+1 In general I don’t like pop music, of any era, but sometimes a single song will stick in my head and will find itself on my playlist anyway.

I genuinely have no idea what it is that you’re complaining about. Could you perhaps clarify in an edit?

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It’s a Debbie Downer of a song, it lasts forever, and it gets really repetitive.

ABBA’s “Fernando” pops up in my head randomly all the time. Styx’s “Half-Penny, Two-Penny” has a phrase that leaps to mind quite often when reading news. “Justice for money, what can you say? We all know it’s the American Way.” and also “Justice for money, how much more can I pay? We all know it’s the American Way.” And when that leaps to mind the rest of the song follows. Forever (or so it seems)…

As a child I had a problem pronouncing “chocolate” so I called it “drawer”.

This makes more sense to people who know German since that’s what I was using at the time.

I want to get some of the local magpies to start eating out of my hand by summer time.

I was nearly frantic trying to find my glasses once. I enlisted the aid of SO (who complied, but was smirking for reasons that would soon become obvious). While I was digging around in places it could have fallen, I mentioned that it would be so much easier if I could actually see clearly while doing this.

Then I had a brainstorm. I took my glasses out of my blouse’s front pocket and put them on so I could see more clearly if my glasses had fallen behind the desk…

You’re conflating two different things:

1. Getting games printed in China.
2. Chinese counterfeit game publication.

#1 is not going to stop happening anytime soon. I saw this in a recent trip to Canada where I wanted to get some jigsaw puzzles with native art on them for friends. There were 500-piece sets manufactured in, I think, Seattle that were three times the price of 1000-piece sets manufactured in China. Yet buying one of each and taking a look at the contents there was little difference in the pieces. (The American-made one was a fraction of a millimetre thicker, but for that the cutting looked more accurate in the Chinese one. The pieces just fit better.)

#2 can be stopped, but would take intrusive border checks that most American businesses would absolutely not stand for.

Could do with learning some more card games. I love that you can play so much without having to buy anything new with them.

This, however, is anathema to an industry which is why you get card games that are thinly papered-over traditional playing card games with relabelled cards and slightly-altered rules. (Think Uno: the commercial wrapper around Crazy Eights.)

There are hundreds—or even thousands—of traditional games out there, playable with simple, ubiquitous playing pieces (like poker decks, small coloured stones/markers/whatever, and simply drawn boards on paper). So if the industry collapses you can keep playing new(-to-you) games for the rest of your life without running out.

I used to, but it’s not really a thing here.

Today started as a Heilung day and ended with Burning Witches. I’ll probably fall asleep to the former.

Way back in prehistory I played Car Wars when it first came out. (You know, before it became an unwieldy, badly-organized mess that rivalled even Star Fleet Battles for being impossible for normal folk to play.)

We missed one very key rule. The “damage” rating for weapons was a number of d6 to roll for damage. We played it as individual points.

Needless to say even the shortest auto duels were horrifically and painfully long to play out.

I am not sure what you mean by saying the CPC isn’t Communist anymore.

The CPC has never been communist.

It’s socialist.

The number drops a bit when the polls are done in secrecy. Still far higher than any western government, mind.

To clarify for any pseudo intellectual who happens to be reading:

“<X> is true for <reason> you utter idiot” is not an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

“<X> is true because you’re an utter idiot” is an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

Glad to be of service.

Have you considered taking a communications course so you don’t sound like a pretentious, obfuscating jackass?

Eschew gratuitous obfuscation. (See what I mean?)

In AI alone, we lead the world.

*Deep Seek has entered the chat.*

Would this be the military that could only reach a standstill in Korea? That lost in Vietnam? That lost in Afghanistan? That ran away scared from Mogadishu? That “won” in Iraq by generating the world’s largest collection of terrorists until the blowback lost you two large towers and a smaller one?

That military?

At work? My go-to activity is to get the Hell out of the toilet as quickly as possible.

I hate squat toilets, see.

You’ll find that happens a lot when Americans comment on things abroad. Victims if their own educational system that they are, they really don’t know anything about the world outside of their borders so they just make vague pronouncements and nod as if they’ve said something wise instead of having just shit their own pants for all to see.