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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1960 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 2, 2026

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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Veritasium has a video out about how the best chip making machines are made: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0

Pretty fascinating the level of sophistication, accuracy, and engineering involved in the process. They have a nozzle that sprays 50k tin droplets a second, those tin droplets are then hit three times with a super laser to produce the exact x-ray they need.

The industry has come a long way from the first vacuum tube computers and transistors in the 50s and 60s.

I recommend the book Chip War.

A great man has passed.

We at the Wawa Nationalist Front wish to offer our condolences to our chivalrous foes at Sheetz on the death of Mr Sheetz. We may disagree with Sheetz customers on matters of taste, decorum, basic hygiene, and just how sweet you can make a coffee before it's inedible. But I will forever remember how hilarious I found it that Sheetz was founded and owned by Mr Sheetz, and when you're REALLY drunk at 2am there's nothing like a $6 triple fried app sampler.

You can kill the man, but not the idea.

I prefer Rutters, they just seem a bit nicer imo

If any of y'all were at the ACX meetup in SF today, I'm the road trip guy and it was fun meeting you

The band I've been playing with did a short bar gig last night after a couple month hiatus. The pay was dogshit, but I had enough fun that the money was really just a bonus.

For the musicians out there - do you have any good tips and tricks for getting gigs? Are there any "nontraditional" venues that I might be missing?

Best way I know of is just to network with the bar staff and other musicians. If you have good friends that are well known or know bartenders/bar managers it’s waaaaay easier to get a gig.

I played in one locally popular band in college, and another that was better but didn’t draw. The trick to getting gigs is drawing a respectable audience relative to the size of the venue. I sincerely don’t mean to come off as dismissive by stating the obvious, but most people that manage bars don’t prioritize art over selling drinks.

There was one kind of venue that was particularly fun, and we played two of these — find a music venue in a nearby, small college town that is open just on Saturday nights. There’s not much to do in those towns so they were always full shows, and you didn’t even need to promote yourself.

There are some nonprofit cultural centers that will host all ages shows. If you go this route you’ll likely need to fill out the bill with other bands, yourself.

Any good books about political theory in the modern-day?

I honesty don't care if it controversies,because i want to learn more about knowledge, and learn more about the new right or left wing in America

I would pair Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics with the ACX Book review of Hannania's Public Choice Theory & The Illusion of Grand Strategy. The two are complementary in that they are complete contradictions. Understanding the internal logic of both is a good foundation to be able to call bullshit on other people's spouting off regarding IR.

I think International Relations theory is tragically under considered. Too often people first form a domestic political sense of "what should be" and then scale it up to the world stage, instead of first asking "what is" and then figuring out what they value that can be done within that context.

Thanks for recommendations, it much appreciated since i wanted to be more in depth about political subject

Martin Gurri’s Revolt of the Public is insightful and an entertaining read.

Seconded. Gurri's book is the book to understand modern populism.

I would also add Leo Strauss's What Is Political Philosophy (essay), Burnham's The Machiavellians, Nick Land's Xenosystems: Fragments (google for pdf), and Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. Consider Baudrillard as well. The first three will give you a good overview of the stages of political theory leading to the new right, and Fisher is the last leftist theorist of any intellectual note to gain real memetic reach (Zizek is not what you're looking for here lol).

Thanks for the recommendations, much appreciated.

Kind of you to say. Other suggestion to understand the modern Left: Foucault is critical, probably Discipline and Punish or History of Sexuality Volume 1. The thing to realize with Foucault is that his work was both a major tool for the leftist project of tearing down old structures of social power, and their blueprint for building their own mechanisms of social control.

I am generally not a fan of reading a lot of stuff about object-level politics, aside from this website, but if you would like magazines, I would say the Claremont Review of Books is the best place to get political theory from the modern intellectual Right. Charles Haywood's book reviews for the extremely online rightist perspective. Left is harder to find a single source, maybe relevant NYRB articles. The Economist or Foreign Policy for the Establishment view (it's easy to get sucked into just following the right/left wing conflict, but ultimately their respective conflicts with the establishment are more important than the beefs they have with each other).

Do you believe in therapists? Given my recent realization of how much social anxiety controls my life, the thought of getting a therapist and trying to handle the issue professionally has come up many times. Don't get me wrong, I think practices like CBT are legit, they should definitely work for a lot of people. But when it comes to people that conduct those practices, I'm most certain many of them are not qualified/fit for the job. Each patient is like a unique 1000 piece puzzle that therapist has 1 hour per week to work through. I believe the bare minimum for a therapist is being on top of their life at all times - how many of them are like that? Simply having mold at home would change therapists' brain chemistry, thus affecting their work. How about vitamin deficiencies? Going through personal life problems at home? Not getting enough sleep? That just means that it would take you so much time to find the one that's actually worth your time and money. And at $200-300/hr they are charging, I imagine most won't spend thousands to find the one that works for them.

But anyways, I've got a fun little anecdote about therapists. I recently reconnected with my cousin and learned that she became a family therapist, got the license, her own office - it's legit. Issue is, her personal life situation would tell you she's got no clue about relationships. She's 38, with no kids and a 'hustler' boyfriend that's 10 years older than her. And her dating history is horrible too - in her twenties, she went off to NYC to study and do modeling on the side, sponsored by her dad. There, she lived the high life of being an attractive model in NYC - partying with rappers and finance bros, trips to Hamptons, yadda yadda yadda. Then, after graduating and getting an ultimatum from her dad that he won't be paying for her fun NYC life any longer, she coasted on her modeling gigs and (i'm assuming) help from boyfriends for a few years, ultimately moving back to her home country. Once back, she continued her party lifestyle for a few more years, once again paid for by her father (much cheaper than NYC). In that time, she, still being an attractive and young woman, got hit on quite often. But her main complaint was that the boys hitting on her weren't up to her standard. She set her own dad, a very successful businessman, and the NYC bros that were in her life as her standard, and well, the small town guys weren't that. In her mid to late 20s, she finally decides to lock in and stop depending on her dad by getting a job at a local bank. Focusing on her career, she grinded up to a branch manager by 30. I don't know much about her dating life in that time because my family and hers grew apart in that time, so I stopped overhearing gossip about her. Timeskip half a decade, she's single and decides to quit her job to become a yoga teacher. And finally, timeskip to now - she's a family therapist. Anyway, the reason why I'm saying all that is not to ridicule my cousin about her unfathomable fumble at life - she's not the first and she's not the last, that's just how life is, it's to tell you that this person is now a family therapist with a license that's 'helping' others work out their family issues and charging 10x (I'm not joking) average hourly wage.

As someone who is working through (possibly C-) PTSD with a therapist, I would say that a good therapist can be a fantastic resource, but a bad therapist is probably worse than not having one at all, and even a good therapist who uses the wrong modality is going to effectively be a bad therapist for you.

I've been through three therapists in my efforts to get my head on straight. The first told me after one appointment that she was not qualified to deal with my specific disorder, and recommended a few others in the area who were more qualified. I respected that honesty.

The second therapist was not a good match, and my various symptoms got a lot worse in the short term. It may be that they would have improved over time, but she left the practice before that came to pass.

The third one has been great so far. The work we've done seems to be highly informed by DBT, and puts a lot of weight into forcing my lizard brain into understanding that the first 20 years of my life and my present life are very different things. That may sound obvious, but God damn, do old habits die hard.

More than that, she helps by functioning as a point of reference for what a Normal, Well-Adjusted Human thinks about things. Sometimes you don't realize that you are, for example, letting a person take advantage of you until somebody who seems to generally have their shit together says "you are letting that person take advantage of you". Some of you may scoff at the idea of having a professional say that instead of a family member or friend, but if you don't have access to a family member or friend who has their shit together, it's a viable alternative.

I've been at it for a couple of years now. I'd like to be done, but it's a process. It took decades to fuck my shit up, and I'm not going to undo it by taking 12 insurance-approved mindfulness sessions where I count five things that I see on the walls and five things that I smell. The work suuuucks to do, because no reasonable person wants to think about the things that are informing the maladaptive thoughts and behaviors, but it's necessary if you want to improve.

Even though it's slow going, I have seen benefits. I don't dissociate as much as I used to, and when I do I don't lose as much time and my actions during that period aren't nearly as dramatic. The amount of physical tension that I carry 24x7 has gone down, which has resulted in less chronic pain around old joint injuries. It's easier (not easy) for me to move around in cities.

TLDR: Find the right therapist. Make sure they use techniques that actually work for your bullshit. Actually do the work they assign.

I saw a tweet awhile ago that said something along the lines of:

Going to therapy? You mean arguing with a liberal until you agree with them?

and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

I went through a period in my life in which I was ruminating so much I found it difficult to concentrate on anything and I was very depressed. I will admit that several weeks of very specific CBT exercises did help. But I'm very sceptical of the efficacy of free-form undirected talk therapy. In particular, I find it frustrating how rarely it's acknowledged that going to therapy might be bad for you. The "just go to therapy" brigade generally claim that the worst-case scenario is that it'll be useless (which even then is not necessarily a trivial financial and opportunity cost): I have never heard these people suggest that going to therapy might make a happy person unhappy, an unhappy person even unhappier, a self-absorbed person more self-absorbed etc.

Do you believe in therapists?

I don't just believe in them, I've seen them!

More seriously: talk therapy rescued one of my kids from some crippling anxiety issues, but it wasn't the first therapist we tried who did so. For her it was the second, but I've heard that that's better odds than average. Therapists are like teachers: quality varies way more than it should, and someone sufficiently motivated can get by with self-study alone, but if you need one then you'd be silly to deny it.

Do I "believe" in therapists?

I'm being honest. No. I don't go to therapy, anymore, and haven't in a long time. When I did go, the first two therapists were useless, and the third, who happened to be young, pretty and sensible, had me falling in love with counter-transference so hard it probably counts as remittance.

But therapy? I believe in that, in the sense that it works.

Empirically, on objective based metrics? It works! Works well! Or well enough, since some form of therapy often beats drugs as the first line intervention. CBT for depression, DBT for BPD (which I was disdainful of, until I saw the objective metrics), the list goes on.

I'm in the slightly awkward position of not wanting to go to therapists while being quite solid at it myself. Learning shit like CBT and IPT is a core part of the psychiatry curriculum here. I've been told I'm good at the job.

My distaste for it is slightly irrational. I simply prefer drugs in most circumstances, far less finicky. Not as many soft-factors. You pop something and you get better. Hopefully.

Whereas finding a good therapist is far harder. They don't come with individual RCTs or dose effect curves. Many of them are useless. Some of them are outright counter-productive. Some of these criticisms are also fairly leveled against the medication.

In general, I think men should go to male therapists. They're usually more no-nonsense, less touchy-feely. Men seem to prefer something closer to a life coach than an auntie who'll sip tea with you while you sob.

More speculatively, you need a therapist who is at least roughly as smart as you. Ideally smarter. Part of the job is analyzing your psyche, figuring out what makes you tick. There are a lot of midwits out there. They're more likely to regurgitate the same lines, offer the same old canned saws.

Do you believe in therapists?

No. Much better off with a priest.

Is it common to speak one-on-one with a priest about your personal problems? This is a genuine question; pop culture depictions, and the few times I've personally attended church, gave me the impression that priests mainly give sermons/speeches to large audiences (and do some very limited things like Confession), and it wouldn't have occured to me to approach one with the kind of issues I'd bring to a therapist.

Yes, absolutely. The average person isn't going to go to their priest frequently for such guidance and help, but only a minority of people need to go to a therapist either.

Yeah, sadly ~95% of therapists are terrible. Maybe 3-4% are okay and will help some. Then there do exist the top 1% of super-therapists that can literally transform you into a different person, if you're willing to work with them.

I'd recommend doing everything you can to just find an incredibly good therapist, and don't settle for one you think is merely ok. It's a waste of time.

And her dating history is horrible too - in her twenties, she went off to NYC to study and do modeling on the side, sponsored by her dad. There, she lived the high life of being an attractive model in NYC - partying with rappers and finance bros, trips to Hamptons, yadda yadda yadda. Then, after graduating and getting an ultimatum from her dad that he won't be paying for her fun NYC life any longer

Unc finally reached his breaking point on the Daughter Question and pulled the plug with regard to sunk costs.

In her mid to late 20s, she finally decides to lock in and stop depending on her dad by getting a job at a local bank. Focusing on her career, she grinded up to a branch manager by 30.

Local bank branch positions tend to be pretty low intensity and low prestige. A son who "grinded up" to a branch management position would likely be considered a failson by a "very successful businessman" father. Fortunately for her, she had the usual suite of thot exit opps.

Anyway, the reason why I'm saying all that is not to ridicule my cousin about her unfathomable fumble at life - she's not the first and she's not the last, that's just how life is, it's to tell you that this person is now a family therapist with a license that's 'helping' others work out their family issues and charging 10x (I'm not joking) average hourly wage

Just like "he who represents himself has a fool for a client," he or she who pays a thot or former-thot for advice is a fool for a client.

Model > bank branch manager > yoga teacher > therapist is an interesting progression. Usually it goes more like "model (or some other role making a living off being young, attractive, and female) > yoga teacher or massage therapist > realtor."

Having her dad's wallet as cushion affected her life quite a bit, I imagine the progression would've been a lot more standard if she couldn't rely on it any time she wanted.

See some past discussion of therapy here.

I'm in agreement with everything stated in that thread. TLDR: Yeah the 1 in ~20 therapist is worth their price in gold and will probably be helpful to majority of patients (given patient puts in effort too), but the rest of them are just a waste of money and time. I'm afraid most don't have the will, energy, money to go through the motions. And even if they do - how the hell would you know you found the one?

Hamburger is the pinnacle of human food, the zenith of an unguided evolutionary process. The taste which appeals to everyone from children and childish picky eaters to people who have personal chefs all around the globe, the way how it slots into logistics and economics to make it ubiquitous and cheap rivalled only by instant ramen, but with actual protein and with no need for utensils or even for sitting down to consume.

allow me to ressurect my only aaqc on burger construction

Yeah. You're right. Kenji (of serious eats) likes to call them culinary endpoints.

culinary endpoint: a creation so perfect in its simplicity that it cannot be improved upon, only tweaked.

Triumph of American cuisine. Frankly, the German hamburg steak that inspired it might as well be a different dish all together. More of a flat meatball than a burger.

The invention of the cheeseburger is entirely American. Thin patties, soft buns and Kraft's American cheese. Ketchup and mustard were used sporadically, but was only normalized once Heinz and French's (both American companies) standardized shelf-stable ketchup and yellow mustard respectively.

Germanic-associated street food must be the secret. I agree in general with your high esteem of the German-American burger. But perhaps the collision of the Ottomans and Gerries presents a challenger in the döner sandwich.

Kebab slices stuffed inside a pita cut open on one side with sauces and a healthier mix of raw vegetables — now the go-to snack for urban krauts headed to a soccer game or stumbling home from the bar — didn’t take its current form until the 1970s in (West) Berlin. One to watch in terms of growth. And I’m personally happy to have seen a döner stand open in my metro area here in the States.

Kebab slices stuffed inside a pita cut open on one side with sauces and a healthier mix of raw vegetables

The German-Ottomans cuisine collision shows signs of convergent evolution with Mexican cuisine. Most Döner Kebab places now sell more "Dürüm" than traditional pita-based Döners. And a Dürüm is basically just a Döner-Burrito.

Dürüms have better filling-to-bread ratios than Döners, are even easier to eat than their pita ancestors, and (probably an artifact of German Döner culture) are a bit larger than a Döner and thus closer in calories to a full meal.

In my book, it's a strict improvement on the concept of Kebab sandwiches.

Counterpoint: pizza exists.

Way worse macronutrient profile than the hamburger/cheeseburger.

I went to Australia in 2003 and one night tried to ask the delivery girl for Hamburger pizza. I could hear her suppressing a laugh. Little did I know I should have just asked for a beef pizza. Or something.

A year or so ago on pizza night I decided to make, in addition to my usual pepperoni, spicy chicken, and regular margherita, a cheeseburger pizza. I mentioned this to an acquaintance who bizarrely asked "Why"?

Some people simply have no taste.

Yeah but have you had None Pizza With Left Beef?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_Pizza_with_Left_Beef

I suppose the best answer to that question is "Not yet."

I wonder why chicken tendies have not achieved as much popularity in the fast-food sphere.

They totally have in my region.

Can't go a block without running into a Raising Cane's, Popeyes, or occasionally both.

McGangbang is an absolute all-timer food

Tendies are kind of a one-note taste (and the sauce is doing most of the work anyway); the sandwiches, and the flavor profile of beef compared to chicken, are also more complicated. There's less room for condiments as well since most of the sandwiches that contain one large tendie as patty always only consist of lettuce, pickle, maybe a tomato, and mayo/sauce (and again, a lot of fried/breaded chicken is simply a vehicle for the sauce or gravy, which is not true for a hamburger).

Of course, the real move there is to just get the nuggets/strips on the side with your hamburger in place of the fries. Most fast-food places don't really do fries well anyway (they constantly forget to salt them and a lot of the time they just taste kind of bad to begin with, or are cold when you get home compared to tendies which have more thermal mass) so it's kind of a waste to get them these days.

The price per pound of a broiler chicken compared to beef has been going down for the past 30 years. It's about 30% of the price now, but was 50% of the price back in 1990.

Chicken tenders are a relatively valuable part of the chicken, so I'm guessing that tenders would have been too expensive for fast food.

/images/17674217705582387.webp

Depending on where you're located, there are fast-food chains who offer nothing but these.

I like interesting historical theories. Especially with an element of the fantastical. Ancient apocalypse series is full of them.

Another one I read somewhere was about how "dragons" might have been real. A large winged predator that was hunted to extinction at the end of the last ice age as they clashed with human populations.

Anyone have any fun ones they've read recently?

That myths are oral histories of the Nephilim who ruled various ancient societies/areas.

The wild hare version is they were the original speakers of the Indo-European language.

Islam, in rejecting alcohol, had trouble spreading beyond areas that weren’t already using other mild recreational drugs.

Polytheistic Norse: [eying Christ and Mohammed to see which might be more powerful]

Volga Bulgars and the Khazar Khaganate: …and one last thing, it’s haram to get drunk.

Polythestic Norse: Buddy, if you think I’m wintering in Uppåkra without mead…

What's the drug of choice for its initial areas? Do stimulants like tobacco or qat count?

The remains of any costal civilization 10,000 years ago would have been wiped out by the sea level rise.

For a more specific theory I'm fond of the Azores as Atlantis.

There's a great theory out there about how, three and a half millennia ago, the Mediterranean was dominated by super advanced civilizations. Like, this is way before classical Greece, but supposedly these guys had intercontinental trade routes, giant palace complexes, literacy, booming populations, etc. The kinds of things you would expect from the Roman Empire. Then a series of catastrophes happened, culminating by an invasion of mysterious sea people that came out of literally nowhere; their cities burned, massive fractions of the population died, pottery and art regressed hundreds of years, the written word was lost and had to be reinvented with new alphabets... basically their own version of the dark ages.

It's an excellent theory, with lots of detailed lore and worldbuilding, it almost makes me think it was real... oh, wait.

Pls, for future reference don't ambush us with "Extra Credits"

"Intercontinental" is overselling it a bit when we're talking trade that is mostly Mediterranean+.

Greece is in Europe, Egypt is in Africa, and Hittites and Assyrians were in Asia; good enough for me.

Besides, the point of the meme is to play up Bronze Age civilization as much as possible with technically-true statements, to make it sound like a crazy conspiracy theory on par with ancient aliens and Atlantis.

Ya bronze age was nuts. I think I listened to the hardcore history episode about the sea peoples and bronze age collapse.

The one that I like a lot is Canopy Theory, which suggested that earth was surrounded by a layer of water (vapor) which might have protected against harmful radiation and increased air pressure at the surface, which could have allowed some types of creatures to grow larger than 'normal' and might explain the giant bugs, extra plant life, even dinosaurs.

Then some large interference (a sufficiently large asteroid strike?) broke the equilibrium and the water came crashing down in a short period of time, eventually settling under the surface and in the ocean basins.

Its sometimes proffered as a way to explain how so many cultures in antiquity had flood myths arising around the same time. Which would be wild since that implies it wasn't that long ago on geological timescales.

I like that it was ice and when it crashed, we got the universal flood myths.

I suspect there was something stopping a lot of the radiation until pretty recently, I don’t see how European colonization of Africa and Latin America would have been possible otherwise. Maybe the ozone layer.

What does radiation have to do with colonization?

How’s a guy from England going to conquer Africa if standing in the sun for two hours gives him second degree burns, and doing that for a few years gives him cancer?

By wearing a hat.

I guess he could put a shirt on first.

I think he's imagining white people cooking like prawns south of the tropics. Or simply dying of melanoma of the melanoma.

Needless to say, it's not that bad. Sure, it's remarkably unpleasant, but covering up and staying indoors during the worst of the glare goes a long way. Melanin or modern sunscreen goes even further. It was malaria that was the real bottleneck in a lot of places.

Oh nice, probably claims there are sky whales too yeah?

The various alternative chronologies are good for a laugh, e.g. we wuz Pechenegs n shit.

Ha! Perfect!

Just started Skyrim up again. Any recommendations for mods or fun things to try? I haven’t played in years.

Do a pure mage, no economy run. No items, no selling, no looting (except spell books), no buying. Maybe cheat in some spell books for yourself.

Just cast spells, kill things, and move on to the next quest. You'll never be interrupted by checking for the last couple gold pieces in a ruin, or have to run back to town to sell things since the rules ban you from picking it up anyways. It felt a lot smoother when I tried it, even if I did end up as a stealth archer (Conjure Bow, Muffle, and sometimes Invisibility).

No economy sounds horrid! I love making gobs of money. How do you play like that? ahaha.

Also of course, stealth archer is just OP.

Almost embarrassed that this is what pulled me out of lurkerdom, but when duty calls…

First, if you want to play Skyrim without actually playing Skyrim, try Enderal. It’s a free mod that changes it into an entirely new game with improved mechanics and good worldbuilding. I enjoyed it maybe more than Skyrim itself. There’s a few areas that you can tell were left underdeveloped, but it’s overall polished and has few bugs (for me at least).

For actual Skyrim, I last played a few years ago. Bethesda has continued to update the game by incorporating Creations into the official release, so no idea if these still work. Here’s my top few:

  1. Ordinator is a perk overhaul that makes things much more interesting than “expert level spells use less mana.”
  2. SkyrimSouls makes it so that opening a menu doesn’t pause the game (you can configure which menus). Prevents the classic cheese wheel spam (or at least forces you to bind it to a hotkey and make combat more reactive)
  3. Apocalypse and Summermyst add a bunch of new interesting spells and enchantments, respectively.
  4. SkyUI is the UI that should have shipped with the PC version, rather than just porting over a console-friendly UI
  5. Genuinely Intelligent Soul Trap is a small but massively nice QoL improvement.
  6. Inigo is a fully voiced companion that is fun to travel with.

There’s a burgeoning scene of AI NPC chat in Skyrim: speech to text or free-entry type your dialogue, it goes to an LLM with some prompt engineering to answer as the NPCs, then a text to speech model have them respond back. Obviously a lot of jank involved and there can still be latency issues, but it looks very cool. Mantella was the first big one, CHIM seems to be the most developed currently, and SkyrimNet is a promising up-and-comer. I haven’t actually used any, so do report back if you try them out.

This is awesome. I ended up getting this collection which has a lot of these. This is a blast so far. https://www.nexusmods.com/games/skyrimspecialedition/collections/qfftpq/mods

There’s a burgeoning scene of AI NPC chat in Skyrim: speech to text or free-entry type your dialogue, it goes to an LLM with some prompt engineering to answer as the NPCs, then a text to speech model have them respond back.

Ah-ha! I rambled on about something like this in a recent thread. In hindsight it was foolish of me to not consider the Skyrim modding scene was doing something, because of course they were. Thank you kind former lurker.

Link for me for later SkyrimNet does it all with an in-process DLL. Impressive.

If you put a gun to my head and forced me to play Skyrim with only 3 mods, I'd pick Sacrosanct(I like playing vampires, and this is the best mod for that), the Serana Dialouge Addon(probably has a new name - they've expanded that mod hugely since I last played it) and Forgotten Magic redone(which is the best magic mod I've seen for Skyrim, IMHO).

Take that for what it's worth.

I remember there being some fun magic mods that really opened up the variety of spells. That and I was always a pack rat so I liked having mods that increased carry capacity. Which led to stores running out of gold too fast, so I'd get a mod for "investing" in stores that would allow you to upgrade merchant gold capacity.

Half my modded playthroughs were abandoned cuz I just kept adding new mods to tweak things.

Stealth archer gameplay is fun. It's cliche too but whatever, lean into it.

I've seen enough Dagoth Ur companion mod footage to know that it's going to be a must have for any future replays.

Try Oblivion Remastered instead. :P

I did! Was not able to get back into it. Part of it is that I played Oblivion far, far more than Skyrim. It may be my most played single player game of all time, hah.

Oh. :) Well, not to harp on the 'not skyrim' topic, but have you checked out Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon?

I’ve seen it but I’m extremely cheap!

Fine. If you really can't be moved off Skyrim; the Dagoth Ur companion as mentioned by self made human does seem hilarious.

Court opinion:

  • A woman is standing in front of a supermarket shelf, contemplating a purchase. An employee comes up next to her, kneels on the floor with one leg sticking out behind him, and starts stocking the shelf. The woman notices the employee's presence. Nevertheless, 30 to 60 seconds after the employee's arrival, she walks away, trips over the employee's outstretched leg, and sustains injuries.

  • The woman sues the supermarket, but the trial judge speedily dismisses the case.

    [The court] has stretched in every direction to determine how, in the absence of a case, rule, regulation, manual or anything else, this can be determined to be a dangerous condition created by the [supermarket] with which thus would have caused the injury to the plaintiff. And the court just simply cannot reach that conclusion.

    A genuine issue of material fact must be created for a jury to consider. This strains the definition, in the court's opinion, of a genuine issue of material fact. This is a normal interaction in a supermarket. There are shoppers that are coming and going. Shoppers that could be kneeling down trying to obtain an item on a lower shelf. Shoppers moving back and forth. Employees moving back and forth, moving things onto shelves, off the shelf. Nothing here appears to be outside the normal operation of a supermarket, as the court would understand it or know it.

  • The appeals panel affirms.

    By her own account, plaintiff was aware of the employee's presence and activities for a significant period of time before she turned to leave. She was thus under an obligation to exercise reasonable care after retrieving her item and walking away.

    Moreover, we agree with the trial court that the employee's extended leg did not create a dangerous condition subjecting [the supermarket] to liability because it did not create an unforeseeable risk of harm and there was no defect in the property itself. Plaintiff's failure to heed the presence of the employee who was performing a routine supermarket activity—where there were no visual or lighting impairments—does not create a dangerous condition of the premises.

Court opinion with hilariously hentai facts but also an interesting legal issue:

  • One evening, defendant was sitting on the couch watching a movie with his daughter, age three, and son, age eighteen months. Defendant's daughter adjusted her position and brushed up against defendant's genital area. He became aroused. Defendant went to the kitchen pantry, put honey on his penis, and returned to the couch with his penis exposed. Defendant then allowed both children to lick the honey off his penis.

  • The three-year-old informs the wife. The wife confronts the husband, and he confesses to her. The wife informs the couple's pastor. Both the wife and the pastor urge the husband to confess to the police. The wife and the pastor inform local police. Simultaneously but separately, the husband confesses, first to a 911 dispatcher, then to a municipal police officer over the phone, and finally to a state police officer in an extended in-person interview. The standard Miranda rights aren't read to him until he gets to the state police.

  • The husband is charged with seven felonies, pleads guilty to two of them, and is sentenced to 15 years in prison (with the possibility of parole after 13 years). He appeals, arguing that the dispatcher and the two officers misleadingly implied in their interrogations that he was not a criminal suspect and would be able to escape with merely counseling rather than prison.

  • The appeals panel rejects this argument. (1) "We emphasize at the outset that defendant was not in custody when he called 911 and spoke to the dispatcher." "The dispatcher's comments that defendant was 'doing the right thing by coming forward' and that [the municipal officer] would 'get [defendant] the best help' simply do not rise to the level of the repeated, explicit assurances made in [two cases where this argument was accepted]." (2) "Defendant is hard pressed to argue he did not believe he was a suspect in the crime that he had already confessed to. Furthermore, [the municipal officer]'s assertion that he was 'not familiar with the whole situation' was, in substance, true. And, finally, at the risk of repetition, this conversation occurred via phone. Defendant was not in custody." "Like the dispatcher's statements—and quite unlike the detectives' assertions in [a case where this argument was accepted]—[the municipal officer]'s reply does not constitute an affirmative representation that defendant will not face criminal charges or penal consequences." (3) "[The state officer]'s words do not in our view constitute an affirmative misrepresentation that somehow undermined defendant's waiver of his right against self-incrimination or was otherwise inappropriate, warranting judicial condemnation." "By comparison [with three cases where this argument was accepted], [the state officer]'s remarks are innocuous."

News article:

  • A person buys a defunct group home, converts it to a six-bedroom single-family house, and rents out the bedrooms. The building has a sprinkler system, as the code requires of group homes, but the system is broken. The owner spends 4 k$ on repairs, but the system breaks again, and he declines to spend another 6 k$ on more repairs, since a sprinkler system is not required in a single-family house.

  • Municipal code enforcement cites the owner for failing to maintain the sprinkler system. It argues that, once a sprinkler system has been installed, that system must be maintained and cannot be removed, even though it would not be required under the current use.

  • The owner appeals, arguing that code enforcement's interpretation is wrong. The code-enforcement board agrees with him and rules that the sprinkler system can be removed.

Court opinion:

  • A developer buys a defunct golf course and submits an application to redevelop it with two warehouses. The municipal zoning officer denies the application, because (inter alia) it does not show all the existing steep slopes on the land. The developer appeals, arguing that the manmade steep slopes of the defunct golf course are not included within the "natural resources" that the municipal zoning code requires an applicant to identify.

  • The zoning board denies the appeal, and the trial judge and the appeals panel affirm. "Natural resources" are defined in the municipal zoning code as "existing natural elements relating to land" and to include "steep slopes". The plain dictionary definition of "natural resources" includes manmade environmental features such as parks. And, under state precedent, any law that applies to "steep slopes" applies to both manmade and natural slopes unless the law explicitly states otherwise, since whether an originally manmade slope becomes "natural" 10, 30, or 100 years after its creation "is the sort of 'thorny bordering on philosophical' question best avoided by courts and left to legislation and policymaking".

Where you find all those court case at, i remember somebody used to post alot of court case on themotte reddit with casetext?

Et cetera.

FWIW, I continue to enjoy these greatly. All else equal, yeah, it'd be more fun to not have the pedophilia part, but the "my voluntary confession to the 911 operator wasn't mirandized" idiocy tickled me.

Alright this has come up before. No more pedophilia cases in the Friday Fun Thread. It's just not fun for a lot of people.

Someone had "fun" too close to the sun.

That being said, it would be nice if the NSFW tag worked properly, as an alternative.

One can easily just a) skip the Friday Fun Thread b) skip @ToaKraka's posts/comments or c) skip @ToaKraka's posts/comments within the Friday Fun Thread.

@ToaKraka's been carrying the Friday Fun Thread. I wouldn't have heard of several court opinions if not for his summaries. I'd prefer he not feel confined in his reviews due to people pearl-clutching and gate-keeping as to what is or isn't fun.

If such content can be Problematic for the Friday Fun Thread, I propose a "Thriday Thrun" thread for Thursdays, where it'd weapons-free with regard to any PG-Thirteen, Rated R, or Rated X topics, but otherwise still respecting forum rules. Anyone can see the thread title and skip if they'd like. Engagement would be divided between the two threads, but such is life.

Nobody wants him to stop posting entirely. We want him to stop posting horrible fucked up things that aren't in the least fun. As others have pointed out, 75% of this week's post was fine. Most of the cases he posts are fine. It's just every so often he posts cases which are the antithesis of fun, and people would like him to not post that minority of cases.

That's as good an excuse as any to end the whole series, then.

I originally started it because I had a bunch of free time at work, court websites seemed like a browsing target that the IT people wouldn't be able to complain about1,2, and the funny and interesting opinions that I found were a good karma farm3. After retiring, I continued it out of habit and for more karma. But I'm not going to post expurgated summaries just to satisfy some whiners.

1Especially because I actually found opinions directly relevant to my civil-engineering job every few months or so.

2My coworkers never got censured for browsing stock-market and news websites on their own work computers. But better safe than sorry.

3Though of course this website does not actually list a user's total karma anywhere, so perhaps the concept of "karma farming" is not applicable.

However fun or not-fun the original story was or wasn't, this exchange is comedy GOLD.

Look, you do you, but throwing a fit and saying you don't want to do this anymore because you can't include cute and funny pedophile stories... like, c'mon man.

Honestly, if you hadn't called it "hilariously hentai facts," you probably wouldn't have gotten reported. What was "hilarious" about it?

cute and funny [child-molester] stories

I resent this characterization. I do not glorify child molestation*, find the enjoyability of loli hentai inversely proportional to the realism of the girls' depictions**, and definitely am not a pedophile or a child molester.

What was "hilarious" about it?

I already explained that here.

*I find it hard to believe that the behavior depicted in this particular case would inflict any permanent psychological harm on the children involved, but I haven't done any research on this topic and do not have a strong, evidence-based opinion on it.

**Skinny = unrealistic = titillating, chubby = realistic = not titillating.

I am not saying you're a pedophile. I'm saying the story isn't funny, and presenting it as "funny" is why you're getting a lot of flack.

I find it hard to believe that the behavior depicted in this particular case would inflict any permanent psychological harm on the children involved

This really isn't helping the impression that you're being a little oblivious here.

I find it hard to believe that the behavior depicted in this particular case would inflict any permanent psychological harm on the children involved

This really isn't helping the impression that you're being a little oblivious here.

I think you are confusing 2 things:

  1. Thinking this kind of thing causes permanent psychological harm
  2. Thinking that many in society believe (or say they believe, to avoid repercussions) this kind of thing causes permanent psychological harm

I assume TK is aware of (2), but he is contesting (1). It does not seem at all obvious that this action, where there was not only consent, but the children actively engaged in the behaviour themselves, suggesting they enjoyed it ("...then allowed both children...") - would actually cause permanent psychological harm.

It does not seem at all obvious that this action, where there was not only consent, but the children actively engaged in the behaviour themselves, suggesting they enjoyed it ("...then allowed both children...")

I assume that "they wanted to do this, and I allowed them to" was the defendant's account of what transpired. Obviously there were no adults in the vicinity who can corroborate it. You'll note that essentially every adult charged with sexually interfering with children will at some point claim that the child in question seduced or took advantage of him. It was a cliché when Lolita came out, which Nabokov was banking on the reader recognising so as to understand that Humbert is an unreliable narrator.

No, I do not uncritically accept a convicted pederast's version of exactly how his act of child molestation transpired. It rather alarms me that you, apparently, do.

Well, sure - if he actually lied, and in fact had non-consensually made them do it, then yes it would be uncontroversially bad (because rape, irregardless of victim age, is bad)

No, I do not uncritically accept a convicted pederast's version of exactly how his act of child molestation transpired. It rather alarms me that you, apparently, do.

I concede it is very possible he lied and only gave a warped version of events to his wife to soothe his guilt. I was originally just assuming he told the full truth, since he was confessing to a crime, but I realise that sometimes even when people admit wrongdoing, they only admit to parts of it.

But this feels like a dodge - certainly what the defendent described as happening could happen. And it seems that everyone views even that as wrong. Would you be okay with it if the defendant provided objective proof that it was consensual? (e.g. by a video recording)

More comments

I'm saying the story isn't funny.

I'm not saying that the story itself is funny. I'm saying that the similarity of this story to a hentai plot is funny. I don't recall reading any hentai manga with this specific plot*, but I definitely have read both hentai manga and ArchiveOfOurOwn erotic stories (example of the latter) that use the victim's obliviousness to trick her into giving a blowjob. And, again, no physical harm was done here.

*I do not seek out loli stories while filtering recent uploads on Exhentai, so it's very possible that I missed some.

How many of those surprise blowjob stories involve a three-year-old and an 18-month-old?

And, again, no physical harm was done here.

I am not sure what to make of your fixation on "no physical harm." Yes, you can do lots of things to children that won't cause physical harm.

How many of those surprise blowjob stories involve a three-year-old and an 18-month-old?

I definitely have seen a nonzero number of erotic stories featuring toddlers and babies on AO3. But I've never actually read any of those stories since I'm not into that topic, so I can't tell you the details of their plots.

I am not sure what to make of your fixation on "no physical harm".

I only mention it to point out that this particular case is not a fistula gorefest. I do not deny the possibility of psychological harm (though, again, I am skeptical of it), and do not glorify child molestation.

That's as good an excuse as any to end the whole series, then.

I greatly enjoy this series and appreciate you doing it and, prior to seeing the mod comment, was wondering if there was a way to report a series of posts for "quality contribution", because while I don't think any individual one of these posts rises to quite that level I think the series in aggregate is worth that.

I think you're being a little overdramatic here. This post has 4 stories in it, you could easily have included only 3 of them and, while you'd have lost 25% of the available content, it also would have taken 25% less time to type up. It does seem annoying, and goes against the Motte's general anti-censorship atmosphere, but if I squint I can see their point in that this is "Friday Fun Thread" and not the culture war post. They're not just picking on you to be mean.

I don't know, ultimately you get to choose what you do with your time and whether you're willing to compromise. I just think that this is a fun feature of the Motte that you create each week, and would be sad to see it go.

Seconded.

I have to be real with you — infants being abused by their pederast father is not my idea of "fun".

I said "hilariously hentai facts". I would not be surprised to find a similar storyline in a literal hentai manga.

Firstly, in the hentai, the acts described/drawn are entirely fictional, whilst this case actually happened in reality (and actually even the hentai stuff is controversial - see the debate on loli/shota and AI child porn)

And regarding whether this sort of thing is actually that bad (as you have argued in your defense downthread), you said:

It isn't as if he caused severe injuries to the three-year-old by inserting his penis into her vagina

There are 3 pretty standard arguments for this:

  1. It causes severe psychological harm to the child
  2. Children are (definitionally) unable to consent, so any child-adult sex is auto-rape.
  3. Sexual degeneracy like this harms society because it screws with the social fabric (though this argument is only made by right-wingers)

This case actually seems like an excellent counterexample to (2). Indeed, prior to this hearing about this case, I was only open to considering the possibility of young children (~6yo+) being capable of consent. But this seems like a very clear example of non-verbal consent from toddlers ("Defendant then allowed both children to lick the honey off his penis.")

And I'm generally pretty skeptical on all of those points, and suspect anti-pedosexual sentiments are driven in no small part by irrational disgust towards unusual sexualities.

...that being said, this is the Friday Fun (i.e. no culture war) Thread. And so you shouldn't really be bringing up this question (which, irregardless of how reasonable the response is, does evoke an offence/disgust response in many readers), even by proxy (but you could totally bring it up in the CW thread, and I encourage you to do so)

I can understand including some of the more morbid cases weeks when the pickings are slim, but there were three other cases this week. I don't see any need to include this, and, Hentai or no, these facts aren't hilarious. Especially since people like me don't even really know what Hentai is and thus have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.

Hentai or no, these facts aren't hilarious. Especially since people like me don't even really know what hentai is and thus have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.

I strongly disagree. People joke all the time about how women allegedly coat their vaginas with peanut butter in order to trick their dogs to eating them out, and this is practically the same thing. It isn't as if he caused severe injuries to the three-year-old by inserting his penis into her vagina.

Bestiality's a 'funny joke' because as much as people say they care about animals, they don't really care about animals that much unless they're more than a little nuts, and the possibility that someone they know might even consider it is pretty unimaginable. There was a big scandal in the furry fandom a little under a decade ago about a zoophilia-sadist ring (cw: no matter how strong your stomach, you don't want to look to close into this, yes, insert 'beating dead horse' joke here), and it got a lot of critical attention from furries (and even some other zoophiles), but as far as I can tell the only criminal convictions involved literal serial killers of animals or separate possession of CSAM. There was a lot of conduct there that was physically damaging or even likely fatal to the animal, but ultimately, it's something normal people see as gross because of what the bad actors are doing to themselves, less than what's happening to the animal.

Animal protective services aren't going to pull custody from Hassan Piker; that doesn't make putting a shock collar on a kid funny.

Beyond that, a lot of the post-1990s changes to attitudes about abuse of very young children were driven by vastly increased understanding of what psychological impact these actions had on their victims. The Breendoggle or various priest abuses had a number of different reasons they were able to shovel themselves under the rug, but one of the biggest is that it was largely assumed that victims would forget, merely not understand, or at worst become 'precocious': 'corruption of a minor' as a charge was a lot more literally considered than modern readers think. But a significant portion of human victims end up pretty messed up by stuff that doesn't leave bruises or injuries, especially when it's committed by a trusted figure.

Man, one of my guilty pleasures is watching YouTube videos of sentencing and parole hearings. Often they involve child molesters who did shit like this. The chomos (or their lawyers) tend to give very similar arguments to what you said.

I don't know what circles you're running in if you hear that joke "all the time", but either way, you're talking about the theoretical sexual abuse of a dog and conflating it with the actual sexual abuse of small children.

I don't know what circles you're running in if you hear that joke "all the time"

4chan. I think it was also featured in Not Another Teen Movie back in 2001, so my impression is that it's a totally mainstream joke.

you're talking about the theoretical sexual abuse of a dog and conflating it with the actual sexual abuse of small children

There are degrees of "sexual abuse". I don't think this is any more extreme than how people laugh about underage boys who get the opportunity to have sex with female teachers.

If the best you can come up with is a message board notorious for offensive content and a movie that came out 25 years ago it's safe to say that this isn't part of normal polite discourse, and certainly isn't fun. The guy got a 15 year sentence for a first offense. As part of a plea deal. That alone should tell you how serious the conduct is in terms of degree.

Don't post that shit here. I think you go to efforts to find cases that contain 'legal interests' when your interest is obviously prurient (like you asking posters what they think about during masturbation, or that other case of sexual abuse you found 'funny'). Then you sandwich it all in a big post where other idiots respond to other parts of the post.

I checked all the opinions posted by New Jersey courts in the past week, plus some Pennsylvania appellate decisions, and came up with three opinions—one that was funny (supermarket), one that was interesting (developer), and one that was both funny and interesting (honey). I decided to add a judicial-adjacent newspaper article that I happened to have read, and to hold over for next week three non-judicial items that I also wanted to post. You can believe that or not.

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