I.d.k. why i thought that Euclid, and perhaps also others, were around Plato

There was an Euclid that was a pupil of Socrates. He was a friend(and classmate i guess) of Plato.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid_of_Megara

And dont worry, it wasnt just you who was confused

"Editors and translators in the Middle Ages often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria when discussing the latter’s Elements. "

Modern gacha games are more exploitative and effective. But there is a reason why almost all conventional games have “rpg elements” nowadays. I am an old gamer and i remember when this happened.

Game devs realized that if they have “number goes up” mechanics in their games, those games will be more popular and they will sell more. Thats how all games, including multiplayer competitive games, started adding temporary progression(session based, ie buying items between rounds in counterstrike) and then permanent progression(unlocking attachments and prestiging in call of duty).

Quake and unreal didnt have any progression, yet they were very popular multiplayer games. Many people blamed the lack of “parallel progression” systems in starcraft 2, for its failure(sc2 eventually added more parallel progression). Mechabellum, an autobattler(the modern equivalent of an rts), has like 3 different numbers that go up, on top of unlocking unit abilities and skins.

The mobile game market is very competitive and game development is extremely fast and iterative. So they leapfrogged ahead of conventional gaming when it comes to all kinds of user metric manipulation(addictiveness, engagement, etc). Dont hate the player, hate the game.

Funnily enough, the most popular mobile games atm are by Hoyoverse and they arent even that exploitative. They are AAA games, with decent story, graphics, gameplay and the gacha is just there for the more vulnerable/rich people. IMO playing them as f2p is not only viable but actually more enjoyable(ie challenging instead of rolfstomping everything).

If only there were more conventional games as a service that could pump the amount and quality of content that Hoyoverse creates for their games. But Hoyoverse is a private company, probably funded by the chinese government, so they can afford to reinvest all those billions back into the game development, unlike other games. And it shows.

So ultimately, gacha is kinda like real life gambling. I am kinda ok with it, as long as it isnt promoted and its profits go to a good place(funding education or creating decent games).

World of Warcraft and Diablo are gacha. Every time you play, you are “pulling” and hoping for a good drop(item). What modern gacha games did, is take that gameplay/psychological feature and directly monetize it(instead of indirectly monetizing it through a subscription/1 time payment).

But both are gambling. I am ok with having age restrictions but we need to be honest with ourselves. And what is “fun” is whatever makes neurons activate. Gambling(ie rpg elements) has always been a core mechanic for many games.

ISIS-K is behind the terrorist attacks in Russia. ISIS-K also wants to overthrow the Taliban and take over Aghanistan(and parts of Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Kyrgystan and Pakistan).

Literally all the countries in the world are fighting or oppose ISIS. The US has probably worked with the Taliban and has hit ISIS-K inside Afghanistan. And it might not be official but if you want to hit terrorists, you need to cooperate with the Taliban because the US has basically no presence in Afghanistan atm.

Obviously for Russia it is even more important to cooperate with the Taliban, considering that ISIS-K hit Russia.

What keeps them engaged with Destiny 2 despite its apparent lack of a clear path forward?

There is no alternative. The First Descendant is p2w. Once Human has different structure and resets your progress every season. Warframe is pretty different and similar to First Descendant. Overwatch basically cancelled its pve. Darktide is clunky.

And none of these games have the polish and shooting satisfaction that Destiny has. If people want a pve game, with long term progression that has enjoyable shooting, Destiny is all there is. What keeps them playing? Copium.

Slowly but steadily Destiny will die. And thats when Marathon will come out. But Marathon is very different, so i am not even so sure that most Destiny players will migrate to that.

I am not even playing Destiny. Destiny is the game that i want to love so much but always shits on me, so i gave up. It seems to me that the easiest thing in the world, is to keep Destiny going and address its minor issues. But somehow Bungie doesnt think so.

You might be right, though the ears arent floppy.

It kinda looks like a basenji, with relaxed tail. Their tails are usually curled, but when they relax, it can uncurl.

Maybe it is a basenji mix, hence the uncurled tail and kinda off whitebrown colour.

Be aware that basenjis are not normal dogs, they are more like cats. And also there are a billion stray dogs that need companions, no need to breed extra.

F-750 is sold for specialized uses, as ambulance, crane vehicle, etc. It is a commercial vehicle, not a normal truck for private individuals. In fact, this picture is a modified F-750(well technically all F-750 are modified). Normally the truck comes just as a base platform and then you build stuff on it.

All i know is that at least she swam in the Seine. Macron still hasnt swum.

With geforce now(and other similar cloud gaming services), you can play all kinds of AAA games in your browser, including diablo 4.

“Liberte” and “egalite” are latin words. “Electrolyte” is greek.

Mixing greek and latin is an abomination and we should put a stop to it. Say no to those mixed greek+latin words, it is an affront to God.

Does a UCI ProTeam cycling team cofounded and co-owned by a Republican American billionaire who says “We want to continue to put Israel on the map internationally and in cycling, like we did until now with the sport diplomacy.” count? I’d say it definitely does.

Ask a random person on the street to name 1 cycling team, they wont be able to do so. Ask them to name 10 football teams and they will do that with ease. And most of them will be arab owned. The scale is not the same. Maybe you are an american and you arent aware what has happened to european football teams.

And they are doing the same with esports too and probably other sectors which i am not aware. That on its own isnt issue, the issue comes from why they are doing that.

If Israel cared about the human rights of LGBTQ+ people, they’d allow same sex marriage and stop using the community as a shield against correct accusations of countless atrocities against other minority groups.

Israel is a very divided society. They have extremely conservative religious people and super liberal ones. You cant force change like that, change takes time.

The same can be said for KSA. I am sure there are plenty of saudis who are kinda liberal and dont really care about oppressing gay people and women. I dont expect MBS to give women freedom to do what they want, i know that isnt feasible in today’s KSA. And while this is a huge issue, it is mostly out of KSA’s leadership hand. What is feasible to change and what makes KSA really deplorable is how they treat opposition and their promotion of islamic extremism.

If you are going around threatening and murdering opposition, thats a big issue. At least Israel has democracy, which is a big achievement. Even if it is only for its jewish population. And it is the only democracy in the area. Funnily enough, the other state that had somewhat democracy in the area was Syria. Hence the syrian protests, etc. Egypt also almost became democratic, but the West didnt approve a muslim government, hence the government was overthrown.

KSA does not have democracy and its rulers are naturally very insecure about their regime. They need local and foreign support. They buy local support through bribing and violence, they buy foreign support through bribing/buying shit(sports, military expenditure, etc).

How will Greece, a country with the worst car charging infrastructure in EU, phase out gasoline cars? Electric cars are literally unusable in Greece.

I googled it and it seems that Greece has extended the phasing out of gasoline cars to 2035.

One country is spending billions try to create positive PR, the other country just participates in sports, organized and paid by whatever country. The second is not sportswashing, it is just sports.

If Israel starts buying teams and leagues and organizing World Cups even though it is a somewhat small country with 40C+ temperature during summer, then we could talk about sportswashing. At best Israel does a little bit of pinkwashing but thats a different thing. And i am kinda ok with that, because thats for human rights. While if Qatar or KSA dont spend billions, someone will host those games anyway, in a more natural location(with more appropriate climate, more fans, etc).

You can have 5 times more people counting votes and organizing things. I dont understand this excuse. Democracy can scale, especially nowadays with technology.

We dont want to use AC on the rooms the athletes will be staying during summer, because we care about the environment. But here are some flying taxis, because that is surely good for the environment.

Greeks living in current western Turkey were called Ionians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionians

They were mostly athenean settlers, which is why when Persia conquered them, they asked Athens for help. Athens helped them but the ionian revolt failed and Persia was super pissed. The persian emperor had his servant reminding him daily to “remember the athenians”.

This is the main reason behind the persian invasion of mainland Greece. The persians burnt Athens to the ground, which eventually led to Alexander the OK burning Persepolis(Persian Empire’s Capital) to the ground(a couple centuries later).

Since turks came from the East, Ionians were kinda the first greeks they met, so they decided that all greeks are Ionians(Yunans). Or other non greeks in the East were already calling greeks “yunans” and turks just adopted that terminology too. Especially since that term had been mostly depreciated by the time the turks arrived to the neighbourhood.

Most of Sicily was a greek and Syracuse was a greek colony. In fact Archimedes helped defend it against the romans. Most of southern Italy was greek, before Rome became big(and conquered other italians, greeks and carthaginians).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Graecia

And even after the romans conquered “everything”, greek culture was still dominant since the romans were greekaboos(and greek culture was everywhere because of Alexander the OK).

An ai can help a lot of non tech savvy people. Imagine every time they want to do something, they could just ask the ai on how to do it, instead of asking you or having to go through a billion SEO garbage google results.

It’s also available on hbo max.