I have a Bose Mini Soundlink. It’s held up for years and years.

Yeah, we did stuff like that too. Then people started breaking contracts, and things got ugly.

Settlers can be played pretty competitively–stuff like building a settlement in a “bad” position just to mess up someone working to build next to that spot, stuff like that.

The friction in Monopoly mainly comes down to our table rules, specifically that you can make any deal verbally you want (though there’s no guarantee the other party will follow through).

Monopoly and Settlers. Both very cutthroat at family gatherings.

Monopoly. My oldest two siblings are absolutely cutthroat when playing it.

Ending a game of Munchkin is almost impossible to do without upsetting the rest of the players. If you felt bad, that’s fair, but what you described is very much in the spirit of the game.

That’s totally on them for ignoring you. Sounds like getting knocked down a peg might have been good for that guy.

Related, Settlers is one of the two games that are banned at my family gatherings.

The Monopoly house thing is a bit of a dick move, but I wouldn’t feel bad about the Civ one–that seems legit.

Back when Words With Friends was big, I developed a reputation among my friend groups for being very good. I wasn’t terribly good, but I noticed there was no penalty for misspelling a word. So each turn, I’d try a bunch of high-scoring combinations that seemed like they might be words, and eventually one would work.

My family plays heavyweight games, and enjoy strategy (whether it’s a “strategic” game or not). We mostly get along well (though we’ve had to ban a couple games that got too heated too often), but we’re quite competitive and we put a lot of thought into games when we play.

My wife’s family is the polar opposite. They seem to enjoy passing cards or pieces around without much reason or goal (they often play pure-luck games). The first time I sat down to a game of Rummykub with them, I won the first three games in a row, and it wasn’t close. Fortunately I had the sense to pull back a bit, but then it was super boring. Finally I gave myself a new goal–each game, I mentally chose another player at the table and would subtly play to see if I could get them to win. I had about a 3/4 success rate on that, and the whole experience was more enjoyable for everyone.

I miss the physical sensor from my 4a. Enjoy the time while it lasts!

How is it that technology has gone backwards in this area?

The Brave Little Toaster. It’s a bit endearing until the LSD trip goes bad.

If it’s not “slam”, it’ll be something else just as bad. Be careful what you wish for, or it might be replaced with “obliterate” or “wreck” or something worse.

Instead, how about we get news outlets to stop writing ambiguously abbreviated headlines as if they still needed them to fit on a page? “Stud Tires Out” could mean two wildly different things, and you can easily fit a couple more words into the 80% of the screen you’ve filled with ads.

I’ve been running Linux on my laptop for a few years now (started with Mint, on Manjaro now). I have our HTPC set up with Mint, and the family is good with it. When my kids are old enough for their own, I’ll probably keep them going with Mint as well, we’ll see.

My wife’s laptop still has Windows, but I’ll likely move her over if she gets a new PC at some point.

Soy sauce, maybe some diced vegetables

Math! Also, noise!

There are algorithms (a set of math steps) that make pseudo-random numbers. These usually involve large prime numbers, because those usually generate fewer repeating patterns.

A truly random number generator is similar to rolling dice: you use some source of randomness and convert it to a number. All electric circuits produce “noise” (which is often received radio waves and such that interfere with the circuits). Think of tuning a radio to a channel with nothing on it–you get “white noise”, which can be a good source of random information. Then all you need to do is convert that to a range of numbers, and you’re good to go.

These are fairly simplified explanations, so take them with a grain of salt, but they give the general idea.

All it takes is a little hypnosis and a bunch of LSD.

Not aware of Bill Hicks’ take, but marketing effectively amounts to manipulating people into buying things that they otherwise would not.