) for a helmet, jacket, boots, pants, gloves and rain gear. I actually wore a jacket that was designed for summer weather, a nylon mesh jacket that breathed very easily, year round. IT had an internal rain liner I could put in which warmed it up a little, and I wore a fleece under that in winter, and still froze my ass off. For most of the year I didn’t bother with the armored pants I bought because they were cumbersome; for commuting you might look into “steel jeans” or similar. Your gear is there to keep you comfortable when moving at speed and to keep you in one piece while crashing. Which you WILL eventually do.

Maintenance

Bikes need more maintenance than cars. Tires don’t last as long, especially the tiny ones thy put on scooters. Those smaller, simpler engines are fussier. They might take less oil, but they often take expensive synthetic oil specifically designed for motorcycles, and it requires changing more frequently.

Everyone in cars is trying to kill you

No seriously everyone who drives a car including you and me are ignorant and malicious dipshits when it comes to the safety of those on two wheels. You will be pulled out in front of, you will be swerved in front of, you will be merged into. Much more so than in a car you will have to defend yourself. Keep your horn working, keep your eyes working, learn karate, install a Phalanx CWIS system if it’s within your budget.

I strongly dislike the end-around that these “live service” games are trying to do around copyright law. I’m a strong proponent of the idea that intellectual property law is a compromise. You get some time to make your money on your idea, then it becomes the heritage of all mankind. Treating games as a service is an attempt to weasel out of their end of the bargain.

So I don’t fucking buy them.

Sure. I remember when Id Software released Doom as open source. They had just released Quake II earlier that month, Doom was old news and not really a money maker for the company, so they opened the source code to let the community play with it. That was a cool thing to do, it should be done more often.

I would say yeah, you should build a game in such a way that it can be played once its abandoned. The greed vampires who are actually in charge won’t let a law like that be passed. Or if it is, they’ll ignore it.

So…here’s the thing, folks: What you’re REALLY going to have to do is stop buying live service video games.

If I understand this, it is a petition to get the EU government to look into maybe thinking about making some laws to…do something about live service games becoming unplayable when the servers shut down. Okay, here’s how that’s going to go: “We looked into it and decided not to do anything.”

Has anyone tried…not buying the damn games in the first place? If you pay for these games knowing that the soulless reptilian cloacal slits that run the AAA industry can just shut down servers whenever they want, YOU are the problem.

No.

Sunbathing in a tuxedo. Cats are just the wackiest.

I took meteorology in college, the thing is I’m trained to read weather data that has been gathered from all the stations and radars and satellites. Without all that I can look out the window and tell you if its raining.