Sampson

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Connections Puzzle #1024 🟩🟩🟦🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦

Surely the Russia-Ukraine conflict has shown that “boots on the ground troops” just get mowed down by cheap, easy to mass produce drones nowadays? Feels a bit like early WW1 where people hadn’t come to terms with modern technology yet so just got thousands of men mowed down by machine guns. I can’t imagine America sending troops into Iran will go for them, or how the US public will like sending 1,000s of Americans to their inevitable deaths. This whole war has WW1 energy of tragically ridiculous, it was like they expected to just kill the leader on day 1, and then expected the regime to fall on day 2, and had no other plans if they didn’t. I would’ve thought 25 years of US foreign policy in the Middle East would’ve taught them it’s not that easy by now.

If you like either video game or table top RPGs the books are great fun, it’s clever how it parodies a lot of the classes, spells, achievements, loot boxes, levelling etc. But they’re also just great stories even without that with sort of a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy style sense of humour, I forget it’s about being in a game after a while. The writing does start out a bit crass, but settles down after the first part of the first book. And as said, the books get better and better as it goes on, and the world and characters both inside and outside “the crawl” grow. They’re very “popcorny” in that they’re very easy to read but hard to put down, so definitely worth giving a try if you think you’d like it for sure.

It’s Monday and end of month, Trump is just trying to get the markets to go up, it’s been obvious from that start that Iran aren’t going to agree to anything.

It’s weird, Blair’s reputation had had a decent amount of rebuilding in recent years, but this Iran stuff is kind ruining it again. Last I saw, only 8% of British people said we should join attacks in Iran and only around 25% supported us letting the US use our bases. I think hes massively out of step with public opinion on this one.

Wordle 1 745 3/6 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩⬜🟨⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Could see the categories from blue and green but couldn’t get the right combos Connections Puzzle #1023 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟪🟩 🟪🟩🟪🟩 🟪🟪🟩🟦 🟪🟩🟩🟩

I thought someone else might be reading them too as it seems like the most popular sci-fi/fantasy series going atm. A couple of friends of mine have been reading them and hyping them to me for about a year, and finally started after Christmas and am already on book 7. Cant remember the last time I just destroyed a series like that, but I find them such an easy read but such page turners and impossible to put down and get out of my head. They gets better and better as the books go on too. Book 5 and 6 which are the last 2 I’ve read are both brilliant. I delayed it when my friends were hyping it because I thought it sounded like a fun premise (essentially aliens turning Earth into a deadly game of D&D that humans have to compete in, streamed on an galaxy-wide version of alien YouTube), but I doubted you can make an extended series of that premise. But it really builds and builds and the world and characters opens up as the books go on. Just has the perfect mixture of comedy, traumatic horror, action, intergalactic politics and human character drama. Honestly, most addictive books I’ve read in ages.

Nemesis one of my absolute favourites. Always comes with so many “remember that time when…” moments you and your friends still retell years later

I’ve always been a PC gamer, but PS2 was the best console for me - Silent Hill 2-4, Metal Gear Sold 2 & 3, Forbidden Siren, Resident Evil 4, Killer7. Great times.

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Connections Puzzle #1022 🟪🟩🟩🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟩🟩🟪 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩

“That’s the badger!”

“Party isn’t a verb” Weird how it’s just accepted as a regular word when used as a vern now, when in the 80s or 90s it was seen as a running joke to use it as a m kind of cartoonish ironic use of the word.

The biggest thing Orwell got wrong in that regards was that people would need to be coerced into an authoritarian post-truth surveillance state, and not that people would happily vote for him as long as Big Brother told them it’d help them keep out foreigners.

I’ve been reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Great sci-fi/fantasy page turners. I’m just starting book 7 now, book 8 coming out in May. No doubt they’ll make this in a tv show at some point as it seems really popular.

While I agree, I also don’t like it when people try to dismiss the old games like monopoly or Cluedo which are still a perfectly nice time with family. To me the appeal is just the social time, in a time when everyone is addicted to their phones, friends or family sitting round a table together, not checking their phones for 2-3 hours and just laughing and enjoying a game together is what life is all about. It doesn’t matter to me if people are playing the old familiar games like monopoly or rummy or enjoying something new. I think board and card games (and tabletop RPGs for us real nerds) feel even more refreshing nowadays because they’re so face-to-face social in a way the modern digitalised world isn’t. My favourite games tend to be ones with lots of table talk like negotiation, diplomacy, bluffing or social deduction games for that reason.

Been really enjoying Magical Athlete recently with my nieces and nephews. It’s a very silly and funny dice rolling family game which is great for young kids and elderly parents who aren’t into board gaming (and still great fun as an adult too).

Carcassone is an old favourite of mine too. Don’t play it as often these days, but everytime I do, it’s always a “I forgot how good this game is, why did we stop playing it so regularly?” reaction. Some of my favourites are Cosmic Encounter, Dune (the original one not Dune Imperium), Nemesis, Unmatched, Dominion, Arcs, Root, Libertalia, Blood on the Clocktower, The Resistance, Survive: Escape from Atlantis, Stationfall, Captain Sonar as well as a good Texas Hold ‘Em night. Used to love Diplomacy back in the day too, but it’s so hard getting 7 people together for a full weekend game these days.

Wordle 1 743 6/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟨🟩⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 That is, in my humble opinion, a complete bullshit word.

Got tunnel vision on the blue group and couldn’t find the right combination Connections Puzzle #1021 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟦🟦🟨 🟨🟦🟦🟦 🟦🟪🟦🟦 🟨🟦🟪🟦

Especially if I can’t pick the Riverfolk otters in Root. Bartering and offering diplomatic promises to your friends only to later reneg on them and stab them in the back in a board game is truly one of life’s great pleasures

I think about death every day. Some days I think it’ll be ok, no scarier than before, but then I think of my friends and family, playing board games together or watching football together or having a nice meal together or a pint in the pub together. Or I read a good book on my own, or I feel the wind against my skin, hear the birds chirping, hear the sea lapping up against the shore and see the beauty of hills and mountains and grass and plants and bogs and marsh and waterfalls. Then the feeling of never getting to experience any of that again fills me with utter dread deep in my stomach.

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