gunnervi

I think the genre you are looking for is “immersive sims”. Notable historical examples are Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock.

I’ve set my computer so that holding caps lock lets me type in Greek

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast. For it is a human number. Its number is six hundred and sixty six

Ultimately, these sorts of crimes are incredibly common for occupying armies. Culture impacts the way these crimes are handled – are they punished, ignored, covered up, or tacitly (or even explicitly) encouraged? But the common element is soldiers, and the way that war leads to the dehumanization of the enemy, not that some cultures breed uniquely evil people.

Yes – America (original by Simon and Garfunkel)

Anthony Vincent – Chop Suey in the style of Ghost (original by System of a Down)

Dr Pez & Marc Papeghin – The soundtrack of Ocarina of Time, but its a prog rock concept album (not sure it technically counts as a cover)

Brass Against – The Pot (Original by Tool)

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along the Watchtower (Original by Bob Dylan)

Also, not sure how widely known this is, but Arethra Franklin’s Respect is itself a cover (and certainly one of the best covers of all time, up there with All Along the Watchtower and Johnny Cash’s rendition of Hurt)

Its the same design but with 2020 aesthetics instead of 2005 aesthetics

I’ve found a few decent hits from random music blogs. actually while writing this i went to one of them and now i’m listening to a Japanaese prog rock band that sings in an invented language

i go about 50/50 between CD and bandcamp. I never got into vinyl, though i can appreciate the physicality of it. That being said, i do listen to a fair amount of stuff on youtube or spotify, especially when exploring new artists but also for stuff that i just haven’t bought

Some of them are. IMO the best are Way of Life, Holy Fury, Conclave, and Old Gods. If you want to play some who isn’t a Christian King, such as a Christian merchant or pagan/hindu/muslim king, you’ll need to get the expansion for that. Respectively, those are The Republic, The Old Gods or Holy Fury (either will unlock Pagans), Rajas of India, and Sword of Islam. That being said, if you like playing a Christian, Sons of Abraham is worth picking up. Finally, if you’re the type of person who really likes optimizing these sort of games, then you’ll probably want Legacy of Rome, which adds retinues, customizable standing armies that let a skilled player solve the combat system to punch way above their weight

honestly i think having been in on the ground floor makes things easier. its way easier to learn the changes to mechanics you already understand than it is to learn mechanics that were designed to be, in almost all cases for Stellaris, more complicated than the original, already complicated mechanics.

Paradox put a lot of effort into making Ck3 more accessible, and I think largely succeeded. of course its still a massively complicated game, but strategy fans are generally willing to put up with that. its being obtuse and impenetrable and confusing that’s the problem

3/4 but i can see why you went with universe sandbox; paring it down to 5 words was tough

Fight on both screens simultaneously

Explore a toybox solar system

Push logic like blocks

Die while climbing a mountain

I mean the same thing is happening at Twitter, but most users are staying there because there’s nowhere to go. Bluesky is invite only and mastodon doesn’t have whatever celebs and influencers they follow (and no shade on these folks, I originally joined Twitter for a single person’s tweets).

This place is cool, but people will stay on Reddit as long as their communities do. And frankly I think most people are going to go to discord if Reddit does actually die, because most subreddits already have an associated discord channel

yeah, i guess i can see that. personally i never really grokked goodreads but honestly I feel that way about most social media platforms so its definitely a me issue

I’m curious, what would a federated IMDB add to the experience for you?

When I was in school, the bus route did not stop near my house, and it was too far to walk, and there was no good bike route (though one exists now). In middle and high school I would often walk or bike to a friend’s house after school but that wasn’t always an option.

This is a situation forced on us by car-centric city planning

it only serves to bias us and disort reality.

Ehh, i mean it definitely does do that, but political discussion is also important to guide action. We can see plenty of political action that gets nowhere and does nothing, because the people instigating it do not have a solid theory of how political change is accomplished. Political discussions are how that understanding emerges.

That being said the internet, especially platforms like mastodon that encourage short posts, is rarely the best place for productive political discussion.

There is a powerful network effect to overcome here, and I don’t think “being federated” is enough to overcome it for most people. Reddit and tumblr and discord offered us “what if all your forums/blogs/chatrooms were in one place” which is massively convenient, and why people flocked to those platforms. Thats a transformative user experience. being federated is transformative, but the change to the user experience – beyond a larger barrier to entry – is minimal. The point of mastodon is that its functionally equivalent to twitter without being centralized. But there are no decentralized places left on the internet, beyond those holdouts who are either very attached to their old technology or want to maintain their unilateral control over their platform, and who are unlikely to federate.