PonyOfWar

It depends. Names for people and locations get reused all the time, both in real life and in fiction and of course it’s fine to do so. At this point, it’s probably impossible to be 100% original all the time with the amount of books, games etc that are out there. However there are some names that are so iconic that people will immediately connect them with a certain work. For example I wouldn’t write a fantasy novel and name a city “Minas Tirith”, as everyone will just think of LOTR. But calling a city, say, “Dragonstone” is just fine IMO, even though it’s a place in ASOIAF (and probably more than a few older fantasy books).

No music, no images… two things that have defined Human culture for millennia. The Taliban must really love leading a miserable existence.

I have a perfectly capable gaming PC but more often than not, I choose to play on the Steam Deck instead. I already sit at my desk for work most of the day, so it’s nice having a dedicated gaming device that I can take with me and sit in the garden or on my sofa. And of course I can take it with me when travelling.

I think it’s exactly those stories that give people a false impression when they come here. It’s not that they are false, most of the time you’ll certainly find people who can speak decent English. A tourist probably won’t need any German, but when it comes to living here long-term, dealing with bureaucracy, finding a job or making friends, knowing German is pretty essential.

So is Irish, but the point was that English is an official and widely spoken language in both countries.

Time to learn a new language, unless you’re moving to Ireland or Malta I guess. Tons of people come to Germany and are shocked when not everyone speaks English.

Anyway, I think you’ll get better answers if you specify a country. The EU is quite diverse, so I don’t think there’s a ton of advice that’ll be true everywhere in the EU.

That won’t do much. Each of the spam accounts I’ve seen is on a different instance.

Celebrate my 18th birthday

…unless the Buddhists are right

It’s not shielded properly, so the surrounding electronics cause crackles, buzzing and similar noise. AFAIK this was the case for all OLED models on launch. Might be fixed for newer ones, I’m not sure. Apparently it can be fixed by opening the Deck and sticking on some eletric insulation tape.

I mostly use the built-in speakers. Sometimes my IEMs, using a USB-C dongle as my OLED’s headphone jack is pretty noisy (I know it’s easy to fix, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet).

Germany: The Munich agreement is well known and taught as part of the failed appeasement policy of Western states towards Nazi Germany. Don’t think we learned about the Bengal famine.

Yep, that’s how we spell it.

It’s most commonly used to refer to the USA.

Yeah, and frankly Macron’s government style is likely to contribute to that problem. A far-right France has never been more likely.

Kind of well-known these days, but also obscure as we literally don’t know who made it or even what it’s called: “The most mysterious song on the internet”

There was a lot of panic about “killer games” in the 90s-00s. Politicians and parents blamed video games for school shootings. Nowadays nobody cares about the topic at all, but the strict rules remain. Steam just kind of ignored the local laws so far, but now decided to actually adhere to them.

That depends… many games blocked in Germany on Steam also can’t be activated in Germany.

I’d much rather have them be overzealous and mistakenly block an addon for a few hours, than have them be too lax and approve addons actually stealing data.

Hearing from my parents about the shitty, uncertain times they’ve already been through. Like the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold war, the division of Germany, various economic crises… everything was eventually followed by better times. Will everything work out in the long run? Who knows. But I don’t think we’re on some kind of linear path where everything will just get worse, forever.

I have a Z flip and while it’s far from perfect, foldable flip phones are great and I’d choose them over a same-spec regular phone every day. Much more convenient to carry in my pocket compared to a slab and basically having an included tripod for photos is pretty nice as well.