Toth

My boy Kane literally killed Stalin, so... it could just as well be that timeline...

And another great game I already bought on GOG and never got around to playing. God damn it! XD Thanks! And... me too. XD I mean... I am so sparsely active and so lazy, I just realized my only perfect IV Pokemon is a damn Bidoof... which I now evolved and it immediately became my second best Pokemon.

Still far away from Mega evolution becoming viable.^^ My main concern is still getting Pokémon that could beat the Team Rocket Admins. That Metagross is right now my only heavy lifter. If anyone wants to add me: 5648 1333 2653

I mean... that's the same guy that apparently thought making an armed bum-rush to the capital would lead to the defense minister he has a feud with get replaced... Since it's the only motivation that makes at least a bit of sense for him to just fold and think he could get away with it... Him being absurdly naive/deluded of his own irreplacibility makes as much sense as anything. The last years of international politics have taught me that we are indeed in the dumbest possible timeline and suspecting rational motivations behind utter stupidity only leads to empty conspiracy theories. Life makes more sense, even if it's baffling, if you assume that stupidity is as good a reason as any for stupid things to happen.

Mmh... in some sort of late after effect of my latest Pokémon fangame spree I reinstalled Pokémon Go and took a look at my workplace. Apparently it got three Pokestops and a Gym. Well, that's neat I guess. So for the time being I'm stocked up on balls despite my usual inability to actually walk much as I am too stingy for a mobile internet flat that I wouldn't use much for anything else. Also just had to go out of my way and take over that gym. According to my log actually the very first time I placed a Pokemon in one. But the Pokemon in there were already pretty badly beaten up, so I thought I could try despite my pathetically low levels. I guess it gave me a confidence boost that three years ago when I last checked the game, I somehow managed to get from a story encounter a WP 2464 Metagross. Put that into the gym and am surprised to see that it's still in there. Maybe it will even survive a day. XD Also caught my first Pikachu. ... Yes, I'm really behind. Does anyone here still plays it? I would have posted this in the appropriate thread, but it's already archived because of a year of silence.

That's just one of many. Assuming their civilization evolves THIS rapidly, Voyager could have stuck around for a few more weeks and they probably would have overtaken Federation tech, maybe offering them an upgrade or two to get home faster. But really, it's one of these episodes where the premise is fascinating enough that I can excuse having to shut my brain off. The historian in me just considers the data Voyager collected there to be worth its hard drives in latinum.^^ "Someone to watch over me" is really funny, yes, agreed. The Captain Proton saga... eh, not really my cup of tea. I remember I spent the episode embarrassed for everyone involved for some reason.

Personally I would also add "The Void" and "Blink of an Eye" as episodes with simple premises that still ooze Star Trek core philosophy. "The Void" being about the Voyager being stuck in a miniature universe where everyone stranded there has to fight for dwindling resources, but coming out on top by seeking alliances and building a miniature Federation. "Blink of an Eye" is an episode about the Voyager getting stuck in the gravity well of an inhabited planet where time is rapidly advancing, with especially Chakotay gleefully keeping track about its civilizations' progress, with a side plot showing the cultural impact of "the sky ship" until they eventually sending a space capsule up. All in all, agree with your takes on the show. Voyager was never my favourite either and I would have wished that a scarcity of resources and survival would have gotten more room. They incorporated a rebel crew... that more or less instantly adapts because after all they all had Starfleet background anyway. And Voyager as a deep space exploration vessel was astonishingly well equipped for exactly this kind of ordeal, not to mention that replicator technology made most scarcity plots void. As long as they scooped up enough deuterium for the ship's reactors, there was just no way they'd ever run out of food or replacement parts.

So, finished the last campaign mission of Railway Empire already quite some time ago. It... went really smoothly, even though in the end I didn't care much for the bonus missions involving San Francisco, as the city was in too bad a position. If the developer's idea was to make the last mission far easier by all the other ones by only letting the player prove they understood the mechanics tasked in the previous missions... well done! Well, not entirely well done, because my major gripe is the game not telling you how to do any of these things properly. After the campaign, the game offers various "scenarios" as well as DLC campaigns. I've read the DLC campaigns are far easier than the original scenarios, so I thought I try those and start with the start. The Britain campaign. Actually a pretty fun one. You start with 600.000 pounds (with the costs being exactly as the dollar costs in the main game... and aside new and more plentiful resources, the game plays exactly the same), which is very little given that most mission let you start with 2 Million. Thought I lost too much time at the early stretch where you have to make 8 profitable routes, as I still used signalling stations at first, then realized I don't have the money for that, used small stations with manual tracks instead, intending to replace them once I got more funds, but only at the very end realized I could just borrow the money and be done with it. Damn. Still, the focus on growing cities and getting more and more space to develop from basically nothing into a huge train web covering the entirety of Britain (didn't have funds to buy out the Irish railway company) made it quite motivating and while I do think it doesn't justify its price tag as a separate DLC, it was still fun as part of the complete edition. Now eventually I wonder whether I should try the Germany campaign...

Finished the Civil War mission yesterday... by constantly restarting the last leg of the mission because the tight schedule to get 3000 passengers from Louisville to Atlanta was just absolutely insane, with every little random breakdown making it impossible because even in my best run I only had half a year of time for it. The last four passengers literally arrived three days before the deadline expired. I was following that train yelling "Come on! Come on! Come on!" Seriously, the fact that you have to do the entire thing in less than three years is insane. But otherwise it's a really good concept for a mission. I liked that with every successful task the front lines move further south, you get access to the confederate rail network and the next task is always to get more weapons and more people further down south, trying to depict you aiding the war effort. That makes the whole mission quite fluid. Except of course thanks to the crazy rigid deadlines... (though I have to wonder... are train nuts usually right-wing? I found it a bit suspicious how the cut-scene was blatantly vague about the political background of the war, only going on and on about rising tensions and that there were "various disagreements", culminating in the victory cut-scene going "after the war, the union was stronger than ever". What? How? This combined with the in-game characters' reaction to the war being "Oh no, what a bummer. Let's go profit off of it!". It's like the developers were afraid to ruffle any confederate feathers, despite placing the player in the shoes of some union railway company that got hired by the army) So... now onto the last mission. Which on paper sounds suspiciously easy and I already finished two thirds of them yesterday. It's basically the last leg of the trans-continental railroad. I need to connect all the cities and resources in California and grow Sacramento to 100.000 inhabitants. The only slight obstacle is the very uneven territory, forcing you to very carefully place tracks respecting the slopes. Already did most of the connections and reached 80.000, the main difficulty being so far that RNG HATES everyone and places mostly completely useless factories, causing me to struggle to get the advanced goods for the last leg of growth, so right now my focus is growing every city to the same level and unlock more factory slots. Because right now, San Francisco is useless as it produces the same shit as Sacramento, but because of my mission objective Sacramento gets all the export connections. The AI opponents have it even worse however, with Doc Brown having ONLY meat production in every city and von Pomp having ONLY beer production, causing their growth to be crippled because nobody can export anything. Still have plenty of time for resolving that, so I see not much of an issue there. The only other remaining objective is to send 50 passengers from San Francisco to Promontory Point, Utah. I have a fear that this once again means dragging people there kicking and screaming, abusing the minimum passenger number with a dozen express trains because nobody actually has a reason to travel there.

Just saw pictures of Challengers and Marder IFVs from the front near Robotyne that appeared yesterdays. The comments are crossing fingers that this mean Ukraine is engaging with their breakthrough forces now since both vehicles had been held back until now.

Railway Empire has this weird combination of being addictive, but at the same time super frustrating. I do a mission, fail, have to look up a Youtube video about what I did wrong, then come back and finish the mission. Rinse and repeat for each mission. That's because the mechanics may be simple, but the game does a horrific job explaining them to you. When I look at my previous posts here, I was confused in the first mission how and when trains turn around, then got blindsided how passengers work and now at the fourth mission it's how cities grow and how warehouses work. The first task is to make Louisville grow to 60k inhabitants, but the number stubbornly refused to budge from 56k and so I immediately lost. Despite me having made a vast network connecting all cities and directing coal, iron and wood for industry and meat, beer and textiles for the people's needs into Louisville. I upgraded my weapons factory to level 3 and the needs of the people were seemingly met, but the number still didn't move. I have seen online many complain about this mission, saying that you need to be extremely efficient and fast to account for a delay before the city starts to grow or be extremely lucky and get to hire a Promoter to force the city to grow. And for the efficiency I need to use warehouses, but the "tutorial" that is actually part of this mission just says "Here is a warehouse, use it!". What the hell, game?

Okay... Finished the damned mission. Once you know what you are doing, it's somewhat easy. Did it in just about five years. Which... was a bit more than needed, given how I wasn't fast enough and someone built a stupid cheese factory in Madison instead of the sawmill that I needed. Had to wait for the city to grow a bit more for me to have the space to put the sawmill in. Then I did the most extreme way of solving the mission: I built a dedicated track from Toledo to Omaha that nobody else was allowed to use. Was actually quite a bit more of a hassle than necessary. The Mississippi bridge had only two tracks which were lined up with Rock Island's train station, with that one not having gridirons and me not being allowed to make space because any track was attached to the bridge and the game refusing you to delete any of it. Since my Express trains refused to use the added two platforms because they were insufficiently connected to the bridge, I had to build random gridirons at it in order to segment the tracks and be able to delete parts of them, so that I had enough space to connect the new platforms instead of the old ones. It looked hideous. But ultimately worked. And oddly enough that was enough for my Express trains to reach Omaha quite swiftly, though they barely got more passengers all things considered. I thought I could build a sightseeing building in Omaha to increase passenger attractiveness, but the town refused to grow even though I filled it up with all the goods it needed and connected it with every other station (using separate platforms of course). This now makes me wonder. I have read that you should actually aim at using FOUR tracks to connect cities, using two for freight and two for passengers. But I feel like in the early game you don't really have the funds for that and the output of the cities is low enough that you get only a mixed train out anyway. And in the late game those annoying AI opponents wall you in with random tracks EVERYWHERE that you sometimes can't get around without much of a hassle. Which brings me to my last point: The only (optional) mission objective I failed at was to buy out one opponent. That... seems still quite impossible to me as I need to focus on expanding, while they do the same and their worth increasing exponentially, making saving up money for buyouts seemingly impossible.

This morning I spotted three little cacti sprouting in my pot. This is going to get interesting.

Graaaaah. Spending half the day on mission 3 in Railway Empire and I still failed, utterly. Maybe I wasted too much time early one (which I definitely did), but the final part is just absolutely bonkers. So... you start in Toledo and have to supply the construction of a bridge across the Mississipi with timber. There I already was quite baffled when I built a sawmill in Madison and even bough the lumber camps around to supply it... and yet all that was delivered to the construction site was meat. I realized far too late the button to manually upgrade the sawmill, increasing the lumber output enough so that I could actually get something done. Then with the bridge completed, the second mission was to transport 100 passengers from Toledo to Omaha without any stops inbetween. So I laid down the tracks, established a route... and forget about it, spending the rest of the years developing the area west of the Mississipi... and then realized aghast that I had only two years left and so far transported only 16 passengers. I... must say, I still have no clue what I should have done better. The problem was that barely any passenger wanted to make the trip to Omaha. I put 8 trains on the damned route and it still made barely a difference. Just now looking at a Youtube video... and what the hell, he just spammed even more trains one after another to make it happen. That... can't really be the solution, can't it?

Well, last week before the end of my summer break is nearing. I have been particularly lazy this year... So today I tried out a little bit of Railway Empire, which I had as a freebie for quite a while and was curious. Am quite the strategy game guy, but not too much the train guy. The closest game I have played was Industry Giant ages ago, which was quite fun, but even more arcade-y. This... reminds me quite a lot of it. But hey, it's from the developers of Tropico, so the exaggerated cartoon characters and snappy natural building placement was feeling like returning home. I must admit, I struggled a little bit figuring out how exactly trains behave. I noticed sometimes they magically turn around in stations, at other times when I built my network in circles they drove across the country to get themselves turned around. So I dabbled a little with building roundabouts everywhere so that my trains can turn... but eventually figuring out that if you build the pre-built "station with signals", this one contains a cross-gridiron which somehow causes the trains to turn around. Apparently they can't do it while sitting on the same track, but when they can back up into another one, this allows them to teleport around, despite making zero sense whatsoever. This... not feels very intuitive. And wonder whether a railway turntable as a building would do the trick (but while researching how that thing is called, I stumbled across the rail wye as a concept... which is amusingly something I built between Washington and Baltimore in Mission 2, but that was not to turn trains around, but to connect Washington with my Baltimore-Pittsburgh track to do a high-paying side mission establishing an express route). After that first stumbling block, the rest was smooth sailing. I finished mission two FAR earlier than the time limit set and it quickly got a bit addictive when the money started piling up exponentially, allowing me to expand like crazy. Unfortunately I am too nice and should have expanded into the "territory" of the two AI oppontents, since they kept building stations in my cities and so towards the end when my last mission was to buy out the smaller New York mobster guy, the other lady overtook me in company revenue. I must admit, I find the AI opponents and their relentless sabotaging and grabbing of opportunities quite annoying to deal with.

What's left of them, that is. Haven't they also redirected them to the meatgrindiest meatgrinders after their threat of mutiny in case of officer replacement? Seems not much news that Russia has been trying to kill them off for daring to speak up.

After beating GTA V (was already fairly late in the game, so it went quickly), I suddenly found myself an itch for some Pokemon as a side gig while watching my streams and Youtube channels I haven't caught up with in ages. So I made another splash into the world of Pokemon Fangames, which... are just an awesome way to play with a far wider variety of Mons than the official games do, and on PC nontheless. First I continued my old ass playthrough in Pokemon Omicron/Zeta. Basically the grandfather of fangames. Very large and complete world, lots of features, but in terms of graphics and animations very bare-bones. Still quite a solid experience. The main story is childishly edgy (which sums up 90% of fangames, really), but thankfully it comes rarely up and the trainers populating the world seem blissfully ignorant of it and sprout the same cheery lines you'd expect in the main games, aside a few bits of black comedy here and there (like a swimmer in the ocean saying he's too exhausted to get back to shore, fights you, then complains why you fought him, as he's about to drown). Interestingly, I enjoyed the "Vesryn Spear" part quite a lot. After beating the Elite Four and becoming champion you get to a long, narrow island with four "Sigil Halls", Gyms owned by the Elite Four members where you have to fight them again with significantly stronger teams. It helps that all battles on the Vesryn Spear give you about four times the XP of normal fights, allowing you to go through levels at a staggering pace. Despite that, my Mr. Fish reached the level cap only in the second-before-last fight of the entire region as my only Pokemon to do so. However... after that you unlock a second region, get handed a new starter and taken away your Pokemon until you beat that new region. And the whole game comes to a grinding halt as the first two trainers on the first route are already stupidly tough and you have no options but mindlessly grind levels in the four patches of grass before them. I must admit, I abandoned the game for the time being there. Dabbled a little around with Pokemon Wilds. A very impressive fangame that is not an RPG Maker game, but rather coded from scratch in Java, using Generation 2 assets. It also kinda plays like a Pokemon version of Factorio. You play on a procedurally generated island with various biomes and buildings and have to survive by befriending or catching various Pokemon, breed them in open pens and have them generate resources that you can use to build stuff with a quite in-depth base-building and crafting system. Seems quite intriguing, but admittedly I didn't play much with it. Instead I went to Pokemon Desolation. Not yet finished, but a still very decent story-heavy game in the vein of Pokemon Reborn (which it openly uses a foundation, taking many of its mechanics and unique Shinys). Reborn was already quite fun (though I never finished it either), especially with its interesting setting in a gigantic city with very few wild Pokemon, forcing the player to befriend strays in scripted encounters and building their team from that. Desolation doesn't do that and drops you on an untamed island after your cruise ship you and two friends are taking gets wrecked and the survivors get picked up by a weird cult, forcing you to take one of the now ownerless Pokemon and rescue them, before exploring the island and trying to find a way to get off it. The game is extremely stingy with money so far, leaving you with tough choices in regards to which of the many, many wild Pokemon you catch and which you don't. The very long areas are thankfully littered with healing stations, making navigating it quite easy and every settlement has a trainer with three suicidal Audinos who battles you for free, essentially as an XP dispenser, so there is zero grinding whatsoever (unfortunately meaning the game assumes you are always at the level cap). The only rage moment was the very first boss fight in said cult village, who has a high-leveled Aipom who can one-shot most of your team (and no fighting types available as of then) and a Roselia that knows Rock Tomb (with no fire types available, only bug and bird types). That guy comes up before the first settlement and forces you to grind to brute force your way through. I was severely tempted to drop the game there and then, but thankfully I didn't. After the first gym (which was also a fairly bullshit fight if you haven't picked up on the idea that you HAVE to use Rain Dance to undo the sunshine and burning field effects that boost the gym leader's fire types through the stratosphere) the game's pacing settles into a far more enjoyable ride, particularly with the quite elaborate quest system that also happens to be one of the only sources of money that you have. I'm also contemplating more of a go with Pokemon Empire. Another unnecessarily grim story-heavy fangame, but I'm yet on the edge about the grinding involved there as it's quite possible to get stuck. The unique feature here is that Pokemon Centers cost money, with the sum increasing with each badge you earn. In return attacks have drastically higher AP and items are much, much cheaper. This all to encourage a very mobile item-based playstyle with little to no backtracking. The fights I have had so far were also significantly easier than in Desolation or Zeta, so the game is very much about judging risks and advancing carefully. Of course, knowing myself, I fear I end up savescumming like crazy because of this. I also caught myself mindlessly level-grinding whenever status effects force me to use a Pokémon Center, thinking so I might as well use up my remaining AP.

The melons died again, so I had to put them back into the didn't work category. In the meantime more and more dates sprouted. I lost count, seriously. And when I started putting them into separate pots and accidentally broke off the date seeds, I'm almost sure they just sprouted a second time. Which... I know makes little sense, but otherwise I can't explain why I have more date plants than dates I planted. XD At the moment I have a bit of a fruit fly epidemic, which I guess is my own fault because I spent a whole year throwing out every spider I found because my mother found them icky and now the flies had no predators whatsoever. Well... I guess until a few days ago. Some time earlier I re-potted one of my methusalem tomatoes and gave it new soil. Not sure whether the soil was contaminated or the pot was, but all of a sudden I watched a couple of tiny centipedes darting around, eating all the fruit fly larvae and even sometimes tackling fruit flies to the ground who dared landing in their pot. They haven't been able to escape the pot at all, with its surface too smooth and too steep for them, so I am just watching them with curiosity. The pot is at the left side of the windowsill and now all flies are concentrated on the right. And right now I started the next experiment. Had already contemplated it briefly before, but the price for dragon fruits was exorbitant. Well, I just ate one. And collected some of its seeds, planting a bunch of them in the container where I failed to get the melons to grow. I keep you updated if I manage to summon an army of cacti.

To be honest, I just go straight to the site of the local train company. Here they have their own route planners.

I'm using as ecosia.org as much as possible after I've seen students use it. Just a minor way to greenwash my searches.^^ Have to switch to Google sometimes for more obscure searches, but it's fine for everyday things.

For someone who is constantly worrying about "the elites", it is odd that I only see you advocating for the party and their policies to make the super rich richer and keep the current trend of ever increasing wealth gaps as it is. If I were you, I'd take another careful look who was in power when wages started stagnating in the US. And yes, to your previous point, those emissions were in the atmosphere millions of years ago. And it took those millions of years and several extinction events to get them out of there. The issue we are facing is that we are drastically changing the atmosphere in a very, very, very, VERY short timeframe. Something life on our planet simply can't adapt to quickly enough. That is why we are already right in the middle of another mass extinction event RIGHT NOW. And taking money in the hand to prevent the worst right now also has advantages for all of us. Don't you think shortening supply chains to stop shipping nonsense from China across the world and getting industries back home won't create prosperity? Will stop throwing money at Russia and Arabs for fossil fuels not make us more independent and in the end be far more cheaper, given how CHEAP renewables actually are once established? You have bought into the propaganda of those very same elites you fear so much, that switching to renewables somehow destroys prosperity, even though it in fact just creates new/different jobs and allows us to prevent a loss of prosperity though climate collapse where we would have to pour ungodly amounts of money for repairs from extreme weather events and to keep from starving. The only ones who have to fear for their "prosperity" are those in the fossil fuel industry and that's why they are lobbying so much and do everything so that useful idiots like you block change out of fear. Change that is bitterly needed right now.

Finished the Red Alert 2 campaign now. The last two Soviet missions were a strange mixture of frantical defense against non-stop attacks and then just rushing the target with airships and be done with it. Given how insanely frustrating Yuri's psy-warriors were, I'm not quite sure I want to jump straight into the expansion. In fact I somehow fell back to playing GTA V as I somehow have an urge to leisurely drive through the town. Did mostly races and parachute jumps before doing a little of the main story.

Yeah, sorry. I should go back to expecting that people are embarrassed of knowing me and focus on the pleasant surprise when someone isn't.

Yeah, I guess that's wise. Doesn't help being bummed out about it though. Eh, that's a bit harsh. I don't want to assume anything that extreme. In fact the situation reminded me of a scene quite a few years ago where I met a fellow student from university in the train with her boyfriend and we started chatting, with him looking rather left out, just uncomfortably sitting there glancing at us without saying anything beyond the initial introduction. It is quite possible she just wanted to avoid such a situation with her partner. True. Still causes me a bit to retcon how I saw her back then, because in my memory she seemed rather unconcerned about goofing off with guys, me or others. Though admittedly, our interactions were rather sparse if not for anything initiated by her and I ended up avoiding her on top of that for a while because of my confusion.

Okay, fuck. Not sure it really belongs here, but... I guess for her situation it kinda fits, because I'm not sure whether I'm expecting too much from a person on an outing with their boyfriend/husband or whether this is another example of my inability to normally socialize or even whether this is after all this time still a person affected by my old status as untouchable pariah that made her uneasy for knowing me. So I was just at an Anime convention and early on saw a girl I went to school with and I haven't seen in 11 years. Okay, as it's just us, I can be honest and say it was my first and only small crush back in high school that I think I mentioned before, the one I swallowed down hard and forgot about because she already had a boyfriend and there was no point making myself miserable. It's a bit unnecessary information, because those feelings are long gone and didn't show themselves today either. However... I must admit I craned around to squint at her about 20 times before I took heart and approached her, if she noticed, that may have added to her apprehensiveness, but I really didn't want to be mistaken. The dialogue was as follows: "Hello! I'm sorry for disturbing, but while I hope I'm not mistaken... aren't you A.?" "No, that's correct! Hello again." "Wow, we haven't seen since ages ago!" "Yes, strange what places you can meet again. I hope you have fun." (already proceeds to walk away) "Oh, uh, okay, yes, you have fun, too." And gone. We bumped into each other a couple more times, but she made sure to never look at me and acknowledge my attempt at at least nodding at her. Quite a bummer, since I hoped I could at least get in to ask what she has been up to all these years or... anything really. On the other hand I can understand that she really didn't want to do any of that while going around with her boyfriend/husband (that I may or may not have mistaken for her father initially, until I noticed them cuddling with his hand at her butt as they stood in front of me in a queue...). On the other hand, I can't help but wonder that her skittishness at engaging with me may have been a late return of my status as "the victim" as I'm very used to former classmates having to pretend not to know me as to protect their social status, so she might have been embarrassed at me daring to approach her like this and just wanted me to be away. This is literally how I'm used to such chance meetings proceeding almost every time, just me greeting them and them turning away embarrassed. And here I also caught a quite distinct "don't want to talk" vibe from her. Which... is a bit disappointing as I consider a main point for my confused feelings towards her back then to have to do with my perception that I thought she acted relatively unaffected by it towards me after the direct bullying ended. Should I rethink that? Or am I overthinking and in such a situation it's far too much of me to ask for even a little talk?