XeroxCool

I've played Far Cry 2 through most of 6. If you don't recognize particular references, there's nothing that makes them substantial otherwise in the sea of creative, humorous descriptions of everyone/everything else.

I would say it's similar with assassin's creed, keeping it in the family of "ubisoft series gamers love to shit on". The references are in the same style as other database entries, so you're not missing anything if you're unfamiliar. I've played 4 through Odyssey.

I'm trying to think of other series and keep landing on the same reasoning, actually. Yeah, I love having more basis for the lore in other series, but I don't feel I'm missing much without every reference. I mean, Ace Combat was my personality for a few months when 7 came out, prompting me to replay 4 and 5 and buy Zero and 6. As others have said, the main thing is if you do choose to go backwards, things get clunky for both general game and specific series development reasons. Assin 4 was my most recent AC (tried 3, beat Unity>Ody, then beat 4) and man, parkour is tough. I gave up on 3 because it was so awkward and I was too old to learn at the elder age of like 23.

I gotta say though, Forza Horizon 1 remains my favorite. There's certainly some nostalgia tied to it because it set me up for impossible expectations in the car community (especially now in the post-covid takeover bullshit). It had a more concise campaign and had some story attached to it. I'm up to 4 and it just drops me in like "this is just what you do now" and every race unlocks 4 more races with no end in sight.

The market continues for people impressed by unethical qualities of materials as much as they're impressed by the physical properties. "Nobody" is impressed by real lion pelts either, yet rich game hunters continue. It's about dominance.

Care to cite these studies claiming human brains are intrinsically superior? The primary difference among mammals is the size and fold density. Koalas are famously smooth-brained, but other animals have greater memory and reasoning capability with larger, deeper folds. What they lack is language. Humans developed superior vocal cords, allowing great variation in speech patterns that jump started written language and, by effect, written history. Have you not seen the videos and reports of the incredible communication and logical capabilities of other animals such as dogs learning 300 commands and using 40+ speech buttons? Have you not heard the tales of octopus escape artists defeating locks?

Survival is what your parents and local community can teach you. But innovation and invention? You are the product of thousands of years of written language passing on more information than any single person could remember and more then any single community could develop on its own. The biggest brain in the world would sound like an idiot without language. We are not above animals, we just talk like we are.

If you're belief is that any human is capable of these things but not yet educated, how do you humans are the only ones that can be taught?

NOx is not Nitrous Oxide and is not short for Nitrous Oxide. Nitrous Oxide is specifically N2O. NOx refers to both Nitric Oxide (NO) and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), both of which are far, far more damaging to health and atmosphere than N2O. NOx emissions are the reason diesel is generally nonexistent in US passenger vehicles - not even great mpg numbers have sufficiently-low NOx emissions.

Even if it included N2O, using nomenclature with a variable like "NOx" and grouping it all together as one inert byproduct vastly underrepresents harm. Imagine if you referred to another group as "COx" but saying it's relatively inert and easily detected by way of a burning lung sensation but feeds plants so it's not all bad because Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has that effect. Carbon Monoxide (CO) is completely left out of that description and will silently kill you.

Moving sustainably? No. Moving? Probably. Sounds like the US is gearing up to make NASA ~~launder~~ fund SpaceX for putting humans on Mars. Probably without increasing the budget after complaining they get too much. I'm sure a round trip will be promised and have the same return success rate as ISS.

"fuck you, got mine" - some anti-immigration guy that put zero effort into gaining citizenship via birth

I counted 5 and then 7 steps across 2 breaths. Gotta be at least 50c per step for my to consider it any further. I probably wouldn't accept until $1. And even then, casual cardio like walking would ramp up breathing faster anyway.

That's a good point I overlooked because it's rare for me to have such polluted skies such as from massive wildfires. Pollution can definitely make the reds deeper, but it comes at the cost of muted colors overall. Human particulate pollution isn't really on the scale of what's needed to have a visible effect like that either, so wildfire smoke is the most common source of visible effects

Ah, I still haven't see that one from Studio Ghibli. Only the two I mentioned. I saw Spirited last year and Totoro last week. Honestly... I can't say I get them. I'm not sure if I'm too old to form nostalgia, too late to recognize the products of their eras, or too uninvolved with that realm of media to recognize how groundbreaking it was. I can appreciate the vibe and musical score, but it's not motivating enough to see more. So if anyone loves them and wants to give me pointers, I'm listening.

I didn't really enjoy Akira, either. I went in relatively blind in 2020 and thought it was a motorcycle story, so I wasn't ready for the supernatural stuff. That was clearly not a children's movie though, so maybe I'm expecting too much depth in Studio Ghibli in my anime adventure route

In my experience as someone who rarely gets up for sunrise, they are not really different. I'm sure there is variation caused by rising vs diving temperature, humidity, cloud patterns caused directly by solar radiation, etc. But, functionally, pretty similar. And no, pollution does not make sunsets prettier. (will explain below)

The main difference is my perception and my ability to predict what comes next. When the sun is setting, I have lots of warning because I can see the sun, obviously. With my spot at the beach, I can watch the sun go all the way down. I know exactly when it disappears and then I watch it a little while longer as the oranges turn even redder. I'm coming from my daytime perception of color and staring at the sun, further delaying my dark adaptation.

Sunrise, on the other hand, is more of a surprise. The sky colors are morphing, but I can't quite tell when the sun will pop up. I'm in relative darkness so my color perception is different. Last one I watched I had my star app open to better predict the sun's appearance and it made it feel a little more like the sunsets I watch at the same spot. As the reds and oranges fade, I continue to normalize the white balance, so to speak, so it seems like a faster event as it approaches normal daylight color.

Pollution. No, those pretty, dramatic sunsets are not caused by pollution. That's a myth you can look up, so here's my observations of why we perceive it as truth. I've spent a week at a time a few times a year for a decade watching just about every sunset on an ocean-like horizon over the rest of my country. The sun is creating a massive, flat rainbow of color. The reds get pulled down towards earth due to refraction in the atmosphere than the blue end. On cloudless evenings, the sky, being a poor reflector, turns a sort of yellow-orange hue while the sun itself is the only thing visibly turning red. That flat rainbow array still exists every time, but it's lost to space as it skims the atmosphere without hitting anything more solid. Think of the classic prism refraction rainbow being projected tangentially onto a basketball. But, if there's some spotty cloud cover between you and 1000 miles west, that rainbow will be blocked and reflected by some clouds instead of flying miles overhead and missing you. Just about all pretty sunset photos have clouds. The solid orange and Orange-yellow portion of the rainbow will be bouncing off the clouds in a patch of sky that still looks blue or pale white. That's where the drama comes from.

I'd also add sunsets blocked at the final stages by very distant cloud banks have made what seem to be the reddest finales I've ever seen, a few minutes after sunset, because the light is still being refracted, reflected, and refracted again from even lower than before. I never pack up and go in for these, unlike most people at the beach. On the opposite end, I don't mind the boring cloudless sunsets because it means I'll have at least a few hours of clear night skies most times. Stargazing is what I'm really there for.

Any relation to the soots in My Neighbor Totoro? Their description made me think they were just eye floaters but since they also appear in Spirited Away with less introduction, I'm curious if they're rooted in a coal/wood burning era