I’ll fully admit to being completely ignorant about voting the first time I did it. I was politically disengaged for moody teenager reasons, but my parents forced me to go to the polling station anyway. I didn’t care to vote for any of the candidates, but was also worried that I would get in trouble if I spoiled my ballot because I hadn’t paid attention in civics (again, for moody teenager reasons).
It’s posturing. Guys gotta prove they have the not-gays.
I’ve spent some time with the first three, so I can give my opinion on those.
The FF1 remake is very different experience than the NES original. That version had a ton of minor bugs that gave that gave it a unique balance. Every subsequent remake, including the pixel remaster, has been an attempt to fix those bugs, and add modem QoL features, and then rebalance the game to try to keep the same feel. I think the pixel remaster is a good game, and comes closer to the feel of the original than some other remakes, but it is still a distinctly different experience. I’d characterize it as a different game wearing the same clothes.
The FF2 remaster, on the other hand, is probably the best way to experience that game. The Famicom original is notoriously unbalanced and player-hostile, but those problems are effectively bypassed by the simple inclusion of two QoL features: a map, and a one-button autobattle. It took decades, but FF2 is finally worth recommending to more than hardcore fans.
The FF3 remaster is in an odd situation, in that this is the first time a close approximation of the Famicom original is officially available outside of Japan. The DS remake from 2006 is a significantly different game, especially in the first couple of hours. I didn’t play as much of this one as the other two, but I can’t imagine it deviates too much in the later parts of the game. I would guess, though, that the more flexible save mechanics make the notoriously difficult final three dungeons much more manageable, though maybe more prone to soft-locking.
Bell was available in Nova Scotia when I lived there. It’s also in Ontario. I can’t speak for other provinces.
There are actually three major telecom companies making up 85%+ of the market share: Bell, Rogers, and Telus. Don’t be fooled by names like Virgin, Fido, and Koodo, as those are just the “lite” subsidiaries of the three major companies respectively.
For supermarkets there is Loblaws, as you said. But, it’s not like Sobeys and Metro are much better, they just keep their robber-baron executives better hidden.
Protip: jump back in the water after you raise the level for the first time.
If that doesn’t make sense right now, it will in a few hours.
Canada’s military is small enough that there is typically only one officer with the rank of General (or Admiral if they are from the navy), and their position is the Chief of Defence Staff. I think a second General is appointed if Canada gets a seat on the UN Security Council, to act as the senior military advisor for the delegation.
There are more Lieutenant Generals (and Vice Admirals), and the CDS is appointed from their ranks when a new one is needed.
EDIT: To clarify further, there are multiple ranks with the word “general” in them. In order of increasing seniority, they are (with equivalent navy ranks in parentheses):
It might have been 22 Minutes instead of Air Farce, and it might have been Stockwell Day instead of Preston Manning. I couldn’t find a video clip using any combination of show and politician.
As I said, it’s deep memory from long ago. I mostly remember it for personal reasons and not the actual joke. But, you’ve reassured me that it wasn’t just a hallucination on my part.
There’s the Christian Heritage Party. I’ve known several people who have voted for them at one time or another.
Somewhere deep in my memories there is a Royal Canadian Air Farce skit about Preston Manning (I think) and how he “didn’t campaign on Sundays.” The joke is that him highlighting his supposed piety of respecting the Sabbath was, in and of itself, an act of campaigning. I did a quick search for the skit and couldn’t find it, unfortunately.
Now, decades later, we have a party leader not just campaigning on Sunday, but making political speeches from the pulpit. I can’t help but think this is a step backwards.
It took a lot of inspiration from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, but the two games had basically the same creative team anyway.
I’ll point out that you can use Dragon Age Keep to plan out key choices in the narratives of the first two games, and even create a world state for import into Inquisition. Helpful if you want to play Inquisition and want a refresher and/or don’t want to replay the earlier games
I think those screenshots look like something closer to Ogre Battle or the recently released Unicorn Overlord rather than any RTS.
The story seems generic at first, but it goes places later.
One feature I really liked about this game was that you can adjust the encounter rate, even down to 0%. No in-game consumables or equipment needed, just an option in the menu. If you want to gain a few levels, you can crank it up. If you just want to revisit an old location because you missed an item, you can turn it off.
It’s the most accessible Paradox grand strategy game I’ve played.
That still means it’s as dense as pea soup, but its nested tooltip system makes learning the game’s key terms much easier.
Briefly: I didn’t.
More substantively: I never owned a cell phone growing up, even though I was at the right age when they became a common thing for teenagers to have. It wasn’t a money thing, nor household rule, as my sisters got phones when they were in high school. The biggest reason was probably just how I communicate. I wasn’t big into IM services either, and I preferred email or face-to-face, or a (landline) phone call if it was an urgent matter.
Then there was also my adolescent brain thinking I was making a bold counter-culture statement by steadfastly resisting the march of technology. In reality, I was probably just being a pain in the neck for my friends and family, and I probably unnecessarily endangered myself at least once.
I did finally, begrudgingly, get an old hand-me-down flip-phone in my final year of university, but that was out of necessity, and I used it to make maybe only a dozen calls the 2.5 years I had it before getting a smart device.
To bring it full circle: I did try sending a text message with that flip-phone exactly once, at the insistence of my family. That message was predictably a garbled mess, and to this day my sisters still wonder how I managed to get a number to appear in the middle of the “word”.
I have a number of other somewhat amusing stories about people’s reactions to my lack of a cellphone, but this post is long enough already.
Am I the only person in my generation who never learned to type on a number pad? It wasn’t the only thing I didn’t recognize from the “test”, but it stuck out to me.
My wife and I had this conversation the other day. Our kid is only two right now, but as we’ve learned, these milestones sneak up on you.
I used my own life as a guide to my opinion, and so landed on age eight or so. That’s around the age I remember being able to go to the park or to a friend’s house within the neighbourhood on my own.
Other questions about how much functionality the phone would have and how much access they would have to it at home are still to be determined.
I see where the disconnect is now.
I, and presumably others, associate obsession with religious minutiae with religious fervour. I have a lot first hand experience with this, as some of the most ardent Christians I knew were also the ones who were eyeballs deep in apologetics and church history (and also adult converts). It makes a certain amount of logical sense too, as you wouldn’t expect a casual church-goer to care that much about all that.
With that in mind, it isn’t a big leap to connect the original post to the phenomenon of the zeal of the convert.
What it comes down to, then, is that the original post has more than one layer to it. Rather than focus on the difference between charity and dogmatism, I chose instead to highlight contrast between the simplicity [of charity] and the convolution [of dogmatism]. Once again, my personal experiences informed the way I approached this post.
Here’s the story.
The actual monetary loss to Air Canada (known affectionately as Fuckstick Flights Inc.) was insignificant, but the PR was bad.
Then again, I can’t remember the last time AC had positive press. Before that they forced a guy with cerebral palsy to drag himself off the plane.