u/freebee

This machine is incredible, it easily plays the backlog of 5000+ games I haven't played before but of which a lot are way cooler than a lot of AAA being published today because it predates many current bad game development practices. DOS, NES, SNES, Wii, GB, GBA, GAMECUBE, PSP, PS1, PS2, SEGACD, ... The list goes on. Steamdeck with Emudeck is a truly amazing experience. I don't need a steamdeck 2 anytime soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinational_Eurodistrict_of_Basel?wprov=sfla1

Skyscrapers =/= big city. Basel is a very well known city in western Europe (France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands...). Known for it's beautiful old town, trams, many museums. It's the cultural capital of Switzerland. Also with people who never went there. As for "not big", it's just not the case, it spreads out into Lörrach, Rheinfelden, Saint-Louis, lots and lots of people from FR and DE work in Basel, go visit it regularly etc. The commuter attraction reaches easily into Freiburg and Mulhouse, with thousands going there daily to earn a way higher Swiss paycheck. The wider urban area goes towards 900.000 people! Compared to polish cities too it's not that small. It's only the old town and the river area that gives that vibe (stayed out of the wars, nothing was destroyed...). Really the lack of skyscrapers is a very unreliable way to judge how "big" a city is! Basel by the way houses the tallest buildings of Switzerland! Roche towers. High rise is just very uncommon in Switzerland, but they get high density living with regular apartment buildings. I really don't understand where your "Basel is a small provincial town" impression is rooted.

Depending where you're from this might be a perception issue. Cities in Europe are generally smallish on modern city world scale. 200.000-500.000 inhabitants, with just a few larger city exceptions per country. There's just a LOT of those medium-large cities and they are often all rather near to each other. How a "city" is defined can differ a lot, many urban areas consisting of many entangled and interdependent cities are technically still all their own (historic) "city". Look at the Ruhr area for example, the Randstad, Flemish Diamond, ...

Well in places like UK, people are installing AC instead of trying many other, passive cooling options first. They don't plant a single shrub next to their building but do put in highly inefficient portable AC units meanwhile asphalting/concreting there driveways... That's exactly what got me on my high horse. AC can be needed, but it's definitely not the first way to go in a northern-ish European place if the building doesn't have outside shutters, very non green streets around etc. It's not the miracle solution, AC adds to climate change, other ways of dealing with heat do not.

Exactly this, it's a last resort measure. More important is that every passive cooling option needs to be tried: outside shutters, more big green around the buildins, minimize concrete and asphalt around buildings, closing and airing at best times, etc. Some people just skip all that and go airco, especially in the USA. They are actively adding more BS to the shitstorm that is climate change.

Why would they need more airco when many houses and apartments still don't even have proper shutters for windows and many people still don't know you should keep your windows closed during peak heat hours, many roofs still barely insulated and they turned all their yards and driveways into concrete and asphalt hellscapes. A nice adult tree in your yard does more than an airco, fight me.

It's quite a theoretical approach. Antwerp has a lot of 30 kmh streets, but you shouldn't expect cars to actually follow the rules in many of them. Same with many bicycle streets: it's not allowed, but you'll be overtaken A LOT by cars in those streets...

Housing is definitely very very expensive in Basel too. But a bit less problematic because of border spillover into Lörrach, Saint-Louis, ...

Yeah it's a bit nuts that in a "democracy" 1 nutcase has all the buttons and can seemingly decide almost anything by "executive order" outside of parliamentary control, not even fake voting on policy in parliament.

Shit might hit the fan harder and faster in USA, but don't be fooled: Canada and every other country in the world will be gravely affected: less trade, prices inflate, some goods become hard to find at all at any price, etc. US $ after all is the big reserve currency and all international trade was de facto protected by US military hegemony. Probably countries like North Korea or Iran will see least influence from all this.. It's insane to watch this happening. Their main goal really just seems to be to create chaos. And from chaos... rises whatever authoritarian state they want to create after declaring some state of emergency shit and after the superwealthy gobbled up all the failing companies at bargain prices. It's like they're organising a reenactment of the "shock therapy" that crashed the Russian economy on a speedrun after the soviet union fell apart.

No we weren't! - Belgium.

Pandora's box is open. Thanks Putin. Thanks Trump. EU can't do nothing... We're heading to more war and disorder either way. Not only more new nukes, also higher chances of them being used again which is even more scary.

I don't think it's within other countries capabilities (Israel maybe, but why would they), nor in their intrest.

In some failed states it's considerably easier to have certain people eliminated (and for sure has happened many many times).

Current USA is an internal affair with external effects. Other countries can't do anything, that's what happens when 1 country has the very biggest strongest military and security machine ever (way bigger than any competitor, no country get near). Even if they'ld want to, there is no way. And the current situation is unpredicatble and not stable, it would become even less predictable and less stable when certain people were to be assassinated.

If assassinations happen in the trump admin in the near future, I think it would more likely come from USA security services internally. Not sure if it's for the better. Decent chance in that case of civil war type scenarios tbh.

Here's to hoping trump tariff war makes those stupid American pick-up trucks a lot more expensive to buy in EU. I hope the douchebags that bought them before have to pay way higher prices for parts now.

Most people would have taken the ride offer out of Kiev in 2022. That alone made him a hero. This new incident just adds even more to his hero status

Played A short hike yesterday and it was great. Short indeed, but very casual, nice and relaxing.

Cool, you fixed my issues!

The audio output still doesn't default to the deck speakers, but after following your hint it is now at least easy to select it while in gaming mode.

I installed the decky loader, and as non-steam game Audiotube. It seems to work, doesn't matter very much to me if keyboard shortcuts like next track don't function, I usually listen to full albums or dj mixes of 1 or 2 hours.