Reminds of the old pile of gold (empty) meme

I mean that is kinda exactly what the developers want to provoke with timed dialogue choices. Timed dialogue choices are a game design mechanic to try and get a player to answer on instinct/gut feeling, rather than over analysing and trying to optimise the dialogue.

You not getting to think about it long is very much the intended effect, and allowing a pause would entirely defeat it.

There are of course definite accessibility concerns that should be considered and worked around, such as people with dyslexia who may not be able to properly parse the dialogue options before the timer runs out, but as a game mechanic I think forcing the player to pick on instinct definitely has merit. It helps make the game more immersive, because it puts you under the same pressure to react as your character is in the story right now, and it can lead to more interesting and ultimately enjoyable games by forcing players to potentially make a mistake, and having to find out a way to deal with the fallout.

Games that don’t allow you to pause and skip cutscenes.

I don’t want to have to miss half of the cutscenes just because someone interrupted me or the phone rang or something half way through. Alternatively, when I’m on my 23rd replay of a game, I do not want to have to sit through every cutscenes I already know by heart.

Oh, and modern games that allow manual saving at any time, not having any kind of regular auto save (looking at you here BG3).

If you’re fine from a gameplay pov with having the player save whenever, then there’s really no good reason whatsoever to not have one or two auto save slots that get saved every 10-20 minutes or so, at least as an option in the menu. ESPECIALLY in open world games (like BG3…) where you can easily go literal hours at a time without hitting a checkpoint save. And yes, I am still salty over learning about BG3’s lack of regular auto save when I lost like 2.5 hours of progress on my first run.

the rest of the “civilized” world was essentially keeping Germany permanently poor, living under such misery breeds a certain…psychotic world view.

Jup. There’s a very strong argument to be made that had the terms of the treaty of Versailles not been so unfair and hostile towards Germany, World War II would have never happened.

Rehabilitation and reconstruction is ALWAYS the best option for the winning side of a large war to extend to the losing side, regardless of who/how/why the war started. Heavily penalising and fucking over the loser for years and years after the war is just going to foster resentment and discontent amongst the population, and make them feel (arguably, with a degree of validity) that conquering th countries fucking them over is the only way their country will see prosperity again.

I mean the layout in terms of functions is generally standardised between PS and XBox style controllers (i.e. “back” is the right hand button, “confirm” is the lower one…) it’s just that the buttons have different symbols for those functions across PS and XBox style controllers.

I’m not really counting the first two, as they were more temporary wooden bridges. The 1209 London Bridge was the first, proper, permanent bridge across the Thames.

In general it can be said that poor people do not have the capital to make upfront investments which become profitable over time. Not even just literal investing, but investing in things like a more fuel efficient car, upgrading the insulation in your house/apartment to save on heating, buying non-perishables in bulk when there’s a good deal, buying a dish washer instead of hand washing…

So many things that let you save tons of money in the long run, require relatively large upfront investments, that poor people can’t afford. That’s a big reason why poverty can be such an insidious vicious loop, that can be extremely hard to escape from.

Two identical households, with identical income could have vastly different financial situations, just based on if their income was previously low, and they weren’t able to afford any of these investments, vs. If their income was previously high, having allowed them to previously make these large investments to reduce their long term monthly costs, and secure enough liquidity to be able to continue occasionally making these investments.

I mean it was the first ever permanent bridge crossing the Thames in London, and for a long time it was the only bridge in the entirety of east London (despite barely being east of the east-west midpoint of London). London bridge has a lot of interesting history, even if the current one is visually boring.

Jay Foreman has a fun video on the history of London Bridge (https://youtu.be/u5CguqywlBk)

There’s a fun video on the history of old/medium/new London bridge in Jay Foreman’s Unfinished London series:

https://youtu.be/u5CguqywlBk

There’s also a common (and completely untrue) urban legend that the guy thought he was buying tower bridge, not London bridge.

“They’re extradonarily narrow” whilst literally talking about an apple patent that covers ANY type of digital display device whatsoever that has rounded corners.

That’s not even close to “extremely narrow” in scope.

Extremely narrow in scope would be defining a certain radius of curvature (within a small +/- range), in combination with an aspect ratio (again, with a small +/- margin) and for a specific class of screen.

That would be an adequately and acceptably narrow design patent.

And on top, there needs to be a limitation on design patents (any patents, frankly) that makes them unenforceable if the holder of the patent hasn’t had a product matching the patent on the marker for several years, and isn’t currently and actively working on R&D to develop such a product. (With some common sense clauses to prevent abuse, such as ordering one employee to spend 5 minutes a month working on a concept so that you’re technically perpetually engaged in R&D, or listing a depreciated product for an absurdly high price that no one will ever pay, so you can say technically it’s still on the market without needing to actually still manufacturer/support it).

Though I’d be happy to hear counter arguments for why this would be a bad idea.