Carnage

I'm fully aware that we as humans have to do a better job in caring for the environment but I personally think that the current "we as humans are predominantly to blame for the current climate change" is just part of a huge political machine which is fueled by extreme climate models that don't draw a realistic picture. I always prefer to look at real data and in the Netherlands for example the sea has been rising at the same rate for over more than 100 years (+/- 2 mm a year). But in other places world wide an increase isn't showing either. Satellites show an increase, but there are so many factors that can distort the data coming from these and although satellites are becoming more accurate, they still are very far from tide gauges for example. I understand it, climate change is a big money maker, but if our leaders would really care for our CO2 emissions, they wouldn't be flying in private jets to their climate meetings. I know that the current measures could help with improving our environment, but then just say that you want to do that. Becoming CO2 neutral is an impossible task and apart from that there have been numerous studies that the effect it's going to have will be minimal and the cost will be tremendous. There are so many ways that we can really care for our planet without having to pay so much. Below I'm sharing an article by Sebastian Lüning a German climate researcher. Think of it what you like, we are all free to believe what we want of course. Here's the original German article for German speakers. "Who erased the medieval warm period? The latest UN report has distorted climate history. The traces lead to Bern. By Sebastian Lüning In the Middle Ages, Switzerland and other parts of Central Europe were as warm as they are today. The so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is scientifically well documented in the region: between 800 and 1300 AD, many Alpine glaciers shrank dramatically and some were even shorter than today. The tree line shifted upward. Permafrost thawed in high alpine areas that are still firmly in the grip of ice today. Those high temperatures are clearly demonstrated by tree rings, pollen, chironomid fossils, and other geological reconstruction methods. Controversial temperature curve For a long time it was assumed that the Medieval Warm Period was a regional, North Atlantic phenomenon. But this warm phase also occurred in many other areas of the Earth, for example, in the Antarctic Peninsula, in the Andes, in North America, at the North Pole, in the Mediterranean, in East Africa, China, and in New Zealand. Together with expert colleagues, I have evaluated many hundreds of case studies from around the world in recent years and published the syntheses continent by continent in peer reviewed journals. Three of those publications are cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its recently published Sixth Climate Report. The Medieval Warm Period was then followed worldwide by an abrupt drop in temperature. During the Little Ice Age of 1450-1850, the climate cooled to the lowest temperature level in the past ten thousand years. Unfortunately, one searches in vain for this information in the new IPCC report. The IPCC maintains its own view of the climate history of the last thousand years. In the Summary for Policymakers, a controversial temperature curve is prominently displayed right at the beginning, giving the impression that only minimal pre-industrial climate changes have occurred in the last two millennia. With the onset of industrialization around 1850, the curve then shoots up by more than a degree. This method of representation is also known as the "hockey stick": the climatically straight pre-industrial period according to the IPCC forms the shaft, and at the end of it is the hook of the hockey stick, representing the rapid modern warming. It is a case of déjà vu. Indeed, the third IPCC report in 2001 contained a similar hockey stick graph, designed to make politicians believe that the current warming was unprecedented and therefore entirely man-made. Over the past two decades, however, paleoclimatology has made great strides and data has been diligently collected. From this emerged more realistic temperature trends with a pronounced Medieval Warm Period and a later Little Ice Age. All the more bitter now is the reversion to the old hockey stick times. How could this have happened? What were the possible motives for this renewed distortion of climate history? The debatable new hockey stick temperature curve comes from the international paleoclimatology group PAGES2k, whose coordinating office is based at the University of Bern. Climate scientist Thomas Stocker, who has collaborated on IPCC reports since 1998, teaches and conducts research at this university. In 2015, Stocker even ran for the general chairmanship of the IPCC, but he lost to South Korean Husung Lee, who recently presented the report of Working Group 1. Stocker co-authored the Summary for Policymakers of the third IPCC report, in which the Hockey Stick played a central role. Now, over twenty years later, the "new" hockey stick comes from Stocker's university, where he heads the Department of Climate and Environmental Physics. Just a dumb coincidence? There are many indications that the new climate curve may have been commissioned for the sixth IPCC report. Five of the nineteen authors of the contributions to the new hockey stick curve are from Bern. But a significant portion of the PAGES2k researchers could not technically support the new hockey stick version and left the discredited group. Evidence thanks to tree rings Meanwhile, the departed scientists published a competing temperature curve with clear pre-industrial temperature fluctuations. Based on tree rings, those specialists were able to show that summer temperatures in the pre-industrial past had already reached the current temperature level several times. This work by Ulf Büntgen of the ETH research institute WSL and his colleagues was not included in the latest IPCC report, although it was published in time for the editorial deadline. Interestingly, the controversial PAGES2k curve had already been included in the first draft of the sixth climate report, although the corresponding publication had not even formally appeared yet. How could this happen? In the second version of the summary for policy makers, the curve was then shrunk to postage stamp size, at the edge of a larger composite figure. This was the last version available for comment by the IPCC reviewers, of which I am one. So it was all the more surprising when the hockey stick image suddenly appeared in the final version at full size. The laws of leverage apply The IPCC is concealing from the public the fact that many experts and reviewers consider the graphic to be highly problematic. For one thing, the new hockey stick contains a whole range of highly anomalous data whose use is difficult to justify. For example, PAGES2k integrates a Bauring dataset from the French Maritime Alps, although the creators of the original case study explicitly advise against using it for temperature reconstructions. On the other hand, it omits data showing strong pre-industrial natural variability of climate. Extensive criticisms made during the report review process and formally published in publications were ignored by the IPCC authors. In light of this behavior, a peer review process makes little sense. The fundamental problem is that both the IPCC authors and editors are appointed by a politically elected IPCC board. Thus, the selection of researchers involved in the IPCC report already establishes a line of thinking that can hardly be watered down later. The laws of leverage apply here: whoever has the upper hand gets his way. The arbitrariness of the IPCC is also evident from another example. Even in the first draft of the report, the IPCC explicitly mentioned the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in a summary table in Chapter 1 of " The Physical Science Basis." The erroneous reference to a regionally limited phenomenon in the North Atlantic was removed in the second draft in response to expert criticism. However, in the final version, which could no longer be seen by the experts, both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age had been surreptitiously dismissed and replaced by meaningless text under the umbrella term "the last millennium." Three small asterisks explain to the reader that the terms "Medieval Warm Period" and "Little Ice Age" could not be used in the report because they would be too ill-defined and regionally variable. That's how easy it is to rewrite climate history, and hardly anyone notices. Why is this important? The pre-industrial temperature trend is highly relevant to the division ("attribution") of modern climate change into human-caused factors on the one hand and natural factors on the other. Since natural climate factors play a minor role in climate models, those models can only generate hockey stick patterns. Thus, any real pre-industrial warm or cold phase poses problems for the models because they cannot reproduce it. They are designed not to. This raises uncomfortable questions about their suitability and usefulness for future climate development. Ultimately, they are uncalibrated simulations that really shouldn't be released for future modeling at all until they match the climate record. In other words, if a climate model provides answers to the question of what the past was like, and those answers are miles away from reality, then the prediction of the future is likely to be just as strongly off. Uncomfortable topics It is particularly curious that the climate models of the so-called CMIP6 type, which were prepared specifically for the sixth IPCC report, turned out to be largely unusable. Due to errors in cloud modeling, they produced temperature graphs that were far too warm. Therefore, the IPCC stated that it would put more emphasis on historical temperature trends in the current sixth report. However, since that historical approach - as described above - is highly controversial, the IPCC has now blown up this "saving grace" as well. In its official press releases, the IPCC largely omits these uncomfortable issues. And in most media reports, the public does not find out about them either. This will continue to reverberate in the scientific community for a long time. For it is only a matter of time before critical climate scientists systematically address the inconsistencies in this biased IPCC report. The incident demonstrates how political tactics undermine the scientific integrity of the IPCC and undermine trust in the institution."

I personally think it's just best to accept that some people have different views, no matter how extreme these might be and take them with a big pinch of salt. It might not always be easy but in life you'll always encounter people with different views (some more extreme than others) and learning to accept that will make everything a lot more bearable. They might even think the same about you, as ones view on things doesn't automatically make it the 'correct' view. We all receive information from different parts and there are so many other factors that decide how we view certain topics. If they're really offending of course, you can always report them, but most of the time a senior member of this forum will soon tell them to calm down if they are.

Symphonia free on GOG https://www.gog.com/game/symphonia

I've selected the first option but I want to add that I would do that with a kid that's able to distinguish fiction from reality and that's it's more a 50/50 option between the first and second. As a kid I've seen and played a lot of stuff that wasn't for my age and it never affected me. I think the biggest problem is the time you're allowed to play as that does a lot more damage than the content itself. In my time there was a cartoon called Alfred J. Kwak and one of the antagonists was called Dolf and was a perfect reflection of Hitler. Pure propaganda. In today's age such a cartoon wouldn't be allowed anymore, just like there were so many cartoons that today wouldn't be allowed anymore. None of these have affected me or anyone I know, but addiction certainly has (not me as my parents were strict in time allowance, but some friends had big problems).

The Complete Edition of Horizon Zero Dawn can be downloaded for free in the Playstation Store for PS4 and I also think for PS5 till May 14/15th.

This was solved on Reddit. An unfinished and unnamed game by a joe wintergreen. https://joewintergreendev.tumblr.com/post/172265678592/five-minute-first-pass-at-lightning-and-thunder/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Yeah, pretty crazy stuff. This will only make crypto more popular because of it's decentralized nature, even though the elites have a lot of power there as well to control price fluctuations.

Hoping they make there own story then and not a tie-in with the new movie.

It certainly is, but still a demo is more than going in completely blind and of course there will be examples as yours. I do think though that you'll be able to find such things in reviews nowadays. Unless you buy day one or pre-order, but I think it's your own mistake then. I usually wait till all the DLC's have been released and most of the bugs have been removed and buy during a sale. The prices you pay then are very good and in my country even more at the moment. For new games I would pay about $ 55. Most of the games I buy though are $ 10 or less, and I find it hard to complain too much then.

I doubt it. I don't think a few euros more expensive will encourage more people to choose a pirate's life, just like a few euros drop in price won't make more people give it up. Quite a few people also pirate games just to test if they like them and then buy them or uninstall them if they don't like them, as refund policies (if any) are quite shady sometimes and there are few games that actually have demos (although this thankfully seems to be increasing again).

This is usually a big problem with gaming laptops, because they have very aggressive boost modes that cause throttling issues in no time. If anyone reading this has a gaming laptop, there's a way to disable the boost mode. Yes, this will mean that your peak FPS is slightly lower (around 5 FPS but sometimes less), but it will result in a much more stable FPS and therefore more stable gaming experience as the FPS won't take a dive anymore because of throttling issues. You will also increase the life of your battery and laptop in general, because it will never run as hot as before. Open a command prompt with admin rights. Enter the following: powercfg.exe -attributes sub_processor perfboostmode -attrib_hide Go to the advanced power options and under "Processor power management" an option called "Processor performance boost mode" will have been unlocked. Change the options "on battery" and "plugged in" to disabled and that's all. Some people change the options to efficient aggressive, but temperatures won't drop as much then and throttling issues might still occur. It's also a good idea to take a look at the fan settings of your laptop, because quite a lot of time manufacturers will set this to silent. There's usually a program for your processor available to change this.

Certainly not mandatory for bounty hunters, but he's a Mandalorian (Boba Fett also was) and it's the signature armor of their people. The TV show is good and so is the acting, but it does suffer from lazy writing sometimes. Like a character does something and you're like that doesn't make sense at all, but then something happens a little bit later which explains why the character did that totally unlogical thing. There are also some moments where a few people take down a whole army but then at a later moment they can't fight a handful of the same soldiers. If you don't really mind those things, then it's certainly an enjoyable show.

I know that in my country and more countries here in South America all deaths (even the ones that didn't have covid) were counted as corona deaths for quite some time, because autopsies weren't allowed. So I think it's difficult to get any precise numbers on the fatality rate.

These people probably have PTSDs from dumping their load and afterwards finding out that there isn't any toilet paper. Toilet paper would be on the top of my apocalypse preparation list as well, I mean food and water don't mean anything if you can't dump it peacefully afterwards... Imagine Hollywood making a post-apocalyptic movie where all people are fighting over toilet paper and it's the most valuable trading good, that would be hilarious.

The thing with corona is that the PCR test isn't done the same in every country and sometimes not even by different authorities in the same country. Anything more than 30 amplification cycles just leads to a higher rate of false positives. In The Netherlands they use about 40 in some places and 25 in others and some scientists have said that the rate of false positives is as high as 30%. People getting infected again is most of the time a false positive as well, because the PCR test sees remains of the virus as positive as well even though those people aren't infected any more. Not saying corona is a hoax, it's just not as bad as they want us to believe.

I don't really think it needed to be called out because just like we have to see that islam extremists don't represent the islam, they have to see that the opinions of a few don't represent the whole community. I personally think religions in general are one of the biggest problems in the world. I remember this one time when a christian lady next to me on the bus got very angry when I said other religions, for her there was just the one religion. There are so many pointers that religions are man-made, such as the if you don't do this list this awful thing will happen to you. Doesn't mean I don't believe in some sort of higher power (even the big bang had to start from something), just not like in the religions. I respect though that some people need religions and believe in them.

The problem is though that we all make decisions in our lives that can kind of force us to do something that we don't like. Another thing is to be happy with less if it makes you happier, but that possibility kind of depends on the decisions you make again. When I finished university I saw so many people that weren't happy with the work they had, but they had a mortgage, kids, were married, etc. (examples in no particular order) which made them afraid or made it even impossible for them to give up their job and try something else. The people around me expected me to follow the herd (find a full-time job, buy a home, get married, make some kids). I found my FT job but wasn't happy with it and wasn't looking forward to follow the same layed out path for 40+ years. I also wasn't happy living in my bunched up country, I was missing the extensive nature and peace that I experienced in other countries. I decided to work and travel in various countries to find the country that was perfect for me and where I was able to do what I wanted to do. In the end I have found that country (which obviously isn't perfect, but during my travels I have found out that no country is, it just has to be perfect for you) and although I'm not working in something that I really like now yet, I know that what I'm doing now will make it possible for me to do so in a few years time and I can also quit whenever I like. Long story short, those people maybe have debts or other obligations that might prevent them from giving up their job and after being sacked all that anger just comes out. I know I would never let it come to that point, but many of us are just like animals living in a herd and make decisions without really thinking them through, because we're expected to follow the layed out path.

I'm also using Ublock origin but never had to click through multiple layers. Guess it depends on what sites you visit. Adblock is the next best thing and never had any real problems with it. Used it before Ublock but is a bit more resource heavy and was looking for ways to speed up my potato.

The Mass Effect novels are pretty good imo. They tell the story of the young Anderson and give a lot more information about things he touches on lightly in the games.

Great game, really liked the story and the various elements it used. The new Cthulhu never really was able to capture me in the same way. Would be interesting to see some Cthulhu mods with this engine as it really fits the atmosphere.

I have it on my wish list as it seemed stealthy from what I read and it's great to read that this is the case. Not sure how it did saleswise but it seems that it has gone quite under the radar. I have to upgrade my potato first before I can play this. I already had to wait about 5-10 minutes before a level in Prey was loaded and afterwards the occassional stuttering and freezing, which I only endured because I really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Looking forward to this one. They are going to release an editor shortly after release as well, so it will be interesting to see what the community comes up with. Just read an interesting interview with Thomas Grip on Moddb: https://www.moddb.com/games/amnesia-the-dark-descent/news/interview-feature-thomas-grip-co-founder-creative-director-of-frictional-games

I was going to take a look at this one, thanks for reminding me. I'm a big fan of Carcassonne (I can recommend https://jcloisterzone.com/en/ for that one as well), Machiavelli and the likes. What about the most popular boardgames, are they free as well or do they come with an extra price tag and if so, are these prices acceptable?

Although it doesn't change much for me, I like diversity. An open market is needed to make it a competitive one, which in this regard is already missing competition. Then again, Sony has quite a bit of exclusive titles as well, so it's not like they are any better in that regard. In the end it's the customers that suffer as with less competition it's very likely that prices are going to rise as well. So I hope you're wrong that Sony is already limping.

Just read the news that Microsoft has bought Bethesda and Zenimax (and the subsidiaries like Arkane). I'm not really sure what to think about it. Very likely not much will change, but I just hope that there won't be too much focus on the Xbox now. It would also be nice if the quality of the games will improve as some of the last few games weren't incredible.