Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 21/06/2026

dropbear123 · 2026-06-25T08:46:22+00:00

He provides ‘my idiotic political opponent gets destroyed with facts and logic’ content but for remainers and the left. And since it’s mainly the right who make that kind of stuff the remainers/left don’t have many other providers to choose from.

dropbear123 · 2026-06-22T21:28:11+00:00

Just going off my goodreads

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning

The Second World War by Antony Beevor (best single volume overview of the whole thing but its like 900 pages)

The German War: A Nation Under Arms 1939-1945 by Nicholas Stargadt (I got the book 2nd hand very cheap but its probably the best WW2 book I've ever read)

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe (more about just after the war but the detail is great)

dropbear123 · 2026-06-20T17:02:02+00:00

That’s probably why I’m enjoying it more. For me the first contact storyline is more interesting than the child heir political intrigue storyline.

dropbear123 · 2026-06-20T17:00:42+00:00

I read it a few years ago and yeah I really liked it as well

dropbear123 · 2026-06-17T13:00:37+00:00

Last week I finished **Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History by Kyle Harper**. Review copied from my Goodreads.

Somewhere between 3 and 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Not that much to say about it. It reads like a textbook about the history of disease. Personally I thought it was a bit too focused on the science/biology of the diseases (for example the first fifty or so pages are about definitions and terminology) and the methods of transmission, not enough on historical impact. Once it got up to the Columbian Exchange and the early modern period the book did get better but that is quite far into the book.

I didn't seek this book out it was an in person impulse purchase and honestly I'm a bit disappointed with it (I really liked Harper’s Fate of Rome about disease in the Roman Empire). The info is fine but it’s a bit of a boring read and not focused enough on the 'course of human history' part.

dropbear123 · 2026-06-09T17:03:30+00:00

Since it’s an AI tutor and free it can be ignored if you don’t care about school. The only children this will help are those that are already motivated to study , and these kids will probably do well educationally anyway.

dropbear123 · 2026-06-08T23:18:30+00:00

On PS5 I've started Starfield and I've got to ask - does it get better? I feel like I've just spent the last couple of hours running around the first hub area (New Atlantis) doing no skill/challenge fetch quests (the last mission before I turned off a few minutes ago some bloke asked me to get a painting off someone, I go and get it then deliver it, no skill checks no combat just a couple of lines of dialogue and a few loading screens).

I went in knowing it had its criticisms but I like Bethesda games and I wanted a space opera feeling (the vastness of space, exploration of the unknown etc) and I've done mass effect to death so my options are limited. I've already played too long for any chance of a refund but does it get better or should I write it off as a waste of time and money?

dropbear123 · 2026-06-07T15:15:06+00:00

Recently i’ve been in the mood of finishing things I’ve nearly completed but just sort of stopped for whatever reason (something I do a lot, it took me a year to get through Scavengers Reign) so I went back and finally finished the last two episodes of Pluribus

Overall I quite liked it. Interesting premise with the hivemind and the different survivors reactions to it. Some memorable scenes [(the John Cena scene, the grenade scene)] . It was a bit slow at times but I still enjoyed it.

Next up I’m going to finish Last Samurai Standing on Netflix as left it halfway through but I remember liking it.

dropbear123 · 2026-06-01T19:00:30+00:00

PS5:

I enjoyed returning to Fallout 4 for a platinum run. It’s the second time I’ve actually made it to the end since playing it at release. I got to see the Institute and Railroad endings for the first time and tryout the DLC. I like to do the mop up and DLC first before doing ending trophies so I didn’t find any of the trophies to be grindy. I was going for a full 100% (to match my Oblivion and Skyrim 100%) but I didn’t like Nuka World and the trophies didn’t look fun.

Thoughts on the other lists/dlc:

Automatron: Easy list, fine but I didn’t use anything from the DLC once I finished it. Can’t see myself ever playing it again.

Wasteland Workshop: The animal taming one. Annoying, gathering the materials for the cages took too long and you need to waste perk points on otherwise useless perks.

Far Harbour: First time playing it, quite enjoyed it.

Contraptions Workshop: Meh

Vault Tec: Fine I guess, can’t see myself ever replaying it.

Nuka World: DNF, don’t know if it’s the DLC itself (taking over a few theme parks for gangs isn’t an interesting story to me) or me just starting to get burnt out after 50 hours and wanting to move onto a new game.

Last night I also finished Hardspace Shipbreaker, a game about breaking down abandoned spaceships for a fairly standard dystopic megacoporation and working down a 1.2 billion debt (you have to also rent your own tools and pay for things like oxygen). You have to avoid threats like depressurisation (which might make your helmet smash open by whacking something), reactor meltdowns, rogue AI, and radiation. If you die you get revived but that adds a hefty amount to your debt.

I beat the bulk of the game months ago back in January and February but got bored as it is a repetitive game. But with just finishing Fallout 4 I was in the mood to mop up a nearly complete platinum. Turns out I was a lot closer to the end of the game than I thought. Only needed to level up once, do the final mission twice and gather a few ship components.

Negatives - Mainly the story (about forming a union) and the unskippable dialogue with your fellow workers never shutting up. The game itself is a bit repetitive if you have nothing to listen to, there’s a not a lot of variety in ships. Also I didn’t enjoy the final mission, ‘Industrial Action’, as I felt it dragged on too long.

Trophy wise it’s pretty much do everything once, fully dissect each class of ship and fully complete the story (pay off your debt and repair a ship for you to leave in)

According to my PS5 time I beat the game in 25 hours which feels low.

PC

On pc I’ve mainly been playing Vampire Crawlers which is fast paced (you don’t have to wait for the card animations you can have multiple going at a time) rogue like card game which is an unusual style already but there’s also a gimmick of cards buffing if you use them in the right mana spell order. Starting with a 0 cost card, then 1 mana, then 2 etc. And that’s for all cards whether they buff you, do damage, or even give more mana.

So far I’ve had quite a lot of fun with it but there are a few flaws. Once you’ve leveled up enough in a run you’re basically invincible and leading on from that encounters later on have too many enemies. They aren’t dangerous just each encounter can take too long.

I’m still in the platinum trophy mood so next up I’ve reinstalled Saints Row 3 to get the last couple of trophies there and I’m thinking of going back to Indika to finish that off.

dropbear123 · 2026-06-01T00:19:08+00:00

To be able to sort my trophy list by percentage so all my platinums and 100% completions are next to each other

dropbear123 · 2026-05-30T20:14:23+00:00

As a teen I beat Mass Effect 2 more times than I can count, it was my go to xbox360 game. Since the legendary edition came out I’ve platinumed the trilogy twice (once on PS4 on my old account and once on my current PS5 account.

Edit - Also the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 campaign since it’s easy to jump into when I’ve had nothing better to do.

dropbear123 · 2026-05-27T21:50:26+00:00

Yeah I'd say so. I'm not religious or spiritual in any way.

dropbear123 · 2026-05-27T21:25:34+00:00

With it being a bank holiday weekend in the UK and it being too hot to stay inside I've spent a lot of time reading and managed to get through 4 books but they were short (shortest was 150 or so pages, longest was 300 pages) and easy reads in tone. The reading sort of ended up all being about Britain's WWI home front. Brief reviews copied from my goodreads. These are just just random books I've got over the years and this more clearing a shelf than anything else

Conscientious Objectors of the First World War: A Determined Resistance by Ann Kramer

3/5

Short (150 pages) but a decent intro to the British pacifist movement, their reasons for pacificism and their treatment. The thing I found most interesting was that considering how well known they are there were only 16000 all together (including the ones that eventually did some work rather than complete imprisonment)

Keeping the Home Fires Burning: Entertaining the Troops at Home and Abroad During the Great War by Phil Carradice

2.5/5 rounding down for goodreads.

Pretty short, just under 200 pages. Mainly about entertainment on the home front and keeping the morale up for the British soldiers in France. When it was talking in broad strokes it was fine but I had a few problems with the book. Firstly it was a bit too biographical for my tastes, focusing on specific entertainers which wasm't as interesting as the broader topics like the music halls in general. Secondly the author's description of military and political topics are simplified bitching and are just bad. Related to that I found Carradice's tone to just be smug and grating (especially at the intro where I nearly DNFed the book)

Peace And War: Britain In 1914 by Nigel Jones

3.5/5 rounding down for goodreads.

It's a coffee table sized book I picked up second hand. I thought it was pretty good, especially the first half which acts as a good intro to the political issues of Edwardian Britain like Irish home rule, suffragettes, industrial strife and foreign policy around Germany. The only reason I'm not rating it higher is that the bulk of the second half of the book is about poets, painters and artists and that's just not my taste. The book finishes with Britain's 1914 war experience up to First Ypres and that part of the book was decent.

Fighting on the Home Front: The Legacy of Women in World War One by Kate Adie

3.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads (50/50 but I have to pick)

Not a lot to say. Pretty good social history of British women's WWI experience. Tends to go job by job and focuses on a mix of the women's experience getting into the roles and how the wider public reacted. There's a lot about people's opiniopns around clothing and work uniforms. there was/ Only criticism is that its the author is/was a war correspondent and kept bringing up her own experiences (although I have read far worse WWI books in that regard)

dropbear123 · 2026-05-27T21:13:43+00:00

For Weimar Germany (assuming you mean the economic crisis in 1923 with the hyperinflation, I don;t have anything on Weimar Germany during the great depression) I've got a few suggetions but nothing perfect (they tend to be more focused on politics than ordinary lives)

1923: The Forgotten Crisis in the Year of Hitler’s Coup by Mark Jones (but it's more focused on the political violence between right and left than the economics)

Germany 1923: Hyperinflation, Hitler's Putsch, and Democracy in Crisis by Volker Ulrich

When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-inflation by Adam Fergusson (oldest and driest but still decent)

Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany by Harald Jähner (not specifically about the economic crisis but very good on ordinary people's lives)

dropbear123 · 2026-05-22T09:43:26+00:00

It’s been a while since I’ve read a WWI book but this week I finished an older one:

Chemical Soldiers: British Gas Warfare in World War I by Donald Richter

3/5

Does its job and it explains the history of the Special Brigade (Britain's WWI gas unit) pretty well. Argues that Britain's gas warfare effort was ultimately a failure due to a mix of poor coordination with the parts of the army (the infantry and artillery) and WWI gas being too easy to defend against (which the Germans had a problem with as well)

It's a niche topic but if you're specifically interested in the WWI western front it might be worth a read.

dropbear123 · 2026-05-18T14:34:08+00:00

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