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PaperclipPerfector  21hr ago (text post)   700 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 27, 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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Cooking

Looking for some delicious meals to make for family. But upgrading easy meals seems to have more bang for the buck than making hard meals. For example: fish tacos.

Caesar salad kit from the grocery store. Frozen fish sticks. Tortillas. Combine them and they make acceptable fish tacos. My girls won't eat those fish tacos, but they will eat fish sticks with their chosen sauce, and Caesar salad.

Anyone have any similar food hacks?

Someone want to tell me why I don’t receive text messages? Had a non-saved number ask me for something and I did not get the text until someone I talk to regularly group chatted it. I click on the number and I see they texted me but it didn’t show up before. Did it just get marked at spam?

Imagine you're in a wrong bank at a wrong time, and you get taken as a hostage while a heist crew tries to escape with the cash / bearer bonds / gold bars. One by one they are taken out by the police or by in-fighting, until the last one perishes in a car wreck that leaves you alone with a goodie duffel bag in a crashed vehicle. What is the best course of action to keep the stolen valuables to yourself?

Depends on how identifiable you are. Most likely scenario is that your are identifiable and nothing can allow you to take the money and run.

In the unlikely case that you are unidentifiable you take some gold and run. If you get caught quickly you plead that you were threatened to take the gold to a second location. If you do not get caught immediately, take the gold, learn some gold smithing online, craft some crappy gold jewelry and pawn it off over time.

Better money making scenario is that you sue the bank for damages for your hostage situation. They will maybe settle with you for more than you could steal.

I immediately open up my Polymarket account and max out buying shares of "will the bank robbers escape" (no) and "will the money be recovered" (yes) and any other related markets that I currently possess insider info on.

Reminds me of this story, starts at 42:54. Bank heist in a small town, everyone in Indiana turns into Batman and joins in to stop the criminals. It would make a great movie.

There is a part where the thieves' car breaks down and they pay a bystander for their car with the stolen money. Question is, does he get to keep the money afterwards? We do not know.

Question is, does he get to keep the money afterwards? We do not know

What do you mean we don't know? Isn't that a clear cut case of Nemo dat quod non habet?

We don't know because it wasn't written in the article and it happened over a hundred years ago. But his car was bought from him at gunpoint and then wrecked later, and I don't think they had great insurance plans back then. He might have been allowed to keep the money out of pity..

What is the best course of action to keep the stolen valuables to yourself?

Depends. Where did the crash happen? Middle of the city? Desert?

The music video which inspired the question had it still inside the city, but a lesser populated industrial area to my eyes.

Hmm. Does this happen to be a song by The Weeknd?

Great guess, Akinator. In fact, it was linked here years ago and stuck in my mind for some reason.

Could have been me that linked it, its a fun one.

Watch Hardcore Henry for a full length movie experience by the same director.

Lately I've been listening to The Mikado, so of course I was very amused to see @Celestial-body-NOS's recent comment referencing it. But this got me thinking about the place of Gilbert & Sullivan culturally, and how much it has changed over my lifetime.

In the 90's it was very common to see Gilbert & Sullivan referenced. In The Simpsons you had Sideshow Bob routinely breaking into a G&S song. The Mikado was referenced in Seinfeld as something Jerry's cousin was in a production of. Other shows as well like Frasier and Cheers referenced it repeatedly. I get the sense that Gilbert & Sullivan was still extremely popular as sort of "Ivy League Humor" as late as the 1990s. Obviously most of these characters like Sideshow Bob were supposed to be pretentious, but at the same time the shows clearly expected the audience to recognize the reference. The audience might not know all the words like Sideshow Bob, but getting the joke requires recognizing the song to some extent. The joke wouldn't land if they were instead referencing some obscure medieval poem that would be completely unknown to the audience. I feel like it was sort of classified as pretentious but relatable, as in, if you were college educated in the 1990s you probably knew at least one friend that was way too into G&S.

Of course, needless to say I don't think it's that way anymore. I think amateur collegiate G&S productions were a staple of Ivy League college life, I mean you had Simpsons writers like Conan O'Brien that literally attended Harvard and was president of The Harvard Lampoon. When I was at college in the late 2000s I don't remember any of that. I think by then productions of G&S had largely been replaced by a capella groups and improv which share a lot of the same sensibilities but strip away any history or cultural tradition.

It makes me a bit sad and nostalgic. In a way it is very remarkable that operas from the 1880s still held any degree of currency in popular culture over 100 years later. I think it speaks to the aspirations of past generations that were still to some degree rooted in old aristocratic Victorian ideals. And I think it went along with a whole host of related ideals like reverence for Shakespeare and classical music and such, all as part of a package ideal of what the cultured intellectual looked like and I don't know that any of that has really survived to the present. It's not so much that G&S or Shakespeare would be frowned upon exactly, or read as gauche (though perhaps they would by some of the ultra-woke crowd), but more just that they aren't really a part of a culturally shared vision for what an intellectually developed person looks like anymore.

It does make me wonder, what do you think the image today of the "slightly pretentious but admirably cultured intellectual" looks like today, in the popular imagination? Do any fictional characters come to mind? What are the markers that would identify such a person most accurately?

Gilbert & Sullivan were everywhere when I was a kid, I still have I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General memorized, but I had no idea Americans had ever heard of it. Echo your sadness that the connection to the past has disappeared.

a capella groups and improv

A scourge. I recall touring US colleges and every single one had a moment in the tour where they described their quiiiiiirky acapella group as if they were the only college that had thought to have it.

It does make me wonder, what do you think the image today of the "slightly pretentious but admirably cultured intellectual" looks like today, in the popular imagination? Do any fictional characters come to mind? What are the markers that would identify such a person most accurately?

In the UK, a Daunt Books tote bag, New York Review of Books in the US. New Yorker for the person pretending to be such.

Gilbert & Sullivan were everywhere when I was a kid, I still have I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General memorized, but I had no idea Americans had ever heard of it.

What? Of course Americans have heard of it! It's a popular stock parody. Just to name one example, xkcd's "Every Major's Terrible", which was later turned into a music video (Randall Munroe is, of course, American).

That you focus on the reception of GS's works through time, rather than as artefacts of their own, indicates that you are correct in your assumptions. Were GS still part of living culture, you would in this society-focused website, draw parallels between the story of one of their works and some recent event. That would feel most natural to you. But if GS are now thought of existing merely in the meta-sense, only through what others think of them, then such a top-level post would feel alien.

I am a big fan of GS, most often I listen to their lesser known ones like: Trial by Jury (about a trial to hold a man to his promise to marry a woman, very short, only about 30 minutes), Utopia Limited (about a chief of some island incorporating his kingdom into a company), Princess Ida (about a princess who establishes a womens-only college, novelty in those days).

As I value them most for the glimpse into a different time, and a different country (1), I seek earliest still not too poor recordings, as libretto has through time undergone censorship. Recent recordings of The Mikado changing:

There's the "n-word" serenader, and the others of his race,

to

There’s the banjo serenader, and the others of his race

Is well-known, but the line in Princess Ida:

And the "n-word"s they’ll be bleaching,

changed to

And they’ll practise what they’re preaching

Not as much. Such changes being made already in 1945, is indicative of GS's days being numbered. For if the words must adulterated to be acceptable, the question of the acceptability of the thinking behind the creation of the work, is reasonable to ask. After all what sort of monster would use "n-word" so lightly

archive.org is great for finding transfers of records released when League of Nations still existed.

(1) What was thinkable, what was was assumed to be true, not being the same as here and now, allows one better to understand what is possible today, particularly as GS worked in a society that is socially and technologically closer than Ancient Rome or Greece were. As such GS's are close yet far, in a way Cicero is just far.

The question shouldn't be very difficult but I'm finding it hard to picture what this person would look like. The public intellectuals we have today (Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Weinstein's) are all trying to sell you something: which makes it hard to separate their intellectual interests from what sells. The not so public intellectuals have all been ideologically captured by either the left or the right, so again it's hard for me to picture what these people might look like without woke or Curtis Yarvin type baggage.

Maybe better suited for Wellness Wednesday, but had a key realization about myself this morning. Went on a date with a med student Wednesday that I was not all that enthused about, despite her ticking all the on paper boxes. I was talking about this to my roommate, and he pointed out that there's no obligation for me to go another date with this person, and I fired back that I need to give people more of a chance if I want to get married and raise a family. He then replied that it doesn't seem like I'm actually deeply interested in that right now. And I think he's right: I like my life, my friends, my activities and independence, and having a partner and a family would compromise most of that. I only feel like I want those things because I feel pressure from my parents and from society (and weddings and the like) to not be single. I don't actually want to be in a relationship, at least not just to be in one.

I've done a lot of bitching and moaning about dating on this forum, and I think this morning I realized that the main problem actually comes from within me. I'm not actually very interested in dating for datings sake, and the only reason I pursue these things is because of pressure from society, and people telling me I need to be in a long-term relationship before I'm 30-35 or I'm completely cooked. Of course I'm not going to have success because in my heart of hearts I don't actually want it.

My preferred mode of forming relationships, particularly romantic ones, involves knowing the person in some personal level (at least 'acquaintance,' possibly 'friendship') before actually initiating romantic intent.

It is possible that the ACTUAL version of modern dating everyone is forced into is innately distasteful to you.

I want to be 100% clear that the current paradigm for finding a partner WAS NOT NORMAL until just over 10 years ago. And it SHOULD NOT BE ASSUMED to be the best way to go about it.

But it occurs to me that anyone under 30 lacks knowledge of the before times, so apps is just how it is done.

The apps have an unfortunate effect where every time you invest emotions early on and get burned, it teaches you to withhold your enthusiasm. But this means you intrinsically don't approach a new date as an exciting new opportunity. And so you don't bring that enthusiasm to the date, and its less likely to result in 'chemistry.' (assume that this same thing happens on the other side!). And so it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

  • No willingness to invest emotions due to past rejection.
  • Neither party is particularly excited about any given date with any given person regardless of how they look 'on paper.'
  • No individual person seems interesting enough to justify investing in.

Both sexes end up withdrawn and reluctant to invest... so even if one side gets interested after the first or second date, the other might not reciprocate.

I suspect that if you met someone more 'naturally' you'd end up getting a sense for your compatibility before you had to enter the romantic arena with them... and that's a foundation you can build some enthusiasm on!

So your distaste for dating might literally just be how the apps have 'trained' you through repeated operant conditioning, and isn't really just because you're too comfortable in your routine to let somebody else in.

You'd let somebody in, but they have to get past your filters first. And too many people are failing at the first 'filter' because of how you're meeting them. Whereas knowing someone for a bit BEFORE expressing interest means they're PRE-FILTERED to a certain extent.

Anyway, my two cents, as I have been in the trenches for a long enough time to see this problem arise in many men.

My preferred mode of forming relationships, particularly romantic ones, involves knowing the person in some personal level (at least 'acquaintance,' possibly 'friendship') before actually initiating romantic intent.

I'll say that this is my preferred mode too, but I also am wary that the average woman feels the same way. When I look back on my dating history, even back to secondary school, I can't remember a single time when "this person is attractive, but I want to get to know them as a person first before expressing romantic interest" ever actually worked out, or ended with a relationship. Inevitably, if I decided I liked the person and I would be interested in knowing her romantically, any expression of interest would just be rebuffed -- typically politely, but still.

You do often see women online complaining about "I thought he was my friend, but then he asked me out and he was just lying about being my friend to get in my pants," as though being friendly and engaging with someone as a person instead of immediately asking them out is a kind of duplicity that can only be understood in a prurient manner. I don't know if those exact thoughts run through the typical woman's head, but it does accord with my experiences being friends with and dating women.

I'm not always a fan of their methods, but I do think the redpillers are descriptively correct when they say that women generally have a separate mental track for "potential romantic interest" and "potential friend," and you have to behave in a certain way to be put into the first category rather than the second. Every woman I have ever seriously dated expressed -- either with their body language and flirtation (when I got better at reading this), or in hindsight, after we were dating and she would look back upon meeting me -- that I did something that impressed her the very first time I met her.

It was always something that was more than just "urquan was really nice and friendly," it had to be, "urquan was the class clown and I thought his joking was really confident," "urquan proudly said he was a Democrat when the teacher in poli sci class used him as an example of voter registration," "I liked how urquan made jokes that built upon each other when we talked and incorporated things I was saying," "the way urquan writes about what love means to him was so romantic, it makes me feel like I'm in a romance novel," or "urquan gave a lecture to a college atheist club where he made a historical argument that the US is a Christian nation because of the large influence that Christianity has had on its history," which, to use her words, "made me think you had your own independent thoughts and didn't just think what other people wanted you to think."

There was also, of course, the time in school where I was waiting for someone in the lunchroom, a girl that sat at the table and I started talking, and I absentmindedly and unconsciously started suggestively flirting with her and thought so little of it that I blacked it out of my memory. (The only thing of that flirtation I can recall is she was eating a banana, and, well, schoolboy-tier phallic jokes were made.) What a surprise when I subsequently did the, "I'd like to get to know her as a person before I express any interest" thing, having forgotten that I'd implanted the mental image in her brain that the fruit she was eating was my fucking penis, and then 3 months later she drops a note on my desk as she shuffled out of the classroom that told me she was in love with me and asked 'would you go out with me?' Man... the high of reading that note was so intense that I'd compare it to heroin, if I knew anything about what heroin makes you feel like.

You should note that, in all my examples, I did something actually impressive in some sense: I was confident enough to say something controversial, or to take a stance proudly, without reservations, or to state how I felt about something in beautiful and moving words, or to express my sexuality clearly and unapologetically. I wasn't nice, I wasn't friendly, I was confident, without fear of rejection. Confidence is the engine of attraction. The engine!

The other thing I note from my dating history is that, of course, in most of these situations I subsequently did the "I really just want to get to know this person first before I express any romantic interest", enough that multiple relationships of mine have started because I did something impressive enough, and was subsequently intransigent enough in my withholding of romantic interest, that eventually these young women took matters into their own hands and directly stated their romantic interest in me out of sheer desperation. Obviously they would have much rather preferred that I ended my sequence of impressive acts of sheer confidence by confidently suggesting something romantic. That's how you get swept off your feet.

The reality is that women want to be impressed before they do the "I just want to get to know this person" thing; it's just how their attraction works. Men are actually the same way -- it's just that their attraction is more visual, and women's is more an attraction to the gestalt of a man.

So, if you're attracted to a woman, you do nothing impressive, subsequently become her friend, and then later decide you like her enough to ask her out. The read she has of that situation is: "well, you did nothing to impress me or to trigger my attraction, and now you're springing this on me, why are you making me have to romantically reject my friend after this time knowing each other?" They see "being friends before suggesting any romantic interest" as a failed strategy -- in which case it's pathetic -- or a covert attempt to "let her guard down" before she knows what all you want out of her, in which case it's considered creepy, like espionage. I think that's a harsh judgment, but it's the kind of judgment I think is being made.

I think in most cases men don't mean it like that, and it's not so much a strategy as men just being slow to warm up to someone, even if they're attracted to them. Men's romantic interest is much more gradual, while women's is much more binary, in or out. Hence why men are more commitment-phobic than women: they escalate from "cute" to "beautiful" to "worthy of adoration" to "eternal and undying love" more slowly.

(Evopsych terms -- maybe men's up-front sexual attraction is the thing that bridges this gap ancestrally? Women ramp up sexual availability slowly, men ramp up romantic/emotional availability slowly, both are withholding something the other wants, so they have a reason to stick around with each other and try to build it up?)

I guess what I'm saying is, I feel you. But some element of the obligation to "bring that enthusiasm to the date" is that you have to impress as a man, or you've already lost. I got really lucky, in that a few times in my life I've just been being my stubborn, headstrong, fiercely intellectually independent, and paradoxically public-speaking-enjoying self, and a woman has taken note of this and found me attractive when I'm being what I consider to be the best version of myself.

So, perhaps "Just be yourself," and "be confident," really were the best pieces of dating advice, because the best relationships come from authentic attraction to personality.

It's just that this assumes that "yourself" is attractive or impressive in some way, and additionally is horribly mismatched to a world in which men and women are less and less interacting organically, in the real world, where real personalities and authentic strengths are present. The end result is, well, the Game.

I mean, Redpill is very right about how you actually build attraction in a woman.

If you literally just approach a girl in your friend group and express interest then yeah you can expect to be rebuffed.

For reference my first GF was a girl I'd known since freshman year of high school. We finally became a thing when we were both at an out-of-town academic competition thing. It just so happened that I ended up DOMINATING the competition (in my category) and I was riding that high.

So as things went I ended up making out with her in the hot tub of the hotel, then headed up to her hotel room. Didn't bang her at that point alas.

Wasn't clear until later that it was my performance at the competition and the thrill of being in a new town that finally piqued her interest in me.

I still have extreme fond regard for that girl. Sadly she is dead now.

More to the point, most of my best friends from college, and several of my current buddies, all have relationships (up to and including marriages with kids) with girls they had known for a while, either in college, from work, or through mutual friends.

Its the safest filtering mechanism I can imagine.

The apps, by comparison, are just an ongoing humiliation ritual.

I think that’s fair — the instigating “this person is impressive” feeling can be after you’re already aware of someone, but not close with them. Looking back, I don’t recall any flirtations like that, so I guess that’s my blind spot.

That said, I think my point is a little more subtle; I suspect that with many of your friends in those relationships, there was some initial level of spark or interest or “this guy is attractive/high status” even before the flirting started. I’m not a mind reader, and I could be dead wrong.

If you naively look at my dating history, you’d probably say the same about mine — in all cases I knew the person for at least a bit before we started dating. But, in hindsight, it was clear that attraction existed from the beginning. It’s possible that some level of “getting to know you” was necessary — just not nearly as much as I let play out, either because I was scared or because I was ignorant.

I’m mostly picking on myself here, as my experience is that I often didn’t act on my romantic interest after signals of mutual attraction were present, either because I couldn’t read them, or felt like I hadn’t ‘earned’ any kind of attraction by doing something bold.

But what you definitely can’t do is be unimpressive, boring, standard, and ‘merely nice’, and expect any attraction to develop. Most guys who are of the “get to know someone for a bit before you express romantic interest” are of that type, and often naively believe that their presence or emotional availability expresses their romantic potential. It doesn’t.

That’s my main point: impression has to come before relation.

Dating apps are definitely an unfortunate means of meeting someone, because a photo reel and a short bio does not a person make. Nevertheless some people find a great partner there, I just honestly never tried because I believed they were just hookup apps, and by the time I realized people were meeting their spouses on there I was already in a happy LTR by the grace of almighty God. Maybe telling a room full of atheists that the US is a Christian nation was a meritorious act, I don’t know.

Yea it definitely could be this too. A better way to say what I wanted to say is that I think I'm done with dating apps, forever. I've had a single relationship from an app and it fell apart as soon as she realized who I actually was, rather than who she projected onto me. I'm open to connection in my real life (I'm not anti friend like @ToaKraka).

I think I'm done with dating apps, forever.

SAME. I've gotten genuinely offended by the choices the algorithm gods have seen fit to provide me. They will receive no patronage from me any longer.

For the new year I'm going ALL IN on maximizing my IRL social 'surface area' and being enthusiastic towards any woman who seems single and available and otherwise doesn't have a disqualifying red flag (which, sadly, is a lot of them).

Do I think this is likely to work out for me? Well, not quite. Do I think it'll be more fun? Yeah.

I'm well aware that I'm still competing with the apps in a real sense, but there also seems to be a general vibe shift where even the women are realizing these apps are wasting their time and ruining their emotional state.

I was flirting with a bartender at a local cigar bar (normally populated by Boomers, so I stood out) earlier this month, got her number, it was a fun little back-and-forth, finally felt kind of alive and in the game. She seemed enthused to have me around.

THEN she turned up with a boyfriend on Valentine's day (not sure how long he was in the picture).

It beats being ghosted.

My understanding is that the vast majority of people need a life partner in order to be fulfilled and happy throughout their life. It is a deeply ingrained human instinct to want a partner, and sex, and children, because evolution means everyone historically who didn't have these died without passing on their genes.

This does not make it universal (otherwise gay people couldn't exist). Psychology is complicated, genes are not deterministic, and once you've unpacked from a genetic code into an actual human being, you should treat your own actual self as more important than whatever evolution originally intended for you to do.

I would definitely be highly skeptical of any desires that go against it. I got married but we decided not to have kids and I am slightly paranoid that 20 years from now I'm going to regret it. But I can't imagine me right now doing a good job of it if I don't actually want it, so that's not enough to change my mind.

I also can't imagine a me who never dated or got married. Actually yes I can, I would be lonely, just like I was for the decade before I met my wife. I have always wanted to fall in love and get married, for as long as I can remember as a child. Which is to say, I can't relate to your experience. And that might speak to a fundamental difference. You might actually be happier alone. I'm skeptical, maybe you just haven't met the right person. But it seems plausible.

I think it's that I haven't met the right person and deliberately dating is not going to be the way for me to the meet the right person. Rather I think I'll meet the person who I want to spend a lot of time with by being social and meeting new people doing things I enjoy.

If your hobbies work that way then that might work. I am a massive introvert, I like staying home and playing videogames or board games, not going out to meet people. And my wife is that way too. I was never going to find her by going out and being social, and if I had picked up a new social hobby to meet people I would have mostly met people who like whatever that hobby is that I would be pretending to like.

I found her on a dating website. And it was painful, because I had to go through hundreds and hundreds of stupid normies and people looking for quick hookups, or just the wrong kinds of nerds. Luckily by being a weird nerd myself I screened off most of the people who were a bad fit pretty quickly, Despite looking for like 4 years I only ever went on one real life date prior to finding my wife. But I eventually found her and now we stay at home not doing external social things together.

I don't know how well that scales in general. That's what worked for me. But also I knew I wanted to find someone and I knew what I was looking for (as close to a female copy of me as possible, basically), so I went through a bunch of effort, and a lot of waiting, to make it happen.

Have you never fallen in love?

I have two times. Both relationships ended messily because the feelings weren't mutual.

Based.

You might be weird like me. I dated a handful of women in my 20s, but the longest lasted a couple weeks. I was mostly a loner. Then I met my now-wife at church at 33 years old and got married about a year later.

You don't need 'practice' being in a relationship. I'd argue the opposite - most people just develop bad habits and baggage. When you're in the right place to seek marriage and family, be intentional about it and follow good advice and you'll probably be fine.

most people just develop bad habits and baggage

They very much do this when alone as well. As one example that may be familiar: A close friend of mine, very good-hearted guy, strong, good job--a career even--not bad-looking, has his own home.

His home is a disaster area of man-cave, nothing aesthetic about it. Computers, screens, junk everywhere, I would barely tolerate standing in it for more than a few moments without the overwhelming urge to straighten it up or throw things out. Yet he lives there, seemingly perfectly satisfied. A man alone soon mistakes his condition for order. A Miss Mr. Havisham. A willful isolation that has allowed (what I would consider) distortion to ossify into reality. At least he does do his laundry. To see him out in the world you'd never know that his living space is a pigpen.

This is the reason to seek out others, even a female friend, and spend time with them. Not all the time, and not if it unduly causes stress, but certainly past the comfort level or homeostasis of perpetual (online) solitude. Have people over. People give you a better mirror than the ones made of glass.

Reminds me of myself as a younger man--I always thought I was interesting, kind, honest, caring, funny even. Yet I spent quite a lot of my time alone. And how do we know, if we are always alone, anything about ourselves? I could write a lot about this but I'm not going to sit and pontificate here; this is just my view.

Something seems to be missing from your post. Who is 'he'?

My roommate. Fixed thank you!

Video game thread

What are you playing this week?

I'm 14 hours into MENACE. It's still fun, though it's even more apparent how unfinished the game is. I won't say I regret that they released it so early into early access, because I've enjoyed it a lot. It's a very solid start and I look forward to the final release.

I bring two vehicles to every mission. One of my three pilots, Rewa, has by far the least professional and most embarrassing voice performance, so she's the backup for whenever one of the other pilots gets the Weary status. One of my vehicles uses the heavy machine gun, and the other uses the autolaser, in order to deal with enemy vehicles/walkers. I prefer fighting the pirates. Some of the 'rogue army' and alien operations have been somewhat difficult due to all their armor, even tho I'm only on Normal difficulty.

I've been putting way too many goddamn hours into Vintage Story, as of late.

...but soon, winter will break. My canals have been built. I shall sail from my castle on the lake into the sea to go on an adventure to a lost ruin to fight against eldritch horrors. And then sail back, triumphant, with my salvaged gains of a time lost to the apocalypse.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670780/Out_of_Action/

Out of Action, an early access PvP FPS. It's kinda old-school with its straightforward server browser, complete absence of matchmaking, simple game modes, and its expectation that the players will just have to learn how to play the hard way. But it also has a fairly broad range of mechanics and the deepest loadout customization system I've ever seen in this genre. I haven't really dug deep into this kind of game since...Titanfall 2? Maybe Hunt: Showdown? Titanfall is the better comparison I guess, with both it and OoA being movement shooters. In any event, I was never good at PvP. At my best, I was solidly mediocre. Now I'm far past my prime. Slow to react, no aim, low APM, no map sense, no interest in the meta, I don't ADADADAADAD to dodge and I can't land a headshot even if the other guy stands still. And yet, I'm having fun. There are so many options, and it's all very well-balanced, so the game is 50% play and 50% buildcrafting for me.

By default, you have a "shell", which is effectively your base character type out of five options - gets-stronger-when-damaged, aggressive regenerator, can fly, really tanky, and goes-insivible. You get a medkit by default. And a wallhack. And a slow-motion ability. And a pair of fists. Then comes optional equipment, starting with the usual selection of guns (all of which have a point-blank TTK ranging from 0.5 to 1 second, depending on the target). Then a slew of modifications for the guns, each of which comes with distinct drawbacks. Then a dozen different throwables and consumables, which regenerate passively. Then 2 to 4 "augments", which modify your characters' abilities in a very wide array of ways, most of them with drawbacks. Then a melee weapon to replace your fists with, if you so choose. Also, each piece of equipment weighs something, so the more you carry the slower you move the more you get shot. And that's just your loadout. On top of that, you also have all the movement options ever devised by video game designers - jump, double-jump, vault, roll, dive, slide, wallrun, wall-jump, somersault, teleport, tele-frag, straight-up fly, crouch-walk, lie down and take a nap...everything except for running. You can't press shift to run faster in this game. Oh, and bumping into people at high speed deals damage. And might knock them over. Or disarm them. And obviously melee weapons have at least four different attack modes, plus a parry. And there's a progression system that lets you put points into various passive bonuses at first, and later on into specializations. And so on, and so on. So much to tinker with.

I don't play a ton, but I find myself doing about one game per day (so around 15 minutes) just to test my latest ideas.

As for MENACE - I also finished the EA content. And I disagree in the strongest terms. Rewa is the only character I enjoyed hearing. That said, yeah, I also went with a heavily mechanized strategy; often bringing up to three vehicles so long as the enemy didn't have too many ATGMs. Vehicles are just naturally tanky (duh) and their turrets pack a punch, and infantry never lacks for cover when they can huddle behind an IFV.

I won't tolerate Rewa slander. Who doesn't love a strong independent woman with untreated PTSD attempting to self-medicate by running over stray dogs?

Keep your eyes peeled for vehicle autocannons. Once you've got two and a medium mech to mount them on, oh boy...

I am on a holy quest given by the Lady of the Lake to rid not Africa of the undead menace (really to get rid of the Joan de Arc character who didn't have the good sense to be burned at the stake be the foreign for and was destabilizing the peasants) in total war Warhammer 3.

We're embroiled in a war with the strongest but least popular Tomb King but on the last turn but we finally broken their back and are on to mopping up their settlements and the last army that decided to bolt into the sea.

The Joan of Arc stand in is absurdly strong she's basically immune to melee combat except for with the strongest combatants. Next will probably be a few more easy tomb, and onto a fight with a true enemy whose land rejects us and who will have enormous armies and very very strong combatants due to their worship of the violence god in universe (Khorne).

It should be a good fight, but usually marks a transition as the land isn't good for her faction and she doesn't have any natural directions to expand.

That's Battle Brothers in Space, right? I've heard complaints that it's always an optimization problem/puzzle, rather than a progression RPG where your characters get stronger. Yeah, they get stronger, but that just bumps against the handicap limit, so your team stays the same strength.

I'm intrigued, but I like getting more powerful, and being rewarded for growing, rather than being limited.

Hm well the graphics alone makes it pretty different from battle brothers. You're right that it's not an rpg. More of a turn based tactics game that's pretty puzzly sometimes. But I don't agree that your most used characters don't get stronger. There's a 'supply limit' (for you and the ai) in each mission. But the semi random nature of the skill trees offered and your choices in those + semi random loot and how to use it, makes it so that you're definitely stronger in some ways if you play your cards right and progress from the start.

It was a couple weeks ago but I tried out Pathologic 3 and I am... not a fan. The Pathologic series is known for being brutal and unforgiving, trying to cure a plague and slowly losing as you have to make hard decisions with limited resources. Very much not my thing. But someone left a review of Pathologic 3 that was like "it's a time loop! The developers saw all the people saving and loading and saving and loading and trying to optimize their runs on the previous games, and decided to bake that into the mechanics."

And that sounded like fun to me. I really like time loop stories where the character is up against overwhelming odds but manages to win anyway by exploiting the ability to try over and over again and learn and cheat using future knowledge. Even if the game is super hard, I can tinker and optimize stuff and fix any of my mistakes by rewinding.

What the review failed to mention is that even though the plot revolves around a time loop, the mechanics are still based around finite resources and brutal hard mechanics. Every consumable you use to restore your statuses permanently reduces the effectiveness of future uses of that type of consumable. Every time you rewind it consumes a non-renewable resource. It's not a true time loop, because even if the plot allows you to redo decisions and change the consequences of your choices, your vital resources don't respawn and you can only do it a finite number of times. Every time you mess up in an encounter and die it forcibly rewinds to the last time you saved, which uses up the time resource. And if you do it too many times and run out of the resource the game deletes your save and you have to start the entire game over again. This is more harsh than a normal game that lets you save and load at will, not less.

This didn't even happen to me. As soon as I discovered that the time rewinding used up resources I googled to see if it was renewable, saw that it was not, and stopped playing. I do not play games that threaten me with permadeath. Not unless it's a roguelite where each character only exists for like an hour (and even then I usually only play if there's meta-progression that persists). If there's a realistic chance of me having to reset or backtrack more than 5 hours of gameplay and have to do it all over again, I'm just not going to play in the first place. It's bad game design, it's not fun. The Pathologic people are trying to be hardcore and brutal and catering to a masochistic audience that likes that sort of thing. You're allowed to have a niche. And I knew that about the first two games which is why I never played them. I'm just kind of annoyed that this one was presented differently and then wasn't.

The Pathologic series always struck me as games it's far more enjoyable to watch others suffer play through instead of trying them myself. Mandalore Gaming has excellent reviews for the first 2, but I'll be damned if I'm going to play them.

Playing through Lies of P for my second time. Partially because I got the itch after watching some of Joseph Anderson's stream of it, and partially because I accidentally selected the dialogue option to skip the final boss on my first playthrough.

It's really surprising to me how much more I've enjoyed it this time through. I think a large part of it is just how much easier it's been for me this time around, meaning I've been able to enjoy the combat mechanics and boss fights rather than finding the whole process mostly stressful the first time through. This has other benefits: taking the time to beat the tougher non-boss enemies rather than running past them means I've picked up more upgrade materials, in turn making my character stronger and the boss fights less punishing. The whole time period and setting has also really grown on me, probably because having played Soulsborne games for ~13 years now I'm just tired of the whole medieval fantasy aesthetic. Simon Manus is still an infuriating fight though

Have you tried AI LIMIT? It's a sci-fi soulslike. It's pretty good.

What is a "cocktail" colloquially speaking?

Context: Mrs. FiveHour read and then made me read the book Strangers by Belle Burden, a memoir by a wealthy WASP about her sudden divorce. The theme of the book is that her hedge-funder husband suddenly walked out, and she realized that they were, you know, Strangers in the grand scheme of things, that she knew nothing about him if she didn't know he was going to walk out on her. The book is both fascinating and awful, because it's the direct testimony of an unreliable narrator, so there's a ton to pick apart, which is what Mrs. FiveHour and I happen to enjoy doing together. Anyway, one of the repeating elements of her account of her marriage is that her husband came home from work at the money factory, she of course never has any idea what he does exactly, and has a "cocktail." He needs his "cocktail" before he moves on with his evening. But she describes the cocktail he drinks every night as vodka over ice.

My answer: Which...that's not a cocktail, that's a drinking problem. A cocktail has at least two ingredients: gin and tonic, rum and coke, vodka or gin and vermouth, whiskey and soda, bourbon and amaretto, etc. Ice doesn't count, plain water doesn't count. I think in general I would say that to really qualify as a cocktail you need a third element in addition to the first two, the olive in the martini or the lime in a cuba libre, but strictly speaking it's not necessary.

Resulting analysis: Drinking straight vodka every night is not normal. Burden describes it as a cocktail to give it a charming mid-century WASP imprimatur, but just drinking vodka on the rocks is unhinged! Even my Polish family drink vodka as a shot! What Burden is describing isn't a guy with a quirky habit, it's a guy descending into alcoholism. Her entire analysis of the marriage is this: she didn't notice her husband's drinking, excused it as a harmless quirk, when the guy was drinking hard. Maybe not alcoholic hard, but you gotta be a heavy drinker to enjoy sipping straight vodka. It's not like whiskeys where you can fake the connoisseur, when you drink straight vodka you're doing it because you like the alcohol in your system. Mrs. Fivehour and I are thoroughly enjoying picking apart Burden's arguments in this way, she might be the worst marital strategist of all time.

Having a single glass of hard liquor at the end of the day was very normal for men of a certain age. You could set your watch by my grandfather's evening whiskey, and he drank one every evening until he couldn't stand up to get it, same with my best mate's grandpa. Vodka is unusual, though. It seems like something that's basically disappeared in younger generations, particularly in America - US drinking culture in general has much more of a binary between "I'm not drinking" and "I'm getting drunk", which I think comes from the high drinking age and reliance on cars. I'd put a "drinking problem" as a matter of escalation: if left to him/herself, is someone going over time from one, to two, to three...

I've heard "cocktail" colloquially mean 'a heavy alcoholic drink that you sip'. But I mostly agree with your definition. I'd just say I'm having a drink if it's basically straight liquor.

What's interesting to me is your colloquial definition of alcoholic. I'm unsure how much of an alcoholic someone is if they only have one drink a night and just leave it at that. I'd be putting myself on the back of I just stuck to one drink every night.

Me, both my parents, and quite a few of my friends would all be "alcoholics" to you I think.

To me the measure of an alcoholic is how quickly drinking alcohol destroys their life. For some people that is just a single night, they are an alcoholic. For most people it's over thirty to fifty years due to cumulative health and liver damage, I don't think those people are alcoholics. I think the line is somewhere around 5 years.

if they only have one drink a night

"One drink" is often standardized as 0.6 ounces of alcohol. There isn't any indication as to the quantity, but if it was a cup of vodka, then it would be about six standard drinks, which is certainly enough to count.

Sorry, that was unclear, I don't think that having one drink a night makes one an alcoholic.

I think this particular man probably had a drinking problem, and that his wife was unaware of it, much as she seemed to be basically unaware of everything going on in his life. I think drinking straight liquor every single night is indicative of a drinking problem, when combined with the "50 year old man suddenly blows up his family life with zero explanation offered" evidence that makes up the rest of the book.

My definition of an alcoholic would be someone who can't stop themselves from drinking alcohol despite negative consequences. I don't know about one night, but I'd agree with you that someone who lasts fifty years doesn't have much of a problem, because they aren't really facing negative consequences. But if your doctor gives you medicine and tells you not to drink while taking it, or if I tell you that wigilia requires no alcohol, and you go ah shit how am I gonna make it through this? Then I think that's a problem.

[caveat: I haven't read this book, and am not an alcohol person]

Is that 'can't' in a social or philosophical sense, or in a pragmatic one? I barely drink alcohol at all and my tastes are weird, but I can tolerate a couple ounces of Everclear or Smirnoff straight where I start struggling halfway through a normal glass of red wine. It's really easy to get drunk doing it -- a single 3-ounce is between one and three beers, depending on proof -- but if you're sipping it over a few hours that wouldn't be enough for someone with moderate tolerance to really deep in their cups.

I agree with your conclusion about what it's supposed to say, but more because of the ritualized nature and seeming 'need' for it, rather than the amount of alcohol alone or form he was taking it, especially if the amount doesn't increase over time.

((And if Burden drinks herself or is ever prepared drinks by her ex-husband, it might also be intended to say something about reciprocity of interest: there's something very 'try to hit requirements without understanding purpose' to vodka over ice that isn't even hitting the tryhard noob levels of throwing Old Fashioneds or Negroni at someone.))

Is that 'can't' in a social or philosophical sense, or in a pragmatic one?

Could you clarify the question, I'm not quite sure what you mean.

I'm genuinely unsure whether normal non-alcoholic people would avoid drinking vodka straight because they it's difficult to keep that much vodka down straight, because anyone who tried would become an alcoholic or would have to already have a strong tolerance, or because it's 'only' an order that would get you weird looks and doesn't match typical tastes.

Fun pastime for lazy people: In your favorite Paradox game (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, etc.), go into "observe" mode (typically with a console command obtained from the game's wiki) and just watch a "hands-off" campaign progress at maximum speed. If you feel like it, you can temporarily exit observe mode to make minor nudges (e. g., forcing an otherwise-AI-controlled country to declare certain wars, annex certain subjects, or pass certain laws) without going to the trouble of actually playing the campaign yourself. You also can make your own mods and see how they affect events.

It's my understanding that some sports games (e. g., EA's NFL series) also allow the user to watch AI-only matches.

Premise: You can use numbers (1, 2, 3), letters (a, b, c), and symbols (asterisk *, dagger †, double dagger ‡) to denote footnotes. The footnote reference in the main text normally is superscript. The footnote heading typically also is superscript, but if you're a weirdo who wants to maintain consistency with main-text and list-item headings you'll make it full-size (1, 2, 3, a, b, c, *, †, ‡).

Problem: You're a weirdo, and one of these things is not like the others. The asterisk already is superscript by default—in order to make it full-size with formatting, you have to give special treatment to it.

Solution: Instead use the "low asterisk" ⁎ ⁎, which is not pre-superscripted! Consistency has been achieved.

Problem: Annoyingly, the HTML named character reference "lowast" is misnamed and actually refers to the separate "asterisk operator" ∗ ∗, whose Unicode category is not "Punctuation/Other" like the ASCII asterisk but "Symbol/Mathematics" like the multiplication symbol.

Solution: If you're using XHTML (without any of the public identifiers listed on the linked page), you can simply repurpose "lowast" as your own custom internal entity that points to the correct character. LOL! (If you're using normal HTML or that disgusting middleware called Markdown, you've got to look up the low asterisk's hexadecimal code, "204e".)

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