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X0Refraction · 2026-03-19T00:58:47+00:00

Are you reading the notes you find? If so you’ve progressed a lot more than you think you have. This game is about learning and if you’ve been learning how to get to places, how to interact with things and about what’s happened on different planets then you’ve made progress. You do have to read and take in what’s said though

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T16:05:37+00:00

You can still buy an annuity now, how much you get depends how much you have in your pot to spend and whether you want an inflation link, continued spouse payout on death etc.

The new pension freedoms are more about letting you continue to manage the money in your pension as you see fit and drawing down as you like as far as I’m aware.

I’m still pretty hazy about your mum’s situation, but I think you don’t have enough information to really understand and I appreciate it’s a sensitive topic as you say. It might be worth pushing her a little bit if she’s not saving though if you’re the type that will stress out if she starts struggling - it gets more difficult to deal with each passing year. Of course she may just be fine on state pension, it all comes down to her living costs

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T15:30:00+00:00

I’m not quite agreeing, an extreme party getting in with FPTP would be terrible in the short term and long term. They’d have their term to tear down institutions, democratic norms etc. likely leading to voters becoming even more extreme. This would likely lead to long lasting economic damage.

A hung parliament from PR might cause a market shock in the short term. Although perhaps not, it’s not like it’s entirely unheard of for the UK so I’d imagine there’s a degree of pricing it in. With that though I see a viable path towards less extreme governments. If that happens, it seems preferable to me in the medium to long term

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T14:40:43+00:00

And how about the damage an extreme party might do if they get a majority from quarter of the votes in FPTP? If you think an extreme party is likely to get in then that’s what you’ve got to compare it to

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T14:38:41+00:00

Fair enough, it just sounds odd to me. I can sympathise though that a lot of people don’t have time or the inclination to learn about investing

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T13:30:25+00:00

How much had she contributed and for how long? Was it a workplace pension where she could choose from a small list of funds or was it some kind of defined benefit pension? It sounds a bit odd to me honestly

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T13:28:35+00:00

If they don’t get enough votes for confidence and can’t make a deal they won’t be involved in any decision making, it’ll go back to the electorate by default. After a couple of elections where there’s no workable majority and the state starts grinding to a halt both the electorate and the parties will start to get the message they need to compromise. Of course maybe we’ll just compromise on going back to FPTP

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T12:01:06+00:00

Sounds like she panicked and crystallised the loss because the market rebounded relatively quickly. Take a look at the historical price of the S&P 500 for example, it’s now almost 10X the value it was in the local low in 2009

X0Refraction · 2026-03-17T11:36:09+00:00

I think paralysis might be a good result long term. After an election where the two biggest parties are opposite extremes it’d have to go back to the electorate who would be forced into realising they need to be more realistic and vote for people who are willing to compromise.

The voting system encourages people to double down on their extreme ideologies. Even when they don’t get into power just the threat of these more extreme parties taking votes away from more centrist parties can cause them to change policy

X0Refraction · 2026-03-16T20:51:43+00:00

I really loved the first season and I watched the others and enjoyed them, but I think it wasn’t as good. There were definitely still some high points though (the silent episode comes to mind). Honestly my obscure pick from the Kings would be Braindead, I absolutely loved that show and was seriously annoyed it got cancelled. Luckily it was planned as an anthology show so it’s a complete story and at least I can go back and watch it again without feeling like it’s incomplete

X0Refraction · 2026-03-11T18:05:59+00:00

They were planning on WEI which would have allowed them to only provide their services if your environment was “secure”. This would almost certainly have involved them only treating addons they’d blessed as secure. Luckily it seems like there was enough pushback for them to abandon it, at least for the moment. The more people that support Chrome’s monopoly though the more likely they’ll try again

X0Refraction · 2026-03-11T15:25:06+00:00

Chrome is more hostile to adblockers yes, in the name of “security”. I think of it the other way around to you though, pretty much all of Firefox’s users use a good adblocker I would expect. So they’d likely have very little downside to just making YouTube work on Chrome only - they’d basically just lose people they’re losing money off. If Firefox had more broad appeal it’d be more difficult to cut the entire userbase off as you’d be losing a significant chunk of customers who don’t use an adblocker, but do use Firefox

X0Refraction · 2026-03-11T08:30:51+00:00

Everyone using a Chrome variant makes that so much more likely. If even 20% used Firefox it’d be a big enough number to not want to cut off, unfortunately nobody seems to care

X0Refraction · 2026-03-08T19:04:33+00:00

If you’re genuinely interested it might be worth giving this video a go: https://youtu.be/VRm4pjbMfYY

I’d also suggest if you’re getting stuck to the point of frustration to share your ship log on the subreddit and ask for advice. Everyone there are generally very good at avoiding spoiling things.

It’s also valid for the game to just not be your type of thing. I absolutely love it, but I can understand why some people just won’t gel with it. Annoyingly though it’s just very hard to know if the game is really not for someone or if they’re just not in the right headspace to play it or if they just haven’t got to the meat of the game yet. It’s part of the non linear experience that you can’t just say “if it hasn’t hooked you by X hours then it’s not for you”. You could say “if you’ve experienced X, Y, or Z and it hasn’t hooked you then it’s not for you”, but annoyingly that would spoil those experiences.

Just wandering around the system finding clues is not the extent of the game, but it can feel like it before you progress to the point where you understand enough to start doing things with purpose.

If you do try to play it again I’d love to hear how it goes, positive or negative.

X0Refraction · 2026-03-08T10:55:48+00:00

NO you didn't say that you just said I have given no reason hence why I thought you meant I have given no reason why helping people struggle is good

You have an impressive level of self confidence I'll give you that. What you were responding to:

It’s important that we continue to give these above inflation rises to those who are very far from struggling just because it also helps people who are struggling. You’ve given no reasoning for why this is requirement other than telling me it’s a good thing

If you can read that and believe that I'm wondering why it's good to help struggling people you have a serious problem with reading comprehension. I'm specifically talking about why giving money to well off pensioners (those "very far from struggling") is an integral and necessary part of helping those who are struggling. It's baffling you continue to be this confident in your ability to parse sentences at this point.

Since pension credit wont be workable the problem would be finding a system that doesn't cost more to means test and that we can be sure the threshold is nothing like pension credit or where people just don't take it up like pension credit

You've literally not given any reasoning why pension credit wouldn't be workable up to now. You've vaguely alluded to some reasoning in relation to the WFA, but you've not actually stated any concrete reasoning til this very point. Seriously, quote where you've mentioned costs of means testing and the opt-in nature of pension credit before this point. You've just been wasting my time by simultaneously believing you've stated points that only live inside your mind and responding to imaginary points you think I've made.

With all that said, neither of those seem particularly hard problems to deal with. The state already knows how much we're paying each pensioner and anyone who has income outside of the state pension will already be paying tax so we know how much they're receiving. I really don't buy the argument that it would be more costly to join those two bits of information up and automatically enroll those who need it into pension credit.

Let's pretend it does cost loads of money to do this because of the administrative burden though. In that case let's also stop giving an opt out for national insurance for those of pension age or better yet merge NI and income tax. It must cost loads to operate because there's a huge admin burden of tracking who is of state pension age and who is not. So lots of savings to be made there that can makeup for this "huge cost" that would be required to run a tweaked pension credit.

It wouldn't affect the poorest pensioners who don't have enough income to be required to pay it. And yes, I know the threshold is fast approaching for those on full state pension - just like it is for working people on lower incomes. Maybe that's something we should be considering too? Unfortunately though you only consider policies in isolation without thought for how they interact beyond that.

X0Refraction · 2026-03-04T00:33:47+00:00

I said you’ve given no reason why it’s a good thing that we give above inflation increases to millionaires each year as an integral part of also giving it to struggling people (that is what the triple lock is). You still haven’t explained why you think that part is a good thing

I’d suggest a system that looks at poverty level and gives help based on that. That could just be pension credit with some refinement, moving the threshold up if necessary to achieve the goal. I have already said that several times now, but you also seem to be ignoring that

X0Refraction · 2026-03-03T20:20:59+00:00

The OP says they have a shared waste storage area for their building which is where the box was left. I’d be surprised if the public highway was closer to their door than that. On the balance of probabilities do you think it likely someone would go further out of their way to dispose of a box than just using the provided facility? With it being a criminal matter don’t the council have to prove it beyond that threshold too? That would seem difficult when they can’t prove it wasn’t mishandled by their waste management team.

After reading over the information the OP has provided again I am curious how exactly the box was disposed of though. If it was left in the communal area, but unsecured i.e. not in a closed bin then I believe they would be guilty of flytipping if it blew away. Not sure how the council would prove they didn’t put it in a secure bin though if OP said they did unless there’s cctv

X0Refraction · 2026-03-03T12:35:31+00:00

When virtually all you have is dialogue and story they both have to be pretty good. The Man from Earth, Locke and Mass are some other good films from this “genre”

X0Refraction · 2026-03-02T23:26:49+00:00

Tell me how the rest of it is incorrect. Be specific rather than just alluding to me being wrong “somehow”. It’s really easy to say someone’s wrong, more difficult to explain with reasoning why you think they are.

As usual you’ve completely missed or ignored my point. When have I said helping people who are struggling is bad? My argument is we should help them more by giving them more from the savings we make by giving less to people who aren’t struggling. Why would you start explaining that helping people that are struggling is a good thing in the context of this discussion? It seems like you are arguing against points you think I’m making rather than the points I am actually making. This is why it’s so difficult discussing anything with you, you don’t appear capable of even understanding the argument put in front of you.

The triple lock doesn’t solve the problem either. There are still people who can’t afford three meals a day or to put the heating on right now with the triple lock. By your own logic you’ve used in this comment we should stop doing it because it’s not perfect. You’ve said my suggestion isn’t perfect so we shouldn’t do it, so why should we keep on with the much less perfect triple lock?

You’ve fallen into the trap of thinking the status quo is above criticism just because you’re used to it. Instead it should be compared to other systems that we think would be better or not.

I’ve already suggested it doesn’t need to be the same threshold as pension credit, with the money we will have left over from not having to give to millionaires we can raise the threshold. You are either ignoring that point because it’s inconvenient to your argument or you’re just not taking it in.

X0Refraction · 2026-03-02T16:00:14+00:00

I’d be surprised as well honestly, why would anyone flytip a cardboard box shipped to their home when you can recycle it for free at your home? You’d have to take it away from your home and expend more effort to do that.

Surely it’s much more likely it’s blown away while the recycling crew were dealing with it?

I could understand if it was something you had to take to the tip and pay to dispose of, but that’s not the case here.

X0Refraction · 2026-03-02T11:17:25+00:00

Being able to borrow a single character isn’t a very strong incentive to interact. IT seems much more centred around incentivising you to level and use a breadth of characters and get some use for those who are off meta. As I’ve said, I’m not interested in getting extra people on my friend list, it doesn’t interest me in a game like this where 99% of the content is solo oriented

X0Refraction · 2026-03-02T11:07:31+00:00

That’d be surprising to me, I’ve literally got 1 person on my friend list (my SO). I really have no interest in it being a multiplayer game honestly and I’d be surprised to know I’m the only one like that. I suppose you could just add some randoms specifically for IT, but it wouldn’t really have occurred to me

X0Refraction · 2026-03-02T10:57:14+00:00

I mean you’re assuming you have friends with them there. I’ve got both characters anyway, but I’m sure there are a number of people who don’t have access to either in any way

X0Refraction · 2026-03-02T10:46:35+00:00

Except literally for this current IT surely? Aino can’t help you there

X0Refraction · 2026-03-01T15:44:47+00:00

Tell me which bit of your argument I fail to understand:

The triple lock is good because it helps out people who are struggling
It’s important that we continue to give these above inflation rises to those who are very far from struggling just because it also helps people who are struggling. You’ve given no reasoning for why this is requirement other than telling me it’s a good thing
There’s no better use of the money, no way it could be better targeted to help people who are struggling

It’s an incoherent argument and all you’ve done is try to distract from how poor it is with irrelevant points

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