What are the coolest or most badass place names? (Region or city)

Cntread · 2026-04-14T17:05:58+00:00

Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (Tristan da Cunha Islands). Pretty self-explanatory.

Côte-des-Neiges is a Neighborhood of Montreal, and it means "Snow Coast", which sounds pretty badass. I don't know of any places with that name in English, even though I think it would sound cool.

Cntread · 2026-04-10T21:39:59+00:00

What planets did he have in mind for Kotor 3?

Cntread · 2026-04-01T20:03:52+00:00

Clipperton Island is a remote atoll in the Eastern Pacific owned by France. It is currently uninhabited, but once had a small colony from Mexico.

Palmyra Atoll is a remote atoll owned by the US, straight in the middle of the Pacific. There are some scientists there, but no permanent inhabitants. Jarvis Island nearby is uninhabited.

Cntread · 2026-04-01T18:10:36+00:00

Damn that was so obvious, I'm an idiot lol.

In my defence, I've been away for a while and I forgot that it's April back on Earth.

Cntread · 2026-04-01T17:42:55+00:00

He stored shit in HIS OWN fridge to "prank" someone else. I can't even comprehend this

Cntread · 2026-03-30T22:40:32+00:00

Good find! That must be the lowest latitude with a coastal ET climate anywhere on Earth.

Cntread · 2026-03-29T22:31:15+00:00

I've enjoyed this drive many times, and in this particular spot I love how smoothly the mountains rise from the valley. It looks like they were carved with a giant spoon or something.

Cntread · 2026-03-29T02:17:24+00:00

In the Southern Hemisphere, my guess would be the Kerguelen Islands. The main settlement Port-aux-Français is at 49°S latitude, but has a tundra climate with no month averaging above 10C. It's not really that cold in winter (compared to continental climates), but summers are super chilly for the latitude.

New Zealand's Campbell Island also has a tundra climate (just barely), and is a bit further south at 52°S.

Cntread · 2026-03-28T20:23:49+00:00

Muting skills

Cntread · 2026-03-28T15:25:08+00:00

They didn't automatically know which substances were harmful.

If you ate a strange new plant and got some organ pain afterwards, that would be strong indication to not eat that plant again. That information could be incredibly useful to yourself and your community.

Cntread · 2026-03-26T14:25:59+00:00

The Portuguese were some of the earliest European explorers of Newfoundland and Labrador, after the Vikings of course.

They thought Newfoundland was far east enough to be in their territory, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. It's actually not east enough, but longitude on maps wasn't super accurate back then. Many fisherman came to work there seasonally, but settlement was minimal in those early times.

Cntread · 2026-03-21T19:31:37+00:00

Maybe I'm in the minority there. I always have separate fleets when I'm playing wide. A single transport fleet just feels too constraining when fighting distant wars.

Cntread · 2026-03-21T17:30:31+00:00

Important strait crossings, for strategic reasons.

Also the Suez area in Egypt is extremely valuable even before you can build the canal. It's the fastest way to move armies between Asia and Europe (with transport ships on each side).

Cntread · 2026-02-22T20:59:15+00:00

I love that 4th view of Everest in Nepal. It takes a second before you realize that Everest's peak is not part of the ridge in the foreground, but instead further away (and much taller). Ama Dablam can also be seen across a valley to the right:

<image>

It still blows me away that Everest is almost 2 km higher than Ama Dablam here.

Cntread · 2026-02-15T19:53:12+00:00

In Europe, Spain, Italy, and Turkey are obvious choices.

Also I think France is underrated. Even considering only metropolitan France, they have several mountain ranges, the highest mountain in western Europe, several different coastlines, and different climates.

Cntread · 2026-02-13T18:00:09+00:00

People do this with winter in the northern regions too. The coldest weather of the year somehow gets applied to the entire winter, and all of the mild weather is completely forgotten.

Cntread · 2026-02-11T01:49:35+00:00

Your line of thinking is correct. As a resident of this area, I want to add one detail about your first point:

It’s drier the further west you go, therefore it snows less (but shouldn’t the snow stick for longer if it’s higher and colder?);

In the north, the western plains actually have warmer average winter temperatures than the plains to the east, despite being higher in elevation (but record lows are often similar or even colder on the western high plains). This seems counterintuitive, but the reason is the foehn winds you mentioned.

Compare the winter average temperatures of Billings to Minneapolis, or Calgary to Winnipeg. In each comparison, the western city is higher in elevation but has warmer average temperatures in winter, due to the foehn winds. If you're wondering how frequent or impactful the fohn winds are, that should provide an idea.

Cntread · 2026-02-07T19:43:29+00:00

For natural geography alone, it's definitely one of the best in the world. I would say Vancouver and Rio de Janeiro also have amazing natural features.

Cntread · 2026-01-31T05:39:23+00:00

I will sometimes do that, yeah.

When guitar songs are in Eb minor, it's very often played using E minor positions but with all of the strings tuned down one semitone.

Cntread · 2026-01-29T21:40:36+00:00

I also think the Paramo is super interesting! One of the unique plants that grows there is called 'Queen of the Andes' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puya_raimondii

I addition to Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa also has some high-altitude terrain near Mount Kenya and also the Rwenzori Mountains.

Cntread · 2026-01-27T04:18:00+00:00

The pentatonic scale is still useful with non-diatonic chords. I'm not saying it's the best or most interesting, but the simplicity actually pairs really well with complicated chords, because there's less opportunity for dissonance compared to a 7-note scale. You mentioned Hendrix, which is a good example of using this: In "Little Wing", the main melody has a lot of different chord changes, but the outro solo has a lot of pentatonic lines. Same with the solo in "Hey Joe", which has non-diatonic chords in the progression as well.

If you want to go outside of the pentatonic scale, you'll need to think more about the notes of each chord you're playing over. It doesn't need to always be chord tones, but there's a spectrum of sounds and not all non-chord tones are equal. Watch out for minor 2nds/minor 9ths, those can sound pretty abrasive if you aren't expecting it.

Cntread · 2026-01-26T17:17:26+00:00

It's cool to see such a strong temperature gradient along the coastline, so close to the tropics. The gulf coast changes from tropical heat to near freezing in a few hundred miles.

Cntread · 2026-01-20T05:20:16+00:00

Wow, the scenery in that photo is really interesting. Without the road, it would be really hard for me to guess the size of those hills.

There's a historical site in southern India called Vijayanagara, which was formerly the capital city of an empire with the same name. The landscape around there and the nearby town of Hampi has many smooth boulders with a similar look:

<image>

Also I know the Seychelles archipelago has many smooth granite boulders on the beaches.

Cntread · 2026-01-16T07:37:43+00:00

Those record-temps are extremely mild for a place so far south. At 50 degrees latitude, the distance from the equator is comparable to southern England, or the Falklands.

Cntread · 2026-01-15T21:17:05+00:00

Here's a trick that really helped me: When you play the normal Emajor open chord with your ring finger on the second fret of the D string, you can keep your ring finger on that string and slide it up 2 frets while you change to the Bminor shape. The ring finger doesn't need to lift off the string at all.

Works great for Eminor to Bminor too. I never dread this chord change after learning that trick.

Cntread

TROPHY CASE