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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   373 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 28, 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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So I finished A Fighting Man of Mars. While I found The Master Mind of Mars rote, boring and tedius in the extreme, A Fighting Man of Mars could easily be my favorite Barsoom novel, and actually a pretty damn good pulp scifi novel period. This one really goes places: Courtship and intrigue in the palaces of Helium, survival against the green hoards of the ancient seabeds, imprisonment in a far off city suspicious of outsiders, escaping ferocious ancient beast, encountering a psychopath, encountering a mad scientist, capturing a borderline magical flier, rescuing and losing the love interest several times a chapter, falling out of love with the bitch, the main character falling in love (predictably) with someone far more worthy. I know that's a run on sentence, but you have to understand I could have summarized the last novel in like 10 words. Really enjoyed that one. I would actually recommend it.

Excerpt from a court opinion:

The trial judge stated at sentencing [on December 16, 2022]:

I am considering the sentencing guidelines. I will also consider the fact that you did have a waiver trial, and I will grant you some mitigation with that. I thoroughly reviewed the Presentence investigation report, my notes on the testimony from the trial, the testimony that's been presented here today at the sentencing, from both [the victim, a previous romantic partner of Appellant and the mother of a ten-year-old child with him,] and [Appellant's current paramour,] as well as your allocution and the arguments of counsel.

On December 20, 2022, Appellant timely filed a post-sentence motion requesting reconsideration of his sentence. Appellant acknowledged that the court had sentenced him at the bottom end of the mitigated guidelines, but he indicated that he had been nervous and had not appropriately articulated his remorse in his allocution. Appellant also requested the opportunity to present additional testimony from some of his children's mothers regarding the ways in which his incarceration would affect their lives financially and emotionally. On April 19, 2023, the court denied Appellant's motion by operation of law. Appellant did not file a direct appeal.

Court saga:

  • A 20-year-old man (diagnosed with ADHD and "autism spectrum disorder", employed by UPS under a special program) meets a 12-year-old girl (claiming to be 13) on Snapchat. Within a month, their conversations become sexual. Among other things, the man directs the girl to record a video of herself masturbating with a marker.

  • Five months in, as part of a different child-exploitation investigation, the girl is interviewed by FBI agents, and she also discloses this situation. The agents take control of the girl's Snapchat account, entice the man to meet the girl at a state fair with condoms in the expectation of having sex there, arrest him, and charge him with six crimes. He pleads guilty to three of them, and the other three are dismissed.

  • For sentencing purposes, the marker video is counted as production of child pornography with an enhancement for "material that portrays sadistic or masochistic conduct", which increases the total sentencing range by 55 percent (from 14–18 years to 22–27 years) under the sentencing guidelines. The defendant objects to this characterization, but the trial judge rejects the objection. It is circuit precedent that child pornography that "would cause an objective viewer to believe that the pictured activity is inflicting physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation on the minor" is sadistic or masochistic. "It is common sense that images of a middle- and high-school-aged girl inserting foreign objects into her private parts are sadistic. At minimum, such conduct is objectively humiliating." The trial judge varies downward from the sentencing range by three years to account for the defendant's youth and immaturity, but refuses to vary further based on his diagnoses. The final sentence is 19 years in prison (plus 25 years of supervised release).

  • The appeals panel vacates and remands.

    For depictions involving prepubescent minors, all penetrative activity is inherently sadistic and alone justifies the enhancement. But, for depictions involving pubescent minors [such as the victim in this case], sexual penetration is not by itself enough. The district court must instead find, within the material's four corners, other visible and objective markers of physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Those markers can take different forms, like bondage, urination, humiliating costumes or positions, penetration with large or sharp objects, facial expressions denoting distress, or body language suggesting discomfort. But, without more indicating pain or humiliation, the depiction of pubescent minors engaged in penetrative sexual activity alone cannot justify the enhancement.

  • One judge on the three-judge panel dissents.

    The majority contends that, since the parties agree that [the victim] was not prepubescent at the time of the video, the first avenue for application of the sadism enhancement is foreclosed. But the parties' agreement or concession on an issue is not dispositive, and it does not end our inquiry. As noted by the majority, the government "concedes" that the video shows that [the victim] has "fully-developed breasts and pubic hair", and [the defendant] describes [the victim] as "almost adult-appearing". But several other characteristics, in addition to physical ones, inform the inquiry into prepubescence. For this issue, we should not rely on the conclusions of attorneys, who presumably lack the requisite medical expertise or specialized training and experience to evaluate accurately whether a minor is prepubescent. That determination is more appropriately suited to a qualified medical expert, rather than an attorney or judge. Moreover, that determination is certainly inappropriate for an attorney or judge to make based solely on a minor's appearance as reproduced in an image or video.

    As to the second avenue for application of the sadism enhancement, the majority focuses exclusively on the "four corners of the image" depicting the sexual misconduct. In particular, the majority emphasizes the minor's facial expressions and body language to discern whether the minor objectively experienced physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation during the sexual misconduct. To this point, the majority highlights that the government "acknowledges there is no point in the video in which the expression on [the victim]'s face is particularly pained", and that [the defendant] states that [the victim]'s "body does not flinch or recoil as she masturbates".

    But this emphasis on the visible appearance and reaction of the victim in the material is wholly speculative and unreliable. The majority's approach requires the court to evaluate a victim's reaction while the victim is in the throes of adverse circumstances. This approach assumes that a minor's apparent facial expressions and body language in an isolated and contrived image or video accurately reflect the minor's objective experience, but that assumption defies common sense. This approach fails to take into account that the minor may pretend to tolerate the defendant's treatment or appear comfortable in the image or video to appease the defendant, which often may be the case, or because of the defendant's threats or manipulation. This approach also fails to take into account that the minor may experience objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material. This approach excludes all outside circumstances, even though those circumstances may illuminate whether the sexual misconduct depicted in the material caused the minor to experience objective physical or mental pain and suffering.

    The burden should not be on the victim to convey to the court in her image or video that sexual misconduct with minors involves objective pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Rather, the burden should be on the defendant to prove otherwise. Common sense and human experience inform such an approach.

The burden should not be on the victim to convey to the court in her image or video that sexual misconduct with minors involves objective pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Rather, the burden should be on the defendant to prove otherwise. Common sense and human experience inform such an approach.

I do not see how it would be possible for someone to prove that a person on an image or video is not in pain when the assumption is that they would be hiding it.

During the pandemic there was such beast as asymptotic covid ... for those obtuse enough to be healthy.

I forgot to copy some text that clarifies the dissenter's viewpoint here. (The paragraph was cut in half by a page break.)

This approach also fails to take into account that the minor may experience objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material. This approach excludes all outside circumstances, even though those circumstances may illuminate whether the sexual misconduct depicted in the material caused the minor to experience objective physical or mental pain and suffering.

Also:

Certainly, the majority’s approach cannot accurately capture the feelings or mental state of a minor through the confined frame of an isolated image or video.[1]

Although the depiction in the material is relevant to the inquiry, the court’s focus should not be so narrow. Rather than confine the court’s inquiry to the image or video and focus on the victim’s appearance and reaction as portrayed in the visual media, the court should consider all relevant circumstances and ultimately focus on the defendant’s conduct.[2] The court’s inquiry should include the course of conduct between the defendant and the minor, the events leading up to and after the footage, and the susceptibility of the minor to the defendant’s possible manipulation and control, as those considerations yield a more accurate determination of whether a minor may have experienced objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation due to the events depicted in the material.

[1]Parenthetically, this problem is exemplified in the media by teenage Virginia Giuffre, who appears to be smiling and happy in pictures with then Prince Andrew, despite her alleging that he subjected her to extreme sexual abuse.

[2]Indeed, in other areas of the Sentencing Guidelines, we have emphasized that the "focus of the inquiry is on the defendant’s action, not the victim’s reaction".

Were there ever CSM cases where the minor was deemed not susceptible enough to the defendant's manipulation and control?

That quote is from the dissent. "Susceptibility of the minor to the defendant's possible manipulation and control" is not an actual standard that has been used in any cases. The text of the law criminalizes merely "persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense".

It is the day after Thanksgiving; and so I will oblige my Christmas-obsessed wife by bringing up the Christmas decorations from the basement. As I walk through the basement, I see the detritus of many things I tried and abandoned. Mottizens: what hobbies or activities have you given a good honest try, and concluded: "this isn't for me?"

For me we have, for example:

  • Golf: Tennis is the only sport to which I have ever devoted myself. However, a few years ago, I spent a large chunk of time thinking about golf, taking lessons, hitting balls at the driving range etc. Then I picked up a very aggravating hip injury that healed slowly. By the time I was back to normal, my desire to do anything relating to golf had dissipated to zero. I think with this one, I realized that starting at a later age, I would never realistically be able to put in the hours to hit an acceptable skill floor. Worth noting - in contrast to some other ball sports, I seem to have no natural aptitude for this one.

  • Photography & drawing: I took classes in each of these within the last five years. I do take my DSLR along if I go somewhere interesting, and I actually think I can take some good pictures; but that's all. I never come up on a random day off and think, "I'll get the camera out and go take pictures of things." Drawing is similar except I never did acquire facility at it. In general, I don't think I'm a very visual person; none of the hobbies that I have kept involve creating anything with visually pleasing outputs.

  • Scuba diving: I did all the classroom and pool portions of the PADI cert, and then got bored with it and stopped. I think this is just because I live in the Midwest; if I lived by a large body of water maybe I'd carry on, but as it stands, it's too inconvenient to pursue this. But I also don't think I was as into it as my peers in the class. As is, I suppose, typical for a hobby you try and drop, I only thought, "This is kind of neat," not, "I love this!"

I love the drums as a musical instrument and several times I tried to learn them, including one attempt with in person classes. I couldn't stick to practicing with the lame drum pad, so I bought a used edrum kit on Craigslist thinking that the realistic sound would be more enjoyable. It was, and I continued with a few online lessons with the kit, but I didn't enjoy the lessons all that much and one day I sat on the throne and wondered why I was even bothering to do this and what I hoped to achieve. I couldn't really come up with an answer and I never touched the kit again.

I think it's hard to learn an instrument unless you intend to play with people (or you're an Asian kid on that grind) and I didn't have anyone to play with.

There must be other hobbies like this in my past, but I usually obsessively get rid of stuff I'm not using so they don't come to mind - although the kit is still in the house.

Good post!

  • Astronomy: I bought a cheap telescope some time after graduating from high school. I put it together and had fun realizing I could look at the neighbors really, really closely. However, looking at the moon didn't go so well. I don't remember if it was blurry or if there was no picture at all or what, but I remember being dissatisfied, and the lens changes I could think of only made the problem different. I think I resolved to look further into the matter sometime, but in practice, the telescope has sat in the garage ever since. I wonder what I should do with it.
  • 3D Printing: I got really excited about making a FGC 9, so I bought an Ender 3 to make it happen. But the assembly got me. I spent a couple hours putting it together, but eventually, I had no idea how the wheels were supposed to be mounted. I took a picture and sent it in to reddit, and they were helpful, but they also said that I had marked the wheels up and that I now had to order new ones, because those ones were gonna hitch up when printing stuff. I ordered them, but as I waited for them, I lost my motivation, and that, too, just sat there. The outcome was different from the telescope, though. Because it was sitting in my room, I had a hard time looking at my failure every day, so I offered it to my geology professor, who I was pretty good friends with. I sold it to him for cheap, something like $40, and gave him all my filament. When I next checked in on him, he told me he actually had gotten it to work on some long Sunday. "I kept thinking 'there's no way I have the part for this', but every time, I would find the part in the box," he said. The difficulties he had putting it together made me think I never would have been able to do it myself; he described needing to shim it and measure things carefully. His wife was quite thrilled he got it working, though, and immediately started getting him to print out miniatures and card holders and whatnot for her tabletop gaming stuff. Finally, he handed me the only thing I requested, the only thing I had interest in besides guns, three really loud 3D printed whistles. While I didn't manage to put the 3D printer together myself, I do think it had a nice ending.

What video game(s) are you playing? :D

I've only played for a couple of hours during the last two weeks, tbh. I was really impressed with Roseymorn Monastery in Baldur's Gate 3. The Shadow-Cursed Lands are a bit of a letdown afterwards. I screwed up a quest which, someone later told me, was a more important one than it seemed. So I have to backtrack a little bit. Which is a meh thing to do when you're not really enjoying the environment. Bring on Moonrise Towers.

Battlefield 6 baby! Free week right now.

It definitely released somewhat under-baked, but the infantry gameplay is PHENOMENAL (with some caveats). Engine is amazing. Vehicle gameplay is shit compared to BF5 (I skipped 2042) which is disappointing, but air vehicles are not very strong and look great when they explode, which is awesome as a good BF5 pilot = just leave the server the game is over. Plus the RPG is very fast and accurate, and RPG-ing helis is a herion-tier hit of dopamine.

Plus, the popularity of BF6 means a lot of... median Americans are playing. As a PC gamer, I missed most of the golden era of cod lobby shit talk, but I have genuinely heard a smoke alarm beep being picked up by someone's PS5 controller mic they hadn't muted.

I have never farmed noobs as hard as I have in this game, it feels like many of the opposing players have Hellen Keller tier awareness and coordination, you can (literally) run circles around them, my K/D has never been this high in a FPS and I'm not even tank-whoring (which I did a lot in BF5).

The median American cannot comprehend a silencer, you can just keep killing them as they walk around a corner into you, blissfully unaware that 3 team mates in front of them just died the same way.

Just bought Baldurs Gate on the recs of this forum. Looking forward to some cozy gaming this winter.

I had to put down Silksong, just kept getting too frustrated playing it. Was fun for a while though.

Awesome. Wouldn't mind hearing about what character you go for and your impressions.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend was on Instagram and found a reel of a group of women (and one man) respectively cosplaying as the Bubble Head Nurses and Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2. I mentioned that the game is really good and we could try playing it together if she liked, a suggestion she responded to with enthusiasm, despite not really being a gamer.

I have a complicated relationship with Silent Hill 2. I was aware of the franchise (and I think even played the demo for Silent Hill 3 as a child, without having played either of the previous two instalments, only to find that my PC couldn't hack it), but the first time I encountered the idea that Silent Hill 2 specifically was a game with real artistic merit was from hearing Yahtzee relentlessly gush about it. Curiosity piqued, about fifteen years ago I bought a secondhand PS2 and a copy of the game and gave it a whirl, only to give up on it an hour or two in. The same thing happened on my second attempt. On probably my third attempt I decided to just power through it and made it to the Brookhaven Hospital — at which point it finally clicked for me, and I played all the way through to the end. I played it through to the ending a second time, and haven't touched it since.

With my PS2 gathering dust somewhere, I installed the PC port of the original game* which is apparently abandonware, along with the "Enhanced Edition" mod, which optimises the experience for modern PCs and enables controller support. We booted up the game and got stuck in, with my girlfriend playing until she got too scared and then asking me to take over. I don't scare easily, and even on the times I've played the game to the end generally found it more creepy and unsettling than outright scary. My girlfriend scares much easier than I do, and after subjecting her to innumerable scary movies over the years, I can say without exaggeration that Silent Hill 2 was the most scared I've ever seen her: she was literally shrieking in terror in places, and mentioned having had nightmares about Pyramid Head. In much the same way that comedy films can seem funnier when watched with a group, playing a horror game with someone sitting next to you who's frightened out of her wits really enhanced the experience, and I found the game scarier and more unnerving than any previous playthrough. By the time you've emerged from the Historical Society and are making the lonesome voyage across the lake, the game has become utterly hypnotic. And then you get to the ending, and the game turns on a dime from scaring the bejesus out of you to breaking your heart. We were both devastated when it's implied Angela kills herself, the twist of how Mary died came as a complete surprise to my girlfriend, and when Mary reads out her letter to James at the end we were both sobbing.

In some ways my opinion of the game hasn't changed: almost everything prior to the Brookhaven Hospital remains a boring slog through a set of bland, repetitive environments. (Maybe that's necessary to lull the players into a false sense of security so they can pull the rug out from under them later, modulating from survival to psychological horror.) The titular town is terrifying at nighttime but dull as dishwater during the day, fog notwithstanding. The transition from in-game cutscenes to pre-rendered cinematics might be the only thing that really dates the game to the early 2000s, as it's a trope that completely fell out of favour once graphical fidelity hit some floor. In other ways I'm surprised to admit that I get it now: the people claiming that the dodgy voice acting and imprecise facial animation contribute to the game's dreamlike Lynchian atmosphere sounds like pure cope — but goddamn it, those things do contribute to the game's dreamlike Lynchian atmosphere, whether intended by the creators or not. (Part of me even wants to call the game a spiritual adaptation of Mulholland Drive, given that both stories are fundamentally about the psychological coping mechanisms their sympathetic protagonists resort to in order to avoid confronting the fact that they have murdered their loved ones; maybe the Man Behind Winkie's serves the same purpose as Pyramid Head? — and yet it couldn't be, because it came out only four months after Mulholland Drive debuted at Cannes. That's how far ahead of the curve Team Silent were: they were making Lynchian games before Lynchian games were a thing, without even having the man's masterpiece to crib from.) Since Silent Hill 2's release, there have been dozens of video games which marketed themselves as "psychological horror", and yet I can't remember any which came close to getting so deep under my skin. In a medium in which "mature" or "adult" is still widely seen as synonymous with more cursing and more realistic gore and tits (or including these elements, but rapping the player on the knuckles for daring to enjoy them), Silent Hill 2 actually feels like a story for grown-ups in a way that most games that have been released ten, fifteen or twenty years later couldn't hold a candle to. I recall when Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy came out, some critic made the comparison that Grand Theft Auto is a game which, owing to its content, should only be played by adults, whereas Fahrenheit is a game for adults. With all due respect: bullshit. David Cage wishes he could craft something half this mature and powerful, and twenty years after Fahrenheit came out he doesn't appear to have come a millimetre closer.

Roger Ebert once said that, for him, cinema is first and foremost an emotional medium: he dislikes films that delve into intellectual debates, considering it a misuse of the form. I tend to agree: I can't remember a film I loved specifically because it made me think (although it may have done so incidentally). By contrast, despite video games' strenuous efforts to replicate the visual iconography of cinema, I've long thought the medium they most resemble is actually books, in the sense that they are long-form storytelling media the consumer must actively engage with to move the story forward, unlike passively consumed movies or TV shows. It is for this reason that I've long considered games more compelling from an intellectual standpoint than an emotional one, which makes sense when you consider that even getting to grips with the game mechanics is, to a greater or lesser extent, a fundamentally intellectual exercise: most of the games I've loved, I've loved because they made me think, not because they made me feel (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 2, Spec Ops The Line, SOMA: they all made me feel emotions a little bit, but the main reason I loved them was because they made me think). But I now think Silent Hill 2 might be the exception to this trend. Having now completed my third playthrough, I think it might be the most unsettling, moving, emotionally affecting video game I've ever played, bar none.

gushing over

I've become vastly fussier as a gamer in my advancing years. Last night I wanted to play something by myself, so I played the first half-hour of Trek to Yomi. Gorgeous to look at and I like that the spoken dialogue is in Japanese, but the gameplay was already starting to feel a bit rote and repetitive, so I gave up on it. Next I tried Advent Rising, notable for having its story co-written by Orson Scott Card. Gave up on that even quicker, inside of ten minutes.

A few years ago I tried playing Undertale after the world and its mother were raving about it. I think I played it for about two hours and remember enjoying it, but for some reason I never got around to finishing it. Last night I took another crack at it, playing about as far as the title card (i.e. the game held my attention for significantly longer than the previous two games I tried that evening). It's rare for a game to make me laugh out loud, or to make me think "aww, how sweet", so props to the game for doing both. Will see if I can manage to make it to the end this time.

*No remake for me, thank you very much.

Some Arma Reforger, and Rimworld.

I've also been dipping my toes into RW modding. I can't play without the Combat Extended mod, which makes the two blind guys in an alley shootouts in vanilla into something respectable.

I wanted to start small and make a mod that adds a single gun, namely a railgun that's effectively an MG and shoots 6mm tungsten sabots. I wanted to be maximally lazy and use AI to write all the code, but had very little success. Rimworld modding is a relatively niche topic, and CE submods even more so. Especially since there was a version update and DLC since the knowledge cutoff. I was tearing out hair before giving up on that approach as a wholesale solution and ended up taking an existing mod as the starting point and stripping it down and building back up by myself.

So far? I've got a 6mm railgun! It shoots!

Unfortunately, it only fires single rounds and doesn't seem to need ammo. The former is a consequence of starting off with a mod that added a sniper rifle, but the latter perplexes me. I'll figure it out eventually, especially with help from the CE dev discord. It's cool that it's working at all, even if it's a tiny project on well-trod ground.

Edit:

I've got it working! It's out on Steam, with 3 railguns that fit your needs regardless of the enemy you need railed. I'm officially a modder, and I've returned something to the community and game that I've enjoyed for an ungodly number of hours.

The Seance of Blake Manor. I've got a thing for detective investigation games. Trying to use deductive reasoning game mechanics to figure out who did what. I'd like to say its deductive reasoning, but its only like that in a couple of the games.

If anyone likes this genre, other recommended games are:

  • The Painscreek Killings
  • The Case of the Golden Idol
  • Return of the Obra Din

As always, watch the first episode of a Let's Play on YouTube and then make your mind up in 10 minutes before things get spoiled.

Edit: Almost forgot Shadows of Doubt

I was considering replaying BG3 and was wondering about which mods might be good. My first thought was some kind of narrator replacement since I really dislike the default one.

I found AI versions of both Lenval Brown and William Morgan Sheppard, both of which seem pretty good.

Does anyone have any other versions they like or some other kind of mod they find to be essential?

I found some good narrator mods that work with the latest version of the game. I'm currently using Christopher Lee, and I've tried out Philomena Cunk, too, who is amusing. The Cunk file can be downloaded here. They both work well.

Other mods I consider to be essential: Carry weight increased (I go for 2x to keep from feeling too cheaty), change Shadowheart's hair(!), Configurable movement speed (requires Mod Configuration Menu).

Optional: Realms Restored, No Alphabets, Better Romance. These three can be found on the socially dubious rpghq forums.

BG3 has.. carry weight? I played the game but don't remember that ever being an issue- even though it should. Isn't there infinite camp inventory which you can access at any time?

I run into the carry weight restriction a lot, even with the 2x mod. Yes you can send stuff to camp, but then it isn't immediately available to you, e.g. in combat. Everything has a weight. Even your hoard of gold coins.

Nice, thanks!

There are many words in the English language which are formed using a prefix or a suffix, but for which the antonym formed by removing that prefix or suffix (or using the opposite prefix or suffix) is never used. There are even a handful of cases in which two compound words can be formed using a prefix and its antonymic prefix, but the word itself is never used in isolation, or has a vastly different meaning than would be inferred based on the meaning of the two compound words. Some examples:

  • abuse, v. (antonym: disabuse): to affirm that another's belief is correct and not a misconception
  • appointment, n. (antonym: disappointment): the state of feeling satisfied
  • baseful, adj. (antonym: baseless): (of claims) with sound evidentiary backings
  • concerting, adj. (antonym: disconcerting): tending to cause ease and comfort
  • faultful, adj. (antonym: faultless): containing many imperfections
  • feckful, adj. (antonym: feckless): purposeful, competent, effective
  • gormful, adj. (antonym: gormless): sharp; intelligent; with his wits about him
  • gruntled, adj. (antonym: disgruntled): content, satisfied
  • gutful, adj. (antonym: gutless): brave, courageous
  • hatful, adj. (antonym: hatless): the state of wearing a hat
  • homeful, adj. (antonym: homeless): of a fixed abode
  • inotic, adj. (antonym: exotic): indigenous, native
  • interminate, v (antonym: exterminate): to commit mass suicide à la Jonestown
  • interpret1, v. (antonym: misinterpret): to understand correctly and accurately
  • jointed, adj. (antonym: disjointed): connected, coherent.
  • parage, v. (antonym: disparage): to commend or praise.
  • peerful, adj. (antonym: peerless): (of individuals) with many equals
  • pitiful, adj.2 (antonym: pitiless): empathetic, caring
  • rate, v.3 (antonyms: overrate, underrate): to assess the value of accurately
  • react, v.4 (antonyms: overreact, underreact): to respond in an appropriate fashion
  • reckful, adj. (antonym: reckless): cautious, careful
  • ruthful, adj. (antonym: ruthless): scrupulous
  • seamful, adj. (antonym: seamless): amateurishly put together
  • spotful, adj. (antonym: spotless): dirty, disheveled
  • substar, n. 5 (antonym: superstar): a minor celebrity; a B-, C- or Z-lister
  • subvise, v. (antonym: supervise): to oversee ineffectually
  • superstandard, adj. (antonym: substandard): in excess of requirements, superior
  • timeful, adj. (antonym: timeless): bound to a particular era, a product of its time; an unintentional period piece
  • tireful, adj. (antonym: tireless): prone to exhaustion, easily worn out
  • topful, adj. (antonym: topless): decently clad
  • underdose, n. v. (antonym: overdose): an insufficent dose
  • underdraft, n. (antonym: overdraft): a positive bank balance
  • underkill, n. (antonym: overkill): to use methods insufficient to accomplish one's goal
  • undersee, v. (antonym: oversee): to supervise ineffectually; to ignore or forget about
  • understay, v. (antonym: overstay): to cut one's residence short
  • undertake, v.6 (antonym: overtake): to be overtaken by sb
  • whelm, v. (antonyms: overwhelm, underwhelm): just the right amount, neither surplus nor insufficient to requirements
  • witful, adj. (antonym: witless): intelligent, sensible

Can you think of any other good examples?

1 Obviously this word does see use on some occasions, and yet it isn't strictly an antonym for "misinterpret": "misinterpret" specifically denotes an inaccurate interpretation, whereas "interpret" is equivocal on whether the interpretation was accurate or not.

2 We move here into the realm of pedantry, as while this word does see use, it's not used as an antonym of "pitiless": rather, it denotes someone deserving of pity, which is more properly denoted by "pitiable". See also "nauseous"/"nauseated". In other cases people get this distinction right e.g. "contemptuous"/"contemptible".

3 See also "interpret": unlike "to overrate" and "to underrate", "to rate" does not pass judgement on whether the assessment was a fair or accurate one. Confusingly, "to rate" also carries a colloquial meaning of "to think highly of, to commend"; when Roy Keane said of Mick McCarthy, "... I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager, and I don't rate you as a person..." he meant that he didn't think highly of him in any of these capacities. This runs contrary to the word's usual meaning of "to assess", which includes both positive and negative assessments.

4 See also "rate".

5 There was a British comedian (it might have been Lee Evans) who once quipped that every actor who appears in a porn film is denoted a porn star, which is not the standard we apply to actors in general, only a minority of whom can be called "stars". "Where are all the porn actors?"

6 As distinct of its meaning "to undertake a task".

These are called lexical gaps or accidental gaps and are quite common in English in particular due to its relatively complex development course.

"Rate" seems to me like it is indeed used as you describe. Someone's accoplishments can "rate", or properly deserve, praise. A work of art can be "rated highly". There are plenty of industries in which saying that someone's job is to rate, or grade or assess, quality or purity would be perfectly logical.

I believe that "rueful" is both the true antonym for "ruthless" (not scrupulous) and actually a word for which the suffix change is fairly normal. Not sure why this one is slightly irregular... "faithful" exists, as does "shoeless", so the problem would appear to be with "ruthless". Perhaps "rueless" is just too wimpy a collection of sounds for this idea.

For abuse, I have always thought of it being the opposite of disabuse in that an abused person's thought process, etc, is being abused by incorrect notions. Thus, to disabuse is to free someone from a figurative abuser.

A fun example to add to the list (possibly) is inchoate, which means not fully formed. Apparently, lawyers do use the implied antonym choate, but Scalia has long criticized this because the "in" here is not in fact a negative prefix, so creating the implied antonym is nonsenical. Personally, I have always thought of coalesced as a good opposite. https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_dictionaries_accept_choate_although_scalia_has_long_disagreed

There is an archaic noun "(ruth)[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ruth])", which seems to mean the same thing as "rue". Many centuries ago it was a commonplace for Christian parents to name their children after Christian virtues they want them to embody, which is where the name "Ruth" came from: along with "Grace" it's the only such name which has really stuck around in Ireland. Some of these like "Hope" are more common in the states, and you'll sometimes encounter Nigerians called "Goodluck" ("Chastity" only gets used ironically by sex workers).

Good point on the Biblical Ruth, but that is supposed to mean friendship or friend, right? I think "ruthless" has to be a slant of "rue-less". Surely we dont have people out there naming their kids "Regret" as a desired virtue! (Well, actually maybe Hunger Games fans...)

Regret is a name, Sergeant. The name of one of the Covenant's religious leaders. A Prophet.

"Rate" seems to me like it is indeed used as you describe. Someone's accoplishments can "rate", or properly deserve, praise. A work of art can be "rated highly". There are plenty of industries in which saying that someone's job is to rate, or grade or assess, quality or purity would be perfectly logical.

But my point was that the adjectives "overrated" and "underrated" refer to instances in which the assessment of an item's quality was considered to be inaccurate, either too generous or too harsh, respectively. To me this implies that "to rate" something is to make an accurate assessment of its quality. But I don't think it really does carry this de-/con-notation: much as with "interpret", the verb "to rate" is equivocal on whether the resulting assessment was a fair or accurate one.

Hmm, I do think that "to rate" implies accuracy, even if a rating does not necessarily imply the same, perhaps a controversial take in performance review season, but I think of that as "giving ratings" rather than "rating".

But then this gives us the prefix issue of that it being clear that an undercooked dish has not been cooked enough and that an overcooked dish has been cooked too much, a common sense application of over/under. What, then, does it mean to do insufficient/excessive accurate assessment? (Since this was all still very common sense with cook, perhaps over/under are just not good prefixes for us to do this with at all.)

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