CountVon

are there games that try to portray life and folklore of people I may not know about?

Kingdom Come: Deliverance might fit this. It's set in 15th century Bohemia (modern day Czechia), and was designed with input from archaeologists and historians. That may present too much overlap with 15th century Bavaria, though. It's an immersive sim with at least some jankiness, though I believe many bugs have been squashed since release. It can also be a bit tough in the early going as your character starts out pretty weak by design. Your character gets better at skills as you use them and the game starts to shine more once you've established some basic competency.

Are there games that play with this kind of meta mystery (I don't know what word best describes it) where you have a glimpse that there's something bigger behind the scenes?

I'd recommend There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension. Chock full of 4th wall breaks and meta commentary on games, game design and game development, plus lots of humour and a ton of heart. There is a bit of a mystery component as well. I'd recommend avoiding spoilers if at all possible, I went in blind and I think it made for a much better overall experience.

a fat crow

I'd wait for independent reviews. The first wave of Intel GPUs had a lot of issues, mostly related to drivers. From what I understand Intel has come a long way on the driver front in the past year, but we don't have a clear picture on their overall state with the new parts. Reviewers like GamersNexus will call out whether the current state of the drivers are good enough for a recommendation, or if Intel still has more ground to cover.

Beware of reverse survivorship bias. We'd know relatively little about the smart deviants if they rarely get caught.

Now it's just the Center for Disease.

Playoff hockey is a whole nother level. This was during the first round of the playoffs in 2016, St. Louis vs. Chicago. The Blues gave him tickets to a game in the next round of the playoffs.

was there iconic scratchy rapid frenetic drum electronic scraping noises before Bowie?

You can find elements of that in earlier 90s industrial, like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. Bowie collaborated with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails on the Outside Tour, which supported Bowie's prior album Outside, before the release of Earthling. They also collaborated on remixes of I'm Afraid of Americans. You can probably also find some elements Earthling's sound in earlier drum and bass, techno and jungle music.

Skrillex' influences include 90s industrial acts like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, plus 90s electronica acts like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. Bowie's Earthling reminds you of Skrillex because the two share many musical roots.

Pelosi is in denial. Trump ran under a big banner that said "Trump will fix it." Banner doesn't say what "it" is, or how he's going to fix "it." And of course the majority of people who voted for him will likely have buyer's remorse when they discover that "it" doesn't mean what they thought, and the solution for "it" is actually not great for them at all.

But the banner at least acknowledged that things are not good. Prices are up, wages are not, layoffs are rampant, and everyone under 40 has basically given up on ever owning a home. Things fucking suck, economically speaking. Meanwhile, the Kamala campaign could basically be summed up as "4 more years of the same because Trump bad." The majority of American voters rejected that outright because they would not accept another 4 years of dim economic prospects. Most of them probably never even got as far as the "because Trump bad" part before they said "fuck that"!

Pelosi can try to deflect the blame all she wants, but the reality is that this collosal failure belongs to the Democrat establishment as a whole, including her. Democrats needed to find a way to make the average voter believe that a Democrat president was going to make things better than they've been for the last 4 years, and they failed to do that. They absolutely fucked it up. They fucking failed. Hard.

Much has been said about transgender this, woke that, Gaza genocide over there and climate change on top. The harsh reality is that the average western voter does not give a shit. You wanna lead? You wanna get elected? You need to meet the average moron voter where they're at and say something that makes them feel seen. Trump's team did that, so he won. Simple as.

And for the record, I fucking hate it. I cannot stand that man. The very sound of his voice sets my teeth on edge. His policies will create untold misery, he will probably destroy American democracy and may even drag down Western democracy as a whole. He is truly awful, in every sense. But the Democrat establishment deserves condemnation for turning in such an absolutely dogwater performance.

There are lots of wild foods that are poisonous, but that didn't stop our ancestors from figuring out ways to make them edible. In the case of bitter almonds I can find a reference to baking and boiling being effective methods of reducing cyanide content. Cold leaching might also work but it would take a lot more time.

I have to imagine that dire necessity was a catalyst for these discoveries. I'm guessing the thought process was more like "These are bitter as shit and they killed Bill, but we're gonna starve to death if we don't find some food, so let me try boiling these to see if the bitter goes away."

AMD crowns the Ryzen 7 9800X3D a ‘gaming legend’

Memes aside, I'm eager to see some independent benchmarks. Been a while since I did a hardware refresh and I got the itch.

The software subscription fee was an ongoing cost to whoever installed the equipment, now that fee has been replaced by a per-use fee that's part of what drivers pay. It's easier for businesses to justify installing chargers if they know that it's a one-time purchase with no ongoing subscriptions, fees, or management hassles.

Off topic: how much would it cost to run a charger continuously?

Depends where you are and how much electricity costs there. Could also depend on time-of-day if electricity metering in that area has time-of-use rates. The biggest level 2 chargers put out 19kw, where I live it would cost about $60 per day to run one of those chargers at absolute maximum. Realistically speaking it would be hard to run one full-time though, since the average EV has ~80kw of battery and would be full after 4-ish hours.

Yeah, I don't get it either. What I've seen doesn't look anywhere close to an 8+ out of ten rating. Will be interesting to see the player ratings on this one...