I can possibly see an argument that “artist” isn’t an essential job because people make loads of art when it’s not their job anyway. Nobody’s doing telemarketing as their hobby

However I very much doubt that this was the actual context for whatever this graphic was trying to show

The real life British East India Company had an army as big as the modern Mexican armed forces today

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Never heard of this one, but I will check it out. Thank you for the recommendation!

That sounds fascinating! I’m pretty tolerant of jank in games if they’re doing something engaging, and while I do enjoy the combat systems of the Souls games I am totally okay with a more abstracted system. Hell I love Paradox’s grand strategy games, and this sounds a lot like how battles work in those — the meaningful decision is in which fights you pick and how you prepare for them rather than your actions within the fight itself.

I’d be really interested to see an action RPG type game that just embraces the real-life scale of the world and lets you screw about with the rate of time passing like in Kerbal Space Program when you’re walking a long way. You’d have to limit the scale of the story to make it manageable to develop, but I think there’s the potential for something cool in there. Maybe there are only two or three villages in one valley, but they’re all full villages and they’re actually several kilometres apart. Make sure that whatever goals you have are time-gated in some way so that you actually have to weigh up whether you can afford to walk to the other village, because even though you fast-forward it so that it only takes a minute of real-life time to walk there it’s actually most of the day in-game.

Sometimes with music. I quite like death and black metal, and I find listening to that loud or playing guitar along with it (also loud) to be quite a cathartic experience. Other times I need more peace, though. I like walking and climbing hills, any nice spot of nature, so I go out and do that at the earliest opportunity. My health and the weather around here can limit the opportunity for that sometimes, but it’s good when circumstances permit

The weirdest experience I’ve had with language mixups so far is that my brain apparently seems to conflate anything not English. English is my first language, and I used to be able to speak German pretty well — not fluently, but well enough to hold a fairly natural conversation. I have unfortunately let it slip away now. I’m now learning a different language and for some reason whenever I don’t know a word for something but I do remember the German one, my brain just picks the German one. It’s quite frustrating.

Huh, the lake really does look like a print left by someone falling on their arse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lake_(Minnesota)

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Very much not an expert, but I have been around pet cats for the majority of my life and have one keeping me good company just now. They’re very much high-strung creatures of habit; they don’t like change, and they don’t like situations they don’t understand. Car trips are things that happen too rarely for them to be used to, which are noisy, which involve them being shut in a small box, and which mess with their balance because they have no idea why the ground keeps moving. It’s really stressful and they don’t know what to do about any of it, so they want your help

Though I think you need 4. A human-ish one first, a four-legged bestial one, and a flying one, before the final one. Then the priest and crew arrive, and the end happens.

Oh, I was including what happens after the priest (whose name is Lord Emon, now that I have actually gone to check because I certainly didn’t remember) as one of the colossus battles. Just trying not to openly spoil a nearly 20-year-old game for some reason I guess. My concern is that the value of the colossus battles in the game comes largely in the form of puzzle-solving, something that won’t translate to film very easily. In the game, the fights don’t advance the narrative much. The deteriorating state of Wander and some of the environmental cues do, but neither of those require the actual fight to be shown in full. We need one fight to set up the nature and danger of Wander’s task, at least one more to make tangible that he has to do a bunch of these and they’re all differently dangerous, and the confrontation with Emon because that’s the conclusion to the story.

David Lowery (The Green Knight)

That’s a brilliant suggestion, that film was exactly what would be needed to adapt this game. I don’t have… well, much of any hope for the guy who is actually attached to it, but I suppose it’s unfair to judge him too hard before we have any idea of if or how it will actually happen

I think you could do a fair bit by following the priest and his soldiers that are chasing Wander more than the game did. He can provide exposition to the soldiers as they travel, seeing more and more pillars of light in the distance as they do so. Have some banter along the way to get us to like one or two or the soldiers as well. Play up this party’s protagonist energy.

In the meantime, let Wander talk to Dormin more. Dormin remains honest and helpful throughout the game, so I think you could easily add in concern for Wander and curioisity about why he’s doing what he is doing. “What a strange, fascinating little mortal. We do hope he knows what he’s doing.”

I suppose you could probably only show maybe three colossus fights max, including the ending. Picking which ones get done in full would be tough. First one almost certainly has to be on the list. I think the giant flying serpent in the desert is probably the best one visually, so that’d be my other pick

This director did the 2023 Flash film, so if it comes out I’m probably going to pretend it didn’t

We cunningly designed kilts to cover up to just above the navel

Barcelona kinda has an extra layer of this too, because Catalan does pronounce “Barcelona” with an S sound rather than an unvoiced TH

I’ve had a somewhat similar experience. I learned that mint is related to catnip while trying to figure out why on Earth my cat would have dunked his entire god damn head into my mug of mint green tea. I didn’t name mine quite so fittingly as you did though

To increase the area of effect when I piss on something to claim territory

My cat got an unexpected chilli experience. I was cooking curry, and chopping up a bunch of peppers, and went back to my computer momentarily to double check something in the recipe. Cat hopped up on to my lap and, when I wasn’t looking, licked my fingers. Poor wee guy had no idea what was happening to him and scarpered for the bathroom sink, where he yelled at me to please come turn the tap on

(I know chilli oil is quite bad for cats; he was okay after this brief but very unpleasant experience)

I feel like the best way to do a Subnautica painting would be an absolutely gigantic black canvas with only the just enough hints of blue light in the centre to silhouette the diver and a big monster. Which isn’t really practical for most purposes.