Dwarf Fortress, so much. But I agree; I don’t think that type of play is unintended. It’s a fantasy world simulator first and game second (if at all). There are absolutely no objectives in the game at all; it’s entirely self generated.

Like, what’s more fun than chopping down all the trees, getting the elves raging mad at you, then holing up in your giant underground+inverted pyramid “hourglass” base while completely ignoring the siege going on above/below you while digging deep to get magma pumps set up all the way to the inverted pyramid so you can flood the surface with magma and kiil all the elves with fire, without having a single military dwarf the entire time because you can’t be bothered to figure out the military menus/training when it’s not as much !!!FUN!!! as mechanical defense options (lava traps.)

Is that a game, or just a sandbox? idk, but I love it. I haven’t played in a while b/c of life commitments (kids, mostly), but I look forward to playing again.

Apparently military is a lot simpler, now, but I can’t be bothered. Traps are so much more !!!FUN!!! and I totally haven’t drowned my complete base with a failed water trap design killing all my dwarves. Not recently. (Mostly because I haven’t played recently.)

Nothing on the OP is talking about honey bees. There are many species of bees. I’m a big fan of mason bees; they pollinate like 20 times more than a honeybee, iirc.

To be fair, what did Obama do to deserve the prize? Maybe I missed something, but I remember literally laughing out loud when I first heard that news. Like, he won for campaigning on hope?

I’ve been on the flip side of this. You’re so panicked about getting your wallet back, and wondering if it was carelessness or thieves, that you don’t even think of giving a reward if you get it back.

I think the worry about thieves also primes us to not want to give money, too, but that’s just speculation.

I’ve also been the one delivering a lost wallet full of cash and got no reward, lol.

Not parent poster, and you’re totally correct… But paper-format books don’t work at all for me, or many others with accessibility needs. I read almost exclusively with TTS while driving/doing chores/walking or to fall asleep. It’s… very hard to TTS a paper book.

So, an old (<= 5th gen) Kindle works great. They’re incompatible with the newest Kindle DRM, so they still allow old methods to transfer books. For KU books, it also has built-in TTS, so you can leave the book “reading” for you after you’ve transferred the file to your “real” device. That way authors get paid for your page reads, but you can still read/store/transfer/preserve the book.

But Amazon still tracks your reading data, and you’re still supporting Amazon’s/Kindle’s self publishing monopoly… But it’s literally the only place where books from my genre of choice are available, so not really any good options until their unethical monopoly is regulated away from them.

lol. Now that’s a unique take.

Maybe try ReviOS? It’s a “playbook” file you run on a clean Windows 11 install that strips out all of the telemetry and junk, and mostly “just works”. The only big potential pain point, imho, is not getting automatic driver updates from Windows Update.

I just installed CachyOS with virt-manager running ReviOS in a virtual machine. For my needs, it’s amazing. Arch Linux allows for easy updates to the latest versions of software and CachyOS further improves it with optimized, pre-compiled packages, which is particularly relevant for a smooth gaming experience. (Outdated packages aren’t a good mix with new games, and the optimized packages improve performance.)

The only “big” challenge I’ve had with Windows is getting videoconferencing working smoothly (my webcam is flickery), but that’s not a big deal. Zoom in Linux works great, and Teams/Zoom both work well in browser (in Linux). So, most of my work stuff is in the VM, but I have Zoom and a separate browser (for Teams meetings) installed in Linux.

This setup requires a bit of technical skill; you need to be able to find and follow guides. (Ex. I needed to troubleshoot why I couldn’t change the VM resolution, and the fix was to download a set of VM tools in Windows.) If you have light technical skills to search for and read guides, it shouldn’t be too challenging.

(I use Arch, by the way.)

Sure, but that’s kinda the point, isn’t it?

Linux has so many possible splintered ways that systems could be configured that it’s hard to support, especially when a Steam Deck native could then be adjusted to work by your userbase, without any support or testing required.

Still a win, and fair that Larian doesn’t have the budget for a full Linux release.

Literal newspeak, straight from 1984.