Not exactly the best example, since that's not a typical behavior but a result of poor scientific practices. Mantises only take that action when extremely stressed, which is frankly a lesson we should be carefully considering.

If you can't stop the (possible) coming disasters, what's the point in paralyzing yourself with fear? Do what you reasonably can to prepare, and enjoy the life that you have now while it's here.

Things will certainly get worse, and disasters will happen in the coming decades, but the end is not right around the corner. The decline will be slow, and it's still possible that solutions, or at least mitigations, will be found. Look for little ways to contribute something positive, and try to appreciate the moment.

Nope, neither were, they're both flying reptiles in the Pterosaur clade. They did live alongside dinosaurs though.

False Claim rejected:

You can't just invent an entire story for this person that you know nothing about as some kind of "evidence".

Social norms are encouraged to keep the status quo and control people. The biggest danger they face is from ignorant assholes who think they don't deserve to live just because they want to live their life a different way.

That's just about as backwards an idea as I could imagine. They experience depression because of how they're treated by people (probably especially people like you, judging by the username).

As usual simply reading the text makes it clear this is nothing but exaggeration and fear mongering. The book says restricting people to strict gender roles causes depression. Absolutely nothing suggests children should be depressed about their gender.

That's exactly why I didn't buy D3 or StarCraft 2, and why I haven't played a Blizzard game since. If it requires online for single player, it's a hard pass for me.

I agree with you 100%, I truly miss that sense of adventure and exploration gained from stumbling through a world and discovering things as they appear.

I'm definitely gonna sound like an old fart here, but it's a symptom of the games and technology of today. The mindset TPC has when creating games is that they need to hold kids attention and that if they get stuck, they'll just move on to some other game/video/whatever and drop Pokemon. Sadly I think they know their audience to an extent. I mean when I first played Blue it was literally the only game I had. When I got stuck in rock tunnel, all I could do was keep trying, and maybe get a peek at a strategy guide if i could get a parent to take me to a bookstore.

Now on switch they're competing against a massive library of free games specifically tailed to get children addicted, and thousands of cheap options and single digit prices sales. It's so easy for a kid to hit a wall and just drop it for the next shiny thing.

That said, if they want to keep their adult audience, they could really easily give an option to skip the tutorials, and maybe even an option for more complex dungeons (though that would require TPC to put in real effort, and we see how that's gone so far). Sadly I don't think we'll see Pokemon return to that age of wold exploration, but hopefully the fan game community continues to thrive and pick up the slack in that area.

Coromon is another one that's worth a shot. Much better story and world than Nexomon, only occasional 2v2 battles, and some of the best monster designs outside old school Pokemon IMO. It's not a big a diversion from Pokemon as Cassette Beasts is, which could be good or bad depending on what your looking for.

Gen 4 was the worst for slowness IMO, Platinum improved it a bit but DP was horrible in that regard. I can't play any Pokemon games outside an emulator with a speed control at this point, it's just miserable.

A big second here for Infinite Fusion! I just found out about it a couple weeks ago and I've been absolutely loving it. It's certainly the classic Red/Blue storyline, but with just enough changes to the maps/story to feel fresh and interesting. The fusions are so much fun, especially the community created art. I wound up finishing my first run with an entire team of Monster Hunter themed Pokemon. Now I'm trying out the randomizer mode and it's such a blast. Despite browsing the discord for a while and seeing dozens of Hall of Fame teams I'm still finding fresh fusions constantly, it's really amazing.