Someone shared this with me years ago and I find it increasingly helpful in remembering how much bullshit our economies are built upon.
Link to the Financial Times here - “The parable of the ox” by John Kay
I think much of Geocities remained accessible until 2013/2014 before going completely (apart from Japan 2019 or so).
Holiday soundtrack for one particularly memorable break. Nice to revisit.
Original studio recording; there’s a re-recording out there that doesn’t sit well with me.
Sniper Elite 5. I played V2 way back and fancied an updated experience. Going reasonably well so far and that x-ray cam experience remains gnarly.
Half-Life was my introduction to FPS gaming; I loved every game in the series that I had the pleasure to play - Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Half-Life 2 (Lost Coast, Episode One, Episode 2). I never got round to playing Alyx; I didn't have hardware that would cope!
Half-Life also spawned the CounterStrike series; I sank way to many hours into them.
My favourite game remains the original; I enjoyed the narrative and the occasional puzzle. I purchased the upgraded graphics pack (which also fixed a few glitches) and prefer the original with this pack to the remastered version of the game (Half-Life: Source).
Things have changed a lot.
And you’re probably right about the crypto thing; if my defection had happened in ‘10 - ‘11 due to price increases that would have been more crypto and less financial crisis. Memory blurs a little.
You used to need to upgrade … every year or two
That’s what took me out of PC gaming; that and a price increase (possibly crypto related, possibly financial crash related).
Super helpful; also thanks for the channel recommendation.
I’ve never actually tried VR; a friend has offered to let me try their console VR at the end of the week so I’ll be taking notes.
I’ve certainly been tempted by pre-build (thank you for the link) but with parts costs (gradually) coming down some are becoming less competitive.
Thank you for the link; will take a look at that as well.
Sorry, I should have specified; I already have the 4K monitor that I would like to use.
The above build (with a suitable NZXT H7 case) can be built for around £3,800; such a generous budget might be doable but deep down I know this build is over the top and that I cannot really justify ploughing that much into something like this. Thank you for the PCPartPicker recommendation; I will try that.
I have little doubt that the above setup is overkill for my purposes. My difficulty is that I am so far behind and out of date in my knowledge of what constitutes a decent baseline specification that I am having to approach this from a position of embarrassed ignorance.
A couple of folks have recommended PCPartPicker so I will give that a go.
I haven't built a gaming PC for over fifteen years; I defected to PlayStation in '08 when the constant upgrading got too expensive to really justify, but now I'm looking to come crawling back.
I am finding it easy enough to find build ideas for very capable (and expensive) machines but I am that out of touch with "what's good" that I no longer have any idea of what would be "good enough" (to play most modern games at "high" settings and at 60fps).
Basically, I would like help in avoiding an attempt at going back to my old ways and building some kind of pie in the sky setup like this:
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
CPU fan NZXT Kraken 360 RGB
MB Asus Prime X670E-Pro WiFi 6E
GPU Gigabyte Aero GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB DDR5-6000
SSD Samsung 990 Pro 2TB
PSU Corsair RM1000x Shift 1000 W
Perhaps the could serve as a starting point - what could you cut from the above build and what would you substitute?
TBM are pretty neat. I wouldn’t let my post hold you back from posting your preferred track!
Thought this too. About to read the article; half-wondering whether I’ll see the likes of Monsanto or similar in amongst the study sponsors.
They posted this little history; amazing to have come this far (and still going) but the talent was always there it seems.
It’s on the tip of my tongue; there was a whole series of ghost pirate themed “hidden object” point and click puzzle games. I’ll update the post when it comes back.
Edit: Nightmares of the Deep
Abstract
As our planet warms, a critical research question is when and where temperatures will exceed the limits of what the human body can tolerate. Past modeling efforts have investigated the 35°C wet-bulb threshold, proposed as a theoretical upper limit to survivability taking into account physiological and behavioral adaptation. Here, we conduct an extreme value theory analysis of weather station observations and climate model projections to investigate the emergence of an empirically supported heat compensability limit. We show that the hottest parts of the world already experience these heat extremes on a limited basis and that under moderate continued warming parts of every continent, except Antarctica, will see a rapid increase in their extent and frequency. To conclude, we discuss the consequences of the emergence of this noncompensable heat and the need for incorporating different critical thermal limits into heat adaptation planning.
Zhao J, Xu L, Sun J, et al Global trends in incidence, death, burden and risk factors of early-onset cancer from 1990 to 2019 BMJ Oncology 2023;2:e000049. doi: 10.1136/bmjonc-2023-000049
Abstract
Objective This study aimed to explore the global burden of early-onset cancer based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study for 29 cancers worldwid.
Methods and analysis Incidence, deaths, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and risk factors for 29 early-onset cancer groups were obtained from GBD.
Results Global incidence of early-onset cancer increased by 79.1% and the number of early-onset cancer deaths increased by 27.7% between 1990 and 2019. Early-onset breast, tracheal, bronchus and lung, stomach and colorectal cancers showed the highest mortality and DALYs in 2019. Globally, the incidence rates of early-onset nasopharyngeal and prostate cancer showed the fastest increasing trend, whereas early-onset liver cancer showed the sharpest decrease. Early-onset colorectal cancers had high DALYs within the top five ranking for both men and women. High-middle and middle Sociodemographic Index (SDI) regions had the highest burden of early-onset cancer. The morbidity of early-onset cancer increased with the SDI, and the mortality rate decreased considerably when SDI increased from 0.7 to 1. The projections indicated that the global number of incidence and deaths of early-onset cancer would increase by 31% and 21% in 2030, respectively. Dietary risk factors (diet high in red meat, low in fruits, high in sodium and low in milk, etc), alcohol consumption and tobacco use are the main risk factors underlying early-onset cancers.
Conclusion Early-onset cancer morbidity continues to increase worldwide with notable variances in mortality and DALYs between areas, countries, sex and cancer types. Encouraging a healthy lifestyle could reduce early-onset cancer disease burden
From the movie Seal Team; I found it fun to watch but was taken in by the soundtrack.
Not sure how to tag with genre; this is a modern take on the 80s rock sound.
I wasn’t there; would love to have been present for this one track in particular.