Many parts of the internet. I won’t pretend there were never trolls (Usenet, BBS’s, etc. all had them), but things have definitely shifted. A minority of people have essentially weaponized various things in this system as well.

Octopus lady is great!

In my case, in the sense of “hearing” then yes. I still have thoughts and my mind wanders and whatnot; it just doesn’t need something else overtop of that

… Are you suggesting we are incapable of thought? My mind wanders just like anyone else’s.

A lot of the old emergency stockpile rice gets sold off as animal feed as it ages out. I would imagine something similar happened for that.

We have a lot of non-management whom are all-in and drinking the kool-ade. I’m still highly put off for a number of reasons, but an outlier.

Either way, I’m allergic, so that checks out.

Basically the handful of countries in western Europe that I visited after graduating highschool in the late '90s. I haven’t been back since and would love to see it again as someone who’s not a very sheltered 17-year-old. The trip was also cut short because there was a huge storm off the US East coast or something that had us end up flying up to Canada, spending the night, and then flying over.

I used to have a PDA, even back in the late '90s I got as a hand-me-down. I used to play games on that and my first several phones. These days, though, if I’m using my phone it’s never for gaming. If I have free time, I’m using a flashcard app to study or watching previously-downloaded youtube vids for downtime. I guess the one exception was when I was doing the prep for a colonoscopy, I fired up ALTTPR on a SNES emulator on tablet to kill time. That’s the only time I can think of in the last probably 2 years I’ve played any games on anything mobile at all.

And in 2025, that comes to an end (at least here in Japan; I’m not sure if they’ll be made elsewhere still) https://www.rideapart.com/news/724364/honda-50cc-bikes-discontinued-2025/

Well, if you have to build all kinds of stuff to win (or even survive) things like environmental regulations go out the window. You can expect factories, many not meant for it, to start running 24/7 and producing all kinds of pollution. People will need to get to those factories and it’s also all using more power. All of those things also need to be shipped around, both to temporary storage and to staging areas for wherever they’re destined.

During WWII in the US, a lot of old mines were also re-opened to get what was left of lead, copper, zinc, etc. and mining can have a huge environmental impact. I suspect we’d see that again along with rare earths mining and refining which is not great for the environment. I suspect we’d see more coal mining, facking, and other things as well to meet energy needs at home and abroad.

There will be tons of fires pumping carbon and I’m sure plenty of nasty materials into the atmosphere as well. Lead is going to end up all over the place in some areas and probably depleted uranium as well (you can see what that’s done over time in various parts of the Middle East).

Probably not. Iron is way more abundant and better for a number of usages as well as being easier to work. Bronze requires sources of multiple metals for the alloy, but may win out in some limited applications

The old TSR/SSI game Unlimited Adventures had randomized potion colors. It’s also how I learned that khaki is not pronounced ‘kahiki’ when trying to explain what was going on to someone (I knew khakis as a type of trouser not a color).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_Realms%3A_Unlimited_Adventures

Edit: or maybe I’m thinking of another gold-box game if that one didn’t have some random generation. Hrm.

Pokemon. I was in highschool when it came out and had no time for it followed by being too poor and busy trying to survive directly after it. With no nostalgia for it, there seems to be no reason to try it. I gave pokemon go like 20 minutes and I was over it (though I did play dragonquest walk for around a year)

I started Korean a few days ago. I am still in the “learning how this all works” phase. I’m frustrated by my slow reading speed and inability to find something to help that readily.

… why on earth would anyone want emails in their notifications to begin with?

Well, it was an old way of pronouncing it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/people-have-been-saying-ax-instead-ask-1200-years-180949663/

I’ve said that, if I had it to do over again, I might choose to move to Norway or Finland instead of Japan, but birth? I don’t know that’s possible to answer. Even if my family were the same people, they’d probably be culturally different having been born and raised somewhere. Even if we assume my parents were just plonked down there, I probably still wouldn’t be the same person due to my environment. Some of that almost certainly for better, but I wouldn’t be me.

Dragons of Autumn Twilight was one that set me on quite the Dragonlance collection and reading journey

Yeah, I’m not a fan of those. I’m fine with licorice.