I know I probably shouldn’t engage, but I really just wanted to spark a conversation. I find the trope interesting. I agree that my Good Place example isn’t that good, but still, no need to be so accusing.

I completely forgot to mention His Dark Materials! Hell doesn’t appear, but Heaven is portrayed as actively bad.

I would +1 this. I’m completely bald, and almost never leave the house without a hat, even in summer. It’s also important protection against sunburn :).

For something comfortable in the summer, I personally often go for brimmed hiking hats. A few that I like:

• Fjällräven Abisko Summer Hat
• Shelta Sun Hawk

Last I checked, it was out of print, so I bought Unfathomable instead (reimplementation in the Lovecraft universe). Still good, but missing pilots, so not as good :).

I’m working on some outdated memories, but IIRC:

Germany allows dual citizenship now, but used to not allow it in most cases. In those cases, if you applied for German citizenship, you had to express that you were willing to give up your old citizenship. Once you were granted citizenship, you had a certain amount of time (two years?) to show a certificate that you renounced your old citizenship. If you didn’t, your German citizenship would be revoked.

I finished Dave the Diver a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it. For me, it hit this sweet spot of “Remember where everything is and grind the same thing over and over” without getting boring.

Thanks for that link! That does seem very similar to what I read about in Machi Koro 2, and I think we will definitely try it the next time we play.

I bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution for 2.99€ and I’ve been enjoying it. I’ve always heard good things about the series, but never tried it before. Definitely feeling that Cyberpunk had some inspiration from Deus Ex.

I also bought Firewatch for 4.99€ and beat it in a day. I wasn’t spoiled about the story, but I had read a bit about it. At the end of the day, I’m glad I played it, but I’m not sure that I would necessarily recommend it.

That is a crazy process. But I’m happy that you were somehow able to get a new passport :).

Have you watched the show? The game is not for me, horrorness being a part of the reason, but the show was very well done.

Depending on the complexity, there’s also abbrev-mode: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Abbrevs.html

I immediately thought of House of Leaves. Do not read it as an ebook, if there even is an ebook version. It must be read as a physical book.

For what it’s worth, you can replace xi with just s or c

I never really thought of it as science fiction (see her MaddAdam series for something more SF-y), but I love the book and think it does a great job of extrapolating from various political trends into where parts of the “western world” could end up going.

I’m also not surprised it’s a candidate for being banned, either from people who think it paints religion or conservativsm in a negative light, or people who think it might make anyone under 18 uncomfortable. Is it appropriate for 5 year olds? Probably not. 16 year olds? Seems reasonable to me.

I think “bad” would be the wrong word. I usually describe it as “weird”. And it feels a bit smushed together somehow: lots of different things that don’t really fit that well together, in my opinion.

It may well be worth reading, but as the first entry on a list of best science fiction and fantasy, it feels out of place to me.

I’ve read schockingly few of the ones on the list, and from what I know, I feel torn. Some I’m happy to see: NK Jemisin is a great author, and although I haven’t read Exhaltation by Ted Chiang, everything I’ve read of his has been incredible.

On the other hand, seeing Perdidio Street Station as the first entry really threw me for a loop. The book is totally fine, but it is extremely weird, and I definitely don’t see it as a must-read.

Edit: typo

Hah, I do know what twerking is, but I never associated it with this phrase. A follow-up: are you actually touching the ground? What body part is touching the ground?

In our first game of Clank Legacy, we thought that as long as you died above the Line of No Return, or whatever it’s called, you got points, regardless of whether you had an artifact or not. This had…implications for some of the story choices that we made.

In Austria, some things like ground beef are ordered in decagrams. My wife used to get confused responses when she tried that in Germany :).

I watched a few slightly older shows recently: Killjoys, which I really couldn’t get into, and now Dark Matter. I’m finding it a bit cliched, but I like it so far.