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Cake day: May 19th, 2025

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  • If server code is released such that people can run private servers after the official servers are shut down, then legally the people running the servers should be the ones liable for illegal activity that happens on them.

    I could imagine third-party companies springing up whose entire business model is JUST providing unofficial servers for discontinued games and moderating them. Maybe a subscription service that provides access to servers for several different online service games.

    Of course, it would be more likely that it would be just a player who hosts a server for themselves and their friends and doesn’t attempt to be profitable. That would be fine too.






  • You’ve basically just described “confession”. You go into a little box designed to make it as difficult as possible for the priest to identify you, you talk about all the ways you feel like you’re a bad person, and the priest talks to you for a while about it, then gives you some actionable items to make amends and once you’ve done them God officially forgives you. The whole concept of confession is designed to allow people to let go of their regrets and live in the now. It’s actually quite clever as a bit of societal design. If modern priests had psychotherapy degrees then everyone in the world would have access to free therapy - unfortunately they wouldn’t be very useful for LGBT+ people.





  • SNES:

    • Harvest Moon - this can lead into allowing the kid to plant something IRL and having them water it regularly, allowing them to “be a real farmer”. Incidentally this is also a great way to get a child to eat vegetables, as a child who refuses to even consider eating a vegetable will change their mind when they grew it themselves

    • Super Mario Kart

    Mega Drive:

    • Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine - simple puzzle game with humorous characters from the old cartoon




  • Hypothetically, we could terraform Venus. At the very least, it shares a lot of the issues that we’re trying to fix on Earth, just dialled up to 11 - its main problems are that it’s way too hot, the atmosphere has way too much carbon in it (96.5% vs Earth’s 0.04%), and the atmosphere has way too much sulfur (0.015% vs Earth’s 0.00000002%, making the atmosphere highly acidic). So if for example scientists had an idea for causing a chain reaction in a planetary atmosphere that rapidly sequestered all atmospheric carbon but were worried about unknown strength or side effects, instead of testing it on Earth where it could kill us all, they could test it on Venus where any failures would have no serious consequences. And if it worked, not only would it mean that we fix climate change on Earth but we partially terraform Venus into the bargain.

    Venus has roughly similar gravity to Earth and has a ferrous core which could hypothetically be turned molten (and therefore ferromagnetic) to provide the same kind of magnetosphere that Earth’s core does. Mars has neither of these things and would therefore never be able to sustain human life naturally - Venus potentially could. On Mars, the atmosphere is just one of many obstacles. On Venus it’s THE obstacle. Solve the atmosphere, you solve Venus.





  • Regardless of how expensive the show was, that money was well-spent as it’s reinvigorated the flagging fan interest in the entire franchise. People would be excited to see more political thriller/spy procedural stuff set in the Galaxy Far Far Away now. I was already fascinated by the Doctor Pershing stuff in The Mandalorian; if they started building on that angle and did a “Kleya as an aging George Smiley-type working with Chancellor Mothma, General Syndulla and Senator Organa in trying to counter the rise of the First Order during the Galactic Cold War era” I would be front row centre for that and I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one. Andor has made the politics of Star Wars exciting again, and I wanna see more Senate oversight committees with Leia going up against Senator Xiono et al. Though unfortunately a recast would be necessary…


  • Things that went wrong with The Acolyte:

    • It spoiled its “mystery” in its first episode but then continued to act like we, the audience, were in the dark about it

    • A lot of the conflict came from characters holding the Idiot Ball for no reason and never communicating

    • It killed off all the most interesting characters that it had spent the entire season fleshing out, and then asked us to tune in next season to follow the continuing adventures of the characters it hadn’t managed to make us care about (and Qimir who’s cool but not cool enough to carry a show on his own)