I don’t attribute a lot of positive things to social media, but I will give it credit for turning me around on spiders. Arachnophobia scared the crap out of me as a kid. For years afterward, I’d never sit down on a toilet without first getting down on my hands and knees to make sure there weren’t any spiders lurking underneath the bowl. Thanks to years of spiderbro memes, now I generally view them as comrades.

You’re not alone.

Perhaps the Balrog underestimated Gandalf, thinking it could cast him into the abyss, then fly back up to deal with the rest of the Fellowship. Alternatively, maybe it calculated that its best chance of defeating the wizard was to grapple with him at close quarters. Either way, the Balrog falling doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t capable of flight.

Nothing to do with cryptocurrency. Great podcast, though.

Because the apparently straight lines contradict the labels. As drawn, the unlabeled bottom vertices are clearly 90°, not 80° and 100°. We must either conclude that the labels are incorrect, or that the figure is not drawn to scale. Either way, it’s insoluble.

I’m looking forward to the inevitable Flop House episode.

I’ve just reinstalled Grim Dawn, having last played it some years ago, and am currently working my way through Act 2. I don’t frequently play ARPG’s, but I’ll try a new one when I get it in a bundle or somesuch. Mostly, they don’t hold my interest. Grim Dawn, vanilla and unmodded (I assume there’s some kind of modding scene; haven’t looked yet) still manages to scratch that itch for me. At some point I’ll pick up the DLC. Right now I just want to find something good enough to replace this crazy caster 2h sword I’m using, so that I can bring Albrecht’s Aether Ray back into the rotation!

Man, I’ve been wanting to pick up Rimworld forever, but I’m pretty scrupulous about only buying games at a steep discount (making exceptions for supporting indie devs I like), and I’ve never seen it more than 20% off. I guess we’ll see who blinks first.

I don’t think that most of the people we might consider evil have that level of self-awareness. Certainly those with a pathological lack of empathy are overrepresented in the highest echelons of power. It doesn’t logically follow that they see themselves as bad.

I really appreciate this take. It’s good-hearted and makes good sense. I’ll try to remember it going forward, when cynicism overwhelms.

Thanks for the write-up! Am also ex-11B, and this really takes me back. A lot of things I don’t miss about the army. Having a new officer come in and make some shitty changes, seemingly just to stroke their ego and put a bullet on their OER—that’s definitely on the list.

If you’re interested, The Flop House (long running bad movie podcast with three hosts and sometimes a guest; 2/3 hosts are former Daily Show writers [they are three cishet white guys, but not stupid or bigoted]) did an episode with Parker Bennett, one of the screenwriters of the '93 SMB movie. He’s got some pretty great anecdotes about making it!

What does libertarianism have to do with anything? The US health insurance industry is objectively evil. It exists solely to extract profits, while providing no service. It’s just a middleman between you and health care providers. It’s a poster child for regulatory capture and blatant corruption.

Every single article about “gen x” this or “gen z” that is 100% bullshit. Stop reposting this garbage.

Thank you. This pretty well sums up my perspective on them as well.

Yeah, it’s too bad it’s only 200 million, and only “X”. All the billionaire-controlled, black-box content algorithm social media sites are a cancer on humanity. Nobody’s freedom is being impinged upon by banning them; they’re the private fiefdoms of oligarchs, who blatantly wield them in service of their own agendas. Banning them is the sensible thing to do, and I can only hope that other governments follow suit.

My impression of r/menslib, formed when I was subbed there several years ago, was that it catered to people with more money than problems. The discussion there was never about real issues.

I had a science teacher that told us, “If you sneeze three times and nobody blesses you, the devil takes your soul!”

It’s science.

FWIW, I’m dual-booting windows and mint atm. Separate drives, but just one EFI partition, and this update hasn’t borked things for me.

Literally listening to the author’s podcast as I came across this (Elliott Kalan, and he has a few podcasts, but the OG and my favorite is The Flop House).