Can I say the entire Discworld series? Sure they’re funny fantasy stories, but I reckon Pterry’s view on humanity formed a lot of how I think about the world.

Also Dark Money by Jane Mayer.

I doubt it’s a recent thought, knowing civil engineers, they’re absolute perverts when it comes to concrete.

Wasn’t that kinda the idea behind the 6 day war?

No you won’t.

Evan?

Seagate have never once secretly changed the underlying disk technology on a NAS grade drive to one utterly unsuited for use in a NAS drive and then sold it as a NAS grade drive at a premium price because it’s a NAS grade drive. So there’s that.

This is a surprisingly divisive topic every time I see it or suggest it. I reckon the divisor is “people who use and work across timezones a lot” and “people who don’t”. Fuck I hate timezones.

Old post of mine, I need to get round to making a comm for this stuff - in terms of European BlueBrixx and Cobi are all that I’m aware of, BlueBrixx use Chinese bricks too though, there’s not much avoiding it. As for a particular set, I’ve got a tallneck in the backlog that’s largely technic, is huge and is well under £200 delivered ~7k parts if I remember right.

So, as far as I’m aware BlueBrixx use a brick manufacturer called gobricks in China - these are generally considered top tier. Mould King also use gobricks - they do some good start wars/space/car stuff (not clone kits, Mould King are pretty legit, as far as I’m aware they license/pay MOC designers for plans for the most part as well).

Other brands I don’t have experience with (but have a really good rep) are CaDa, Pantasy and Rastar. CaDa and Rastar both license IPs.

IMO JieStar are also a pretty good brand, they are a brick manufacturer and a set manufacturer. I’ve never had an issue with a JieStar set, their bricks/clutch is a little tighter than Lego which is sometimes beneficial, sometimes a little annoying, but it’s never caused an issue. (I’ve build a couple of 5k+ brick sets from JieStar - worst I had was a single malformed brick that I just hid). They make clone kits and original IP. (Some cool little 50 pc sets you can pick up for £1-2.

Reobrix is the other brand I like, they use JieStar bricks but make their own sets and license MOC designer work. Have some interesting aircraft/vehicles. Their cars are good, their B2 bomber was a bigger set, some of it was a little fiddly, but it holds together - it had 1-2 bricks missing, but I picked up replacements on bricklink for pennies.

I also pick up the odd no-name brand from AliExpress, tbh they’ve mostly been fine too, a couple were mediocre (I didn’t have high expectations £15 for 1000pc sets, they were fine for the price tbh, the bricks were fine for one set, a bit too little clutch on the other - but honestly both look fine when they’re assembled. I wasn’t disappointed considering the price).

In terms of ordering -

YOURWOBB

Youmko/Barweer

Marstoy

I’ve ordered from all 3, they’ve all delivered what they said they would. YOURWOBB doesn’t do clone sets, all original IP (and you can sort by brand) youmko are a mix, though mostly original stuff. Marstoy officially don’t sell clone sets, however they do sell “Brick kits”. If you go on the site you’ll see a lot of stuff with names like M12345 - take M off the name and reverse the number, this is the corresponding Lego set (eg. M12345 would be Lego set 54321)

There’s loads on AliExpress too - usual rules apply here, but choice, buy an item that has a lot of buyers with good reviews. If you buy a MOC off AliExpress chances are the original designer isn’t being compensated - many people will go and buy the design off rebrickable to compensate the designer, but no obligation.

For minifigs there’s:

RebuildVenus

This is the same company as Marstoy, free shipping over $17.

That’s not what that study says.

Oh man, this happened with my wife too, just bumped into her and next thing you know she’s pregnant. I can’t believe how fertile I am sometimes.

I’ve paid for the year, so I’ll do my damnedest to run up their gippity bill.

No huge risk at the minute. While I’m all for you doing whatever you want with your DNA it doesn’t make uploading it to everywhere that will take it a particularly good idea.

Has this not been the state of the games industry for the most of time? Small bedroom coders get a break, build a studio, fire out some games, get bought out of grow huge. The founders move on and start a new studio, rinse, repeat. The games industry has always appeared pretty democratic in that specific regard, barrier to entry is pretty low compared to most other industries.

As for the over performance of older games, have they noticed they get cheaper and less shit than on launch?

In general I’m not against how the lords operate - just pointing out these are specifically hereditary peers (of which there are 92) in addition to the life peers. Oh and the bishops, can’t forget the bishops.

I use an eink notepad daily, I drag text about pretty regularly, it’s a complete non-issue.

Uncut Gems was a damn masterpiece, pure stress and anxiety from start to finish. He deserved an Oscar nom for that at the least.

You think countries are going to wholesale give up control of monetary policy?

They’ll not combust, I’d hazard a guess that air pods are made from ABS which has a glass transition temperature of 105C, so they will melt.

Sounds awesome!

Ah, my bad, I’ll update.