I'll use the preset responses sometime for Google but that's as far as it goes. It's very cool that you've found a way to help your anxiety by using it though.

Funnily enough (not funny actually, considering the war crimes and all), the Old Testament says that the Jews/Isrealites will never get rid of other people living in the area due to not driving them out in their original conquest.

Interesting, I've not heard of this shell of ice, and I believe in a young earth. I have heard though of a similar hypothesis based in Genesis 2:5-6 which proposes that it did not rain before Noah's flood and that plants were kept watered by a heavy mist and/or extremely humid atmosphere. Acoording to this idea, that excess water in the air and ground would've been all condensed by God as part of the flood.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the hypothesis, and I do not believe it is essential biblical knowledge so I don't concern myself with it, but I have heard it before.

I agree with others, this seems like a flat-earther belief that has gotten mixed with Christianity's creation story.

I've heard of it before while browsing the internet, but not from any Christians I personally know. All the Christians I interact with (myself included) believe in a literal interpretation of the creation but nobe of us believe in a physical firmament. I will note that a single man I know denies the moon landing (for reasons I haven't bothered to ask) but even he still believes in a spherical earth and heliocentric orbit.

My understanding of Genesis 1:6-8 is that the firmament mentioned is the earth's sky or atmosphere itself, and not a physical barrier at the edge of the atmosphere. The easiest way to show this would be Genesis 1:20 where birds are described as "flying in the firmament of heaven". If the firmament was a solid object, birds could not fly in it.

The guardian target lock music from Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.

Minecraft maybe? I would say at the minimum it's a net neutral but considering how far off the deep end Notch is now I imagine it was a good thing.

I personally doubt it. If you consider it an addiction then you can compare it to the idea that drug addicts have to take more to get the same high and may even look for more extreme drugs.

I'm worried it would make things worse, but I'm not sure.

I don't think there is a cutoff.

My 80yo grandfather still pulls out the gamecube to play Mario Kart (and for a long time noone else could beat him). My grandmother before she passed was not really big on video games but would play one specific level of crash bandicoot over and over again.

My 45~yo mother streams minecraft in her free time and is even looking to start up a YouTube channel with more content. Some of her viewers are close to her age and when she was playing more Counter Strike than Minecraft the server she played on had adults of all ages on it.

I'm getting closer to 30 every year and I can't see myself ever quitting games. If/when I marry I imagine playing games will just be part of family bonding. I may get worse as I age like my grandfather but I doubt I'll ever stop.

Trap him in the house. "If you don't rock and stone you ain't going home."

Is this all that was on this "laptop" I keep seeing people meme about? I haven't paid the whole situation much attention but this seems like a lot less of a deal than what some people were making it out to be.

I will point out that Mastodon and Pixelfed are Federated and open source versions of Twitter and Instagram respectively. Although, I do remember seeing something about Pixelfed's founder stepping away for a while.

Short one hour 4x game? That sounds like a blast to me, particularly with friends.

I can forgive the issues with Kbin and Lemmy because Reddit has had more time and resources to build the platform. My hope is that with the new attention and the open source nature that Lemmy will show consistent improvement to where I don't feel like I'm compromising.

There was a time where I'd boot up Libre office for tasks that Google docs wouldn't cover. But it's been so long I don't remember what it was.

Now I just use Docs for all my personal work.

Honestly, it keeps it simpler. The idea of federation and etc can go above the heads of people so it's probably simpler to just focus on one instance and let the users discover the wider world of federation at their own pace.

Personally though, I would have mentioned Lemmy/Kbin in some capacity.

Edited my title because I realize it implied that Phreak was behind the changes (which is possible, but noone has said it yet).

Anyway. No, i haven't seen any talk from any devs as to why the changes are being made. I assume Phreak will talk about it in his usual patch rundown whenever these changes hit live but I don't know how many of those changes are actually his.

I really need to go back and play it. I played it briefly a few years ago but didn't get much past the first act.

Nostalgia trip right here. This song got played at just about every major boyscout camp I went to. And from what I know, still gets played at those camps.

I feel like the nature of Lemmy better fits a community with "anarchy" in the title anyway.

reopening in a restricted form

What are we talking about here? Will it be a protest similar to r/steam or r/pics, a restriction on who can post/comment, or something else entirely?