maverick2007

Have you ever shared "the shot"s you got of those 3 cats? Would love to see them if you have :) Best of luck with the bobcat!

In case anyone is curious to see how far people have pushed the game, check out NEDesigns[1]. Some truly incredible RCT (mostly 2) parks. I'm a huge theme park enthusiast and I love seeing the realism that people have managed to get out of this limited game.

[1] https://www.nedesigns.com/

I was an intern at CenturyLink the summer they opened their new building in Monroe. Monroe was not fun to live in but the building was gorgeous and great to work in. From my understanding, the building sadly sits more or less empty now as more and more of the workforce moves to Denver (aka home of Level 3 who more or less took over CenturyLink after being acquired).

Standard Blu Rays? Are you sure about that? I started ripping my blus at the beginning of the year and don't remember it being more difficult than buying any random Blu ray drive, downloading MakeMKV and clicking the start button.

Now, I'll 100% agree about 4K Blu rays. I got lucky in that I bought one of the handful of drives that supports ripping 4k disks (since its encryption keys were leaked?) but even after that it required finding and flashing custom firmware that was a hassle. But I got it working which is cool.

I'm curious, what did you find lacking in Navidrome/...? I'm thinking about installing one of those pieces of software to serve my media and I'd love to know why you're building your own (if the answer isn't "for fun" :) )

Other sibling comments have mentioned using your phone or the Pasmo passport but I just got back from Tokyo last week and there's a machine selling the Welcome Suica, a time limited card where you lose whatever was left on the card, at Haneda and Narita. I picked one up when my flight landed and was able to top it up and use it all throughout my 3 week trip.

A mix of Expedia, Agoda, and Priceline! As far as what I looked for in a hotel? Mainly just good reviews and pictures that looked simple and clean. I figured that I wouldn't spend a ton of time in the room! I liked the Tokyu chain of hotels. Stayed in a couple and they were very clean

I just got back from a trip to Japan where I stayed at a lot of non-western brand hotels. But when I went to their sites directly, they were obviously all in Japanese which I don't speak. I could've relied on Google translate to book directly but I'd rather book through a 3rd party site in native English. Which I did.

America had asked Taiwan to manufacture biological weapons at a lab run by the island’s defence ministry, the report claimed.

This reminds me a lot of the (presumably Russian disinformation) story that flitted around American conservative spheres early in the Ukraine war saying that the US gov was setting up bio weapon labs at the border with Russia and that's why the Russian invasion was justified. Funny how the exact same propaganda can be shared between conflicts to good effect presumably.

Pinball is addictive. I don't even have a house to myself and I've had to talk myself out of picking up pins for my apartment. If anyone is in the Bay Area, I recommend the Pacific Pinball Museum. Over 100 pins ranging from old EMs to 90s games to plenty of modern ones. I have a season pass and try to go as often as I can.

So the parent comment was referencing the steroid era in the 90s like the sibling comment mentions but you also do still see that in the (presumably) cleaner game today. While upper 90s fastballs used to be rare, they're pretty common now. More and more pitchers are throwing pitches with more and more spin. Personally, I think the game is in a good place especially with the pace of play changes but many (most?) also believe that this arms race, so to speak, is really driving the prevalence of arm injuries. I'm a Rays fan, it's a sore subject this year.

I've been noticing this a lot lately in one of my little hobbies of Halloween events. There's so much history from events in the early 2000s that has been lost. So many links in ancient web forums that 404 and aren't in the Internet archive. Info from the 2010s is much better but still missing a lot of media. As an individual, I certainly don't have the resources of some of the organizations listed in this article but I've been trying to do what I can and mirror important sites. I dread seeing what the future looks like as more and more of the communities in my niche move onto discord and away from more traditional web forums.

ETA: The issue I face is two-fold. More pressingly, there are files just missing. Nothing I can do about that barring someone magically having them downloaded to an old PC. But also interesting is working with old formats. The 2000s/early 2010s Halloween Horror Nights websites were all written in Flash. They have tons of little Easter eggs and information for the event obsessives like me. Between fan backups and the Internet archive, the files are pretty complete thankfully. But since Flash has been dead for a while, I have to rely on the Ruffles Flash emulator to get it running on the web. But that doesn't work super well. On my list of things to do is to contribute to the project to try to get some of the files working.

In case anyone is curious about my backup of the event or if you're also a fan and have any of the files listed to share and archive, my site is hhncrypt.com!

Epic Systems did as of 5 years ago

There's actually talk that they might pick up the media deal for the PAC 12 (if the conference exists in a week) so you might be right on the money there

I assumed it was Greta Gerwig coming off of two very well received, award winning movies

Happened to me too, on a roller coaster funny enough.

I was at Busch Gardens in VA, riding their new coaster (Pantheon [1] for those curious). It's a fast, launched coaster and I guess the way I was sitting with the restraints hit the power button of my pixel 5 times and toggled the emergency call feature. I felt my smart watch vibrating with the ongoing call as we went up the top hat spike of the ride. Thankfully I was able to stop the call from my wrist before it connected. But that was the last time I didn't turn my phone off or put it in a locker before I got on a ride.

[1] https://rcdb.com/16812.htm

We definitely like to trade stories of the days where the parks were so empty that we might as well be in there alone!

Yep, you got it! I concur with that.

I'd say the first one you need to visit is Islands of Adventure in Orlando. When it opened in 1999, it really invented the idea of the IP land, a themed area dedicated to 1 IP as opposed to the standard of multiple IPs in one land (like how Tomorrowland might have Buzz Lightyear and Tron and Star Wars). IOA still has what many consider a top 5 dark ride in the world in Spiderman. And the Harry Potter area which opened in 2010 was the first what I'd call hyper immersive land where great pains are taken to make every aspect of the experience immersive, from the food (the food is all British food and not regular theme park fare), drink (butterbeer is great), environment (even though it limits the amount of people in the area, the paths are very narrow since that's how the area is in JK Rowling's world) to even the bathrooms (Moaning Myrtle makes appearances). Most new modern lands built by Universal or Disney follow this blueprint. Velocicoaster in IOA is also widely considered a top 10 coaster in the country so if that's your thing IOA has a great one.

If you had a few more days after that, I'd probably pick out a Disney park or two. It probably depends on which IPs you're interested in. Hollywood Studios has Tower of Terror and Star Wars so that would be my choice (Rise of the Resistance is the best ride I've been on in the world) but I've heard good things about the latest Guardians of the Galaxy Ride at Epcot.

I've been trying to make my way out to Japan for the last couple of years but Covid has gotten in my way. Looks like it's finally going to happen later this year. And I'm so excited for it!

That hotel looks awesome! I wish I could've stayed there.

And I wonder the same. My family moved around a lot growing up and one of the few constants was a visit to a specific theme park every year. It seemed to be one of the few constants in my life when I was younger. I'm sure that certainly influenced the way that I feel about them. I bet a surprising amount of other enthusiasts would have similar stories.

I do! And themed dining like Rainforest Cafes and the like. My previous job was famous for their elaborately themed offices (I worked in the Alice in Wonderland building). Wasn't a fan of the job, loved the office themeing.

Have you been up to California's Great America to ride Railblazer, another RMC? Seems like you're based in SoCal so it might be accessible to you at some point. Railblazer in the back row is, bar none, the most intense roller coaster I've ever been on.

Like you said, it's difficult to articulate but let me try. Growing up in FL, my family would go a lot of parks even though I was deathly afraid of roller coasters and most rides to be honest (wish I could go back in time and tell myself that I'd regret not riding all these classic now removed Universal and Disney rides). In my early teen years that fear turned to obsession and I was devouring all the information about parks as I could get, especially fansites and Travel Channel specials since it was at the very early days of social media. I eventually got over the fear and the obsession has waxed and waned over the years but I still love the parks as much as ever.

For a while my fandom was driven by roller coasters and especially the forces and feelings you get on them (the acceleration of a launched coaster and airtime in particular) but as I've matured a little, I think I find the escapism of the themed entertainment more and more appealing. The world is a complex and sometimes awful place. But in these parks I can forget all that, I can relax and watch other people's happiness or take part in epic stories on rides. It's hard to describe but they just feel like home. I was at Universal in FL a couple of weeks ago and I think I rode like 5 rides all weekend even though I had skip the line passes? I just enjoy being there and taking in the themeing and atmosphere.

Woah, surprised seeing bio on the front page of HN. I'm a massive theme park fan (which you can probably see from my comment history here) and I follow Orlando theme parks particularly closely. Bio is a huge asset to the community and their tweets are super widely spread on all of the forums that I visit.

Like the article says, we don't know much about them except that they likely do use one of those tourist helicop-tours that are all over Orlando. I personally don't think they're employed by the parks or anything, I think they're just a super fan like I am that has carved out their own niche in the fandom. I know that if I lived in Orlando, I'd likely do something similar.

In case anyone is interested, Bio has been covering the construction of the first ground up new theme park in Orlando in 20+ years: Epic Universe. It's been so much fun watching the park turn from an empty field to where it is now [1] and we know as much as we do thanks to Bio and others like them

[1] https://twitter.com/bioreconstruct/status/166406870175727206...

Apparently Disney and Pixar too. I know someone at Disney and they had a fairly large distribution for anyone who wanted one

I think you're confusing rides, Flight of Passage (Avatar) to the best of my knowledge is not VR (maybe traditional 3D glasses), Rise is definitely not VR (not even 3D) and Mario Kart is AR with a headset overlaying graphics over physical sets. None of them are VR in the traditional sense of the word.

The biggest test of VR at theme parks in the US came with various Six Flags around the country strapping VR goggles (Samsung IIRC) on some of their coasters and drop towers. They're pretty widely regarded as failures. I got to try two of them and they definitely were not a plus to the ride experience, especially on a drop tower where the view from the top is half the fun.

Certain modern(-ish) roller coasters do have more circular loops than others. Specifically Schwarzkopf[1] coasters are famous for having more circular loops (and the more intense positive Gs that come with it). Anyone in the Bay Area might remember Zonga[2] at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom which featured the more circular loops.

Also maybe of interest is Blue Flash [3], a backyard roller coaster that has a loop that reminds me of old school circular loops.

[1] https://rcdb.com/6844.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami_(roller_coaster)

[3] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/blue-flash-backyard-roll...

I feel like the author starts from a position of poly being the "right" way to conduct yourself and worked backwards to deduce a reason why their school of thought is right and monogamy is wrong.

Couldn't you make the same argument the other way if you assume that monogamy is "right": "poly people are insecure in thinking that no one would commit to them and only them and they choose to act accordingly to that principle instead of working on themselves"? Of course there are poly people that are like that just like there are monogamous people that want to control/are jealous of their partner but I don't think either are as good of arguments as the author thinks

I can confirm that at least at my dealer. Just bought a Mach E this week that I ordered the first week of October of last year. Got it at the MSRP at the time of order, not purchase. The salesman was telling me that the guy he was helping before me took over an abandoned pre order and paid 10k of dealer markup for that privilege.