Not yet! But it is a Sunday, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect one right away. I will be sure to update you if I do get one!

Not a bad call actually. I will try that tomorrow

That account is less than a month old and the literal first thing they did with it was defend Putin. Yesterday they got banned from some communities for spreading antivax nonsense. Classic stuff.

“local .ml account approves of billionaire Jeff Bezos manipulating major new outlet”

I invite you to take a look at how much of their post history is RT and Sputnik

40 miles per charge, for those that haven’t read it. That’s enough for a return trip on a whole lot of ferry journeys, though. Certainly a good chunk of the major ones where I am

The Paradox siren song is an alluring one

An electric hydrofoil ferry, no less!

Been having a lot of fun with the Exo Rally demo. You go rally raiding in a big six-wheeled sci-fi rover with RCS thrusters, but it’s absolutely still leaning towards the sim end of things so you’d better be conscious of the terrain and take good care of your vehicle. The rally raid format (meaning there’s not a defined course, just a series of checkpoints you have to reach by whatever route you choose) gives it a layer of strategy too, as you get a limited window of time to survey the stage with a drone before you drive. The demo only has one area and one type of rover at the moment, but the area is pretty big and there are three challenges with different routes each day so there’s actually heaps to do given that it’s a demo

On a much less serious note, RV There Yet with friends has been really entertaining. Drive your somewhat ramshackle RV across some progressively sillier and sillier terrain, nailing bits back together whenever you launch it off a big drop or a bear decides you have lost vehicle privileges

We can call it Big Max though

I know. I’m not saying that they’re accusing the Marinera of breaking international law, I’m saying that current international law basically says unflagged vessels are fair game

There’s probably a solid argument that the flag-switching made this compatible with international law. Article 92 of UNCLOS reads:

1. Ships shall sail under the flag of one State only and, save in exceptional cases expressly provided for in international treaties or in this Convention, shall be subject to its exclusive jurisdiction on the high seas. A ship may not change its flag during a voyage or while in a port of call, save in the case of a real transfer of ownership or change of registry.

2. A ship which sails under the flags of two or more States, using them according to convenience, may not claim any of the nationalities in question with respect to any other State, and may be assimilated to a ship without nationality.

And then Article 110 permits boarding of ships without nationality. That’s not a comment on the ethics of doing so either way, of course, only legality

Man those games are great. I recently-ish tried out one of the decompiled versions of the original after the source code leaked. It’s still a lot of fun

What you describe is a huge part of vehicle racing in general. Getting into a flow state is fast. If you can stress an opponent out enough by threatening to overtake or even just keeping up, you can very often push them to start taking bigger risks and to drop out of that flow state

Funnily enough, if you do really well in a specific mode of some of the Wipeout games, you do indeed get a rating of “zen”

Funny you should say that, they actually caused one in Moscow just over a week ago (October 31st)

It seems to me like Ukraine is focussing its efforts on military targets and oil production, though. Russia’s oil industry has been getting absolutely hammered, to the point where it has had to start importing fuel

I can’t necessarily offer an answer here, but I can give you a bound at least. I was able to find this 1703 geography of the Kingdom of Naples that explicitly calls Italy a boot, so “some time before 1703” can be said for sure

Forma una Penisola, à guisa di uno Stivale, fi come l’Italia tutta fù meditata da Strabone, e da altri Geografi di rigo

Machine translated:

It forms a peninsula, like a boot, just as all of Italy was studied by Strabo and other renowned geographers.

I’m fairly sure the Strabo bit means “we’ve known it was this shape since Strabo” rather than “Strabo said it was boot-shaped”

To speculate a little more, I think the style of boot that Italy looks like started off as riding shoes developed in 10th century Iran (heels are good for staying in stirrups, apparently). If that is correct then it can’t be earlier than the 10th century since there weren’t boots that Italy looked like

I thought I was being so clever making the connections of what I could do with that and it turns out I would actually have been

If I had a lot more patience it would be cool to try to recreate one of those slide reels as panels around the pumpkin

It is, yes! I think I should have simplified the hearthian’s design more to make them clearer, but I’m pleased with it overall

Thanks!