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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1841 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 11, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The "Grok wants to rape Will Stancil" thing is still ongoing. Will even went on the local news about it. The memes and jokes are just spectacular. This is the funniest fucking thing that's happened on the internet since Trump put all the libtards in crystals.

But the thing that pushed me to share the unhinged, surrealist joy of the Dankest Timeline was this absolute bunker-buster of a post from Big Yud himself.

The memes continue to deliver.

Another one

I don't think it's going to contaminate the dataset so thoroughly, but seeing as 2-3 million relatively tech savvy Americans loathe liberals and probably 50,000 of them have a twisted sense of humor, the odds of Stancil getting visited by a Teslabot when these start selling is .. very, very high.

absolute bunker-buster of a post from Big Yud himself.

Hey! I was looking for an excuse to post that pic 😡

(I really can't get enough of the WS hate. I barely know what the guy did to become a lolcow, but I'm munching popcorn nonetheless)

He's the kind of guy who spent his life regurgitating official stats without a hint of critical thinking, because that's what a good student / smart person does, right? But when he gets pushed back, he shows the black heart of a concentration camp guard, just, you know, impotent and sad.

Like a year and a half ago, he got into it with Steve Sailer on HBD. Sailer was polite, but the pile-ons were like watching a herd of lions toy with a sickly gazelle. And Will just did not seem to have the slightest idea how to actually mount an argument when he had to think for himself instead of just repeating the NYT or government stats and he quickly devolved into Downfall, Hitler-In-The-Bunker tier scitzo-ranting about how everyone who disagreed with him were "vermin" who needed to be "expunged", mixed with plaintive cries begging to know why no one else in his tribe was helping him. Why did he argue against the hordes of darkness alone?

And the hordes just spammed him with lines like "Because they know how this ends" and "NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE YOU, WILL".

He's just kind of the biggest, most easily riled dork on the internet, and he can't help himself but enagage every time.

I appreciate the detail. Ah, would life be nearly as colorful if there weren't so many lolcows mooing out of desperation to be milked?

He tried to engage with, rage-bait and jostle with the 4chan crowd to raise his standing I think, only for his lowly political aspirations to flop. Problem is that the 4chan crowd are just plain better at being rude and aggressive online.

That's not to say he lacks his own clapbacks. I recall an exchange along these lines:

Will Stancil’s 2011 NYE Rape Spree Groyper: We are going to do things to you that have never been done before

Will Stancil: I don't know, I thought you made your intentions perfectly clear

Not to mention Vril Stancil, Triumph of the Will, Stancilwaffen...

https://x.com/BovrilG/status/1761548880166920660/photo/1

Thank you for that. But human memory, while capacious, isn't infinite, and I wonder if I'll ever want these neurons back.

Digital fast update, Peter and Paul edition.

  1. Your Name, +2. A feature-length anime about a city boy and a country girl swapping bodies that takes an unexpected turn when they decide to meet. It's one of the best-drawn 2D movies I've ever seen and even some 3D-assisted total animation they used doesn't look jarring. As far as I know, the director deliberately wanted to avoid making "another anime" and wanted this to be treated as a work that is judged on its own, not because it has round eyes and too few FPS. He made a couple more feature films after this one that I plan to watch, but I can't be assed to find proper ass subs that overlay carefully styled text over signs and phones and newspapers and do other fancy stuff like that.
  2. Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World, 0. If you have a hardon for the Royal Navy, like Catgirl Kulak, then watch it. Volokolamskoye Shosse is probably a better book about military leadership. The ship scenes look great, but the plot feels more like a series of vignettes than a coherent story. And Russell Crowe is fat.
  3. Breaking Bad, rating pending. I still haven't finished watching it. It will most likely get a +2 from me, but I want to finish season five before rating it properly.
  4. One Punch Man, 0. I almost gave it a -1 after watching the first few series, but then it finally realized it needed at least some plot. It's still nothing more than The Adventures of Dr. McNinja with Japanese characteristics, which makes sense, given than it started as a webcomic as well.

I loved the aesthetics of 'Your Name' but found the plot kind of lame. It made no sense whatsoever. Yeah, I don't care the clouds were kitschy. Same is true of every other film of his I've seen, including the latest, Suzume.

E.g. 'The place promised in our early days' had an impeccable vibe and mystery to it, but in the end the whole thing made ..little real sense at all. Still, enjoyable. Also I feel like I'd want to go see coastal Japan eventually.

Haven't seen the movie so can't comment, but the Aubreyiad is a great, fun series which apparently is catnip to a lot of non-cat girls as well (I'm seeing a ton of fanart for it on Tumblr even this long after the movie). O'Brien manages to pull off all the hearty naval stuff for the boys and introduce the main relationship, which is the friendship of Stephen and Jack, which draws in the girls as well. He had me laughing at bad 18th century jokes and while I remain as ignorant as Stephen about the workings of a ship, the rest of it all held my interest too.

I have read the first book and seen the movie. I think the movie is great, but it was one that got better on repeat viewings for me as I came to appreciate the characters and setting more. As in the book I have read in the series, the movie is more about the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin, and being an interesting depiction of life at sea, than it is about the plot.

The running plot, such as it is, throughout the books is good but it's mostly "the Napoleonic Wars at sea" so unless you're absolutely fascinated by the minutiae of naval campaigns, the real interest is "ooh so this was what life was like on a ship at that time" and then it's "will Jack advance his career, will Stephen ever have a happy relationship, never mind they're best bros and we all love learning natural history".

There are just so many great lines (everyone's favourite is this one) (warning: TV Tropes link):

Stephen acquires a sloth in South America, and it immediately befriends everybody aboard. Except Jack, who for some inexplicable reason gets rebuffed- the poor thing cried when it first saw him. When he finally resorts to feeding the sloth bits of ship's biscuit soaked in rum, he soon wins its friendship but ends up turning it into an alcoholic. Thus leading to a line found nowhere else in literature: "Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

But Stephen is like me - all the nautical terms and explanations just go right over my head and don't lodge. Gluppit the prawling strangles, indeed!

Stephen: The moment you are afloat you become pragmatical and absolute, a bashaw —do this, do that, gluppit the prawling strangles, there—no longer a social being at all.

You start off reading for the "Napoleonic Wars at sea" but then you sort of forget about that and treat it like 'Stephen's Big Natural History Expedition' and 'Jack climbs the ranks' so that the great world-shaking events become background, almost, to the little dramas played out in their world.

From what I've read, the movie tried to compress the stories from several novels into one, which causes it to jump from scene to scene awkwardly.

I can't remember if it was Your Name or Weathering With You that I watched. I think it was Weathering. I downloaded both of them after reading yet another "recommend some anime for non-anime watchers" thread. Whichever one it was I switched it off unfinished, deleted the other one without watching it, and re-examined my credulity for internet anime recommendations.

One Punch Man on the other hand was thoroughly entertaining even as the joke began wearing thin, but that was recommended to me by a real person who isn't into anime.

Must’ve been Weathering

Just watch Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bepop over and over again like I do

Maybe add Elfen Lied - or Gantz if you want something almost good

I feel like I'm the only person in existence who doesn't like Cowboy Bebop.

It's a very vibey show but it's all aesthetics, the characters and their motivations are about as deep as a puddle, and the episode-to-episode plots make very little logical sense and feel like they were all made up on the spot with a lot of technobabble to cover up the sheer lack of effort put into any of the plotting or worldbuilding. I watched many episodes and never got the sense that it was a coherent world with rules that had to be adhered to at all. Incoherent ass-pulling constitutes a significant portion of how most of the plots in each episode actually progress, and it's really hard to be invested in the episodic narratives when some deus ex machina can be invoked at literally any time to turn the plot on its head. The overarching reaction I had to most episodes was "This is happening now, I guess". Honky Tonk Women is an early example of an episode that's just needlessly contrived and really only exists because of a lot of irrationality and a one-in-a-million coincidence without which the plot would not happen.

They also try to pull emotional scenes at the end of most episodes that don't hit IMO because they spent too little time fleshing out the characters; that moment in Asteroid Blues when it's revealed that Asimov and Katerina won't make it to Mars is clearly supposed to be a pensive one, but you've spent all of 15 minutes with them at that point and so the emotional scene feels unearned. Also seriously, does anyone actually like Faye Valentine? She's superficially charming but is often shown to be a selfish, arrogant, lazy individual who leeches off the rest of the Bebop without so much as a show of gratitude, with a bad habit of gambling all her money away.

Visually, aurally, it's a great experience; the whole atmosphere is immaculate. But you need more than that to carry a show IMO, and animes almost always fall apart on plotting and characterisation for me (Japanese narrative writing generally rarely delivers on these fronts). Ghost In The Shell is another great example of a classic anime with fantastic art direction crippled by a wafer-thin narrative, which purports to be way more than it actually is given that it has basically nothing much to say on the subjects of consciousness and AI it touches on (what it does say is vague and bordering on incoherent). This banger of an intro sequence deserved so much better.

You criticism is quite valid. I rewatched the Bebop movie during the Lent because I found Black Lagoon to be a pale imitation, and I agree that it's style, not substance, that CB relies on.

Also seriously, does anyone actually like Faye Valentine? She's superficially charming but is often shown to be a selfish, arrogant, lazy individual who leeches off the rest of the Bebop without so much as a show of gratitude, with a bad habit of gambling all her money away.

First of all, tits. Secondly, this character archetype is relatively uncommon in anime.

I just watched a few episodes of Elfen Lied before being rather turned off. I appreciate an anime that shows off some titties as much as the next man, but the characters seemed one-note and the plot and pacing were.. lacking. You call it "almost good", but I'd have to say that's a better assessment than I made, heh.

I thought Elfen Lied was great… when I was in high school. Now, it’d probably go in the “guilty pleasure” box at best.

I can’t imagine recommending it to someone who’s just getting into anime, unless I already knew they were into that sort of thing.

I tried the first two a while ago and tapped out of them pretty fast too.

The only anime series I've finished other than OPM was Welcome To The NHK. It was overly long but it was darkly comical enough to keep me watching to the end.

I'm not a total non-anime watcher but I haven't found much I like outside of the well known feature length films. Even the popular titles like Evangelion and Blade of The Immortal didn't do it for me. Cyberpunk looked okay but turned into a Joss Whedon-alike by the second episode.

Maybe I'll try Uzumaki again when I hit a dry spell (tipped by the same guy who recommended me OPM).

Watch Death Note. I've never found a human who didn't like Death Note.

Ok, Samurai Champloo and Bebop, I get. These are essentially, perfect YA comfort food cartoons, oozing with character, atmosphere, unique soundtrack, etc. etc. They are perfect for non-anime watchers because they're crossover western-style stories done up in anime styling.

But Elfen Lied? Are we thinking of the same show? The one with the body horror? The creepy "magical" girls, the harem protagonist, etc.? I don't understand how that's even in the same category. I would recommend someone looking for "anime for non-anime watchers" never, ever, ever watch that. It will just reinforce every bad stereotype about the genre while having a perfectly "meh" plot.

Well the first two are ‘ this transcends yet IS anime ‘ and the last two ‘ ARE anime ‘ - meaning, just weirdo, brutal insanity. It’s a big part of anime with a long tradition.

Sure I wouldn’t recommend them to an anime non watcher, probably, but Elfin Lied is what got me into anime before even the classics.

What do these ratings mean, what is the scale?

  • -2: just terrible
  • -1: not recommended, unless you are really into this genre/actor/etc
  • 0: meh
  • +1: recommended, definitely watch it if you're a fan of the genre
  • +2: recommended without reservations

From how it’s presented I assume it is a 5-point scale, with the median value of 3 revised downwards to zero.

You're 100% right. I do this because the regular 5-point scale has been distorted too much by average rankings: 5 is good, everything else is bad and the real ratings are 4.99, 4.95, 4.9 etc.

This is why the best ranking method is a simple thumb up/down (or upvote/downvote, or like/dislike). Then you report the ratio, which runs the whole gamut from 1% to 99%. YouTube used to do this before they decided that dislikes were problematic. FIMFiction still uses it.

(Admittedly, this system does have the issue of only working in aggregate; there is no way for a single reviewer to distinguish between something that is barely worth watching and the greatest story ever told.)

No, this is just the Rotten Tomatoes problem all over again. Up/down works fine but not stellar because a movie everyone universally finds to be on the good side of fine, gets near-100 ratings while movies with higher highs and lower lows, that are on the whole “better” movies, get lower ratings.

I rate movies about how far they are above or below replacement, reflecting the fact that that’s how most people actually decide what to watch. A 3.5 is fine: you can watch it, it will be a movie with average enjoyment. A 4 is better than its peers: prefer it in any head to head comparison. A 4.5 is one to go out of your way to watch. A 5 is a 4.5 but one that had an especially memorable impact on me personally. A 3 is worse than replacement - it’s a below average movie. And ratings from 2.5 and down are various degrees of how aggressively you should avoid them, with a 1 star creating a negative memory you’d rather have lived your life without, ie actively harmful.

Lol, that reminds me, my friend wrote a review of Death Stranding 2 (TW: Twine, blue tribisms) democratising his score - it's 4, but you get to decide out of what depending on how you feel about Hideo Kojima. It's a great system!

I haven't seen any of those except the first few episodes of Breaking Bad.

It's actually kinda good as TV. You only feel it insults the viewer's intelligence like once per season, instead of every 5 minutes like a normal TV show.

This made me realize I've made a mistake. It's "Your Name", 君の名は。

Glad to have somehow helped. I haven't seen that either, alas.

I didn't expect a banana to give me trypophobia today. Out of a desire to upgrade my diet from becoming 100% junk food to merely 90%, I bought a bunch of them.

They arrived at a non-ideal level of ripeness, and then I let them sit for a few days. Now they're nice and yellow, but have a pattern of spots on them makes my skin crawl. Just about the only image on earth that otherwise does that is a photoshopped pic of someone's tits with holes added on, purportedly from worms.

Noob. I stagger my banana purchases to try and continuously have them coming into perfect ripeness (ie the day before they get black spots). There's inevitably still some variation but it avoids the worst excesses of squishy black bananas, or worse the under-ripe, mealy fleshed green bananas with skin that squeaks when you touch it.

If you don't like the spots leave them another day or two and they'll change into something less trypomatic(?).

I ate more than my fair share of bananas back home! They definitely didn't have the same pattern of spotting, just some discoloration. I did, however, eat them.

Riddle me this, Doc Wonder: If you want to keep trim and build muscle, why rely on Ozempic and why not eat clean or at least eat something besides junk food 90% of the time?

Use the bananas for banana bread.

Just because I give out good advice doesn't mean I take it myself. Besides, my diet isn't literally >90% junk. A more realistic figure would be ~50%.

  1. Work sucks, so I usually come home sapped of the will or energy to cook, and I'm not very good at it in the first place. I just tried figuring out my new place's oven, and the markings have worn off the dials. There are so many dials! I can't even tell what they do! I even tried all sorts of searching on Google, and asking my friendly neighborhood AI, to no avail. I just about managed to make some roast chicken without killing myself, so I'm not sure banana bread is in the cards. There's only one banana left, and no bread.

  2. I can easily afford semaglutide (Ozempic, while a convenient and borderline generic name by now, actually implies the injectable form. I take tablets). It's remarkably safe. I probably save around 30% of the price of purchase via simply eating less.

  3. I have, in the past, lost far more weight via a combination of a strict diet and working out. I happen to find the experience unpleasant. Some people enjoy going to the gym, alas, that's not me. I do it because I'm single, and need to up my market value unless I end up being sold as a lemon.

  4. This time around, if I can't meet both my goals of losing weight and gaining muscle at the same time, I'm content settling for the former. When I'm at a more ideal BMI, I can stop the semaglutide and focus on musclar hypertrophy über alles. I'm aware of the fact that taking semaglutide causes me to lose muscle as well as fat (but not any more than simply dieting would do, that's just how the body reacts to a caloric deficit).

  5. And last, but certainly not least: I have a realistic enough model of my own self that I know that if I didn't have the option of Ozempic, I would likely neither lose weight nor go to the gym as much as I should. The bottleneck in most of my life has been a lack of executive function/willpower. I can either hide behind a diagnosis of ADHD, or just accept that I'm lazy. Both might be true! Semaglutide simply short-circuits that dilemma.

I find this and the discussion below rather fascinating. It's pretty clear from multiple responses, including some of your own, that you don't simply lack willpower. And it's not at all like some folks would have you believe these conversations go down, where there's a bunch of folks (made of straw or something) telling you that you just lack willpower or are a stupid failure or something. Instead, you're trying to self-proclaim a lack of willpower, which is mostly contradicted by all available evidence.

And further, instead, you've not described almost any challenges that in any way really resemble any sort of lack of willpower. Most of the actual challenges you've described are just problems with a variety of known solutions that actually work... and, well, you've also proclaimed that you have an urge to find those sorts of things.

Frankly, as I put it:

There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay.

I don't think you've quite hit the nail on the head yet for why you don't do it, but I think it's pretty clear that it's not a matter of willpower, and it's probably not really a matter of a couple minor challenges that have a variety of pretty well known solutions, either.

It's pretty clear from multiple responses, including some of your own, that you don't simply lack willpower

Instead, you're trying to self-proclaim a lack of willpower, which is mostly contradicted by all available evidence.

?

I'm not sure anyone on this forum is in a better position to judge my willpower than I am. Just about the only people I would defer to in that regard would be family or close friends. My family, as much as they love me, still regularly sigh and tell me they wish I was less lazy or had more willpower.

Firstly, why would I lie about my willpower? What do I have to gain out of downplaying it? I can be accused of many things, but excessive humility isn't one of them. I don't like my relative lack of willpower, it's a curse.

One that I manage to work around, and still have a reasonably productive life and successful career. I'd be much more successful if I didn't have ADHD or laziness.

(One of the core criteria for ADHD is a lack of executive function, and trust me, my diagnosis is quite clear)

The things that George was kind enough to say were impressive about me are largely things that I am naturally inclined to do. I do them for free, as a hobby. Except medicine, which I kinda drifted into because I wasn't sure what else I'd do with my life, before eventually finding a passion for psychiatry.

There are many things which are far more important, which I don't do or put off till I can't anymore, which have major impacts on my life and wellbeing.

I'm not saying I've got literally zero willpower. I'm just saying that I probably have <25th percentile conscientiousness, which is an unfortunate failing. Every time I hear about people who made nothing of their lives, or the self-proclaimed "gifted but lazy", I shudder, because there but for the grace of God go I. That's while acknowledging that I have other strengths and talents.

My family, as much as they love me, still regularly sigh and tell me they wish I was less lazy or had more willpower.

In what contexts?

Firstly, why would I lie about my willpower?

I would not claim that you are lying.

willpower... executive function... conscientiousness

I think these are probably nonidentical concepts, though I would likely have to spend some additional time thinking about it to be able to write on it eloquently.

Whence your urge to find solutions to problems that actually work? When it comes, how does it manifest?

In what contexts?

"Clean your room. Take more driving lessons instead of lazing around. Start studying for the exams you've got ahead of you (this one is rather unjustified these days), don't skip the gym, learn to cook."

Or, in more specific contexts, things like applying for a visa earlier instead of nearly at the last minute.

I think these are probably nonidentical concepts, though I would likely have to spend some additional time thinking about it to be able to write on it eloquently.

I don't think they're identical either. But all 3 have a lot of overlap, the core being something like "doing unpleasant or boring yet necessary things, in a timely manner without prompting".

Whence your urge to find solutions to problems that actually work? When it comes, how does it manifest?

You mean professionally or personally? In the former, I do what any doctor does, defer to guidelines unless I am sufficiently confident in an alternative interpretation or treatment regimen.

The latter? What everyone else does, just later and more half-heartedly. I just told myself I'd go to the gym every other day, and in practise, it's been closer to every 4th day. I just skipped going this weekend despite promises to my dad I wouldn't, and plan to make it up tomorrow.

I also tend to do things at the last minute, and thus rushed as a consequence. Fortunately, I rarely actually let major deadlines slip and then face disaster. But it's stressful to live that way, and I know, on an intellectual level, that I'd be better off not procrastinating.

Are you afraid of the long term side effects?

How long will you be on it?

I too am the king of giving out fantastic and true advice on health and wellness and not being able to handle it myself.

A personal failing.

Are you afraid of the long term side effects?

Not particularly. It is not literally risk free, but rarely is anything we normally call "safe". The worst of the side effects can be detected, and are reversible if stopped. It's certainly far safer than the longterm effects of obesity.

How long will you be on it?

I bought six month's worth and took it with me about a month ago. So that's about the minimum I envision. If it works super well, I might stop, if I start gaining back the weight, then I have no real qualms about continuing indefinitely. It's not breaking the bank, the biggest pain would be either getting more shipped from India or picking it up on a visit. GPs here won't prescribe without a strict cutoff, and going private in the UK would be far more expensive.

I have some life advice that will work wonders for you, perhaps phrased poorly by me, but its essence has been passed from father to adolescent son for generations, to excellent effect: Stop being lazy, and grab the goddam reins. Because no one else is going to.

I say that, but it actually seems to me that you do a lot, and are not one of the perpetually unmotivated. Your substack is active, and mine has only one lonely post, so you're way ahead of me there. You mod here. You're a friggin' doctor.

Gym time will ultimately make you feel good. I am sure there is a physiological reason and I am equally sure that you know what this reason is probably better than I do, but perhaps haven't reached that point of that good feeling, and you perhaps doubt that it is a point you will likely reach.

Have you read the studies suggesting there could be a relationship between macular degeneration and regular use of semaglutide? Admittedly there are many caveats by the authors (admirably so) regarding the design of the study and how it was not designed to establish causality. But still. How are the peepers?

I appreciate the advice. It's even good advice! The failure I envision is on my part, and yes, I'm aware of the risk of self-fulfilling prophecy here.

Stop being lazy, and grab the goddam reins. Because no one else is going to.

My own dad has said the same to me, on many an occasion. He's the opposite of lazy, being an extremely hard working man who has, time and time again, worked himself to the bone to ensure his family and children wouldn't need to.

I say that, but it actually seems to me that you do a lot, and are not one of the perpetually unmotivated. Your substack is active, and mine has only one lonely post, so you're way ahead of me there. You mod here. You're a friggin' doctor.

Thank you, but a lot of that is simply a consequence of my natural proclivities! Everyone has hobbies, some people are lucky enough to have hobbies that are quasi-productive.

I intrinsically enjoy writing, enough to outweigh the chore it can sometimes be. I like arguing with internet strangers, and can usually stay polite while doing so.

Medicine? I hated med school, and was a slacker for most of it, doing my best to cram at the last minute. Most doctors are rather type A individuals, I somehow survived despite being the opposite.

I eventually got better, after graduation, I spent several years working very hard to avoid the fate of never entering higher training, and for the purposes of escaping India. I suppose that is a concrete example of me becoming better, the previous exams were ones I "had" to give. Everything after was something self-directed, and I'm justifiably proud of myself, even as I've found many things about life and work in the UK disappointing and a chore.

If you had to sum up my laziness, it is rarely truly catastrophic. If I'm worried about my house catching fire, I'd probably do something about it instead of waiting for a fire to tickle my ass hair. But my life would definitely be far better if I was more motivated to do the things that I really ought to do, and earlier. For the sake of privacy, I won't go into too many details, but it has had personal and professional consequences.

There are definitely people worse off. I'm not lazing in bed high on weed all day without a job, I have a relatively demanding one, even if most other flavors of doctor have to work harder. I occasionally do things that people appreciate, but can I really take credit for that? It's just a fact about my preferences that I like writing instead of say, only video games and going out clubbing.

Gym time will ultimately make you feel good. I am sure there is a physiological reason and I am equally sure that you know what this reason is probably better than I do, but perhaps haven't reached that point of that good feeling, and you perhaps doubt that it is a point you will likely reach.

I'm not sure about ultimately. Back in med school, after a messy breakup, I was motivated enough to lose about 10 kilos while working out at least twice a week, for 6 months. I was even doing HIIT on the side, dodging the odd cobra outside (not a joke). I think six months of solid effort should normally be enough to figure out if I enjoy something for its own sake!

I didn't like going to the gym at the end, the only thing that got better was that I stopped having DOMS after the first few weeks.

Have you read the studies suggesting there could be a relationship between macular degeneration and regular use of semaglutide? Admittedly there are many caveats by the authors (admirably so) regarding the design of the study and how it was not designed to establish causality. But still. How are the peepers?

I did read them when they came out, and was slightly concerned, but not to the degree it put me off. I'll probably have to look at follow ups, but the fact that, AFAIK, medical bodies haven't immediately begun recommending regular eye tests to patients on Ozempic is suggestive. I'll have to look more into it again, but I'm not worried enough to not take the meds.

My peepers are currently rather sore. But before you get alarmed, that's because I spent this afternoon looking at Magic Eye images on Reddit and ended up straining them.

(You should have fewer qualms about throwing most things you write onto your substack. Your slice of life and the odd wistful recollections are a pleasure to read, and I'd certainly follow along. Link your substack again, if you don't mind, I'd be happy to give it a follow)

It's here. Do not have high expectations.

As for the important part, the banana bread: All you need is one perhaps over ripe banana. Also flour, sugar (brown or granulated white), an egg, some vanilla essence, butter, baking powder or soda or both, an oven, and a thing to hold it in that is bread-shaped. Throw in some chocolate chips. It's good. All sorts of quality ways to make it. I have to watch my potassium due to dubious kidneys, but I recommend making it and eating it. Maybe in the winter when it's cooler. With some coffee. Invite your latest complication over and while chatting, make that bread and serve it. Then the sweet sweet romance. Or something.

My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.

I take all your points. I was drinking cognac when I wrote my previous reply, which is itself pretty pretentious but I want a new thing and I think a cognac before bed is it. But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.

You've got your cognac, I've got a bottle of cheap rosé from the nearest supermarket. Life, if not good, is doing okay today.

My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.

Alas, I can't get much in the way of goat-mutton in Scotland. That's what I was used to back home, but to be fair, well-prepared lamb comes close. Evidently your culinary skills came in handy! If Mrs. Hale doesn't like lamb, you can't go wrong with making chicken kebabs. It's too late at night for me to order some, but the idea itself has got me hankering.

But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.

Your innate suspicion is far too common. Modern culture has primed everyone to be suspicious, to look for things that are "too good to be true". That might work for narratives or literary fiction, but reality isn't quite the same. Sometimes, the uncaring universe is kind enough to give us things that are unalloyed goods, and also good. So it was for antibiotics and vaccines, and so it goes for Ozempic.

While not literally perfectly safe (what is? No drug I've ever heard of, and I've heard of most), it is a paradigm shift when it comes to one of the most pressing issues of our time. It is a solution to the obesity epidemic, even if that is somehow dissatisfying to some. I can only stress that the universe is uncarinv, not actively malevolent. Good things happen, or are even discovered, every now and then!

If you need to lose a few pounds, or many, you can't do much better. You can always stop once you hit your target, and seek other ways to keep yourself there. I would hope that getting my own mother, as well as myself, on it would be a sufficient signal of confidence.

It's here. Do not have high expectations.

Followed, which costs me nothing at all. Hopefully you'll get around to writing more!

Second banana bread, though I put way more than one banana in. About three bananas per loaf, if memory serves. Also have some butter on hand for when it comes out of the oven; you'll be glad you did @self_made_human.

For this and for all other things baking related, I will forever shill the King Arthur Flour website. They have a ton of recipes, as well as detailed blog posts explaining the reasoning behind why some things work. They are written for a US audience, so you might need to make substitutions from time to time if things aren't available in UK stores. But the ingredients in banana bread are so basic I'd be surprised if they didn't have them.

They are written for a US audience, so you might need to make substitutions from time to time if things aren't available in UK stores.

The UK might be poor and shabby, but not quite that poor!

If the two of you are so keen on it, I'll keep my eye out for ingredients. I'm more concerned about the fact that I can't identify the make of my oven or what the settings do, and I'm entirely a noob at baking.

I didn't mean that in terms of being poor, though I can see it now that you point it out lol. I just meant that what ingredients are commonly stocked varies from country to country - for example I have a recipe for cupcakes that involves clotted cream, which (to my understanding) is commonly available at UK stores but you have to go to a specialty store to get it here.

I wouldn't worry too much about being a noob at baking, especially because quick breads (the type of bread banana bread is) are made to be easy to make. Literally just put all ingredients in a bowl, mix them together until the wet and dry ingredients are decently combined, then pour it into a pan and bake. Even if you make a mistake somehow, the worst case scenario is that it'll still taste good but maybe it'll be denser or drier than normal. So worst case scenario, you still have tasty bread!

More comments

Not OP, but I imagine there are two reasons why not: Time and anhedonia.

Interesting. I may have the least time of anyone on here, at least I feel that may be true when I read about the gaming that occurs and the books that are read. I feel like between work, trying to get in my gym time, taking care of daily household needs (cleaning, making sure my plants don't die, routine maintenance of our house, feeding our pets, spending time with my sons, having reasonably long daily conversations with my wife) and getting in enough sleep (typically six hours) I have no extra time. Yet I cook probably four nights a week (for the four of us) for dinner, and often sort out my next day's meal the night before.

As for anhedonia I have no answer. It's a term I learned on reddit, meaning at first I assumed it was just a pretend word meant to be a catchall excuse for not getting out of fucking bed. I'm not unwilling to believe it is a real thing, but I would suspect finding the root cause of this and sorting it out should be any one individual's main goal in life if he finds himself suffering from it for any length of time. Of course for the anhedonic there is always the convenient excuse: They simply don't have motivation to do anything. I cannot imagine a household where anyone would accept or tolerate this without taking some action to sort it. Of course these people may live alone--but then how are they paying rent?

Not enough time is a flimsy excuse. There is nearly always enough time for anything that matters. We carve out time for what is important to us. We do what we have to or need to do before we do what we want to do. That is one of the first rules of being a man (or adult.)

But as you say, you're offering a hypothetical.

I was indeed offering a hypothetical (mostly based on my limited knowledge of OP's situation and the fact he has described himself as a "depressed shrink"), but I half agree and half disagree with what you've written here.

As for anhedonia I have no answer. It's a term I learned on reddit, meaning at first I assumed it was just a pretend word meant to be a catchall excuse for not getting out of fucking bed. I'm not unwilling to believe it is a real thing, but I would suspect finding the root cause of this and sorting it out should be any one individual's main goal in life if he finds himself suffering from it for any length of time. Of course for the anhedonic there is always the convenient excuse: They simply don't have motivation to do anything. I cannot imagine a household where anyone would accept or tolerate this without taking some action to sort it.

Speaking as someone who veered closer to suicide at one point than I usually care to admit and who has also seen claims of poor mental health used as a way to excuse one's failures and a means of aggressively manipulating others (mostly by women who in retrospect exhibited many traits of BPD), I'm of two minds about this. Often it can be beneficial to adopt the mindset of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop whining" and it helps induce a positive feedback loop wherein doing more productive things in turn improves your mood and consequently motivation, but there is a point beyond which it will actually make things worse; beyond a certain level of despair some external assistance can be necessary. Of course it's always a problem that should be solved, it should never be left to fester, but I find maturity is knowing the appropriate context in which one should deploy these two strategies.

Not enough time is a flimsy excuse. There is nearly always enough time for anything that matters. We carve out time for what is important to us. We do what we have to or need to do before we do what we want to do.

I don't necessarily disagree, but "anything that matters" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here and doesn't really tell you what you should prioritise, since that is a value judgement that's heavily dependent on the individual. There is a lot of grey area in between "what you need to do" and "what you want to do". Yes if you're an extremely unhealthy weight, losing that weight should be a major priority. On the other hand, if you're within a healthy range perhaps reading books, learning things, etc may actually give you more utility than losing that extra weight and getting swole, depending on what you personally value.

Of course if you're just choosing between these two options you can likely do both to some extent. But tradeoffs inherently have to be made, and inevitably you will not have enough time for something. There are legitimate situations and preference rankings which result in goals like "exercising more" being put on the back burner.

[comic sans]UAP DISCLOSURE UPDATES[/comic sans]

The mood in the UFO community has been rather dour lately due to a string of disappointments and setbacks, but Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri dropped some promising indications this week that Congress has not forgotten about the topic and full disclosure may very well still be in the works:

"We're pursuing a hearing date. We've got a list of people that we're looking at. We're actually looking at potentially doing two. One with some people that are direct whistleblowers, who have had direct, and when I say direct, they had eyes directly on or have personally encountered UAP. In their formal operations."

"Not somebody out and about like Joe Blow out there that saw something. There's thousands and thousands of people like that. We're talking about people that worked for the Pentagon, worked in a government program, where they worked in and around this technology. Whether it was through crash retrieval, or through reverse engineering, that's what we're pursuing right now."

"The next hearing after that, once we're able to get information, we're looking at doing some interrogatories, which is where you take some of the things that have been said in these briefings, in these open hearings under oath. And then we send a formal letter as a committee, asking for answers from, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard, or whomever it is that we need to be asking these questions of. And then which would send up the potential second hearing, which would hopefully be able to clear people like Tulsi Gabbard to come forward."

"And I've been told she's very... friendly when it comes to this topic. That she wants disclosure. She wants to help bring about disclosure on this topic."

Dasein has a an interesting take regarding the UAP theater

And one more thought. There has been more rigorous, well-funded scientific investigation of xenobiology than of secret societies, conspiracies and psyops. This asymmetry is interesting. We have learned an awful lot about life and why it'd be hard for life to emerge outside Earth, and nothing in favor of such life. We have seen quite credible examples of conspiracies, and nothing to suggest that better-ran ones are impossible. However, the former remains viable, while interest in the latter has positively plummeted among the educated classes in the last 100+ years. «What if intelligent life beyond Earth, like silicon-based or something, dude, and flying saucers, imagine how it could work» is a respectable enough train of thought: why not indeed, and what's the harm anyway, it's deserving of patronage of eccentric billionaires, academic grants and place in peer-reviewed journals. «What if a well-organized cabal of malicious people manipulates public opinion without legible authority» is a sinful evil idea a libel this idea killed millions shut up stop it or we will erase you from polite society. (Like many taboos (e.g not threatening to throw another party's candidate into jail), it's being violated nowadays, to an extent; the ayy guys say the government lies. The government is not the Cabal, of course; it is known that the government keeps some things secret. But I suppose this does blur the line). Most importantly, though, we do not have a serious theory of conspiracy.

(snip, see the rest at the link)

That said. If there's a single parsimonious theory of a motive for this psyop that I can seriously propose… It's not my «overcapacity» thesis but rather the opposite. I mean the discrediting of the authority of the USG and army and American intelligence apparatus, through this very Bayesian logic, as @Hoffmeister25 demonstrates. The USG is the supreme secular power of the world, – and it's being reduced to some provincial slapstick comedy, instead of carrying itself with the dignity of the sovereign. It does not command respect, mostly just grudging support, on account of the vileness of its competitors. Give this 10 more years. 10 more years of AI shit torrent, 10 more years of long Covid and demented gerontocrats, 10 more years of Trump and Biden dog-faced-pony-soldier show and lurid, Jerry Springer tier gibberish in Congress. If at some point, say, CIA manages to report something truly ludicrous for Americans, physically plausible but shocking – who knows, maybe Mossad quietly installing backdoors into Deepmind and Anthropic AGI superclusters? – it will just be met with shrugs and condescending scowls. Whoever runs this, wants the legitimate authority of the US to end up in the position of the boy who cried wolf, and then collapse without popular support.

Just an idle thought.

Project Bluebeans

Screenshot this

I wish I could bet money against anything happening on this front. I guess that’s just normal investing.

I wish there were a reliable site where you could bet a lot of money on absolutely degenerate, unique markets like the outcomes of stuff like this.

https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-us-confirm-that-aliens-exist-in-2025

I want to believe, but also there are no aliens in the classical “beings from outer space” sense.

I rate this news 5 Nothings out of 5 Ever Happens.

You are correct that Comic Sans is the appropriate font for this.

Do you think there's no alien life anywhere, or do you just believe that it's implausible that it's a) intelligent and b) has the means and desire to get here?

It's more like if the alien life exists, and is intelligent, and had the means to get here it would operate on technology and energy scales that is completely beyond what we can even imagine how to operate. And if such beings are around we'd either all notice them very well and far beyond the occasional case of butt-probing a rural weirdo, or wouldn't notice them at all because they wouldn't want to destroy our fragile backwards culture by inadvertently stepping on us in so many ways. In other words, if it happened, it would happen in completely different way - thus, what is happening, if anything is happening at all, is not it.

Some species has to be the very first sapient life in the galaxy. Maybe we're just the Progenitors.

There are probably alien mechanisms in the solar system but we won't find them for centuries.

I’m on record here, but given the fact that the laws of physics would have to be nearly completely wrong to allow anything to move faster than light, the chances that we’d actually communicate with an alien let alone be visited by one are pretty small. Even if you have something like a generation ship, any such aliens would either conquer immediately, kill us, or move on. Pranks don’t make sense at all.

The galaxy is only 100,000 light-years in diameter. Starships moving at a mere 0.1 c could get from one side to the other in only a million years.

That's peanuts in astronomical time. If you can make a 0.1 c starship you need not worry about biological lifespans. 'Aliens exist but are too far away' doesn't make any sense. They could've shown up 100 million years ago and still be here. There are centuries old engravings of weird shapes in the sky, recordings from egypt, footage from modern jets and sensors.

Furthermore, our understanding of the universe is extremely limited, bordering on pathetic. 95% of the universe is 'dark' to us, we have no clue about it. Logically, that's the most likely place for the bulk of the aliens to be. Not only is it the vast majority of the universe's mass and energy, it provides a simple explanation for the apparent absence of aliens in the tiny portion we understand.

It makes no sense to play around with Dyson Spheres or largescale structures we might be capable of observing, it's not cost-efficient compared to 'dark' enterprises.

We prank the North Sentinel Islanders with drones and occasional plane/helicopter overflights, some missionaries showing up and getting killed. The real estate they control is so small it's worthless. Nobody wants to live on a crap jungle island. It's probably the same with aliens but instead of crap jungle island it's 'entire visible universe'. There's no real serious intent, more like casual observation. The only thing interesting on Earth is us.

I mean we have no information about the stars in the universe too far away to see. We actually know quite a bit about mundane physics, and it’s mundane physics that rule out most travel between stars at least at human lifespan scales. This would drastically change the equation for why beings would come here. The sentinalese are fairly trivial to get to. If you got on an airplane in New York, you would be able to get to them in less than a day and without the need to carry your own life support systems. Going from one solar system to another takes 4 years at the speed of light. It would take a generation at 0.1 of light speed. Would anyone spend 40 years at huge expense to prank drunken rednecks and steal the naughty bits off of dead cows? Especially since you’d need life support systems, food, water, and waste disposal. This isn’t just a small trivial jaunt on a jet plane followed by a boat ride.

The trouble is that we keep conflating the age of sail to space travel. They are nothing alike. Traveling from England to North America took a month under sail. You had to bring food and water, but you were never in a hostile environment. In fact the age of sail was possible because the ocean would provide the propulsion for you in the form of wind and ocean currents. You thus don’t need to provide fuel. You could breathe the sea air, and in fact as someone who enjoys an ocean beach, it smells pretty good. If worst came to worst, you could easily catch fish along the way. Space is nothing like that. In a month, you wouldn’t even reach Mars, let alone deep space (which at current technology would take decades), and you’d have to pack everything you’d need including atmosphere and a way to recycle it, food (and if it’s a long trip, a way to grow food), water and a way to recycle urine into water.

Second, due to studying earth biology, we have a fair understanding of what kinds of chemistry to look for to find life on exoplanets. So far, I think there are maybe one or two that are possible candidates for exobiology. We know what to look for as far as technology, and to my understanding we haven’t found anything that’s even plausible as alien technology. No Dyson spheres, no repeated mathematical signals, no lights on the ground nothing that is large and regularly shaped and made of metal.

Based on this, im just not buying it. If aliens exist they’re as trapped by biology and physics as we are.

My point is that life isn't to be found on exoplanets (certainly not for long), that 40 years or 40,000 years is nothing to an immortal being, that Dyson Spheres make about as much sense as burning dung for fuel.

Huge expenses from our perspective are trivial for a powerful civilization working on astronomical timescales, not biological timescales. Maybe it takes 150 years to build their gigantic planetary scale accelerator complex for highspeed travel (it probably wouldn't if they just spin up more workers or use advanced construction methods). Maybe it takes 1000 years to build a dark matter refinery. Why would they care? They have billions of years to work with.

Our knowledge of physics is overrated. Still no fusion power! What could we achieve if we had a particle accelerator that ran all the way around the world? What could AI discover if given hundreds of years, billions of terawatts, giant computer complexes the size of countries? This is mindboggling sci-fi stuff for us, it's boring and primitive for a powerful civilization.

We know what to look for as far as technology

No, all we know is what we can see. And we can't see 95% of what's out there!

Strongly B.

I have no stance one way or the other on whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Sure, it’s a bit implausible that we’re the first, but also someone has to be so why not us? It’s just unknowable at the moment.

If there is intelligent life and it developed further away than Mars, I think it is impossible for it to have the means and desire to reach Earth, and then spend the last 80 to 8000 years apparently mostly focused on pranking us. They would have conquered us to work in the unobtanium mines, or coldly and amorally reshaped the planet to their liking, or just moved on, or something.

There's no reason there can't be life elsewhere, it's a big universe. Even intelligent life. Even intelligent life at, or above, our present level of technological advancement.

Where the big, improbable jump lies is from "aliens exist" to "aliens exist and visited/visit our planet".

I could imagine alien scientists examining specimens of humans; we do it with animals (see monitoringbirds) and with anthropologists turning up to bother the last 'undiscovered' tribes that won't immediately kill them. But that has to first get over the hurdle of "space is very big and there's no evidence they ever got here". I went through my Ancient Astronauts/von Daniken phase in my late teens/early twenties. All the 'look here is an Egyptian tomb painting of what can only be a circuit board with transistors!' is convincing - when transistors are cutting edge tech. Twenty years later, that's not convincing any more because now we've moved on and we'd expect aliens with spaceships to be even more advanced than we are, not using tech that's outdated within twenty to fifty years.

I don't believe in the advanced tech all the wishful thinking here engages in:

"We're talking about people that worked for the Pentagon, worked in a government program, where they worked in and around this technology. Whether it was through crash retrieval, or through reverse engineering, that's what we're pursuing right now."

What I'm starting to think is that UFO rumours were great propaganda during the Cold War. The USA is a global superpower but it's not the only one. Russia (and to a much lesser extent China) are there breathing down their necks. The USA had the atom bomb first, but they weren't able to remain sole possessors of the technology. Everyone is working to have the best, newest, most kaboomy big-kaboom! first.

What better way to muddy the waters than to let hints slip out about amazing new tech? Even better - Russia and China can console themselves "okay their scientists got there first but our guys are smart, too, and it's just a matter of some light spying and a lot of hard work to catch up or even pass them out", but how can they do that if the rumours about the tech are that it's not human, it comes from advanced alien civilisation that crash landed in the desert? How will you catch up then, unless you get an alien UFO of your own?

Yeah, they're not going to believe random "Joe Blow says he saw something in the sky" but if you have all the dedicated True Believers talking about secret bases? my cousin knows someone who knows someone who swears he saw bodies being carried away? here's a leaked report of a military pilot talking about the mysterious craft that shadowed them on this flight?

Now you've got them chasing shadows trying to catch something that doesn't exist in the first place. And again, if they do catch wind of anything advanced you really built using your own human scientists working hard, then that is just more bait for "and what about the stuff we're not seeing? what if they really have something even better under wraps?"

Add "c) would reveal its existence solely through slightly weird bogeys" to that list.

Video game thread

I've been playing Captains of Industry, and Len's Island lately.

The first is a kind of mix between factorio, a city sim, and a terrain flattening sim. The latter part doesn't sound fun, but is weirdly the most satisfying aspect of the game. If you ever wanted to dig a giant pit and dump it all into the ocean, this is the game for you.

Len's Island was described as an isometric Valheim in a review and that has mostly been true. Generally an enjoyable game if you like the genre, but nothing too ground breaking or unique.

I continue to be one of the ~1000 people still playing Post Scriptum Squad44. We're down to 1-2 full servers at any given time, with a smattering of near-empty servers where people are presumably either testing new weapons or seeding so that when one of the full servers goes down for maintenance or because it's an unstable game that occasionally just has servers go down, theirs will fill up with the players who got booted.

I just can't kick the game though. There's nothing else out there that scratches the itch. The teamwork elements of Squad44 are just head-and-shoulders above the non-WW2 competitors (Arma 3/Reforger), the realism aspects are head-and-shoulders above the WW2 FPS competitor (Hell Let Loose), and the relative simplicity of the WW2 battlefield is just much more fun than the relative chaos of the modern setting hardcore FPS offerings (Squad). So I continue to be one of the dwindling number of players, waiting for Offworld Industries to turn off the lights.

I feel like I have hit my gaming retirement, not bothering to play anything other than a new eroge. Not even my digital fast got me playing again.

Chikan Undercover Agent Rina is good, though. It's not yet another RPGM or Ren'Py VN, it's an actual roguelite game with actual mechanics. You control the eponymous sexy police agent who has to detect and arrest Japanese train perverts while resisting their molestation attempts. Get to the end of the line, defeat the boss, repeat three more times to win.

Escape from Tarkov just wiped, and I had previously been somewhat interested in playing again, after a prolonged break due to lack of interest and circumstance. I already had about 1700 hours in it over a few years, so I'm hardly a newbie.

Yet, as usual, BSG managed to screw up royally. The game already started out immensely grindy, and only got worse. Half of the actually good guns, gear and ammo was locked behind ball-busting quests. Back when I used to play with a group of buddies from Singapore and Malaysia, we'd cheese the worst of them, 5 or 6 of queuing up at the same time but separately, in the hopes we'd spawn in the same match as 'enemies' and then kill each other for the sake of quests.

And yet, like many things in Tarkov, it got worse. The new patch is supposed to be a "hardcore" one. What does that entail?

Removing 90% of the progression, in the sense you literally can't progress. You don't have access to quests, unlike before, where you could directly queue into maps, now, you have the choice of about 2 or 3 by default, and need to travel within a map to find an exit leading to the next one.

This works... terribly. The game already had abysmal queue times, now you can easily spent 30 minutes waiting for the sake of entering and running through a map for the sake of getting to where you actually want to go.

The game has a feature where you could pay to insure your gear. If your killer didn't loot you, anything left over would find its way back to you a few IRL days later.

Nikita, the owner and lead dev, in his infinite wisdom, made it so that insurance is so exorbitantly expensive that it costs more than buying an entirely new set of gear.

You can't access the player-run market. The sell price to NPCs was gutted, and the price to buy inflated.

There's hardly any actual new content, and you can't access 90% of the old one.

A change last patch made it so that you couldn't use items you didn't personally find in game for upgrades. So if you bought a pack of screws and a drill to upgrade your shelter, now, unless it came with a special found in raid status, it's next to useless.

At one point, they'd finally added a feature that had been teased for years, and which I'd looked forward to - realistic armor hitboxes. Armor plates were modeled, with proper coverage and weak spots. Then they rolled that back next patch.

I could go on and on, but the game has gone from a diamond in the rough to a lead pencil in the shit, aimed at your butthole.

The only good news is that their decisions are being absolutely roasted, with an immediate exodus of the player base. They're starting to roll back some things, but it's too little, too late. Good, fuck them, maybe someone can make a hardcore milsim extraction shooter that respects the player's time and energy.

They got my money (early on), but with how tough the playerbase was, and how they never fixed cheating I never really played the game. Maybe 20 hours.

We are getting pretty close to being able to have games where bullshit like 'memorizing where loot is' and 'memorizing great ambush spots' stop mattering.

I'm (still) playing Anno 1800, in between finishing FFVII rebirth, my NG+ of Metaphor: ReFantazio, and returning to low-level LotRO. My biggest takeaway is that the newer LoTRO writers are far, far worse than the original dev team.

I really should get back to playing M:RF. I liked it a lot but dropped it while upgrading my GPU, months ago. I think I'm like 1/3 or 1/2 through it. Played around 33 hours.

Please help re-kindle my interest without spoiling anything. :) I assume there are good reasons why you are playing it not just once but twice.

33 hours, roughly halfway through? Dragon Temple, I'd guess? That one can be a bit of a slog - probably my least favorite portion of the game - but hoo boy do you have some plot and characters coming up! As well as some solid challenges, but aside from one specific fight, the game is good about giving you the tools to overcome its bullshit, which I rather enjoy.

But even outside the main plot, a lot of the Rank 8 bonds are just fantastic, and I really do enjoy the gameplay. Enough thinking, enough action mixed in with the turn-based, and I actually find the grinding reasonably enjoyable. I really like every single party member, which is fantastic, and while you can customize them, you're also incentivized lategame to keep them in their original roles somewhat.

A good portion of the reason behind my replay is admittedly that I'm very close to 100% achievements, but I wouldn't bother if I didn't love the game. I find myself re-looking forward to scenes, dialogue, and even some boss fights.

TL;DR: Louis is a top tier villain, Fantasy is real, Esperanto-esque chanting is a bop, and Peerless Stonecleaver (or Wanton Destruction, I don’t judge) goes brrrrrr.

Also, the manga is being released and translated. It changes a few things around, and can be a bit odd in the pacing, but it's pretty fantastic. Worth reading, and it won't spoil anything for where you are (the manga is just reaching Martira, the first town along the way to Brilehaven after you get the gauntlet runner -- I say because I myself always forget Martira's name).

Yeah unfortunately the dragon temple is... real bad, imo. Though to be fair I got through it, whereas the final dungeon was so hard that I can't actually make any forward progress and kinda stopped playing the game as a result.

Overall I felt that Metaphor was a pretty uneven game. There are some real high points, but also some real low points (like the aforementioned dragon temple). I enjoyed it well enough, but I don't think I would ever play it again (and haven't even managed to finish my first playthrough due to the difficulty issue I ran into).

When you say "Final Dungeon", I assume you mean Skybound Avatar? Yeah, that one was a bit tough, with no good enemies to mage-MP grind on, but it's also slightly shorter than I expected. ...And I just now remembered those teleporting liches. Man, fuck those guys, but I guess it wouldn't be a proper Atlus game without them and the legged fish.

Yeah, that's the one. I'm currently at the part with the teleporting liches, I believe. They fuck me up, such that if I don't get a perfect first round (i.e. not randomly getting the "enemy has recovered from stun" when I hit them), I pretty much have to restart the fight because I won't be able to burn them down before they leave my party seriously hurting. As you might imagine, having to restart fights that much got tedious pretty quickly. If/when I start the game back up, I'll probably go back to earlier parts of the dungeon to grind EXP and A-EXP on the weaker enemies. That way I won't be so outmatched with the stronger enemies.

Aside from overloading on strike damage and synergies just for them, I wound up being very conservative with my early turns - If they didn't get unstunned by the first few attacks, I'd just buff or pass turn with my remaining icons, then let loose in the second round. Made it slightly less frustrating than having to sit through their bullshit before I could hammer that rewind button.

If it's any consolation, you should be near the very end of the dungeon, if I recall. Just that last miniboss, then the boss (who isn't who you might expect, to avoid spoilering others reading this - the game teases an additional boss fight afterwards, with a save point and everything, but it's just a conversation, so no need to burn through recovery items).

I have picked up Quasimorph the turn-based extraction shooter and have been enjoying it so far (still mostly at the stage where I stay at Mars and Mercury). The recent announcement that promises the player being able to set up his own trade outpost is, let me be excused for being repetitive, promising.

I have also looked into The Rose of the World, the schizo-cosmological tract the game pulled the parallel reality stuff from, and it is a fascinating read as well. It can be freely found here for inquiring minds.

Len's Island is interesting: it's a technically well-executed game with a lot of effort put into it, that's also just painfully shallow. Lootless-Diablo-clone could work even if it wasn't unique or groundbreaking, there's just not enough meat on the structure. I finished the third dungeon a couple days ago, and there's only been six normal mook types (+3 reskins) so far, one unique boss per major dungeon, and most 'mini-bosses' just consist of rooms with a ton of mook-spawner cocoons. You can beat the first major dungeons just by dodge-rolling and spamming normal timed hits, the second starts to force you to use a shield and/or weapon skills, but there's only a couple skills per weapon, and that seems to be about as deep as combat gets. In theory, build variety around the enchantment system or skill point system should drive a lot, but they're pretty easily solved, too, and there's not a ton of choice economy around what items you'll upgrade in what order or how you focus on getting specific gear. There's several weapons, but most of them suck for the mook-heavy fights, and of those that do work there's not really enough difference to justify enchanting multiple. It wouldn't matter as much if the rest of the game was really compelling -- I love Vintage Story after all -- but so much of Len's Island focuses on combat or dungeon splunking that it's pretty frustrating, not just a chore, but a boring chore.

((Also, struggling with the UI. Why is the inventory and the build menu tied so closely together that you can switch from one to the other by mouse-click, but if you use the build button you can't interact with world items and if you use the inventory menu you can't place a structure?))

Maybe a slightly more complex combo system, or changeable special skills, or more reason to hotswap weapons, or cheap area denial combat potions? There's a lot of set pieces in the dungeons, maybe make them matter more than just being 'don't fall into this lava'? The devs are allegedly still working on the game, so maybe it'll change down the road.

The SO's gotten back into ARK, with Survival Ascended's Ragnarok release, so I've been pulled a bit into that when I can. The game is and always has fallen into the 'great idea, awful execution' from day one, both on the technical side and on the game philosophy one, and it still shows now. ASA and the new map release are better than ASE: gone are the fifteen-plus minute load-times, the frustratingly bad building system, and there's been at least a little effort to avoid the numerous outright glitches. ASE's Ragnarok was never really completed, and while there's a few missing critters in ASA's Ragnarok, it at least doesn't have whole biomes that were stapled on without being populated. Other parts aren't improved; whistle commands are still painful to use without a long keybinding session, combat is very floaty and weightless and depends on gameish stats that often don't make sense. I'm not as opposed as some to stat sticks, but if you're going to let a solo direwolf easily take down a pack of five carnos that each individually outweigh her, I need some way to actually tell that's going to happen other than jumping in and hoping, or memorizing a breakdown of how a critter's stats tie to their levels. And some parts are outright worse: the devkit is an astounding 1TB, which manages to break my record for 'western game developer was here', the new engine is very GPU-intensive even at its lowest settings, support for unofficial servers manages to be worse(!) probably downstream of the new owners partnering with a server provider, and ASA's Ragnarok manages to have more mesh errors than the already-notorious ASE version. There's a bunch of more interesting taming options than the old 'hit it with a club/tranq arrow and shove food up them', but a some of them suck, and a lot of the better modded solutions to the taming dilemma haven't been ported from ASE. Running a small dedicated server with wildly tweaked rates gets away from mandatory no-lifer play while still making most tames weighty enough to be meaningful... and it's still more commitment than I can really put into it.

But it's very much the only effortful game of its kind, with maybe Palworld as competitors. Nightengale devolves into a dungeon spelunker and the pet system is a joke, and a lot of the few others in the genre either don't exist or work even worse. I have some hopes for Amiino -- Palworld meets Hi-Fi Rush-style combat is a match made in heaven, even if the music integration ends up more muzak -- which when you're looking at Chinese gatcha f2p for innovation is a worrying sign, and that's eta 2026.

My gaming tastes have changed so much now that I have kids. In many ways the shallowness of the game is a plus rather than a negative. It's just wrapping a bunch of game elements I've played dozens of times into an isometric action game that I haven't officially completed. And that's enough to occupy my brain in my few hours of off time, or during my partial off time when I need to drop the game at a moments notice to handle something happening.

The sailing and exploration is fun. I think I'm getting close to exploring just about every game mechanic it has. I'm not sure I want to grind out the fishing mini-game. It's similar to mining other resources, but with a failure option. I've always hated fishing in games. I'm still confused why devs bother adding it. (Dave the diver was great, but that is mostly spear fishing).

I'll play it for another week and then leave on vacation and forget it/drop it while I'm gone from my PC.

I don't know, I only ever played Ark on the official servers. The game .. may feel fun for ~800 hours if you play by yourself in the PvE mode but it's about 1/20th of the entire game experience. PvE itself can be challenging and fun, especially on Aberration, but the real experience is vastly more 'rewarding'. The issues is, permanently running servers reward no-lifers, so even those who could dedicate 4 hrs of it each night, as much as people used to watch TV, would be unable to compete with students, unemployed, part-time employed people who love the game..

The whole reason why it seems more fun is because people are smart, and you really find out what you're made of when there's no reload or do-overs.

Ofc, with Ark, the big issue is, that devs can't program and can't create good rules.

I'm not as opposed as some to stat sticks, but if you're going to let a solo direwolf easily take down a pack of five carnos that each individually outweigh her

That's because they wanted to reward players and the level scaling is absurd. A tame high lvl direwolf with a dozen lvls into HP is going to have about the same HP as an alpha carno. If in the game high level tamed animals weren't absurdly stronger than wild ones, navigating the map could be an actual challenge. People wouldn't like that at all!

Ironically, you picked a pretty bad example because direwolves are notoriously 'squishy' due to having no saddle damage reduction. They're a niche animal with limited uses, mostly bred as pets. You want a high level direbear with a decent saddle, but ideally a high level t-rex. That's going to eat everything except a giga or titanosaur. (as to fighting those, the only safe way is trapping them and using weapons or dinos that do % damage, like another giga or allosaurus)

Anyway the meta to understand is relatively easy and in any case, there's always the wiki.

I keep trying to break into Captains of Industry, but the tutorial is so dry, hand holdy and long I just get bored and wonder back to a game I know better. I get maybe an hour to play a game a night, and not even every night! I can't spend the whole hour being locked out of the interface until I click the exact button the tutorial tells me it's time to click, over and over and over again!

I really wish there were two levels of tutorial sometimes. The "Yes, I've played a game before" type where it has a much lighter touch, just gives me some short term objectives and a quick summary of how to get there. Then there could be the "wHaT iS cOmPuTeR?!" tutorials that explain what a mouse and keyboard are, and how to click on buttons and shit.

I reviewed the game here.

The game feels kinda long, but I think it's mostly bc I suck at it. E.g. I'm always dealing with some problem and running it at slowest speed.

Even though the supply chains are less complex than Factorio, the extra details and infrastructure related stuff means there's more..problems that can crop up.

Don't think I played the tutorial, I just did the in-game one.

If I were you, I'd give you this advice:

  • remember that you'll need to scale up .. almost everything. (my current big issue is I can't expand my settlement without dumping a megaton of crap into ocean)

  • plan ahead knowing that and you'll do fine.

My biggest peeve with the game is truck dumping. You lose gigantic amount of terrain-moving capacity if you incorrectly set up allowed dumping and truck drive across half the map. NEVER allow a dumping designation outside of a designated mine!

Can you just entirely skip the tutorial? I've owned the game for a long time, so I can't remember taking the tutorial, or it's possible it didn't exist when I first started playing.

The research tree progression acts as a pretty good tutorial. For most game content as long as you can figure out the basics.

So I read Blindsight in about 4 days ish. That was a ride. Waaaaaay less comfortable of a first contact story that Mote in God's Eye, which was the last novel I talked about which brought recommendations of Blindsight. Here, and also a buddy of mine who just lent me his copy.

I liked it... but I didn't enjoy it. Like, it was rich in concepts and took the story in directions I never saw coming. But I felt like it spent more time trying to fuck with me thanks to the layers of unreliable narrators than it did advancing a story. And then of course it's just a total downer from a humanist perspective. I feel like Blindsight is a better recommendation to go along with something from HP Lovecraft than an almost Star Trekkish "Rah Rah Humanity!" first contact story like The Mote in God's Eye.

I guess if you love hearing about how much we suck and are doomed and the universe will trample us with it's indifference, Blindsight is pretty good. But something in me says Lovecraft did it better. Probably a matter of taste.

I liked it... but I didn't enjoy it

That's Watts. I don't think his works are supposed to be enjoyed, unless you have a capacity of taking joy from existential dread and confusion about what anything ever even means. Like, I don't regret reading Watts, and probably will keep reading it if he writes more, but I am not sure I'd use the word enjoyed about it.

There's a reason why the blurb/introduction has the following quote:

Whenever I feel my will to read becoming too strong, I read Watts

(Great book. Up there as an all-time fave.)

Peter Watts is, in my opinion, a very original writer, but not a very good one. He introduces interesting concepts or combines concepts in interesting ways, but his misanthropy is downright monotonous, his characters are pretty much just "what if someone were extremely fucked up in this particular way", and the plots are always "everything's fucked and then it gets worse". Garnish with more or less novel scientific ideas, interesting to read, but not really good books as such.

My favorite flourish of his was in Echopraxia, where he casually dropped the non-bomb that reality in that book was proven to be a simulation, but it never comes up again and has no impact on anything.

I'll probably read anything he writes, if only to hear about his latest inventions.

but it never comes up again and has no impact on anything.

Isn't the whole point of the novel that God is a virus, infecting our simulation?

I'd say that's pretty plot relevant.

In fact, from a realism perspective, it is entirely believable that we might discover clear evidence that the universe is a sim, while simultaneously not being able to do anything about it. I assume the people with the capability to simulate an entire universe would have better sandboxing and intrusion hardening than AWS.

My favorite flourish of his was in Echopraxia, where he casually dropped the non-bomb that reality in that book was proven to be a simulation, but it never comes up again and has no impact on anything.

Echopraxia was quite the mess. There were things I enjoyed about it, but it lacked a lot of narrative direction and also contained a lot of plot points that didn't make any sense at all just because the story had to happen.

I think in general Watts' short stories work better than his novels, since short stories lend themselves to the exploration of a single conceptual thread which is his clear strong point. With the exception of Blindsight and perhaps the Freeze-Frame Revolution I think things tend to fall apart when Watts is left to craft an extended narrative - there are often a whole lot of unrelated ideas not relevant to the story and there's a general lack of narrative cohesion. The lack of character depth also tends to become far more clear when he has more words to waste on them. Though, you don't really read Watts for his spellbinding characters.

What I am struggling with, however, is understanding the game plan of the aliens - specifically why on Earth the alien Theseus went up against would intentionally seed the Icarus Array with a lifeform capable of turning the entirety of humanity into a super-intelligent hive-mind. That is an utterly suicidal move.

My takeaway from the two books was this:

Beginning of Blindsight

Theseus arrives at Big Ben.

The Captain/Jukka Sarasti realizes almost immediately upon encountering Big Ben that all current life in the Solar System is fucked.

Big Ben is the alien. The Scramblers are just antibodies or pieces of the larger hivemind that is Big Ben/Rorschach.

The rest of the plot of Blindsight plays out, with The Captain knowing in advance that Theseus and its crew will be inevitably reprogrammed and consumed by the Scramblers.

The Captain executes a dead man’s hand strategy where whatever information Big Ben inevitably sends back down the telematter stream to Icarus is going to be edited/hacked.

End of Blindsight/Beginning of Echopraxia

Big Ben sends information back down the telematter stream to Icarus. Under normal circumstances, this would start the process of creating Big Ben 2, except now with access to all the matter and energy of the Sun, rather than the brown dwarf Big Ben 1 was found orbiting.

The Captain’s dead man’s hand strategy results in this information not beginning the process of making Big Ben 2, but rather Portia, which has similar capabilities to Big Ben 1 but is a competing organism. This hack was what the Captain was working on the whole time Theseus was engaging with Big Ben.

The Captain expects Portia to consume all life in the Solar System, but in a hivemind kind of way similar to the Bicams, thus allowing humanity and vampires to continue existing, sort of, while also being able to compete against entities like Big Ben.

End of Echopraxia

Portia is humanity. The human shaped bodies are just antibodies or pieces of the larger hivemind that is Portia.

Book 3 would be a war of super-intelligences between the alien Big Ben and the nearly as alien Portia, with all remaining human-esque entities caught in the middle.

I find it interesting to think that under this interpretation, the Captain is an exquisitely well-aligned super-intelligence. Its strategy is the only way to save anything of what humanity was, given the circumstances and universe as presented.

Anyways, to answer your question with my personal interpretation, the alien’s plan took a left turn when the Captain was able to execute some kind of Hail Mary man-in-the-middle attack on their information transfer to Icarus.

Incidentally, this all implies that almost all of the character actions in Blindsight are irrelevant to the plot, and even actively counterproductive, because the single most important thing occurring is the Captain making sure that Big Ben never susses out that there is another super-intelligence in the mix.

I actually kind of like this interpretation of the plot, that Rorschach initially intended to build another version of itself around the sun but Captain turned it into an advantage for itself instead. Actually a pretty good resolution of the apparent contradiction.

Incidentally, this all implies that almost all of the character actions in Blindsight are irrelevant to the plot, and even actively counterproductive, because the single most important thing occurring is the Captain making sure that Big Ben never susses out that there is another super-intelligence in the mix.

The crew in Blindsight even without this interpretation are mostly irrelevant to the Captain's plan - they spend most of their time following Captain's orders or being manipulated by Captain, and even then much of what they do doesn't end up directly contributing to the resolution of the story. Most of the events in the story were planned by Captain long beforehand. I actually think this is a theme of the story - your amount of actual agency in the plot inversely correlates with your level of consciousness.

Susan James is probably the most conscious individual on Theseus, and Rorschach easily turns her against herself and co-opts her for its own plans. Isaac Szpindel, who boasts a huge amount of augmented senses that elevate his sensory world far beyond an average baseline, gets unceremoniously killed early on in the book before he even has any time to put his skillset to use. Amanda Bates, the combat "specialist", is pretty much entirely useless and is just a glorified safety-catch to make sure her automated drones aren't as effective as they could be without her. Siri Keeton, the famously un-self-aware protagonist who does his job without realising how he does it, ends up being one of the least co-opted or affected by Rorschach, and ends up being a surprisingly relevant part of Captain's plan when it turns out his role is to play stenographer and relay all the information to the public (And how do they get him to do this? They break him to make him more human and more manipulable).

The critical revelation that the aliens are not conscious and are hostile was made by the vampire, who has a reduced level of consciousness compared to your baseline human - or Captain itself, depending on how you interpret their neural link. Literally everything else was planned by Captain, an automaton that likely operates in a manner not too dissimilar to how Rorschach itself does.

The fact that very few of the characters actually had any agency at all in Blindsight is a feature, not a bug. You're not reading about plucky oddballs making decisions and saving the world, you're reading about an extended game of 4D chess between two non-conscious gods in which the humans are a footnote at best. Theseus itself is an analogy for how the book says the human brain works, with the conscious actors being irrelevant at best and actively harmful at worst, and the non conscious actors being responsible for almost everything in spite of the fact they’re usually backgrounded in the plot.

The fact that very few of the characters actually had any agency at all in Blindsight is a feature, not a bug. You're not reading about plucky oddballs making decisions and saving the world, you're reading about an extended game of 4D chess between two non-conscious gods in which the humans are a footnote at best. Theseus itself is an analogy for how the book says the human brain works, with the conscious actors being irrelevant at best and actively harmful at worst, and the non conscious actors being responsible for almost everything in spite of the fact they’re usually backgrounded in the plot.

Yeah, and this is where I will defend Watt’s writing in these two books, where Blindsight is his masterpiece and will probably go down as a classic of 21st-century science fiction. Sure, his characters are frequently more like plot coupons, but they’re not really the story. The story is about titanic forces moving around in the background, between the lines on the page, which is pretty cool when he pulls it off and the reader figures it out.

I think that’s basically the theme he’s always writing about, even his early Rifters series was like a first stab at that idea.

I enjoyed the book so much I read it four times. Not that there aren't quibbles to be had with some of its storytelling, but the concepts and overall narrative are strong enough to overcome its deficits.

something in me says Lovecraft did it better. Probably a matter of taste

Vehemently disagree with this in particular. In theory Lovecraft would be something I'd enjoy, but I get pretty tired of his penchant for showing the reader incomprehensible unexplained creatures, then stressing endlessly how easily our world could be ended by them - IMO, that is trivially easy to achieve if no burden whatsoever is placed on the writer to explain anything or make it make sense. The challenge with this kind of fiction in my opinion is to introduce a concept inherently clever or terrifying enough to maintain that sense of starkness, alienness and cosmic horror even when the mystery box is opened fully. I get so tired of aliens where the entire point of their existence is to be alien for the sake of being alien - it's easy to write godmade horrors if you're just optimising for weirdness and incomprehensibility, it's not easy to write them if you're simultaneously trying to make them comprehensible and plausible while retaining the dread. The horror in cosmic horror comes from it feeling real enough such that the audience would actually entertain it as a possibility.

Blindsight's cosmic horrors are maybe the only ones in fiction that feel truly alien and scary to me. Most of the others I've encountered are basically souped-up elves with even less plausibility.

Strongly agreed. Blindsight is in my top 3 list, and Lovecraft? The man was afraid of miscegenation, his own shadow, and presumably, General Relativity, given how much he hates non-euclidean geometry.

I found the general concept of unknowable, eldritch entities interesting, but his execution lackluster. The Laundry Files does it way better, if we're sticking to the Mythos.

The laundry series is not half as scary as Scratch Monkey, his first novel.

Stross needs to be terrorized in real life to produce great art (e.g. Scratch Monkey was written while he was implementing credit card transactions..in Perl), and I'm seeing much promise here with the rise of nativism and Trump.

It's not supposed to be enjoyable, but memorable.

My feelings were similar. I appreciated it and respected it, but I didn't enjoy it and I've never felt the slightest urge to read it again.

Wacky court opinion:

  • A company owns a nine-acre (four-hectare) piece of land (comprising three lots) that straddles the boundary between two municipalities, Allentown and Bethlehem. (This Google Maps link shows the location. This screenshot of the county's GIS map shows the municipal boundary.) The company wants to build a complex of four apartment buildings on the land. On this piece of land, Bethlehem's zone allows apartment buildings, but Allentown's zone does not, so the company is getting all the zoning approvals through Bethlehem.

  • More specifically, Bethlehem's zone allows an apartment building to be built only if there is a commercial use on its first floor, but this requirement is waived if the apartment building faces a "local street" rather than an "arterial street". The company asks the Bethlehem zoning board to rule that all four buildings in the complex count as facing North Wahneta Street in Allentown, which is a local street, even though building 4, when considered individually, actually faces West Broad Street in Bethlehem, which is an arterial street. Bolstering this argument, the complex's main entrance will be on North Wahneta Street, while there will be a fence blocking access from West Broad Street.

  • The Bethlehem zoning officer recommends that the petition be rejected, but the Bethlehem zoning board approves it anyway. Since the piece of land counts as a "corner lot" (indeed, it adjoins five different streets), the zoning code allows the company to choose whichever street it wants as the street that the entire lot faces, without considering individual buildings. And judicial precedent states that a zoning board can acknowledge the existence of land in a different municipality without being guilty of exercising its jurisdiction outside its own borders.* The Bethlehem government appeals**, along with several disgruntled single-family-residential neighbors who don't want to live next to an apartment complex, but the trial court affirms.

  • The appeals panel reverses. (1) Under the unique circumstances of this case, the Bethlehem zoning board actually is exercising its jurisdiction outside its own borders, because it is giving the nod to an apartment building that "faces" an Allentown street and sits partially on Allentown land but would be forbidden in Allentown's zone, enabling an end run around Allentown's zoning code. And (2) the designation of building 4 as facing a street that actually lies behind building 4 would run afoul of other parts of Bethlehem's zoning code (e. g., a prohibition on putting an apartment building's parking lot between the building and its front lot line), which the zoning board completely overlooked. Finally, even if those first two points were not valid, (3) there is not even any evidence in the record that North Wahneta Street counts as a local street under Bethlehem's zoning code in the first place! Therefore, building 4 must be considered to face West Broad Street in Bethlehem, not North Wahneta Street in Allentown.

*In that case: A company owned a 43-acre (17-hectare) piece of land straddling the boundary between two municipalities, Cheltenham and Springfield. Cheltenham's zoning code required a 100-foot (30-meter) setback from the property line. The Cheltenham govt. argued that this setback should also apply to the municipal boundary in the middle of the piece of land, but the Cheltenham zoning board rejected this argument**, and the trial court and the appeals panel affirmed. "Hamilton Hills is clearly distinguishable because it pertained to [whether a developer could count open space in one municipality toward another municipality's open-space requirement], not setback provisions. The zoning board simply found that the municipal boundary line was not a property line for measuring setbacks. In so concluding, the zoning board did not exert any control over land located in another municipality."

**Yes, in each of these two cases the government and the zoning board of the same municipality were opponents. Apparently, a zoning board is considered a quasi-judicial entity that is independent of the government that appointed all of its members.

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