They’re actually not bad for space! I’m about 1.9m / 6’3", and while I’m not that heavily-built I’m definitely not unusually slim. It wasn’t roomy for sure, but I fit just fine. The lack of a roof did at least mean that headroom wasn’t a concern

I did once have to back out of a purchase of a second gen Toyota MR2 because I was too tall. That was a deeply disappointing day

I’m in the UK where people do have an unfortunate obsession with SUVs but we mostly don’t have the really enormous American ones. Since our roads tend to be significantly narrower than American ones - especially in rural areas and older towns - when you do see one of those big trucks like a Hummer or something they just look like they got lost and are now stuck

I am this and have no regrets

Kenya is also an ex-British colony with a small minority of L1 English speakers and a substantial presence of L2 English speakers, so I don’t know if language can explain it so easily

Couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid. I only know about the game because I happened to be in a pub where it was on the TV at the time

Those are the names of the German footballers (soccer) that scored to make probably the worst defeat the Brazilian team has ever suffered

Much as I do agree with everyone talking about public transport here on an actual sensible and rational level, I do still like cars and driving no matter how much I agree that the world would be a better place were they rendered irrelevant.

So in the spirit of the question: the Morgan Supersport. It looks magnificent, Morgans are supposed to be great to drive, it’s quite small and still fairly luxurious, it’s pretty fast but not so fast that it becomes functionally unusable on actual roads, and the company still describes itself as a coachbuilder so you can tweak every little detail to your pleasing

There’s a place near-ish me that offers them for hire for a day. They’re every bit as fun as you’d expect. Exhausting, but fun

The Sun is an insult to the craft of journalism and should not be posted anywhere

The actual paper the number comes from (Fate of Empires by John Glubb) is complete bullshit, though. Even the cherry-picked examples it uses, which are limited strictly to the surroundings of the Mediterranean, don’t use any kind of consistent criteria for when an empire starts or ends. He tries to count “Alexander (and his successors)” as one coherent entity and then picks an end year in which all of them had either already collapsed long ago or would not do so for many decades to come. He cuts centuries off of the Roman Empire’s lifespan by just saying that the empire was unstable and getting invaded a lot (and ignoring the Eastern Empire entirely). HIs reckoning of the “Arab Empire” includes three separate caliphates, and the end date isn’t even the actual end of any of them

Other than that, no, it does not attempt to find an average in the sense of a mean lifespan. It actually does argue that 250 years for an empire can be compared to a human living 70 years.

If we go by impact factor (a measure of how often the articles a journal publishes are cited elsewhere), various Nature publications are six of the top ten journals in the world and Nature itself is 15th

Is it particularly more your fault that things don’t better in Souls games than in any other game in which you are meant to save the world? I think the only difference is that in the Souls ones and others like them, the world is already horrible and needs repaired in some way rather than on the verge of becoming horrible

Interestingly Elden Ring went for quite a different direction. The world is, unquestionably, still an enormous mess that would be horrendous to live in, but they’ve left in far more of the beauty. I particularly like how every so often you hear hostile NPCs playing music or singing if they haven’t spotted you yet, and how there’s a little puzzle side quest about a painter; people are still making art in this ongoing apocalypse. One important allied NPC even actually openly makes an argument that the world is worth preserving if it looks like you’re going for the “destroy everything” ending

Of course the atmosphere and gameplay are still heavy going, both in the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. I get why that wouldn’t be for everyone. It’s like playable Cormac McCarthy stories, except you can punch your way out of most of the misery if you get it right

I’d be very surprised if “cartoony style” and “low-tech vibe” is not describing Wilds. I assume the bit about respecting of time is something to do with the various timed events in each loop like Ash Twin. I don’t agree with them in the slightest, but I assume that’s what it is

I’m not sure I’d count Outer Wilds as a space game (assuming you mean something in the vein of Elite Dangerous), despite it objectively including a lot of space travel. It’s a detective game, the point is to unravel a mystery

Could you talk a little more about the aesthetics thing? I have no intention to pick a fight with you or tell you that your opinion is wrong, I’m just curious because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that about them before

Also yes the no pausing thing is very frustrating

The gear would not have saved you. The game gets substantially more difficult as you progress, even accounting for your character getting stronger, and if you don’t do a decent job of levelling up appropriate skills that will compound the issue. The starter gear for most of the classes is actually perfectly viable all the way to the end of the game for most players too, it’s not notably weak at all

I love Elden Ring, but I can absolutely respect why it wouldn’t be for everyone. No sense in playing it if you’re not enjoying it, the point is still to have a good and/or interesting time

I would argue it can be, even if it isn’t always. I don’t go for radio pop at all, but we can agree that it changes substantially over time right? Billie Eilish doesn’t sound like Imagine Dragons, who in turn didn’t sound like Britney Spears. New ideas are being brought to the genre and to popularity all the time, otherwise we’d still have Beatles soundalikes dominating the radio

The transition happens at the exact moment that my fingers first touch the popcorn

I had to go back out after giving it to him, and when I got home an hour later he had simply curled up and gone to sleep exactly where he was

Well they’re gonna need a lot of new brown shirts, I assume