finalarbiter

Why does the site immediately prompt me to use my Google account? Is there another method available?

Consider adding (2020) to the title. "The Lighthouse" is no longer Robert Eggers' most recent film.

The first PDF is the results/notes of someone attempting remote viewing. Given the dates, I agree with the above poster that the similarities are impressive.

> maybe something else

Water, Life, Arcane, Shield, Lightning, Cold, Fire, and Earth. [0] It's worth noting that, though you can combine most of the elements to form new spells (and with compounding effects, for example wetting or steaming an enemy enhances lightning damage), you cannot typically combine opposites like lightning/ground, which will instead cancel out. Killed myself many times trying to cast lightning spells while sopping wet.

In my experience, though, nobody used the element names—my friends and I just referred to them by their keybinds. QFASA, anyone?

[0] https://magicka.fandom.com/wiki/Elements

I agree with your sentiment that the Kobo is better than the Kindle from an... ethical standpoint, if you have the money for one. However, it is worth noting that Kindles will always be cheaper than Kobo devices [0] due to economies of scale and lockscreen advertisements (removable with jailbreaking). From a pure cost perspective, and assuming the user is technically-minded enough to accomplish the jailbreak, the Kindle is likely always [1] a better deal.

[0] as of today, 12/8/25, the "base model" Kindle 11th Generation is priced at $109.99 USD, and the respective Kobo Clara BW is $139.99 USD.

[1] I say "likely always" to cover my bases. To my knowledge Calibre supports Kindle, just not as well as Kobo. That said I have found that the KOreader app is more than powerful enough for my use case (reading my own epubs, using dictionaries, etc.)

This is a good list, and there are some games on here I've never heard of. That said, I would suggest the addition of Xonotic[0] to the 'first-person games' category, and Luanti[1], formerly MineTest, to the 'sandbox games' category.

[0] https://xonotic.org

[1] https://www.luanti.org/en/

Agreed. I have also found that some (dirt cheap) USB drives are incompatible with Ventoy entirely, being that it does not format the drive properly. I can drop ISOs all I like, but if they don't boot once I select them... Unfortunately I have resorted to using my trusty "pile o' flash drives" I've had for a decade.

Judging from your comment, you may find it intriguing to take a peek at the authors and books listed in Appendix N (Inspirational and Educational Reading[0]) from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1979). If you have any interest in the fantasy roleplaying sphere, this list should be all the more interesting.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_N

On your latter question, I don't see much discussion surrounding The Magus by John Fowles (1965), which is one of my favorite fiction novels of all time.

In my experience people ~25 years of age and younger, who are not tech-savvy enough to install an adblocker, simply do not surf the web. Everything is an app, thus the internet browser becomes an online shopping (no/very few ads) and "googling" tool, though this second use is fading away as well with the rise of LLM chatbots. The ads baked into short-format content are much less obtrusive than the popups or fake download buttons of yore—though in my view this makes them even more insidious. I've witnessed my friends not even realize a video was an advertisement until they'd already watched it in full.

* Grain of salt; just the anecdotal opinion of a jaded zillenial.

You are most likely thinking of the "Phonebloks" concept by Dave Hakkens (2013).

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

https://www.onearmy.earth/project/phonebloks

Massive wealth aside, I would argue that any decrease in crime is nullified in recent years by the increase in sensationalization of specific crimes. That is, reading "crime rates in <city> drop to historic lows in 2025" does not have as much emotional weight as seeing a social media video of a violent crime happening near one's home, even if the statistic is true.

Consider how many children were terrified to swim in the ocean after seeing Jaws for the first time... statistics do very little to allay existing (irrational) fears for most people.