The city I grew up in is home to the “world’s largest” Bratfest. The sell close to 300k brats every year (and it’s hosted in a city with a population of about 280k!)

MTG seems to be in the minority of elected Republican representatives in that she actually seems to believe the things she says

I think it’s more trying to win political favor by spending big with the company owned by a member of the incoming presidential administration.

Or it’s just wanting to market their ads on that platform and as you said, not having the balls to stick to their boycott

Good question! I can’t remember.

I think I read a Microsoft blog or something like a decade ago that said they shifted from a Hyper-V based solution to Linux to improve stability, but honestly it’s been so long I wouldn’t be shocked if I just saw it in a reddit comment on a related article that I didn’t yet have the technical knowhow to fully comprehend and took it as gospel.

At this point I think it’s most telling that even Azure runs on Linux. Microsoft’s twin flagship products somehow still only work well when Linux does the heavy lifting and works as the glue between

You say that but there’s basically 0 chance I’ll buy it anytime soon because I wait for games to be down to about $20. If I really really want it I’ll snag it at $30-40 but I don’t think I’ve ever bought a title at $60

I feel similarly. I work in an office that’s heavily invested in Microsoft for everything and when you use Microsoft everything Teams fits in really nicely with great outlook integration, Microsoft Loop integration, etc. and the experience on Teams is fine

I started playing that one a couple of years ago but found myself horribly lost on one of the introductory quests (I think the first lockpicking was what did me on?) and kinda lost interest from there. I can see the appeal though and at some point I’ll certainly circle back to it

My wife and go on kicks of playing a bunch of Minecraft together which is amazing

As others have said loss of interest can happen and the interest can of course come back with a vengeance. I’d recommend picking up another hobby until gaming suddenly grasps your interest again.

Two types of hobbies that have lasting positive impacts on people are creative hobbies and physical hobbies. Your brain is wired to invent and create and your body is wired to move, so being able to do each for fun is brilliant for your mental and physical health. Hop on a bicycle, go for a walk and enjoy the crisp fall air, stop off at that gym you forgot to cancel your membership for, and start doing it regularly.

For creative hobbies you can get a pack of printer paper for a couple of bucks and a pack of Crayola crayons or colored pencils and just start doodling. If you suck at drawing make wierd geometric shapes to rebuild the fine motor skills that computers have killed. Or if you want something more in-depth model making is always great because it has elements of fantasy while having entry points at any skill level. Personally I’ve been getting back into model railroading which if that seems boring to watch a train go around in circles, consider it has its own table top roleplay scene in the form of operations

Too big of a map ultimately becomes a deal breaker for me because it will inevitably have too much empty space and get too boring and time consuming to play through.

Smaller more refined maps are better than larger maps where the team can’t sufficiently justify every single corner and make sure every inch truly is fully designed and makes sense.

The upscaling technologies they’ve been building into modern graphics stacks also have benefits for much older games where the performance isn’t necessarily needed. There’s an old game I like to play, Railroad Tycoon 2, which doesn’t run at resolutions higher than 1024x768 and modern upscaling can make that game look absolutely gorgeous despite being 4+ pixels per original pixel. I’m sure it provides similar benefits to emulators and the like too!

On the subject of Matrix parodies, I just want to throw this classic out there

If he’s anything like American conservatives he probably appreciates the comparison more than anything

This is particularly American sensibility about not drinking alcohol casually around children

Shockingly this will vary by family. Some families take their kids bar hopping while they drink to excess, some drink casually and not in excess, and some are sober around their kids, and some remain sober all the time. My wife grew up hanging out in bars with her parents biker friends and their kids. She learned to watch some of them and save the good homemade wine when someone was about to topple. I grew up with parents who would have a single drink with dinner one to two times a week and would avoid getting drunk (at least that I know of).

Personally, as a parent and living in an area with a strong alcohol culture and with alcoholic family members, I drink very rarely (the alcoholic family members really kill my desire to drink), and when I do I make sure we have more than enough adults available to parent and drive if needed. I also am very much a lightweight so there is no drinking without getting noticeably giggly and sloppy. My wife feels and acts similarly but is not a lightweight and can realistically drink one drink and be visibly unaffected.

I honestly think the OP is less about the presence of alcohol around children but more just calling out a wine mom as such

My wife’s family will 100% get drunk around their kids, and drunk drive with the kids in the car. Seeing that first hand makes us really reluctant to drink at all.

I’ve only seen the ocean when visiting family in LA, so I do genuinely wonder if the waves are especially loud and violent there compared to, say the Gulf of Mexico or the US East Coast. But importantly, that is the exact same conditions Hollywood people would be used to too, so they should be very aware of how loud the ocean is (I’d say its comparable to cruising altitude in a standard commercial passenger aircraft)

Hyce, who works at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden (which is a heritage railroad with restored steam locomotives) got to drive on of them while visiting family in Bosnia

There are uncommon instances of revenue freight being hauled by steam such as during a recent dispute between different agencies in Germany or the Everett railroad in Pennsylvania apparently does have some revenue service despite primarily being a tourist railroad and has on occasion used steam to switch out it’s revenue customers

Or for a similar but entirely different example, the Iowa Traction Railroad uses almost exclusively century old electric locomotives all built in the 1910s and 1920s. You can see here one of their electric locomotives posing with a much newer locomotive:

Don’t forget the universally established upward direction so all ships are magically oriented exactly the same when they meet

At beaches too. Hollywood is based so close to the beach they should know how hard it is to hold a conversation at a normal tone of voice near the ocean