Flown in, as a passenger. I’d have said ‘piloted’ if I was the pilot.
And yes, that’s an odd trio of aircraft, considering most people only really fly on airliners. I’ve been on a Boeing 747 in a museum, but have never flown in an airliner.
It’s magical, right? It’s what got me interested in aviation - the physics, the science, the engineering to make it work. And we’ve gotten so good at it, air travel is now available to most people, it’s safe and convenient.
I’ve flown exactly three times in my life: a hot air balloon, a helicopter and a DC3. Each was magical in its own way. I’ve also done a fair bit of plane spotting. Seeing an Airbus A380 landing right in front of you is amazing. It really is the size of a large apartment block with wings. Truly awe inspiring.
Aviation is fucking awesome!
Pretty much. Men speed more for example and drive under the influence more often. High mortality risk on those.
Women however tend to be a bit more distracted when driving; they use their phones more often behind the wheel for example. There’s also particular situations that simply happen more to women. I.e. they go grocery shopping and are distracted by the kids in the back seat and hit another car or object in the busy parking lot.
That’s also why innovations like backup cameras and parking sensors are great at reducing those sorts of accidents. But still: tell the wife to put the phones away if she’s driving. For everyone else’s safety too.
So basically, the ISS has the equivalent of a car up on blocks parked in its driveway. How delightful.
It’s a shame they can’t toss the responsible Boeing/NASA folks out that same airlock.
Borderlands is a straight up dopamine injection for my brain. You shoot someone, damage numbers go up, brain gets all happy. It’s dumb, but I fucking love it. I also love the writing, the characters, the level designs… it’s exactly the type of gaming comfort food that I enjoy.
Moar Borderlands!
“Greetings, we’ve been trying to reach your civilization about the extended warranty on your Class 7 interstellar exploration cruiser…”
I miss forums as well, and I’m actually moving back to them. Back in the early 2000’s, I visited like a dozen forums each day. I was a member of like three watch forums, a camera forum, a Star Trek forum, some gaming forums and others. Just ‘doing the rounds’ kept you busy for a while. People also were insanely knowledgeable on those niche forums, and they all had their own specific culture and flavor to them.
Places like a niche subreddit are… OK at best. They are convenient and easy to visit, but don’t tend to have the level of knowledge and discourse that I generally enjoy. You also run the risk of your sub getting ruined by people who are into the wrong aspects of your particular hobby. For example, on a watch FORUM, the discussions are about design, mechanical features, history, photography, how to repair, etc. etc. On the subreddit, a lot of posts tended to be drive-by posters who ‘found a watch and wanted to know what it’s worth’. or ‘is this fake’. The subreddit didn’t curb that, so eventually I and many others just stopped going there. It was basically too easy for people to post there just because, well, they could. Whereas on an actual watch forum, you can do a bit stricter moderation and the registration requirement weeds out low effort posting.
Some consider that ‘gatekeeping’, but I see it as a valid way of protecting one’s chosen community.
I don’t think I’ve met any Brazilians back in those days; (online) gaming is really expensive there from what I heard, right?
One fun thing in the old COD lobbies was always to teach others slurs and general cursing in your language. I learned how to curse folks out in like 50 languages. Each country also has its own unique style of cursing. We Dutch really like to incorporate diseases for example.
I’m certainly not going to say you’re wrong on that first part. I’ve been online since 1996. At that time, the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy… well… going online felt like coming home. Those were my people. I still really miss those days.
But I also know that the experience of someone not like me would’ve been wildly different. I learned a bajillion slurs on COD lobbies after all. It’s a good thing that more people now feel welcome online, as it led to platform growth and functionality that we otherwise wouldn’t have had if it was just ‘my kind of people’.
The current safe, sanitised, gentrified gaming sphere also has benefits: COD lobbies these days are very pleasant by comparison. You even have to sign a code of conduct to get on multiplayer. It feels more welcoming, less hostile. Of course, companies certainly have been financially incentivized to attract as wide an audience as possible. For example, the very first GTA game sold about 6 million copies. GTA V has sold 200 million. And with ever-increasing development budgets, you can’t afford to cater to a niche, you want to cast as wide a net as possible to recoup those costs.
I miss that era. Companies didn’t mind a bit of edginess and weren’t afraid to market to adults. The console culture itself also isn’t what it used to be.
These days, gaming consoles all need to be safe enough for five year olds to play on them. And it’s caused everything to be just too bland and safe, both in marketing and the console itself. Can’t really have things like Xbox 360 Uno with the live camera feed and no moderation. Or the wholly uncensored COD lobbies.
Well, you certainly haven’t been rushing it so far, considering Fallout 4 released back in 2015…
Well yeah…. They’re clearly developmentally challenged at Epic. In every sense of the word. I’m not exactly surprised that a platform still lacking basic functionality that should’ve been there on day one, has trouble figuring out Linux.
It’s a cliche, but at least he died doing what he loved. And at 90 with a career like his, going out like that is probably preferable to dying in a hospice bed.
Godspeed, mr Anders. And thank you for one of the most iconic, inspiring images ever made.
Couple years ago, I visited a historic grand prix that featured classic F1 cars. They also had open pits, so you could walk up and ask questions and literally stand next to the cars.
I was standing next to a 70’s F1 car when they performed an engine test. I was wearing thick, professional earplugs and the biggest Peltors you’ve ever seen. When they fired that thing up, I lasted all of five seconds before I walked out. At that point, it was no longer sound but sheer pressure. You could feel it in your chest.
As for how the mechanics do it? Easy, they’re all deaf as a post. Even the best earpro can’t prevent that kind of hearing damage, especially if that’s your chosen career. If you’re worried about good earpro not being enough, best advice is to put distance between you and the object/career path involved.
The Tour was quite a bit less… sporty in its early years. There are plenty of stories about riders basically stealing wine, champagne and beers from local cafe’s or whatever when the Tour passed through.
These studio/publisher buyouts and closures are a cancer spreading through the entire business right now. About the last thing you want as a gamer is to see your favorite studio or publisher trade hands. Because 99 times out of a 100, the thing you love gets canned or turned to shit.
As a gamer since the late 80’s, I’ve seen many studios come and go. It happens. But these days, with these huge publishers, closures are no longer single studios but entire swathes of them. Like carpet bombing, with little regard for collateral damage.
Some of those really, really hurt. Knowing that they won’t be able to recreate that magic because the people behind it are scattered like ashes on the wind. If this pace continues, it’s going to cause a big crash somewhere down the line.
Which is exactly what everyone does. At least in the US. And every side is equally wrong about it.
The loudest voices always draw the most attention. And I don’t know any other vegan voice that’s as loud as PETA’s. That’s kind of the problem.
There’s also the ‘guilt by association’. Look at organisations like PETA: they even complained about things like the treatment of entirely fictional animals in video games, like Palworld. Basically, you can’t even argue that ‘they look like real animals so it encourages real-world mistreatment’ like they usually do.
That does not make you look particularly sane. I’m sure they do good work as well, but that sort of thing isn’t helping their cause.
It is not. Nor am I offended by it, as it is a good show :D
I actually work in radio as well, and certainly share a few traits with that character, both good and bad.
I really enjoyed my helicopter ride as well - a sightseeing flight on vacation. That was on a Schweitzer S300; a small helicopter with a bench seat in the front. So you’re sitting right next to the pilot with an almost unobstructed forward vision. So cool. Definitely not something for people with a fear of heights.