Ten and a half hours to go for me. I’m about to head off to a friends place to play some Go, and some of that well known variant slightly-tipsy Go, with other club members. It is also our hosts something-somethingth birthday, so there will be a lot of Japanese food. Then we’ll see in the new year.
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Delicious program!
6:30am here, and still on OGS.
Happy new year, hope all the best to OGS, its team and players.
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Happy 2024 everyone. A couple of people are letting off fireworks even though its raining
I actually wanted to play a game on an actual board at midnight since that would mean I could claim to have played the first real-board game of 2024 on the entire planet. Alas, the party wound up about an hour ago 
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Happy new year everyone!
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As we Austrians say when the old year comes to an end: Slide well into the new year!
I’m not so optimistic in things getting better soon, but I’ll gladly be proven wrong.
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Happy new year! Looking forward to an exciting year!
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Just 90 minutes till the new year. I was trying to finish my 11th Travis McGee novel by John D. McDonald, but I don’t have the reading stamina I used to have. So, rather than being my last book of 2023, it will have to be my first book of 2024.
Instead I wasted my time watching a thoroughly rotten SF-horror movie, Event Horizon, which is even worse than the 1997 critics and audiences said. Today it has gained a small cult following, which I must conclude is among fans of gore and ridiculous horror cliches.
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Same. I was trying to finish a book yesterday as well, but I didn’t have enough time so it’ll have to be the first book I finish reading in 2024 as well. 
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Maybe 2024 will be a better year. This does seem a bit fatalistic to me.
Also last year’s 2023: “Things change, and they don’t change back.” was a bit gloomy.
A better world is only possible if you actively try to be that change. Passively waiting for what is going to happen, will not work.
So, what are you going to do to make it a better world?
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If that was true, it would mean every single person has to actively try to be that change.
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Happy new year.
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That is quite correct, but in the grand scheme of things, it is true that there isn’t much that can be done.
For example 2023 was a great year for me, I completed a ton of work, my project completed a lot of translations, I did a lot of things and personal goals and most of them went my way. Maybe one of my best years ever, if we look at it objectively.
However it was a bad year for the country. I did what I could on that matter since we had quite a few elections, but it didn’t work out.
If you zoom out a bit more, it was a bad year for Europe too. And if you zoom out more, it was a bad year for the planet (wars, economy, employment, problems with supplies etc), unless you are into crypto (in which case it is still a bad year for the rest of us, because “crypto-bros” are going to return very soon ). I can’t say that I can think of anything that people like you or me could have done to improve things in such a large scale.
So, in the grander picture the “maybe 2024 will be better??” sounds fatalistic, but ultimately it is quite optimistic, if you ask me.
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As an AI, I cannot predict the future or provide real upcoming news events. However, I can create a fictional scenario for you. Please remember that the following is a made-up example of an unexpected event that could, hypothetically, occur in 2024:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Global News Network (GNN) Press Office
Email: press@globenewsnetwork.com
BREAKING: Meteor Shower Turns into Unexpected Meteor Strike on July 28, 2024
July 28, 2024 – In a startling turn of events, what was expected to be a routine annual meteor shower has resulted in an unexpected meteor strike, causing widespread astonishment around the world.
Earlier this month, astronomers had forecasted the arrival of the Perseid meteor shower, an event eagerly anticipated by stargazers every year. However, at approximately 3:15 AM GMT, a previously undetected meteor, estimated to be roughly 10 meters in diameter, penetrated Earth’s atmosphere and impacted a remote area of the Siberian tundra.
The impact was not completely unforeseen, as space agencies around the world had detected an anomaly just hours before the collision but lacked sufficient time to accurately predict the landing zone. Fortunately, the location of the impact was uninhabited, and no casualties have been reported.
The force of the meteor strike has been estimated to be equivalent to that of a small tactical nuclear weapon. Seismic stations across Asia and Europe recorded the event, which caused a minor earthquake with a magnitude of 4.2.
Emergency services were dispatched promptly to assess the situation, and teams of scientists are en route to the impact site to gather data. This incident has reignited discussions about planetary defense and the need for improved detection systems for near-Earth objects (NEOs).
“This is a wake-up call for the global community,” said Dr. Helena M. Brandt, Director of the European Space Operations Centre. “While this event thankfully resulted in no loss of life, it highlights the necessity for investment in asteroid detection and deflection strategies. It’s not a matter of if, but when, another such object heads our way with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
The meteor strike is expected to have minimal environmental impact due to the remoteness of the location. However, the event has caused a temporary disturbance in local wildlife patterns.
Global leaders are expected to convene an emergency meeting to discuss the implications of this event and to coordinate an international response to enhance NEO monitoring efforts.
For more updates, stay tuned to GNN.
This is a fictional news article and should be treated as such.
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That new perspective could also mess with your astrological horoscope in the new year.
I do not know if anyone here believes in astrology, but I have a funny story about it (not sure if I have written this before or not, either):
A few years ago I was working as a typesetter in the local weekly newspaper and we used to receive a couple of “stock articles” from another friendly publication (the sent us the weekly horoscope and something else that was similarly non-news related). At some point that publication went under, so we stopped receiving our email with the horoscope. The matter was not really important (since it was non-news) so the owner/editor told me to look over the internet to find something similar. I thought about it and gave it a couple of google searches, but not only copying a random horoscope that someone else had mde might have had legal consequenses, it was not easy to find a comparable horoscope that fitted the allocated space in the typesetting. 
So, I did this: Let’s say it was edition 265. I went to the archive, found edition 165 and copy-pasted the old horoscope as it was, without any changes (after all they are written vaguely and without any date reference on purpose).
Weeks later the editor told me this: "I am getting a lot of praise lately about our horoscopes and how good they are. Where did you end up getting them from, after all?
So, I told her what I did and she couldn’t stop thinking of the “praise” she was getting and laughing for the rest of the day
It is all made up. Looking up into correcting scientifically something that is not scientific, is like trying to pump gas into a Tesla car. 
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You just proved that time is cyclic.
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Not really, since most of the time it was wildly wrong about planets aligning and what is retrograding at the time and what is not, but it is all bogus, and noone would check those things either.
What would the readers that believe in that stuff going to do? Look up an actual scientific source to see if Mercury is really retrograding or not? Or maybe check with their telescope? 
I am very amused by this astronomy thing at this particular moment because I called a friend of mine that is desparately looking for work to wish him a happy good year and he did have good news!
A company that had told him to begin work at 8th February, called him to begin at 8th January, so he is literally saved!
But he hasn’t signed the contract yet.
Why? I asked? Is it not good?
He hasn’t even read it yet. He is waiting a couple of days because Mercury is retrograding. As if reading it two days later would change the content of the paperwork. I heard that an hour ago and I am still trying to stop smiling and I am still failing.
This was so absurd that it is the first day of the year and it is already a good candidate for the funniest thing I’ll hear this year. 
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