Cthulhu. There is only one way to properly cleanse this world.

In 2013, I posted on Facebook, urging my Czech friends not to vote for the eventual winner of their Presidential election, Milos Zeman. I called him and inept drunkard, and compared to him to the then Slovak President, Ivan Gasparovic. The next day, the Slovak police paid a visit to my parents (I’ve been living abroad by then), and offered not to create problems for them if I deleted the post, because Mr. Gasparovic was offended by being compared to Mr. Zeman. As soon as my parents called me, I dropped everything and deleted the post.

This was in a presumably democratic member of the European Union, and I didn’t even think twice. I’d probably self-censor if I lived in a dictatorship. Sorry; I’m no hero type. I do have my opinions and express them when able, and don’t when it would cause problems for me or my family. I think I’m just an average person.

The ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. It pisses me off to this day.

I don’t have light-up shoes, but I have lights for when I go for a run in the dark. They use a floating magnet that creates small electrical charges, strong enough to make a pair of LEDs flash, with every step. Installing those inside shoes would be a good idea.

This could satisfy environmental concerns, but I personally am not sold on the comfort angle of the solution.

I’ll be probably downvoted to hell, but my hardware is so old it won’t even support Win10. So, I’m running 8.1. I use Bitdefender for firewall and antivirus. Obviously, everything is regularly backed up. So far, I haven’t had any security issue, so as long as the hardware holds (had to change a few pieces already), I’ll be using it. I imagine Win10 would be even more secure.

what if someone has friends but doesn’t value them or like them at all? They don’t dislike them, but they’re apathetic toward

Those are not friends, but acquaintances. Your friends are defined by you liking them, your enemies by you disliking them, and your acquaintances by you knowing but not caring about them. Having acquaintances is very normal. I always have many more of those than friends. Having no friends is abnormal, though. Without knowing your situation, I can’t even speculate of reasons, but in my case the failure in turning an acquaintance into a friend was most often due to a lack of mutual interests we’d both be passionate about.

At 10, I won’t have much money to invest, and I doubt I’d convince anyone to invest on my behalf. So, the butterfly effect on the markets will be at least 10 years away. I’d spend my first 5-6 years soaking up the knowledge that would be most relevant to me for the late 00’s, then from 16 or so I’d use that knowledge for well-paid gigs to earn money to invest, first into the stock market (short term), and later into startups I know will succeed. By 22, I’d start sponsoring the Cincinnati zoo, as a side project. By 24, I’ll use my influence at the zoo to beef up security in the gorilla enclosure. The kid will not fall in, Harambe will live, and today’s timeline will never materialize. Then I’ll retire. You’re welcome.

Today, my longest walk was 6.8 km. Took about 2 hours, but I had frequent stops as I was collecting kids from their schools and taking them to their respective sports clubs. When I have to go to the office, I run commute, 8 km each way. My watch says that my average step count for the past 7 days is 20,109 per day. I may be an extreme case, but walking 3.7 km to the library would be so routine I wouldn’t even think of taking a bus.

Back in 1995, I was still using Gopher, when someone showed me WWW. I soon found the chatroom at Mrshowbiz.com, and was hooked to this new Internet technology.

But my favourite was Geocities. Had several sites there. They taught me HTML coding, and that there was such a thing as too many “Under construction” animated gifs.

Samsung Galaxy S2. I’ve been always using it only for calling, texting, checking the weather in the morning, and automatic sync with my watch after a run (and perhaps with some light Internet browsing), so combined with a phone case, the phone has seen very little outside world, which limited any potential damage. I did have to replace the battery twice, though.

Now that my Canon Powershot died, though, I’m still considering whether to upgrade to a phone with good optics or get a new camera. They are roughly the same price.

My phone is 14 years old, so no modern apps (especially the ones needing extra security) work there. In Ireland, we don’t have a digital ID card, but there have been some equivalents:

• During Covid, we had a digital vaccination pass. However, it was possible to request a paper version, which was supposed to be accepted everywhere (it wasn’t).
• Due to 2FA, many companies require a phone authenticator. Those companies that provide legally mandated products or services are required to provide an alternative to people without smartphones. For example, when I needed to renew my car insurance and couldn’t do it online, the company had a phone number for over the phone renewal.
• There’s currently a fight whether one of our airlines can mandate app-only boarding passes, effectively excluding people without modern phones. Since they don’t provide essential service that’s mandated by law, they argue they should be able to do so.

In Dublin, everyone would enter and leave via the front door. Only Covid changed that, and drivers started opening the second doors in the middle of the bus. Still, people are used to exit through the front, or shout their thank-yous from the other door.

Got it in one :)

Thanking the bus drivers when exiting the bus.

Anything that doesn’t require hand-eye coordination. This is not due to age; I just always sucked at that. So, turn-based strategies (Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Panzer General) and RPGs with turn-based combat (Might and Magic, Wizardry, SSI Gold and Silver Box games), or the combination of both genres (UFO: Enemy Unknown, Jagged Alliance). Come think of, none of those should require a lot of HDD space anyway.

I stopped buying new games when physical discs went the way of the Dodo. I have plenty of older games that would keep me entertained till I die (I think I won’t even get to finish most of them), so I don’t have a direct stake in this discussion.

Just wanted to say it amazes me when I read here how big games have gotten. I still sometimes get surprised at Word documents that wouldn’t fit on a floppy anymore. And I remember running Civ 2 from an external Zip disc because I didn’t have the space on my HDD ( the game came on a single CD). It was a bitch waiting for the advisors to load from what was essentially a 100MB floppy connected through a parallel port. But I digress. The point is, anything that wouldn’t fit on a DVD is absolutely unfathomable for me, and you people are talking about 100GB+ games here…

Mint, and I’ll stay with mint. Perhaps I’m not a good Linux user material, but I just want something that works and doesn’t get into the way. You know: a reliable, unobtrusive operating system.

I’m turning 50 soon, and almost all of this hits close to home. Almost all. My media consumption is as it’s always been: new books all the time. But also no TV, and I know all about a given movie from reading a few reviews, not actually watching it.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’ve driven cross-country in the US to visit various national and state parks numerous times, but always alone. So, this may not apply, but two things helped me tremendously:

1. Pack plenty of water, apples and beef jerky. Saves on human refuelling stops.
2. Don’t be afraid to stop, turn around and backtrack if you saw something interesting.

Bonus: Little or no technology. I did my trips when all we had was a road atlas and music tapes. Still ended up listening to the lical talk radios along the way. Would do the same even now.