This brings back some memories! I used to play the Ancient Art of War at Sea on my dad's Mac Plus as a kid. Having never sailed, it was fun to learn about tacking while trying to broadside spanish galleons. Years later, I lied about my experience to convince a resort to let me check out a tiny catamaran. I made it back to shore!
One recommendation: make the boats not turn quite so fast. It allows you to outmaneuver other vessels by planning ahead or gaining speed ahead of time.
I still don't know much about sailing, but I have a lot of kitesurfing experience. Do boats really travel that slowly downwind? I assume that crosswind is faster, but downwind should still move at the speed of the wind.
I don’t play much, but some people who play the “commander” format build decks that are carefully balanced against each other. My buddy and I had a blast collecting most of the Lord of the Rings set and playing games of Hobbits vs Sauron, Gandalf vs Galadriel, etc.
That’s how I first played it when I was 14 too. My friend hand a deck of each color and we just took turns playing them.
You might be able to find someone who has built 4 balanced commander decks and you can just play
There are other RPGs with light rules that are WAY more fun than D&D. I've been playing "Blades in the Dark" recently, where the players run heists in a victorian ghost industrial city. It's an absolute delight.
D&D is better as a video game. Try Baldur's gate. It has the side benefit of teaching you the rules if you ever want to jump in to a local game
You’ll never be blown too high. Rocks can be dangerous, but only in certain places and only if you make bad decisions: there are many safe locations around the world. It’s probably about as safe as skiing overall?
Quite weather dependent, but there are places around the world that have very reliable wind during certain seasons. My home area in BC is good almost every day in the summer. Brazil is fantastic all fall, etc
One can take many good ideas from less wrong, yudkowsky et al without adopting a rationalist identity. Sure, it attracted wackos and they made a cult or two. But that could happen to anyone!
I work remotely, and my schedule is flexible. I live in Squamish BC all summer which is great for wind. In the winter we are in UT but my friends take lots of kiting destination vacations.
I’m fairly late in my career though (44yo), so I’ve opted for a lower salary, low stress and flexible job.
Not sure if you were looking only for indoor hobbies, but I picked up Kiteboarding recently, and it is the most outrageously fun thing I've ever done.
It's like being a kid and jumping off the house with a bedsheet, except it works. Most mistakes are laughed off by splashing in the water. I'm 3 years in and I can jump 7-10m then fly like a bird for 5-10 seconds without consequences.
Even as a beginner, sailing around or just feeling a kite pull you around is such a blast. Keep in mind it's really difficult and pretty much requires 10-20 hours of private lessons.
A lot! Maybe it's obvious, but I've long thought that religion's primary function is to help people process death (and other suffering). Now that life isn't constant suffering, many of us have discarded religion, but then we are blindsided by death.
I was very religious for 30 years, and have a very religious family. I've been athiest for more than a decade now, and it's sad to me that to leave religion behind I had to give up all my family traditions to process death. Those traditions are still there, but I can't relate to them since they are based on a belief I no longer agree with
#2 is true of everyone. I'm not arguing against the kind of empathy you're describing, I just think we should extend it to all sorts of criminals. The murderer and rapist in the cell was screwed the moment they were born to dysfunctional, probably abusive parents. They have to fight hard to break the generational cycle.
All this means is that crime and violence are a systemic problem. Thinking about free will as the cause of crime isn't useful compared to thinking about how we might support and treat abused children and help them take a different path.
I have many rock climbing friends who live on less than 15k a year. They often do it for years, working seasonally 3-5 months a year. the trick is to go somewhere with a very cheap lifestyle. It can be accomplished by living in your car in the mountains, or traveling to SE Asia, etc. The climbing provides something to do and a sense of community.
There are other cultures like this. I’ve seen kids from Europe doing a gap year staying in hostels for very little (they sometimes do some light work for the hostel to get a free place to stay)
I don't think it's currently possible to book flights to Google Flights itself. Doesn't it always redirect you to another site to book? You would have to contact that site for help in this siutation.
In that mac game, there was a tradeoff between speed and the number of cannons / health too