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It seems to mostly adhere to a one entry per series rule, but somehow Final Fantasy Tactics is different but Ultima Underworld isn’t. Anyway, speaking of the latter series, if you have to choose just one, Ultima IV is a good choice, but I’d opt for VII personally. Also, I’d have it number one.

The one game I’m both not surprised and still disappointed isn’t here is Tyranny, which is the only one of those BioWare/Obsidian/Larian CRPGs that I haven’t gotten bored of after… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:45 AM on November 11, 2023

Since Ultima IV has been mentioned a few times, I'll note that it's available for free on GOG.com, as well as the two Ultima Worlds of Adventure games (CRPGs made using the Ultima VI engine, set in completely different worlds). I'll note, though, that Ultima IV is antediluvian, as nicolin noted, and while the Ultima VI engine is a lot more advanced, it isn't really until VII you approach the kinds of graphics and controls that modern gamers are used to.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:22 AM on November 11, 2023

Also, I should note that the two Ultima Worlds of Adventure games are inspired by early 20th Century pulp fiction, and the attitudes of that era are in evidence in those games.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:33 AM on November 11, 2023

It’s still not certain that an eruption is imminent. From what I’ve gathered, geologists think it’s more likely than not, but that it wouldn’t surprise them if things would quiet down again.

So far, a lot of the discussion in Iceland has centered on the Blue Lagoon, as it’s near the area which has had the most geological activity. Two bus companies have stopped driving there as they don’t feel like they can guarantee their employees’ or passengers’ safety, but the Blue… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:00 PM on November 7, 2023

There’s a lot of seismic activity right now, and as this map shows, it’s pretty close to the Svartsengi power station, and therefore the Blue Lagoon. Crucially, it’s on the other side of a mountain from it. The alert level has been raised and geologists are saying that this could be an eruption starting. Hopefully it won’t be dangerous to anyone.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:58 AM on November 10, 2023

Many inhabitants of Grindavík have started leaving the town, though the authorities have not issued a recommendation to do so yet. To make that rather more difficult, the main road out of the town, which goes across the peninsula, has been badly damaged by earthquakes today, but there’s a road crew there now and they expect to patch it up so that it’s drivable in about two hours. Until then people have to leave by the coastal road.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:26 AM on November 10, 2023

Magma has been moving, subterraneously, towards Grindavík, so the town has been evacuated. RÚV, the Icelandic public broadcaster, has an English language liveblog, though it’s mostly dormant now that the evacuation is over.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:52 PM on November 10, 2023

This photo taken from the air provides a good sense of the landscape. The magma tube is mostly underneath the area on the left, the town of Grindavík (pop. 3700), the mountain Þorbjörn, and the craters Sundhnúkar. The Svartsengi power station and the Blue Lagoon (Bláa lónið in Icelandic) are to the north (on the right of the photo). The English-language liveblog I mentioned before is active again.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:40 AM on November 11, 2023

The Finnish police have released a statement, The investigation is now focused on the role of the vessel Newnew Polar Bear. Excerpt: The police have established in the criminal investigation that the movements of the vessel Newnew Polar Bear flying the flag of Hong Kong coincide with the time and place of the gas pipeline damage. For this reason, the investigation is now focused on the role of the said vessel.

[…]

Yesterday the National Bureau of… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:43 PM on October 20, 2023

Finnish investigators suspect Chinese vessel's anchor caused Balticconnector pipeline damage. Excerpt: Maritime traffic data showed that the vessel crossed the Balticconnector pipeline at the very moment a loud noise was registered in the area of the pipeline.

A photograph of the NewNew Polar Bear vessel docked in the port of St Petersburg appeared on the Russian Port News website on 9 October — one day after the damage to the pipeline occurred. The photograph began to… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 10:38 AM on October 24, 2023

YLE News: Finnish investigators confirm recovered anchor belongs to Chinese vessel. Excerpt: Technical examinations of an anchor recovered from the seabed between Finland and Estonia have confirmed that it belongs to a Hong Kong flagged Chinese vessel.

The NewNew Polar Bear ship is known to have been moving in the region when damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline was first detected.

"At this stage, it can be said that the anchor that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:43 AM on November 11, 2023

The first time I was a guest at someone’s house for thanksgiving my friend’s grandmother vowed to disown every single one of her children because they’d had her driving license suspended after she’d driven her car into the supermarket, again, and an uncle tried to get me and my friend to smoke up with him and I thought: “Yes, this is it, this is the Thanksgiving that American pop culture promised me.” Anyway, all the other ones were really chill and nice, but I’ll always cherish that first one.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 10:29 AM on November 10, 2023

Jezebel, as a site, did more to open the eyes of people of my generation to structural misogyny and other forms of patriarchy than any other publication I can think of, so while it’s extremely galling that these fucklewits have done this, Jezebel’s historical legacy is secure. But damn, is it ever so goddamn galling.

I was gonna say that now I have a fresh set of names to add to the list of people whose asses will be first up against the wall come the revolution, but… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:36 PM on November 9, 2023

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I read about Grand Royal magazine when I was a teen and coveted an issue, but none ever washed upon my shores, so they became almost impossibly built up in my head. When I finally stumbled upon a copy, I was happy that it lived up to my outsized expectations, though I don’t know how it’s held up over the years.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:06 PM on November 9, 2023

That was a really interesting article, and I’m glad it focused on Leena Kutti and Gary Evans, the person who saved the documents from the trash heap, and the person for whom those documents had the most personal significance.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:33 PM on November 9, 2023

I worked as a cook for a few summers in my wayward youth, and the most useful aspect was learning a bunch of different ways to cut vegetables. This one has some that I don’t know, and I’ll absolutely refer to this video, as it’s super clear and helpful. Thanks for a wonderful post, swift!
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:58 AM on November 9, 2023

I swear to Eru that drugs manufacturers have the list of the rulers of Númenor and Gondor tacked to their walls and just move a couple of letters around to come up with names for antidepressants… or that’s my excuse for why I kept thinking the names of those folks were antidepressants.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:42 PM on November 7, 2023

As a non-American, let me say that it’s good that waking up to election results in the US is a spot of brightness in a darkening world.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:25 PM on November 7, 2023

It has a transcript, but for whatever reason it only seems to show up as a button you can press on desktop. It's below the "Chapters" section.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:07 PM on November 6, 2023

Yeah, I was also fairly surprised by how well done this was. The one thing I wish they’d mentioned was the “if I did it” interview Engström did in 1992. If he didn’t do it, he would be almost comically suspicious, if this wasn’t an actual murder.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:04 PM on November 6, 2023

GenjiandProust: I wonder how much of the police malfeasance was incompetence or not really caring to find the killer of a Center-Left politician.

The police did have some political hobbyhorses, but it had mostly to do with the fact that they were convinced a far-left organization had been involved, despite there never being a shred of evidence pointing that way. As far as I’ve been able to tell, Hans Holmér, the original lead detective, just… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:48 PM on November 6, 2023

In Icelandic poetry there's no convention that the first line of a poem should be capitalized.

I co-directed a poetry chapbook series in Iceland for a little under a decade. Poets would often submit manuscripts to us where the beginning of each line would be capitalized. At first I thought that this was due to the influence of English language poetry, but I saw this also in manuscripts by poets who clearly had fairly extensive knowledge of Icelandic poetry. Then it… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:02 PM on November 6, 2023

Oh hey! My aunt features in the top 20, she’s one of the violinists playing on Björk’s Jóga (the one with shorter hair).
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:50 AM on November 5, 2023

Marina Hyde had a typically sharp take on Sunak’s talk with Musk. Excerpt: One of Tony Blair’s great weaknesses was that he was pathetically impressed by rich people – almost any rich person would do – and Sunak’s analogous vulnerability would be his starry-eyed tech fandom. From long before he became prime minister, Rishi has seemed not so much unperturbed by a future where tech firms run the world, but actively encouraging of it, despite the vast and blatant encroachments on his own power and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 6:32 AM on November 3, 2023

David Forbes is a very good journalist, who I’ve followed on social media since I read her The Old Iron Dream, about right-wing science fiction. She’s really worth paying attention to, especially if you’re at all concerned about the far right in America.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:08 PM on November 2, 2023

lauranesson: does she pronounce it day-vid or dah-veed or something else?

As far as I know, and it’s been a while since I heard an interview with her, she pronounces it day-vid.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:30 AM on November 3, 2023

There’s a moment in Now and Then, at around 1:08, when Ringo does one of his perfect little drum fills, and I got a frisson of excitement that took me back to memories of listening to way too much Beatles, and the song never quite delivers that again for me.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:05 PM on November 2, 2023

I never really got into the movies. I mean, I saw a few in theaters, but it was never a big deal for me (with the exception of Black Panther and the Guardians films). But I clicked with the first season of Loki. Something about its knowing silliness allowed it to bypass the logical centers if my brain. I’ve watched a few shows since (I liked Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight) but nothing that grabbed me like Loki.

So I was excited for season 2. And while all the things I… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:55 PM on November 2, 2023

My comment about the capture of football by the world's worst rich people is just, essentially, a gif of a person melting as they scream into the void.

There are rumblings of discontent, especially in South America and Europe, and it's possible that those two confederations will threaten to break away, but sadly it probably won't be over Saudi Arabia, but more likely FIFA's attempts to pre-empt the Champions League and to a lesser extent the Copa Libertadores (the South… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:07 AM on November 2, 2023

GenjiandProust: We get an answer to the burning question “how do you lose an entire kingdom?”

Actually, that question gets answered twice over, for two different lost kingdoms.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 10:18 PM on October 31, 2023

To be fair, it’s hard to concentrate when you’ve got neighbors who’re as noisy as theirs.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:55 AM on November 1, 2023

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I have a fondness for all the Friends actors. I didn’t like it much during the first few years, but my first girlfriend was a fan, and so we ended up watching all the series that were out by then on videotape which I think was up to season five. I ended up keeping up with the rest, and watched everything but skipped the final episode, because I wanted it to be open-ended. The show had been a part of my life in a way that not many other shows have been, even though I… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:35 PM on October 29, 2023

I came across MetaFilter in early 2001, just before I turned 20, first tried to join in 2002, and finally got in about a year and a half later. Any way you look at it, I’ve been on here half my life, and all my adult years. During that time I’ve lived in three different countries, six different towns and cities, and have had to find new social nets of my own. But MetaFilter’s always been there, an island village I carry with me around the world. There are dozens of MeFites, even hundreds, whose… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:44 AM on October 22, 2023

flapjax is still jammin’ ‘round Tokyo, according to his website

I remember being absolutely flabbergasted when I found out who flapjax is

incidentally if you don’t know his music, he’s got an absolutely amazing back catalog

one random thing I listened to just the other day is his wonderful cover of one of my favorite Beatles’ songs, Dear Prudence

if I’m not mistaken, that’s Billy Martin, out of Medesky Martin & Wood, on drums
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:17 PM on October 22, 2023

bondcliff: is there anyone who knows about Metafilter that doesn't know about John Landis

I realize I sound like I'm trying to clown, but this is honestly the most interesting thing I've learned today. I recognize I'm absolutely someone who should've known about this, but I didn't. There was a post about it ages ago, but somehow it didn't catch my eye.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:53 AM on October 23, 2023

I belong to another community, of sorts, people who write regularly to the Guardian’s minute-by-minute reports of soccer matches. One regular was a diehard Everton fan from California, named Mary Waltz. She would write, pretty much without fail, every time Everton played. But since August she’s been silent. I haven’t found any obituary online, so I hope for the best. But even so, there would be no place to memorialize her in the context of that strange little community. I’m thankful that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 7:16 AM on October 29, 2023

I desperately want a close harmony quartet to perform a straight cover of the whole all-bum Chordettes discography.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:15 AM on October 29, 2023

Unless I misread something, Johanna Ortner isn’t claiming to have discovered the book herself, but to have double-checked academic sources and found that the orthodoxy in her field was incorrect. This isn’t a story about the triumph of research, but of doing your due diligence.

Also, it’s unclear from the article whether she was cataloged in the database as “Frances Ellen Watkins” (as the original title page had it) or “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper”.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:49 PM on October 27, 2023

The Guardian is doing a liveblog of the Women's Strike.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:15 AM on October 24, 2023

In 2019 Icelandic historian Íris Ellenberger wrote an article about the original women's strike, and its legacy, for The Jacobin. Excerpt: “Women are waking up. They know that men have ruled the world since time immemorial. And how has that world been?” These words were first spoken by Aðalheiður Bjarnfreðsdóttir, a fifty-four-year-old domestic worker, on an unusually warm and dry afternoon in fall 1975. Her audience, in her speech in Reykjavík’s main square, included 25,000 women from all walks… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:58 AM on October 24, 2023

RÚV, the Icelandic public broadcaster, is showing the main event live. You can stream RÚV here. It’s a mix of speeches and music, and will alternate between Icelandic and English, and be interpreted into Icelandic sign language.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 7:08 AM on October 24, 2023

One of the non-binary specific demands of the strike was that the Icelandic national statistics bureau doesn’t track non-binary people specifically, so reliable statistics are hard to come by. If I remember correctly, surveys indicate that non-binary people are similarly placed to women in terms of pay gap,
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:03 AM on October 24, 2023

Police estimates that 80 to a 100 thousand people gathered in downtown Reykjavík for the outdoor protest meeting, which in a nation of 400 thousand people is pretty good going. Additionally, there were marches and meetings all over the country, from tiny Drangsnes in the Westfjords to the sizable town of Akureyri, and dozens of other places. If you scroll down on RÚV's Icelandic-language liveblog, you'll find drone footage of the Reykjavík meeting, as well as pictures and footage from there and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:44 PM on October 24, 2023

A friend who lives in Brisbane once posted a number of photos from her 24 hour train journey on social media. When she got to her destination, I looked up the trip online, expecting her to have traveled most of the way across Australia. Reader, she hadn’t even left her state.

Australia is confusingly big.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 10:17 PM on October 23, 2023

THIS IS, BY MY COUNT, THE FOURTEENTH POST TO USE, OR A VARIATION THEREOF, THE TITLE “YAD KCOL SPAC”, THE FIRST HAVING BEEN POSTED 20 YEARS AGO…

…AND I JUST NOW GOT THAT IT’S “CAPS LOCK DAY” BACKWARDS.

I FEEL A VERY CROCKETY BLOAT.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:59 PM on October 22, 2023

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posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:34 AM on October 17, 2023

I think it’s a great essay, I just came to MetaFilter to post it, but I’d like to nitpick Sandifer’s argument that Time Rag, a song I really like, is consciously a “rap song”. The earliest attested use of “rap” in the meaning of “rap music” is over a year after the song comes out. Now, I agree with Sandifer that Baez has incredibly fine-tuned antennae, but I find it incredible that she was among the very first people in the world to talk about “rap” in that sense.

Now,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:28 AM on October 16, 2023

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There’s a blog, largely a comprised of quotations from books the blogger was reading, and given that the he committed suicide, it’s hard not to read the entries as meditations on death and reasons to keep living. He typed up the whole of Averno, which is my favorite Louise Glück collection. I don’t know for sure if it helped him, but I imagine it did, at least for a while. I don’t know if Averno helped me, but it’s a great book, and its final lines have stuck with me.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:52 AM on October 15, 2023

It’s remarkable how the vibe of everyone on-set changes when Elliott Smith starts playing the song, they all seem like people who’ve all fled their god’s command to seek truth and beauty, and then that song rises from the deep and swallows them all, even the puppet.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:38 PM on October 13, 2023

Sontag is really underrated as a short story writer. I have a collection of her complete short stories, and they’re never less than interesting, and though she has her faults as an author, as a rule the flaws are interesting in their own right. If you like the Way We Live Now, I’d recommend getting a copy from your local bookshop.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:34 AM on October 13, 2023