Bobylonian

I am probably PC gamer and I do not use controller and do not plan to do. Aiming with mouse vs aiming with controller will always differ - tbf, even when shooter games(Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, even Descent) used keyboard for aiming that had a lot more options than modern controllers, which I personally think is a big step down from PC joystics. What you are mostly seeing are console players, who are playing games on PC and they might use controller - some of the platform games(that are also available on PC) might benefit use of controllers instead of keyboards, but then again - PC gamers have reached virtuoso level with using keyboards, so pleas stap this nonsense of inciting PC vs consoles hatred. Clearly, consoles have bigger income from gaming than PC, but then again - mobile games dwarf all of these combined, but that is not really an argument about what is better, but where is bigger income.

If we define that Earth is not moving, factually you can't be incorrect, that Sun is orbitting Earth.

Maybe it is all about Elder Scrolls...

Not even close to what I read from that article, but your description is certainly much better for a cult leader.

After reading this blog post, I realized, that after doing exactly the same things for last couple of decades it was not decision of mine... but this guys decision.

In modern days - most of them. It takes years and years to get to scientific breakthrough discoveries.

The issue with software developers is that in some places there was no requirement to finish uni to work. Though, I would advise to finish studies asap, as later you won't have that much energy to share among work, relations, family, health and studies.

I am planning to finish my course after a very long gap in my 40s. Not sure if I need to, but for the sake of finalizing it, so it does not bother me anymore. The long gap seems to bother my university at my home country more than it should bother me and they have still the same irritating procedures in place that I do not like... but why should others care about how you spend YOUR money and time?

The question is dumb and so are the answers.

Person who asked this question, should have calculated how many lightbulbs he need to heat up the room - unless he has built tiny room for some pet, then it makes sense to use just one lightbulb.

I would assume, that most of the folks on this site are heating up room using their PC... For me it is clearly a 2-5 degree difference if the room is not heated by PC.

PS Ironically, I use the most energy consuming and brightest lightbulb I could find(among the energy efficient lightbulbs, because there are no other options).

What I can't get from this article is price. When I was student, reason why students shared those rooms with bunk beds was mainly because that was the thing they(or rather their parents) could afford and renting proper flat was out of their capabilities. Nowadays, in the city I live in 20min distance from university my rent for flat might be cheaper than what students are paying for their dorm room(with windows).

Somehow I have a feeling, that prices for these dorms are adjusted to property rental prices(and income from renting square meter here is larger, than what you might get from flat) and those who have friends might share some place and rent together to have place with more breathing room...

PS If there are no windows - why it had to be built as tall building and not some underground hole, from where those students - lesser humans can crawl out for the time to study...

If the Universe is cyclic and recreated again and again and has the same outcome(and appparently has no beginning and end), simulation hypothesis have problems to explain why things that follow exactly the same tracks again and again can't be part of Universe as natural mechanism observable by enough developed brains and why there is such necessity for someone to create something that is natural. It also concentrates on humans, but there is nothing that prevents animals - at least for mammals to "remember or guess future". Or even things to "remember" their place, that humans can observe. Anecdotally, but some of the issues, that are discussed in regards human behaviour, were already present in old folk tales, that discuss exactly the same issues, that simulation hypothesis have about human behavior, as in those old folk tales it was claimed that humans initially knew their fate and behaved accordingly without any regards for others when their end came, so they were robbed of that full understanding of what is their fate.

*rest of the world :D

it appears, that nowadays people do take Zuck(and jokes that fly over them) too serious, just like it was with Bill Gates... heh

>>> Questions of religion vs science plague proper scientists too, Einstein among them

This is something you are making up, because in his own words Einstein clealry states opposite of your claim:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Why are you concentrating on individual animals, where herd behaviour of them can not be explained by behavior of individual. Same applies to people - there are enough of examples in history of groups of people believing in God and his plan and that belief has led to catastrophic consequences for tribes and even nations... For all I know nothing really matters - Sun can go Nova or Earth can be hit by a small planet and Life on earth can go extinct.

I think, that English language has a linguistical problem with name of "God", as it has no etymological understanding what is it behind this word and the only meaning to it is coming now only from Christianity. Other languages have different meaning for word God and even etymological meaning behind it.

If you translate Greek ancient pantheon... well, Big Bang would fit in it, just like all the gods, that described nature and things that were ruling over people, along with other gods that were describing human behavior.

Quite many of etymological meanings to most of names in other languages for God is Giver. It is not much different from Luck - the main difference between those are only in gender, but not in function. So, if someone thinks, that Gods function was to be responsible for Big Bang, they should be very disappointed or very disillusional, as the only function for God for any society was to bring prosperity to the believers(and wrath to enemies).

There are many different beliefs what is God, what is soul and so on. There are belieffs, that animals were gods - even today there is a belief in Tibet, that gods incarnate in people - young girls. Gnostics even believed, that humans are Gods and that was a big issue with Christianity...

As for something that there was something before - that is Christian construct for most of Europe. Ancient Greeks knew, that first there was a Chaos(a gods name)... for many others there was only a sea from which God emerged as a bird. So, there is not uniform belief, that there was something before, or that gofds themselves appeared into this world before creation of this world - sometimes Gods appeared even much later than Christianity is depicting them and for some American natives Gods appeared only as animals, who created humans.

If the discussion is about still unexplainable mechanisms on how this world works, especially about RND and calling it a God... well, there is a problem with English word of God, because it does not have that meaning in etymology and claiming that it is something that we can assing is not really working. Also, none of other God names means any of those things, so it would be better to establish new term for these mechanisms, how the Universe works, as God has nothing to do with that - not to mention, that extension of Christian God is not possible because of clash of meanings.

>>>I mean, are we gnats on God's

There is always possibility to accept that there is no God(who has eyes? - what about God for worms or trees without eyes, like it is for most of Life?). Rivers run without God, Wind blows without God. Life exists without God and need for it. Humans and not God are responsible for attrocities they are doing for each other and other beings.

So, your argument is that methaphysics is based on belief and no logic? :)

TBF, all of those can be expressed into binary code and mathematical formulas and mathematical logic, however there does not exist proof that there exist God.

Science requires proving that something exist - not disproving that something that is made up centuries ago does not exist!

Catolicism belief is without further discussions in Trinity - Holy Father, Holy Son and Holy Spirit(which had earlier representation of anthropomorphic Jewish God).

Since no one really has read a Bible, I can remind the source:

>>Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

>>"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

According to Bible - God created humans in his image - this is very problematic passage for Christianity, if there is an alien life out there, because apparently they would not be createad by a God.

Any deviations from anthropomorphic nature of a God in Christianity does look like a herecy. Because any other deviations from Christian religious dogmas basically brings to the result, where Aztec god that requires sacrifices and Sol Invictus, not to mention Allah and Yahweh are the same immanent transcendences of a God.

Yes, it has a name for it as equatorial bulge: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/equator/

It was observed in other planets first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_coordinate_system#Eq...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

So, it could be quite possible, that even with sea level rise, crust rebound will play bigger role around poles and there might be some new lands in the sea around north pole - as it is quite shallow ocean near Russia and Canada.

It seems a very US centric view, because in Eastern Europe there are countries with more women than men in science and education and where even women receive bigger salary(tbh, not a good configuration for countries, that need many improvements and stability at this point is stagnating), yet for some reason even there also are parrots present who locally are repeating same dumb ideas, without looking on statistics.

The problem mostly is that there is no interest from women to join male dominated natural sciences - most of those that excell are loners. But, anyway - as a male with IT background I assure, that many guys would not mind, if there were even more women studying. I had probably rare chance of working in a job, where all my colegues were women, who were writing software... it would be very insulting to them and me to know that they had to study less to receive the same salary and job!!!

Ideologies seems to be a necessity for young and dumb people - so they can look back on their stupid mistakes when they will grow wiser(unless they don't), but since the fail of communism in USSR there seems to be not enough effort and brainwork involved to spread these ideologies with style and feeling of selfimportance and it all just relies on making opponents dumb with never ending BS, to compensate for something else.

I somehow expected that this article would talk about technical issues on how to deliver water to planets and how to drain them and where to put that water.

To be fair, if all ice would melt, neither Greenland nor Antarctic would have hole - crust would rebound due to ice removal. Another thing - most of the melted water would flow to equator, so there should be adjusted loss to flooding in northern regions and even more calculated to equator regions.

It explains their course of action, as Jorge was not flexible in his "my way or highway" approach. And I would also either ditch or fork earlier version, if maintainer of API is sabotaging my project.

IMO, making fork, instead of integrating or writing their own(without the need to acknowledge original author due to significant changes to a code) shows struggle of dealing with this situation. I think that it is too harsh to declare it as intent that is directed specifically towards Jorge, but they took that route where they were vulnerable to attack. In the place of users of Jorges API(because I'm not related in any way to anyone here - I'm just reading this piece an making my comment), if I knew that Jorge would be taking this to public and rally a mob to torch other side, I would be making my own code, but then I don't exactl'y understand using so many unowned modules on personal project, as it is vulnerable to do so in first place(it saves some time initially, but if they are improving code so much, that it is running faster, then that is not an issue to write their own) - and one of the vulnerabilities is exactly this situation.

I am sympathising here with Jorge, but only on that side where his efforts in making that API might be significant to him. I don't see anything else good from this situation, as he is not going to get back his main user and others might avoid using his other works because of this conflict. Well, he might have a temporary victory in getting his name in fork, but that will just lead to ditching any code of his in future. The important part is distinguishing author side and his ability to communicate with users and once again I can sympathise with him as author, but not as user, as his communication and solving issues are taken from defensive-aggressive side. You can like or dislike my opinion, but that does not change that fact.

Arguments of other side explains a lot:

https://twitter.com/PostCSS/status/1441734989490446336

https://twitter.com/sitnikcode/status/1441878805337935877

>Churches are usually very "local", and "local" stuff is usually the ones that resists the most immigration.

This is not how churches should work and how they work. Religion can't be non-inclusive and accepting poor souls of migrants, regardless of their religion is humanitarian trait which is also considered equivalent of being Christian, according to how Christians are taught. Islam takes inclusion to even higher level and development of non-Arabic identity is considered corruption of religion(exception is to Arabic, because Quran is written in it). They do not take migrants, because migration is another sham and if rich nonIslamic countries have decided to take care of them without requirements to receive this support, then they are only bringing problems upon themselves.

Also, lets not forget that Christianity birthed revolutionaries of Europe(at least in eastern part), as it is impossible to make global terrorists from local minded people, it takes Large idea to start to kill other people in the name of one happy united brotherhood of mankind.

For those who have a hard time understanding what I am refering to - Stalin was studying to be a priest, his comrades of that time and 20 years prior mostly came from very religious Christian families, who were more religious and who shunned local "pagan" traditions more than other people. When people lose roots that are string together with traditions, they start to participate in crazy experiments with themselves and other people.

Mercury today is ball of fire from one side and ball of cold charcoal from other.

200k is quite a massive time period and the only thing is certain that modern humans would be long dead and most of them would share fate of Denisovans, where most of modern people would not be direct ancestors to people of that distant future. That is a very long time for humanity to exterminate itself to near extinction and achieve the same technological level 3-4 times over again.

Nazis and Soviets had ability to destroy lives of people even without sending them to labor camps. Not sure what you had in mind, but people in British weapon factories also were worked and driven to death.

>Volcanic activity is already accounted for. Human activity vastly exceeds its effects.

Be real. That is neither possible according to modern human technological advances, nor is true.

>What would you consider “not religious”?

Anything that is not based on belief.

>I’m basing 90%-ish on the size of change we are concerned with preventing versus the magnitude of the difference between the earth and the moon

Well, that is interesting and unique take upon the global warming, but somehow without dipping into this deeper I don't think, that this approach is effective to describe global warming or is even taken into account. This only reflects, that you are a human being and have independent thinking, but I would not waste that on something that is waste of time... unless you are serious on making career on this.

>Though frankly, as you’ve already gone for argument by reductio-nazi-absurdum, I’m honestly expecting you to dispute the temperature of the moon at this point.

Are you ok? You decided to be white knight because I responded to someones else comment that he was picking out and declaring, that we knew about global warming forever, which is not so. People in northern hemisphere would specifically ignore memories about gradual warming or warmer periods and remember about cold winters and tell about them for other generations - it is just how it happened, and they would not tell about something good, that gave them slightly better tan, but they would tell about those winters that killed their cattle and how they survived through it.

Dude, just calm down - arguing is one thing, but I do not deserve your personal attack on me - only because I have my own opinion about this scam and also about the people who use it to gain personal benefits out of it.

Of course Sun sunspot maximum is coming closer and there is also link to that people get crazy during that period... anyway - this is way off the topic of Sid Meyers Civilization, when people were not as batshit crazy about nothing as now.

Let me repeat my words: "All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age." Different theories of global warming at that time were only theories and not that significant and are not even comparable to that heavy weight of the whale what is understood under "Global warming" today.

>You can’t use sci-fi to draw conclusions about anything except the culture in which it rises.

I can draw conclusion about culture of that age - just like I can draw conclusions of my own on this culture of modern era, which sure will also raise questions to future generations. However my conclusions about human behaviours has nothing to do with the volcanic activity, that will prove theory of Global warming wrong.

My main point here is that Sid Meyer during the creation of his game probably had no idea about those early global warming papers and "research" that you are so eager to point in that publication from earlier times - including earlier centuries, but clearly the idea about global warming was in the air in 1980s for completelly different reasons. Since I did not live in US, I can't recollect any talks about global warming in 1980s - this really exploded in my region only in 2000s(not much after it became a thing in US), when effects of global warming could be seen and when Al Gore was pioneering the usage of this question to gain political power.

>Explain.

The wiki part is not that interesting as background story of childish - even Hitler Nazi behaviour of scientists, where the one who provided that chart(without any proof) and who later could not admit that he was wrong about calculations(that this whole model was based upon) and who caused grief to anyone else who opposeed him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph

>The other 10% is the problem.

Providing numbers like these are what I call a religious belief.

>Just a reminder that we did know about global warming. We've been knowing for a long time.

That is not really correct and very nitpicky. We also know, that volcanic activity that releases those greenhouse gases were actually cooling down planet with catastrophic consequences to humanity that halted economic development. Not to mention, that there is also observation, that cities have higher temperature than in countryside(on average 2 degrees higher in north - 4-5 degrees hotter in south), where cows are generating methane gas. The scourge of 21st century is that human infested urban environment that has constantly hotter temperature than environment around it finally have reached significant enough coverage, so that it is now affecting rest of the planet.

Also, it is worth mention that there is a theory of Nuclear Winter, which is completely avoided in Civilization games.

All the greatest scientists in late 1970s were talking about coming of a new Ice Age. All the science fiction from that era is full of Ice age related stories. So, at the moment global warming is complete bonkers theory, that will fly out of the window as soon as there will be a sufficient volcanic activity level. So far there is also observation, that volanic activity has been going down while global warming has gone up.

The current theory of Global warming is very politicized. The data that lead to this theory was fabricated and opponents to this theory were silenced. And constructive criticism about reasons why there is a global warming is not possible. It is not as much as a theory, as it is a religion with belief system for something that has different natural causes. Besides there is some belief, that there will be high temperatures in equator, that render those regions void of life, while the reality is that highest rise of temperature is going to be around poles and that in turn will improve living conditions to people that are living there now.

The main reason why there exist theory about global warming is because it was a reaction to actions of Arabic Gulf countries in 1980s that halted economy of USA by creating fuel shortage. Suddenly Ice Age theory became defunct overnight...

Though, there are of couse good side effects to this new religion - fuel powered cars are cause for lead poisoning and ending usage of them will be better to health along with other enviromental changes.

When Sid Meyer was making his game, it was not yet known, that lands that are now under ice, would be rebounding and main body of that water will flow to equator(because of planets rotation and shape) to flood things more around equator than lands that are near poles. I did not knew about that either, but I always wanted to build some city on that Earth map in first Civilization, that was turning ocean tiles into land tiles in northern pole because of a bug.

It was: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Global_warming_(Civ1)

Civilization 3 had to do what Civilization 2 was not able to do and break into 3D world of strategy maps. I was more impresssed by Age of Wonders games that offered better terrain strategy and eventually they replaced my interest in Civilization games. That along with more pleasing fantasy visuals and music was something that took over up till Crusader Kings II came along(though it had a dark side of using toxic and not very deep enough interpretations of history).

>>One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.

Hmm, this is interesting observation, but I have excatly the same feelings towards Civilization games that you are describing about XCOM games, because I felt that XCOM games did not offer very deep game and were very repetitive to the same grind. But then, I also have a dislike for any doom scenarious of future and probably that was one of the reasons why I was not impressed by XCOM games and also Civilization II with free range of scenarious as the first thing that map makers did was creation of doomsday scenarios and the ones that weren't doomsday scenarios were not as fun as other games.

>>In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.

Well, I feel that some of the "hate" or claims about greatness of some games in past is more on the meme level that over time have developed in myths, that some now are taking too seriously - even religiously... :))

It also has to be taken into the account, that any author that is riding the wave on someones else success has to praise object of the topic even more and that makes self fuelling cycle, but I would not go so far as to claim, that Civilization was not a great game. It stood test of time - my memories of first Civilization are of those times, when other very popular option was Wolfstein 3D and then Doom and Doom II and I still played first Civilization when I got bored of Civilization II. Of course I played later Civilizations as well and had fun, but my ground base memories are not about them all so there will be a bias about some of them.

Claims that Alpha Centauri or Civilization II were best games are over exaggerated - I have never understood why people had to make such controversial claims and why they have to continue to do so. IMO, they were unappealing games slapped on top of a very simple concept of first Civilization, that had unique component among all the strategy games - digital encyclopedia - long long time before wikipedia. That was one of the reasons why I started to learn English.

As for Civilization II - it sucked hard and if anyone feels insulted about this claim, then they really have to sit down and shake their brain box to remember if that Windows monstrosity of Civilization II was really that great. Sure, videos of advisers was new technological advance, which very quickly became nuisance and then were turned off. Music was initially great, but after a while I had to play Civilization II without it, unlike Heroes of Might and Magic II, which had the greatest music and was proper full screen game for Windows(and DOS!!!). Not to mention, that there was great strategy game of Master of Orion 2: Battle of Antaris. And then there was a Civilization clone - Master of Magic - with had a very successful following as Age of Wonders. Anyway, I can still enjoy first Civilization(even with that nasty bug, that glitches Earth map in late game), because of Genius simplicity of a game, but can't say the same for Civilization II even if I had fun when I played it, because usage of Windows GUI in Civilization II will feel outdated and very unappealing, which only later Civilization titles fixed.

As for Alpha Centauri - it was not as widely available as Civilization II and technical specifications were ahead of most of PCs, when most of them were not powered by latest Pentiums. That sucked, as I really wanted to play that game(hence the discussion about greatness is more limited, unlike about first Civilization), but by the time I was able to get a hold on it, it was already outdated(and unplayable due to Windows compatibility and color paletting issues!!!), compared to other games that were released at that time.