Luzifer's right hand

Really? Damn.

Still does not feel as big as BG2 which required multiple CDs back in the day.

I still remember that damn car race... great game with awesome ending. On a side note I pulled the trigger on RDR2 for PC as it is on sale. I think it is one of the biggest games I ever downloaded with 110,3 GB.

Only because he does not want to watch the rest of humanity die from bunkers and guarded compounds like the rest of the billionaires who are young enough to plan for the fututre. Earth will be more habitable than Mars even if the worst happens unless it goes full Venus. You just have to watch most of humanity perish. Most other lifeforms will perish even before that and it is already happening.

I personally think that countries which more or less practice social distancing outside of familiy/friend groups by default like Sweden are not that useful for predicting how things will go in other places. Isreal had hundreds of cases in school incredible fast after opening schools for example.

I grew up on a farm and my allergies reached the asthma stage before we moved away. It is just too risky although there are some cats that only cause a small reaction but you can never tell in advance and it tends to get worse with prolonged exposure. I'm also allergic to other farm things like hay now.

I like animals and don't eat them because of that. Sadly I'm allergic to cats and dogs. I can live with a dog if I avoid cuddling but cats are a complete no-go and I'm a cat person . I have been thinking about getting a bunny though.

I always liked the system in Jagged Alliance 2 best. No other tactical role-playing game ever came close for me although Wasteland 2 was fun. The people that can join your group are mostly uninteresting though. I Just created 4 characters, used the portraits of SG-1 and had some fun. It is not something I would replay countless time like Jagged Alliance 2. The only other game I replayed more was BG2 which is a completely different game.

I just read a local news article about the fact that some Austrians who worked in the USA at some point in their life and their spouses got the US corona stimulus checks. A local guy who worked in the USA in the 60s and his wife got one for example. At least a hundred checks were cashed in the state I live in. It was caused by some database fuckup according to the article. The local banks recommend cashing such checks because it is unlikely that the USA goverment will bother to demand the money back. People even got some kind of bonus if they have kids. It seems a lot of former au-pairs got them for example. It is good to have a SSN it seems and the US gov keeps good track of people who have one because people even got the bonus for kids...

Stellaris can be rather pretty. A lot of stuff that you never really look at has really nice details. It is also incredible hardware hungry late game when large fleets are involved. It is my most played game on steam with more than 1000 h played... I did not spend all of that time paying attention though. Late game I was often just waiting for the next thing to happen and just kept it running until an auto pause event. Before I got my current PC I hit single digit FPS in late game battles if I wanted to watch them... I gave up on it after they patched it in a direction I did not enjoy though. Well I could have lived with the gameplay changes but the AI worked ok on maxed difficulty with the more simple mechanics of earlier versions but the patches turned it into a complete non-threat. The end-game crisis mechanics were also still broken the last time I looked(and two of the three worked pretty well before things went downhill).

I replayed part of it some time ago and had quite a bit of fun. I got it for free on Origin back when they still had a free game program. The first person mode looks really bad though and you need it for some of the secret levels.

Personally I recommend not reading any of the Rama sequels.

Well this thread made me read the first three Galactic Center books. Some parts have not aged very well but the 3rd book is the best so far imo. The first book I got seems to be the original version with events happening in the 20th century. The 2nd book changes that but the first event is still set in 2019 with the USSR still around. I guess changing such things in older near future books is rather pointless. Far future goodness starts showing up in the 3rd book.

I'm sceptical about BG3 although I will give it a try. Would be nice to see some old characters again although I was happy with the endings they got in ToB. A return of Viconia would be nice though. I liked most of the party members from BG2 although Cernd, Anomen, Nalia and Valygar were a bit boring. Although crazy Anomen was kinda fun. Edwin(a), Jan, Viconia, Keldorn and Korgan were my favorites.

Ah seems like I did not remember correctly. As I wrote I remember it more like a just for fun thing than anything meaningful. Certainly not a respectful or insightful approach. I was completly uninterested in such things at that age though and just accepted it as a SFish thing. I think I had read a Culture book that mentioned switching genders as a thing you just do before that. I'm quite sure I had not heard or read anything about transgender persons at that point being a kid from rural Austria.