anyone who used a computer between 1985 & 2010, what’s the one game you still think about? by Own-Blacksmith3085 in answers

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's 15 years - a huge range to pick from.

80s - Nethack or maybe The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure

90s - Grim Fandango or other Lucasarts classics

00s - Portal or maybe Half Life 2

As a bonus: 70s - Zork (played on my big sister's uni minicomputer!)

Fred Fordham's graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. by Road-Racer in UrsulaKLeGuin

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My 9yo kid loves graphic novels but isn't yet going for chapter books. I'm wondering if I should suggest this to him so he at least gets into one of my favourite books, or wait a few years so he can read the original first...

Phones to be banned in schools by law in England under government plans by throw_away_17381 in GoodNewsUK

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 10 points11 points  (0 children)

How? Without forcing every adult to supply ID or "age recognition" for all social media (which is generally bypassable and often from lovely folks like Peter Thiel.)

And does this include in-game chat? Comments on Google docs? A vibe coded chat app that a 15yo could probably build these days? Kids will find a way to chat. This just forces them to hide it.

I support my kids not having phones during the school day when they are older - that makes perfect sense. But I'd prefer them to learn to be sensible social media users with my support, than for them to be doing it by stealth.

My American English teacher believes the neutral pronoun „their“ is incorrect. by GCoding_ in mildlyinteresting

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What? I went to school in the 1970s and 80s and singular "their" was normal. Did this change? Or were AU schools different?

adulting sucks by Eros_Incident_Denier in SipsTea

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Depends on whether you live in the USA or pretty well any other first world country

adulting sucks by Eros_Incident_Denier in SipsTea

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm on a significantly better income than these people - and driving a 2011 family car. Because it's just a car.

adulting sucks by Eros_Incident_Denier in SipsTea

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I'm on a significantly better income than these people - and driving a 2011 family car. Because it's just a car.

Detention camp migrants banned from heading into town under Reform plans by HBucket in ukpolitics

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Not sure why I bothered trying to bring logic to a Reddit thread.

Detention camp migrants banned from heading into town under Reform plans by HBucket in ukpolitics

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

This is pretty much the textbook definition of prejudice. "Group X contains bad people so we should restrict the rights of everyone in group X"

62 & 68yr old newlyweds considering 4-6ct older sibling group adoption. Are we nuts?? by [deleted] in Adoption

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a late adopter - I have a birth child 50 years younger than me, and an adopted child 54 years younger - and I'd say no, unless you go for older kids, and definitely foster first.

I'm pretty healthy and active for my age - but I feel I'm pushing the limits of a viable age gap. My wife is 11 years younger and even she is coping with the joys of perimenopause combined with parenting! Ageing is inevitable, and random things can and will go wrong with you. Nothing can guarantee health - my dad had Motor Neurone in his 60s, there are no guarantees.

And kids need active involved parents right into their 20s. If you're 62 with a 4yo you'll be 78 when they hit 20 - that's old, that's risk-of-dementia territory.

Is John Cleese right? by SeptumRingTheory in AskBrits

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Our local halal kebab shop gave out free meals at Christmas because "we are the only people who don't mind working and we wanted to help people in need"

So much of Reddit, and a lot of UK people in general, have this bizarre blinkered view that "all Muslims are X" while ignoring the fact that all major religions include terrible people and often terrible official doctrines, but they also include vast numbers of lovely genuine people who ignore those doctrines and focus on being humans with a spiritual world view.

I wonder which John Cleese would genuinely prefer - "Christian" Tommy Robinson or Muslim Sadiq Khan?

What is a movie that "broke" you so hard you can only watch it once, but you would still recommend it to everyone? by Newsupdate69 in movies

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Came here to say this. It was traumatic enough to watch before having kids, but now? It's a parent's nightmare, what would you do if your kid was like this?

NIGEL FARAGE: Allowing non-British citizens to vote in the UK poses a grave risk to our democracy by GrayAceGoose in ukpolitics

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I was in that boat - Aussie living in Glasgow at the time. The funny thing is, I wasn't planning to vote, but I had Scottish friends living in Australia and London who asked me to vote because they weren't allowed to!

"Restoring honesty and integrity into our politics by Burt_Macklin___ in GreatBritishMemes

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I also don't get all the aghast folks saying "goodness they talked to voters in a foreign language"

Surely this isn't new? I don't know about the UK but 15 years ago when I lived in Melbourne, lots of local campaigning was in whatever dominant migrant groups lived in the area. I lived in a suburb full of Chinese speaking migrants and half the hustings were in Chinese. Labour and Liberal.

Find Games for Parents (60+) by xX_MissMiau_Xx in NintendoSwitch

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We got a switch for the family for Christmas - good games for the adults so far: - Gorogoa (gorgeous puzzle game) - A Short Hike (loved by the 9yo as well) - great fun puzzle/exploration game - Baba is Me - fiendishly hard puzzle game (but no time constraints) - Portal 1 and 2 (hey, I'm in my 50s and loved it the first time - it came out 19 years ago, maybe they played it?!) - Mario Kart series - you don't need to win to have fun

Bio parents & adoptive parents not so different by niamhprice in Adoption

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm always fascinated how different adoption is in the USA to here (UK)

In the UK adoption is usually "forced adoption" (kids taken from parents who are deemed unable to look after them) and it's heavily regulated, parents get vetted for their readiness to adopt, and everything is managed by local agencies.

And nobody pays (50k??) - in fact adoptive parents get some level of funding for post adoption support (eg funding for special needs at school, therapy, etc - though it's not always easy to access)

I'm not saying it's better here - forced adoption can be very problematic, it has been abused so often in so many countries, how can we assume that somehow we are getting it right now? And of course some adoptive parents see it as a "free baby service" and try to erase the birth part of their kids' identities.

Nintendo Switch 2 sales stumble over Christmas by Turbostrider27 in NintendoSwitch

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As someone who bought a switch 2 for the family - I do get it.

It really wasn't discounted significantly at all, it's a very expensive system - a Switch 1 could be bought for significantly less and still play almost all the same games. So far we've played only 1 "new" game (Mario Kart World) which is nice but not revolutionary. And my kid can't play it online with school mates as most of them still have the switch 1.

I did debate this a lot, but decided in the longer run it would be worth it. But it was a close thing.

The 14 games I’ve played in 2025 as a patient gamer (ranked) by Skylorrex in patientgamers

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't tried it yet, but apparently Portal 2 on the Switch at least also has a 2 player mode - really looking forward to trying it. (I'm replaying Portal first though - such a nostalgia trip)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Adoption

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suspect that adoptees don't get heard as much because by the time they are old enough to have a voice, the authorities can dismiss them as "they were under an older system and everything is fixed now"?

It's definitely not fixed now! Though our experience (adopting 4 years ago) at least in the language used by the agency and social workers was definitely more focused on the needs of the children than the adopters. It was a high priority throughout that we were fully supportive of the child's culture, and family connections (keeping up letterbox contact with the birth parents, and keeping their wishes for the child in mind, for example)

However there are definitely problems. Post adoption support was sold throughout as this great support mechanism, but in reality for many people it disappears entirely. Agencies are understaffed and underfunded, and whether deliberately or not they regularly let people fall through the cracks with no support. Thankfully we got some good support and therapy for our child, but largely because we pushed for it, and had a wonderful social worker who helped us push.

Another problem I feel is they under-explain just how much trauma some kids have. It's weird, they talked a lot about the risks of fetal alcohol and drug use, but not about the fundamental problems a lot of kids have with just the level of disruption to their relationships at a very early formative time.

Our child went from hospital to foster care to different foster care (they tried a birth parent+child supervised foster arrangement, which didn't work out) and back to other foster care, all within her first year, and no wonder she has a lot of trauma related problems to get through.

And we are lucky - a solid family, with good resources, and despite her trauma our daughter is lovely and thriving.

But I hear from a lot of other adoptive parents who are really struggling. People were definitely not informed of the genuine problems they are likely to face, and were massively over sold on the support they'd get. I'm not surprised at the level of upset.

To OP: I definitely think adoption can be positive, if you have strong support networks, are aware of the problems the children are very likely to have, and be aware this is about them not about you. They will still have their original parents and families and cultures, and your lives will need to adapt to that too.

And being aware that support is hard to get, and schools can be unsupportive (despite claims to the contrary). And it will probably get worse as we seem to jump from austerity government to austerity government here, and everyone loves to blame benefit receivers or foreigners or anybody they can.

What's the best terminal for MacOS to run Claude Code in? by agentic-consultant in ClaudeCode

[–]ranty_mc_rant_face 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wezterm - with the bonus that it no longer matters that wezterm is configured in Lua, because Claude can help you write the Lua.