How is Railroad Tycoon not included in the sale? Luckily, I already have Railroad Tycoon 2, so I’m good on that one. I might pick up Station to Station though.

That’s a reason I can support. Maybe they could just wear nice wool caps.

However, the ministry spokesman said a fake fur version would have to satisfy “safety and durability considerations” and that “no alternative has met all those criteria to date”.

Why do they need to be durable if they keep buying new ones? Don’t they have enough existing durable hats to reuse at this point? And I’m having a hard time imaging what is unsafe about faux fur hats.

I got my lawnmower about 9 years ago secondhand and have never done any maintenance on it. I’m pretty sure that’s how you’re supposed to do it.

I played this one forever ago when I was a kid with my dad and sister. We had a notebook and tons of graph paper that we taped together to create the game map.

That bridge…

Games sure are easier now. I remember being amazed that it was able to parse text to solve puzzles. Of course, some areas I had to have my dad take care of because I knew what to do, but couldn’t type fast enough; the vampire and medusa both come to mind.

I think the way to play this is to place a ruinously large bet on the candidate you hate most. That way, if they win, you’ll at least have a large payout as a consolation prize.

Same, I actually use a french press and then pour the coffee into the insulated carafe from my dead coffee machine to keep it hot until I finish it.

I’ve noticed this with my kids’ schools. Many kids are open about who they are - LGBT+, neurodivergent, mental illnesses, etc. - and people are generally accepting of that. When I was a kid, people were bullied relentlessly for showing any form of difference from “normal”. It makes me happy to hear them talk about things like that like its no big deal…because it shouldn’t be.

https://www.positive.news/

This site usually has some good stories worth checking out.

I used to travel quite a bit for work and I would collect state themed magnets for my kids each time I visited a new state. Most airports have magnets for sale in the gift shops that are shaped like the state with some various references to the state. I visited Chicago multiple times, but I could never get an Illinois magnet because apparently Chicago overrides any acknowledgement that it is part of a larger entity…there is only Chicago.

But were there bread knives before bread? I’m not going to slice my bread with a butcher’s knife or a cleaver, that’s barbaric!

I’ve been curious about this too, but haven’t been able to find anything that puts a real price (including future profit margin) on GenAI. For example, having a chat conversation with a customer service agent in India might cost about $2-3. Is a GenAI bot truly cheaper than that once you factor in the energy & water costs, hardware, training, profits, etc.? It might be, but I’m skeptical.

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

If you’re having problems getting support from a Telecom company, file a complaint with the FCC. You are more likely going to get someone who can/will actually help you. This mainly works when you have a concrete complaint that is running into process/policy roadblocks. For example, if you’ve been overcharged by an amount that the normal agents don’t have authority to credit or if you’re having chronic service issues that aren’t being resolved.

It is less likely to help if the issue is more subjective, such as asking for a large credit to compensate you for being inconvenienced by an outage (i.e. claiming the outage cost you business or work time). They’ll likely offer a prorated service credit and a courtesy credit (like $25-50) and the FCC will likely consider that reasonable.

Yeah, I bought it in the late '80s, I’d guess around '88 or '89 and it included 2 controllers, 2 games, and the gun. I recall the whole package being close to $100, maybe a little more.

On an inflation adjusted basis, that would be a bit under $300 today. Considering it would have been a 5-6 year old system at that point, it would probably be fair to compare it to the Xbox Series S today, which sells for $300-350 with one controller and zero games. So, it seems like that was a pretty good deal at the time.

I bought the original NES with my own money, so I guess Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt were my first since they were included.

Strange Horticulture…I’m probably fine.

Yeah, I plan to do in-person early voting rather than take my chances with mail-in voting.

I recently took a voluntary lay off from my job after almost 20 years with the company. I found out my dept was going to be reorganized and I was not very happy about the direction things were going, so I put myself on the severance list. I had been planning to look for a new role this year anyway, though I originally thought I would be looking for something in the same company.

It has been a couple of months now and I’m getting fewer interviews than I expected. I still have plenty of time to find something, so I’m not too worried yet, but I do question if I made a bad decision. Of course, I expect more layoffs within the next year, so it was reasonably likely that I would have been laid off eventually anyway.

Last year’s reorg for my dept, they broke into two rounds, the first round mostly got rid of supervisors and managers and kept more analysts than were needed long-term to get through all the work changes. Then, in December, they came back and laid off the extra staff. They knew that was the plan when everything was announced in April. They actually discussed telling people up front so they would have 8 months notice + severance, but decided not to at the last minute. I’m guessing they were worried those people would leave or not work hard enough through the transition.

I was only ever interested in these company’s services as a way to save money. They are no longer cheaper than a hotel, so I would rather stay at a hotel.

Apocalyptica is a symphonic metal band with 3 cellists as the core of all their work. Sometimes they also have drums, electric guitar, or vocals. It varies from album to album and song to song.

There’s a great orchestral version of “Animals” by Architects if metal works for you.

Going back to the 90’s Metallica did a concert and live album with the San Francisco Symphony.

It’s not exactly what you asked for, but Sean Townsend does great piano covers of rock/metal, especially Killswitch Engage. His music is very relaxing to listen to. Most of his material is on YouTube, which is a shame because I would buy his music if it were for sale somewhere.