• 1 Post
  • 17 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle



  • The chart below shows the ARS/USD exchange rate over the last five years.
    The peso has been in steady decline for years, with the last big drop in December, about a week before the presidential election.

    The exchange rate doesn’t tell the whole story of course, but neither does attacking Milei for dismantling Argentina’s social programs. The reason for Argentina’s ongoing problems is that the state has literally dozens (if not hundreds) of social programs that it simply cannot afford, along with regulations strangling otherwise healthy businesses. The Peronists have always ‘solved’ this problem by a) borrowing whatever they can (and then defaulting on the debt) and b) printing more money. This has unsurprisingly led to ever-increasing inflation and rampant poverty.\

    The Peronist/Kirchnerist presidential candidate (Massa) planned to counter the threatening hyperinflation by printing more money for more subsidies to counter the effects of the inflation. Let that sink in for a moment.

    The point is, Argentina’s current system of subsidies and handouts is not sustainable, and hasn’t been for decades. That’s not a political opinion but simple math: you cannot spend more than you earn forever.

    How that problem can and should be solved is of course debatable. Milei is certainly far from an ideal president, but when you bash him, keep in mind what the alternative to him would have looked like… and maybe give him a chance to prove his critics wrong if he gets Argentina’s economy back on track, which would be something the faux-left Peronistas/Kirchnerites have failed to do for the better part of eight decades now.

    (Source: xe.com)


  • Radiant_sir_radiant@beehaw.orgtoMemes@lemmy.mlgot em
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Yeah. I’m hardly a fan of everything he says or does, but it’s a bit like appointing a new captain an hour after the Titanic hit the iceberg, then blaming him for not stopping the ship from sinking. Argentina was well on its way to hyperinflation long before the presidential elections.





  • I’m making a wild and probably spectacularly wrong guess here: C&C 1 has German text on it and there’s Sternenschweif, and the white plastic thinggy might be a Schuko / Type L adapter (it’s kinda hard to tell with that camera angle), which would suggest a place somewhere in Southern Tyrolia.

    Looking forward to OP’s answer though. If it’s close to me, I’m gonna book that room and spend a day ripping all of those to SSD.




  • I don’t know Don’t Starve and have only played ONI for a short while, so the other answers are probably more helpful that mine, but at its core the game is about managing (and obtaining) limited resources. You start out inside an asteroid with a limited amount of oxygen and food and need to build a sustainable environment from there.

    Silly fun also seems to be a big part of the game - one of the character stats (they’re called duplicants in the game) is the reaction to stress, and apparently one of mine is an ‘ugly crier’ and another one a ‘binge eater’. Two appear to have a crush on each other and spend the day avoiding work and exchanging heart symbols whenever I’m not watching.

    As for the game itself - yes, I find it very overwhelming. There are short tutorials on how to navigate the map etc. and a lot of stats, but not an awful lot of info on strategy or what exactly is expected of you. So far it’s still fun though.



  • Metro 2033 Redux. Bought it a while ago when it was on sale on Steam and didn’t enjoy it much as it was incredibly hard and the performance was sluggish. Gave it another try this week with the new graphics card and now it’s actually a great cross between fighting, strategy and adventure.

    Each chapter of the story has its own world, rich in details and atmosphere, often with several ways to advance and uncover new parts of the story. The controls take some getting used to - most keys do two different things depending on how long you press them - but once you get the hang of it, it all makes a lot of sense. The graphics are very well done and organic, and the engine chugs along at a steady 60fps at 4k and full settings on my Ryzen 5700X and RTX 4060 even during intense fighting out in the open. What more could one ask for?

    My only gripe is that there’s no save button. The game will silently auto-save at certain points in the story, and when you die or exit the game you can restore to that last checkpoint (and only then will you discover where in the story that is). Everything after that point is lost.


  • I’ve had more unused time this and last week than usual due to a persistent case of Covid, so I’ve played Return to Monkey Island again. It’s so much lovelier than I remembered - it took a few “just average good” games inbetween to notice just what a piece of art this game is. There’s a billion of details you hardly notice: the pattern of the frame around the main menu changes every time, there’s so much going on even in the most obscure and distant corners of the background that adds nothing to the story but a lot to the atmosphere, and characters constantly hint at non-canon things that happened earlier in the game based on the player’s choices.

    It’s also a bittersweet game for two reasons:

    • It keeps confronting Guybrush (the protagonist) with the consequences of his actions on his quest to find The Secret - he destroys an ancient tree and makes the woodland critters cry, a museum is shut down because of him, a friend is abducted and his shop is destroyed, a kingdom falls into chaos etc., all just because he wants to find The Secret for the principle of the thing.
    • It does a very good job of likening the changes in the game - new pirate leaders doing things differently than the old ones, practitioners of that new-fangled Dark Magic putting the Voodoo Lady out of business etc. - to changes in the real world, where the glory days of the Monkey Island series in particular and point-and-click adventures in general are all but over.

    Still, for old farts like me who grew up with anything Lucasfilm from Maniac Mansion to Full Throttle, the game feels a bit like coming home - and as far as point-and-click adventures go, they don’t come much more brilliant than this one.





  • Bought it, tried it out and am already hooked. Thanks for the recommendation!

    My impression after some two hours of playing:

    As a sometimes lazy/impatient puzzle solver I appreciate the painless save/load feature. For a ‘real’ adventure or horror game there are too many guidelines to keep you on the right path - I’d call it more of an interactive thriller. Still the scary atmosphere and black humour are enough to draw you in and make for an enjoyable experience. Plus the various hints at the killer’s identity and story keep you guessing. I probably should have gone to bed two hours ago but can’t quit yet.