Lol what? Their system makes more sense

To make a circular mask in gimp, use the circle select tool, then fill your selection.

This, I’ve never understood the learned helplessness of some people. The 12,000 employee international company I work for doesn’t pay for any Adobe products. You can just use literally any other product or open source alternative, I promise you there are multiple good ones with extremely well supported professional workflows used by millions of people every day, for every conceivable Adobe product. You can learn a new workflow I believe in you, it will take like three months to get used to.

I think a big part of the problem is the time investment and the fact most people really vibe with only a few types of games.

On time investment: in order to say anything interesting about the game, anything you couldn’t get from watching someone play it for two minutes, you’d need someone to take the time to finish it, often 50+ hours, and probably more to digest it and to play stuff around the sides (achievements, collecting. Given an 8 hour work day, and reasonable breaks, that’s easily a week or more of just playing before you start writing. Then you’ve got to write with better insight into mechanics, design etc than the average guy, which a lot of critics fail at. Not just what mechanically does the game do, but clearheadedly why is that different, what makes that good and bad, how do they reinforce or work against the games themes.

On subjectivity: I could not review a first person shooter. I could not review an RPG like Skyrim. It’s not because I couldn’t play those games, or even derive some enjoyment. But rather that I know my mind, and I know that I have a strategic optimizing mind that left alone would rather play spreadsheet simulator stuff like rule the waves or dwarf fortress or football manager. Complexity is my god. But that’s not the route to good design for most people. Similarly, guy who only plays CSGO probably shouldn’t be reviewing disco Elysium.

All of this put together means an ideal reviewer would be working on a narrow selection of games, taking weeks or more for each one. And they’d be competing with people making excellent video essays for free on YouTube or whatever. Text is already a niche (hence declining film/book reviews also)

Imagine being a professional music listener. That would be the life. Sure I’d have to write a ton, like every day, and go to a bunch of events with record execs probably. Still sounds alright

I’ll remind you that sailing ships big enough for piracy very much cost more than a house. If nothing else, they’re way bigger than a house, and literally house dozens of crew for long stretches of time. A huge amount of modern capitalism was invented exactly because ships were so expensive and risky (insurance, large scale banking, corporations, lots of contract law, risk assessments, time value of money etc)

But yeah. Valuable space freight passing through areas of space with complicated conditions with many safe harbours for the pirates, for one reason or another. Political (government doesn’t care that they pirate against those other guys) geographical (countless small islands/asteroids makes searching for them futile), or otherwise

Serious attempt at an answer: I was terrified of this myself. I felt super tired on much less, had no idea how I would cope with a full day of work plus coming home and going right back out to be social or whatever. I ended up having to do it, plus language lessons twice a week. Have been doing it a couple years now. I think you really do adjust, at least a little. You find ways to rest in smaller periods, in bathroom at work, going out for a break with the smokers, sleeping when you come home etc. I find a lot of things I ended up sacrificing but I also find it’s not as hard as you might think. I even manage to cook most days, and stay on top of household chores for the most part. It isn’t a brag, and I think I fall back on the same recipes time and again. One one level, it just sort of all gets forced to be optimised, but I do also feel I have more energy

Right. Theres nothing inherent to the act of making a bed, or having a bed made, that makes it normal. It’s literally only normal if you’re a person that normally does that. If you need a benefit of routine in life, you can choose whatever routine you want!

Tests are good vibes we like test. I feel safe warm embrace when test. Test brought dog back to life.

Enforcement.

It’s not hard to build public trust in this sort of thing if you aren’t a coward. Visible enforcement.

Idk, I use basically no paper at home or at my full time job. I get ungodly amounts from my language class though

Yes. People have tried both of those things. Heck, the encyclical even talks about it. It’s very long

Idk dude I’m still playing it on steam pretty regularly? Ive got some weird auto-generated username which I guess comes from an epic account made for me but I never had to do anything it just works fine

Whether you learn to speak a language has very little to do with school lessons anyhow. We had french from elementary school in the UK till I was 16, and I’d estimate my fluency at A2-B1. A combination of excessive focus on grammar, painfully slow lessons, and utterly no exposure outside of the classroom means nobody learns it. As an adult I’ve moved to another country speaking another language, attending language lessons, and I’m seeing this pattern again- the classmates who never use the language at home or work barely seem to make progress beyond a certain point, whereas those using it at home, socially or at work are making lightning fast progress.

Incidentally this is a big reason that it’s common for wealthy people to hire nannies or tutors that speak another language to live with their children and teach them.

It’s not as though passive exposure is enough on its own though - without at least some effort on behalf of both the learner and others, people don’t learn

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Oh that rabbit hole is gonna get a whole lot wilder for you: they produced man portable atomic mortars! Search up Davy Crockett mortars

South Africa made atomic cannons like this one too back under apartheid

My partner is quite a fan of the Ollie Richards story learning books. I think they have a couple of those for Spanish.

This was me. I feel it’s damn near a miracle I got through university. Make good friends people. Get together with them regularly to study.

Some professors made slides with information in. Some had unrelated pictures where they presumably said the important info. You can guess which classes were hard for me based on that alone (even when id use the course books for those)

Isn’t it already illegal in most countries? Everywhere I’ve lived there are dB maximums, plus extra penalties for modifying exhausts to be loudee etc or loud music

XCOM 2. I love enemy unknown/enemy within, but bounced right off 2. There were so many little details that just made me quit after about an hour. In comparison, I’ve run through the other dozens of times.