Racist, but also ageist.

The “zoo animal” thing seems about right. Sometimes they look at you like they think you’re about to start flinging shit around. Sometimes they’re curious about how the zoo animal is going to do something simple like handle chopsticks. Often they don’t make eye contact or keep their space because they don’t want to have to interact with the zoo animal.

OTOH, part of their being polite is that if the gaijin actually asks them for help, they’re obligated to try to help.

Overall, I liked it. As an introvert, I don’t like countries where people approach the foreigner and try to practice their English on them. There are also too many countries where you’re frequently approached by someone who wants to scam you, or wants you to give them money.

You found that the Chinese weren’t racist or sexist? I agree with you about Japan, but China was hardly enlightened. They were mostly just louder and more obnoxious, where the Japanese were overly formal and quiet.

Both cultures also had a lot of superstitions, like words or phrases you shouldn’t say, or lucky or unlucky numbers.

As in 3 minutes and 56 seconds? At that speed you can’t even build a base. Can you even get the wetsuits for deep diving in that time?

For me, it’s the opposite. In Factorio you know that to produce one Z, you need 3 Y and 4 X, and to produce 1 Y you need 3 V and 1 W, and so-on. And you can make the perfect conveyor system so that your mine connects to your smelter which goes to your gear factory, and so-on. You never really have to struggle with space because you have an entire world to build your conveyor belts on.

Sure, until you get a certain kind of explosive, you might be annoyed by cliffs, and the locations of the resources are random. But, other than that, you can build the exact same optimal thing every time.

Once I launched a rocket in Factorio once, I never really got the urge to build the same thing again.

With Oxygen Not Included there are a dozen ways to solve each problem, whether that’s how to make air, what to feed your dupes, how to deal with heat, etc. As a result, each time I play it my base looks different because I’m dealing with a different set of opportunities, a different set of challenges, and so-on. Also, with laying out your machines in 2d, the same basic machine (say an O2 generator that uses water and feeds a hydrogen power generator) can be built a dozen different ways, none of which are fully optimal, it all depends on how much space you have, where everything else is, etc.

But, what I especially like about ONI that you don’t get with Factorio is the “physics engine” solution to things. I know it’s unrealistic and simplified, but still, the fact that you can make petroleum by boiling oil instead of using the machine is great. And then there are the various techniques to make a reverse-flow heat exchanger so that your oil is pre-heated and your petroleum is cooled. That’s awesome. AFAIK that kind of solution doesn’t exist in Factorio.

And it’s easier once you know some of the “secrets”, like where to find certain modules, where the various paths are to the lower levels, etc.

But, why would you replay it? I actually like both the original and sub-zero, but I didn’t replay them.

Yes, god is mentioned as an additional clause, but you’re pledging to the flag.

And the founding fathers were divinely inspired geniuses who thought of every possible contingency, despite being a bunch of 20 year old rich kids.

“I pledge allegiance to the the Flag of the United States…”

Unless you think the flag is a god, you’re not pledging to a god, you’re pledging to a piece of fabric, or to the design printed on that fabric. Which, honestly, is a lot weirder. How can one have allegiance to a flag? What about the opposite, is it possible to be disloyal to a flag?

Do you understand how the water is being used?

What would the icon for a “directory” look like?

What makes that different from a “real directory”?

1. Power
2. Connectivity

I wonder if water / cooling is less of an issue in Canada.

Step 1: be attractive

Step 2: don’t be unattractive

FIFA has an ethics committee?

Isn’t that like the Amish having a CIO?

This has to be one of the more difficult things to figure out. Some players, now, are showing signs of CTE, presumably from heading the ball when they were younger. But, when they were younger the ball was different and the game was played differently.

It might be that the way the game is played in 2026 with a 2026 ball that doesn’t absorb much moisture, headers are relatively safe.

Also, if you limit training headers when players are young, they may not develop the right technique, which means they’re in more danger if they have to do it later.

Maybe it makes sense to ban headers outright now, just to be safe. But, that’s a big call.

Maybe I remember wrong, but my memory is that at one point MacOS had zsh as the default and then switched to BASH, and then maybe back to zsh again. But, since Internet search is broken these days, I can’t find anything about that.

The ergonomics aren’t great compared to a dedicated camera. The camera sensor not being in the middle is annoying unless your subject is far away. Having to hold the phone so that you don’t accidentally touch the screen, accidentally block the camera, etc. is not ideal. The shutter is never in a great position, even if you do something like use the volume button as a shutter.

Even flip phone cameras were more convenient than that. With those the camera was roughly in the middle, and you could hold the phone in a way that felt less awkward.

OTOH, the thing that killed cameras for me was the ergonomics of getting the pictures off the camera and backed up online. You either needed to remove the memory card from the camera, make sure you had a USB to memory card adapter, plug it into a computer, drag the files somewhere, etc. then wait for that to complete, and remember to put the memory card back into the camera.

For a short while, the cameras claimed to have WiFi, but it wasn’t like you could just connect them to your home router and let the camera connect to the Internet and upload the photos. No, the camera created its own WiFi hotspot and you had to connect your laptop or something to that hotspot and transfer the files that way.

To me, the killer feature of phone cameras (aside from always being in my pocket) was that to back up the pictures I’d taken I had to… do nothing. I’d get home, use my phone as normal, and within half an hour, the photos were already online and backed up.

Was zsh the default at the time? Or did you switch to zsh? AFAIK the new default is BASH, but it was zsh for a while.

IMO, your level of nerdiness is much higher if you change the default shell.