Recent Posts

1

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Cultures are Weird

« Last post by dubsartur on Today at 04:32:58 AM »

In a 'Surprised Eel Historian' story Fisheries and Oceans Canada caught someone trying to smuggle 109 kg of chilled eels https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-officials-seize-around-500000-worth-of-elvers-from-toronto-pearson/

The Globe and Mail (older and less politically conservative of the two Toronto papers which call themselves national) has a story about the decline of small prairie hamlets (they call them towns but a few hundred people is only a town in the legal sense) through the lense of the decline of their hotel-bars https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-on-the-rocks-the-death-and-life-of-canadas-little-bars-on-the-prairie/

2

Pangolin Games / Re: Exile Princes Closed Beta Testing

« Last post by Jubal on May 19, 2024, 11:26:12 PM »

32 achievements now ingame! So that's progress. Here are some more of the latest ones:



I've also started work on the much needed dungeon crawl overhaul: I've been putting in "service" sections for piping more information around the various functions so far, but I've now got to a point where:

• Completing a dungeon turns it into a ruin instead (which could then be redeveloped, so it lets you "clear" the area in your own cities if you'd rather have another amenity).
• Ruins have a chance to turn into dungeon entrances (which is currently set way too high for testing purposes, this will be a very rare event).
• Dungeons have a type, which will set the final enemy, and which I'm also planning to use to flavour some of the miscellaneous events on lower levels.

The next and probably bigger section of the overhaul is to add three new enemies on top of the one already used. I want these to be some of the more interesting/unusual boss fight style encounters in the game, there to stretch its better players, so they're going to involve some difficult/unusual mechanics.

3

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Sex education in the UK - an update

« Last post by Jubal on May 19, 2024, 09:45:28 PM »

Teachers take after their worst-behaved students: tell them not to do something and they're possibly more likely to do it. Speaking from experience.

I think that's true in terms of attitudes, but threatening people's jobs can have a certain chilling effect on that sort of thing, and make it harder to get time when it's not on the curriculum: teachers are also in my experience very stretched! It would almost need a level of full civil disobedience to get it to work on a "you can't fire all of us" basis, and I don't know if that's something anyone's quite prepared to organise sadly.

4

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Sex education in the UK - an update

« Last post by indiekid on May 19, 2024, 09:38:25 PM »

Teachers take after their worst-behaved students: tell them not to do something and they're possibly more likely to do it. Speaking from experience.

5

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: World Politics and Elections 2024

« Last post by dubsartur on May 19, 2024, 02:04:49 AM »

Illia Ponomarenko on Ukraine's internal problems (birdsite IAPonomarenko/status/1791440191615307900 )

There's one thing that one should keep in mind as he or she follows the developments in Ukraine.

The people of Ukraine are actually fighting two wars at the same time. Apart from the Russian invasion, the largest war of aggression in Europe since Adolf Hitler, there's another war -- a domestic war of our people against so many things that undermine us from within.

It's about corrupt officials, it's about incompetent and populistic decision-makers, it's about those who embezzle our money allocated on fortifications and defenses, it's about those who give exemptions from military conscription to sports-betting firms (with very murky tax records), and don't it to charity foundations providing the military with fast and vital aid.

It's also, for instance, about entire departments of the SBU security service spying on anti-corruption investigating journalists during the war with Russia.

It's a war against so many things that try to drag us back to what we used to be - a weak and corrupt informal Russian colony.

Just like the "military" war with the foreign invader, this internal war for saving this country from its own dark side has had its victories and setbacks.

Every time high-profile malpractice is exposed in the open, it is fought daily, triggering a scandal and a public uproar.

And these two wars are interconnected.

A favorable outcome of the war against Russia's aggression is not possible without significant victories in this domestic war of ours.

That's our life and the struggle for national survival in the last... ten years!

And I must say that sometimes I look through the news, I can't help but keep thinking about the fact that so many of those insolent pen-pushers in high cabinets don't deserve to even hold a candle to all our men and women who save this country every single day and do the impossible on the fronts of Russia's war.

The Ukrainian military also seems to have both aspects, with those who figured out how to fight Russia to a standstill since 2014 on one side, and the older school of Soviet-minded commanders on the other.  I suspect that is one reason why expanded conscription is controversial, nobody wants to die because someone embezzled the money for fortifications and the commanding officer is stuck on doing things the way his textbooks told him to do it.

6

Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Jubal on May 18, 2024, 07:37:42 PM »

bar

7

Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Tusky on May 18, 2024, 06:14:26 PM »

Sand

8

Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Jubal on May 18, 2024, 04:25:34 PM »

Line

9

Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Tusky on May 18, 2024, 03:37:01 PM »

Clothes

10

Forum Games - The Beer Cellar! / Re: Word Association

« Last post by Jubal on May 18, 2024, 08:47:37 AM »

Catalogue