I believe the problem is that WOTC was incredibly hard to work with. They should have a lot more freedom with their own IP.

I can feel the difference between 71 and 73 in my house.

At 73, my kids room is uncomfortably hot. At 71, it has a perfect chill for sleeping.

Of course the kids don’t know how to read them. Kids rarely encounter analog clocks and when they do, they have several digital clocks within arms length. Most people wouldn’t reach for a slide rule when they have a calculator.

And to be fair, analog clocks are objectively worse than digital clocks in every way aside from aesthetics.

I would argue otherwise.

Wikipedia is incomprehensibly large. Perhaps the largest database of vetted human knowledge ever.

I know for a fact you can find inaccuracies and biased information if you look for it. But it’s rare relative to the amount of information that exists there.

Yeah, RDO is pretty much garbage. Blatant cash grab.

Did you beat the game?

I agree with this guy that it may be the best Western ever written.

Collect 3,000 cells in this wide open world to collect your skins.

Buy 4,000 cells to get this custom pirate skin for your character.

I don’t worry that she will end democracy.

She will do a bunch of dumb Republican stuff and make America objectively worse for a lot of people. But the Republic will survive her presidency at least.

Trump, not so much.

For longevity?

Satisfactory and Elden Ring.

Honestly, something like Call of Duty or fortnite might be nice too. I haven’t played in years but the skill ceiling is very high so it could at least keep me occupied for a very long time.

I don’t really want to play adversity Olympics with you but since you insist.

My parents were on food stamps and going to food pantries when I was a kid. Father was an absent alcoholic and drug addict. I myself struggled with heroin addiction in my teens and 20s and ended up ruining my life - or so I thought.

I managed to climb out of that hole (using Obamacare and the support of my family) to find a whole new perspective on my life.

I was angry, bitter, nihilistic, and selfish. I was obsessed with how bad and unfair the world is, and it gave me every excuse to keep buying bundles and nodding into oblivion.

Once I got clear of the horrible opiate withdrawal and paid back the considerable money I owed - once I stopped wanting to overdose and kill myself - I realized how nice it is to be able to take a walk on a warm day and just check out the birds. I realized a cup of coffee and a sandwich is a blissful experience, especially when shared with a friend or loved one.

When I think about the eternity I will spend in non-existence after I die, I know that I have very limited time to enjoy this strange and beautiful trip I’m on. I know this little blip would be the envy of the non-existent. If ghosts were real, I bet every one of them would kill to come back and just feel the sensations of smell, taste, touch, and sound. Or to look at something pretty.

Like dude, I’ve had parts of my life that were fucking miserable. Please don’t tell me it’s so easy. I’ve just decided to enjoy it and practice gratitude. Whatever happens to me, I remind myself that it’s better than going through opiate withdrawal on a plastic cot and wishing I was dead while everyone was disgusted with me.

Life, on average, is much easier now than it’s ever been. The wealthiest men alive didn’t have access to basic over the counter medicine that we have today. If you die of some horrific disease tomorrow, you’ve still had a higher quality of life than most of the richest people who have ever lived.

You know why my ramblings about the beauty of life sound so corny? It’s because a lot of people have realized it before. Because it’s so often said that it sounds cliche. There is a reason so many people have come to these conclusions.

My advice to you is to touch grass. No joke. And if you don’t want to touch grass, go watch a movie that makes you feel awe. Go read a book that moves you. Otherwise you’re going to have your eyes opened on your death bed and wish you had lived differently. Happens all the time man.

Bidet attachment https://www.amazon.com/Bidet-Non-Electric-Mechanical-Attachment-Self-Cleaning/dp/B00P2XZDGG

And I grew up with window unit air conditioners. They kept a couple rooms cool no problem.

I don’t see how I’m talking out my ass.

I really love that you said test hamster instead of guinea pig.

I’m using this from now on.

I actually think life, for all its faults, is a beautiful and amazing opportunity. It’s a special blink of existence where we get to witness the unimaginable beauty in our universe.

Perhaps our lives (in the West, at least) have gotten too easy. Not that I want to go back or live a harder life - I don’t. But for most of human history, there was a pretty solid chance you were going to live a sick, miserable, religion-filled life as a soldier, slave, or peasant. All the while, you’d have pretty much no control over what happened to you. Even the wealthy and powerful were shitting in holes and sweating in the heat. Today, it costs you about two hours of easy labor to get a bidet and maybe 10 hours of labor to get an air conditioner that will keep you cool for many years. People still found meaning and reasons to keep going through the thousands of years of famine, plague, war, and slavery. They kept seeing something that made them want to have babies and love them.

The world isn’t perfect but it’s better than it’s ever been in most ways. Even if we don’t survive climate change and late-stage capitalism, I think the time I’ve already had with my son has been beautiful and meaningful. I only hope he gets to experience love, satisfaction, simple pleasures, etc. Even just a comfortable nap or the feeling of accomplishment after completing a task. It’s all so fragile and temporary. We are the universe experiencing itself and it’s really beautiful despite the miserable parts.

I think anyone who has worked HR knows why you ask for references.

Because some people literally list their mother.

Because others list previous employers or even best friends who have nothing nice to say about them.

And because some people, having really thought it through and providing the best reference they can come up with, list their buddy Steve who will get on the phone and say something like:

“Jack? Great fuckin’ guy man. Works hard and parties hard, ya know? Just keep his psycho ex away from the job site bro, that bitch is crazy.”

You can weed these people out without wasting time. Half of what a job interview is about is seeing if people have a good head on their shoulders. If you pick a bad reference or lack a good reference and don’t even have the brains to have someone lie for you, it’s probably the tip of the iceberg with your bad choices.

Split screen games have second person camera angles! You’re able to see through the eyes of someone interacting with you but you aren’t actually playing from their perspective.

It’s first person view for them but second for you.

One big difference I think.

Nazi Germany lost in outright combat against an enemy they had always said they could beat. They were decimated and many of their sycophants were killed in battle.

Unless Trump and his followers start an actual armed rebellion and get put down, I don’t see how they end up ashamed.

Beating Trump in court, while it needs to be done, allows all of his followers to keep saying, “See? We told you the deep state was out to get him.”

I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s not a super common occurrence.

And even if it is, locking down the entire internet and monitoring people in an Orwellian fashion isn’t the government’s job.

What happened back in the day when kids walked in on their parents doing the deed? What did the parents do when their child snuck a passage of Shakespeare and read all the filthy jokes he wrote?

Oh, they spoke to the kids and guided them through a normal part of life?

I have a son. I would like for him to not see graphic images on the Internet. But when he does, I will explain to him that human beings have sex (which is why he exists). I will tell him that sometimes people like to watch videos about it because it feels good to them. I will explain to him that it’s fake, just like the action movies and violence he sees on TV. I will tell him it’s nothing like that in reality and I will explain to him that he’s not ready to see that material yet.

Fascists always gain control by offering “safety.” Ironically, they’re more dangerous than the thing they claim to protect you from.

Yeah, making a government list of porn watchers with their watch history available is 100% going to be abused. It will not turn out well.

Donald Trump’s presidency pretty much removed any doubt I had about the official 9/11 story.

He proved that our government is full of regular idiots who are just barely able to work together. Of course the 3 letter agencies have a lot of power and fancy technology, but if the CIA or NSA was seriously that in control of this country, Trump would have never happened. He is a bumbling moron who did a ton of damage to this country and nobody lifted a finger apparently? Damaging alliances, burning undercover assets, etc.

Our Congress can’t work together long enough to pass basic bills. No way the Patriot act was planned with a false flag in mind.

The 9/11 conspiracy is just way too big and would need way too many participants to keep it under wraps like that.

Plus, every big disaster has conspiracy theories. If you believe all of them, you’re pretty much saying bad things never happen without the overlords planning them. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, JFK assassination, RFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and every other major event have had massive conspiracy theories and claims that they were inside jobs.

Yeah, the official story has holes but reality is messy. It was a big attack involving/affecting a lot of agencies, corporations, and people. It’s pretty much guaranteed that out of the measly 365 days in a year, a lot of these groups and individuals would be doing their “once a year” inspections, misremember details in their panic, deal with other terrorist attacks, intersect with ongoing crimes that were being committed separately, etc.

Seriously, a plane crashed into one of the biggest and wealthiest business centers in the world. The conspiracy theories write themselves no matter how clear the evidence is. Of course one of those companies has ties to foreign governments, obviously one of the CEOs is commiting fraud, one of the employees is bound to have worked for the government in a sensitive role. Imagine the ties you could find on one of the planes alone. Every plane in the sky right now has a politician’s relative, a political activist, a criminal, a foreign diplomat, high-ranking military, or all of the above. All of these things would spark a great conspiracy theory. Imagine the things you could find if you wanted to blame Boeing. Start looking into details about every employee they have and connect some dots. It’s easy.

Schools are absolutely guilty of underpaying teachers and overpaying admin. Many probably mismanage their funds to some degree. And a lot spend way too much on sports stadiums and other things they probably could do without.

But don’t forget, they also have to shell out tens of millions of dollars all at once when their infrastructure needs to be fixed or updated. If the student population grows, they may be on the hook to build entire hallways full of classrooms and the necessary technology for each room. Usually they sock money away knowing that things have limited lifespans. Even still, many unplanned expenses and planned updates have to wait due to lack of funding.

1. Listening to AM 740 out of Toronto. I’m in the US but it comes over here. My grandma listened to it and I find it calming when I’m stressed because my grandma was the only person who truly loved me unconditionally and without question.

2. Eat bits of granola cereal one at a time and chew them slowly. I don’t even really like it. It’s just such a simple food and I can kind of meditate on how simple it is.

3. This isn’t odd but a hot bath. Truly a portal to another world for me.

4. Listen to Dreamscape on YouTube and imagine dystopian fantasy/sci-fi worlds I could live in. Maybe I’m stranded on an alien planet, maybe I’m in a dark forest and creatures are hunting me, or maybe I’m driving through a foggy, wooded hillside and I see something weird I need to investigate. Whatever the scenario, it gives me an escape from emotions I don’t want to feel and allows me to create situations where I can feel whatever emotion I do need to feel.