Zonetrooper

Haha, holy shit. Somehow I had never connected that Piratesoftware was Maldavius. Yeah, that explains so, so very much of this entire SKG debacle.

Like, what kind of dictator are we talking here? Is this a Lord Vetinari benevolent dictator, or your typical generic slimeball autocrat?

Personally, I'd like to think that if they did become the latter, they'd be so far different from the person I love that I would break from them. Thoughtfulness, intelligence, and consideration aren't usually things I see associated with dictators, you know? But people have an incredible capacity to isolate and put on different masks between their personal and professional lives...

It really is an interesting question, yes! Fires started by frictional heating are pretty uncommon in nature, but early humans could pretty readily see that objects placed near a fire would begin to smolder and burn just from radiant heat.

It really depends on when we were able to take intellectual leap of realizing that all heat is equivalent, and fire is not a prerequisite of making new fire.

We don't know. Hell, we can't even narrow it down to a specific place with certainty. There is strong evidence in human settlements for use of fire anywhere from a few hundred thousand to 1 million years ago. When, exactly, is hard to ascertain; for instance, some sites which are claimed to hold the oldest evidence have been criticized as resembling the aftermath of wildfires.

It is also depends on what you mean by "discovered": Early proto-hominids were almost certainly aware of fire and the concept of burning, so are we counting from when they realized "hey, I can take a burning thing and put it where I want it, and it will spread burning there?" Or are we only counting from when fire began to be used as a tool (e.g., for clearing brush or cooking)? Or when humans discovered how to start fires in the absence of a natural source?

In fairness, Microsoft certainly has tried to get the next closest thing with Bedrock. The hosting of server backends through their architecture via "realms" allows them to lock you out of a whole lot, and I still see people getting randomly banned because of their profanity filter.

But yes, if Realms shut down right now, there would always be Java (and even privately hosted Bedrock servers).

I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don't play on a schedule that works for me. It's really frustrating.

I think it was the cost.

It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena's schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up... or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.

I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a "rocket launcher" with a little radio thing in the "rocket" to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.

When it's posts you agree with, it's honest users. When it's posts you disagree with, it's astroturfing.

I joke, but unfortunately that seems to be the most common metric for a lot of people. If it's a position "no one would really support" (in their view), then support for it must be astroturfed.

From what I understand, it's less about chasing a market than wanting to be perceived as correcting the previously highly male-dominated writing scene.

Subjectively, a little informal discussion among writer & fan groups to me suggests that men who read fantasy tend to slowly but steadily acquire new materials, often from word-of-mouth among dedicated communities; women, by contrast, tend to latch on to a particular breakout series or author, with awareness often propagated by social media such as "Booktok". This means that while both groups purchase in similar volumes, a book whose audience favors women can experience surges of popularity which make for prominent best-sellers over limited timeframes.

Admittedly, though, this is informal - so take that with a grain of salt.

The last few times this was brought up for discussion, one thing that many people mentioned - including quite a few who had interacted with publishers - was that publishers were strongly selecting for female authors. Some of this may have been in an effort to correct for lack of female presence in what was perceived as a male-dominated genre, some may have been trying to find the next wildly successful Rowling / Suzanne Collins / Sarah Maas / etc.

Several expressed that it was actually difficult to get a response as a male fantasy author, so this well-intentioned drive may have resulted now in some over correction bringing us to our current place.

I admit it's not my favorite, but I do still love that it's actually distinctive and has a specific "vibe". You look at it and you know exactly when it's from and what it's about.

I can't think of any 'style' in the last 20 years that has that.

I'm not actually surprised. Water and gas meters have to work perfectly, for years on end, without leaking or jamming, through rain, ice, and blistering heat. They feel like the kind of invisible infrastructure that we almost never think about, yet is actually some fairly robust engineering with a lot of R&D behind it.