Riva TNT 16MB, brand name Elsa, card called Erazor.

By that token, I would also recommend the one-season X-Files spin-off ‘The Lone Gunmen’. It can come across as a bit hokey for the first few episodes, but they found their pace and it became really enjoyable. I don’t think it was ever meant to be more than a single - and, by then-current standards, short - season but I really enjoyed it. The show blended the comic relief of the three geeks from the main series with some more serious storytelling and even had an episode with a plot that resembled a later real-life world-changing event.

Devil’s advocacy is supposed to be, ultimately, constructive to the discussion. If that’s what you’re doing, then good on you. A lot of people just do it to throw a spanner in the works.

The only thing worse than people misusing the term ‘enshittification’ are people who criticise that but can’t be bothered to get their facts straight.

No, it’s not a meaningless buzzword. And no, it was not made up by nostalgic millennials. It would have taken you a mere minute of online research to figure that out yourself.

‘Playing Devil’s advocate’.

Mostly because most people who use it do so in glaringly wrong ways.

I suggest you read up a bit on how and by whom the term was coined and what it actually means. It’s by no means ‘vague’ and it is also a bit more than just repackaging and selling something already known. I suspect many people using the term aren’t even fully aware of what it describes and, crucially, what is being proposed to reduce the effects it describes.

Thing is, I am actually Gen X. Early even. And I look at the Boomers and see the generation who kept pulling up the ladder. They got free education and privatised it to make it expensive for us. They got free healthcare and privatised it to make it expensive. They got into the housing market for cheap and started using it as an investment and speculation vehicle, making it harder for each subsequent generation to get into it. They were pretty much the last generation in which it was possible to raise a family on a single income. Climate change is front and center of mind in my generation, we’ve known for over 30 years what’s coming. When you look at those who most fervently oppose climate change action - all old fogeys, and I say that being very conscious of the fact that I am approaching ‘old fogey’ status from the perspective of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

I can only imagine how todays teenagers and young adults feel…

Teenagers today were born in the aftermath of a global financial crisis, are seeing war after war after war, grow up with the knowledge that the world is going to shit and the older generations aren’t willing to do anything about it. They see everyone pull up the ladder behind them, the ‘fuck you I got mine’ mentality is everywhere.

And TikTok is to blame for their mental health?

Specific to subway surfing: I’m 46, and I know this stuff happened when I was a kid. There were no social media back then to show you, but somehow kids still these got stupid ideas. It seems like social media is just the new video games are the new comic books are the new heavy metal is the new whatever scapegoat society wants to use to blame for its own deliberate shortcomings in bringing up the next generation.

I had lots of time to play games, but not a lot of money to buy games.

Now it’s the other way round.

If I could bring back anything from back then, it’s boxed PC games that can be resold and traded. Covered a lot of my gaming needs from second hand shops.

Railway and train modellers, of all scales. To their credit, a fair fee people are becoming more open, but especially modelling clubs are often run by old white men with questionable politics and problematic behaviours. They will sneer at anything that’s not steam, or at people who run modern instead of vintage trains, or who don’t get a train model exactly right the way the original ran that one time in the mid 50s from Bumfuck, Idaho to the middle of nowhere. They have little patience for newbies who might not have internalised all the lingo, or who might need something explained in simple English. If you build something that is not an exact replica of a real world location, they’ll say you’re not doing model railway, but merely toy trains. And then these same people go and wonder why they can’t attract new people to the hobby.

I don’t have a lot of comparisons to dubs in other languages, but most german dubs I know are average at best. The biggest problem is that they often pick voice actors who just don’t suit the character or the original actor. The stilted reading/talking is another issue, which is also often present in original German productions.

As an older metalhead, this makes me a bit sad, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. The metal scene I joined in the early 90s did have its tolerance problems specifically against other music genres, but I never knew it as particularly gatekeepy, at least the circles I socialised with and the concerts and festivals I went to. There were some people who though you weren’t a real metal fan if you didn’t exclusively listen to metal, but they were a minority. Nobody had a problem with me not particularly liking Slayer or Motörhead, and there was no requirement to have long hair and be covered in leather and/or band patches.

Many people suffer from impostor syndrome to a degree. Many people make mistakes even when it comes to subject matters they are very familiar with. Everyone has technical problems every now and then - that’s outside of your control. Technology is finicky and increasingly shit.

You’ll always get people who think they know better than you, or could do something better than you. But they aren’t. You are. You got where you are through your work and experience. As long you feel that you’re prepared to the best of your ability and knowledge, I think your conscience can be clear.

You will never have everyone you meet like you. Some people are just basic shitheads, and some of them will write reviews like that precisely to gaslight you into doubting yourself and your abilities. They do it for kicks. If 95% of your reviews are positive, you’re in a good place.

Also, putting half percent points from 0 to 5 on the y axis, while the x axis is four month intervals since 2009, makes this growth look way more significant that it really is…

You could almost be forgiven for not realising that every point on that Y axis is a mere half percent…

When I started University, I used part of my small savings to buy a very nice bicycle so I could get around between uni districts.

When I moved into a shared student apartment, there was a locked bicycle room in the basement. Only resident keys would fit that lock. Nonetheless I still locked my bike separately.

The one day I forgot to do that, my bike was no longer there the next day. It pissed me off immensely because I couldn’t immediately afford a new one, and the theft really made me uncomfortable. Mostly the fact that it must have involved someone who lived in the same block.

First step to achieving that is banning homeschooling - way too many people use that as a way to avoid their children getting educated about stuff they don’t want them to know.

That’s not necessary. What’s needed is to treat religious beliefs as a personal choice, and no more. You can get protection from being discriminated against based on your beliefs so long as it doesn’t extend past actual disadvantage (so yes to not being disadvantaged in your workplace for being religious, but no to not wanting to bake a cake for gay people). Other than that, your religion buys you nothing. No ‘medical exemptions’, no special treatment, and especially no influence on other people’s lifestyle choices. True freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. It stays in your home and place of worship. In public, in government, in education and healthcare, religion does not exist.