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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2298 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 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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I have watched the Odyssey, and whilst you can make a Culture War thingamajig about some of the casting decisions (which I'm negative on but not like '-100000 points, 3woke5me') I'm giving it a 6.5/10. Some fun spectacles but it didn't really hang together well.

Felt the pacing was a bit overlong, they could easily have cut out certain parts or merged certain 'trials' without losing much. I feel like swapping about 10 minutes worth of the 'final battle' which goes for ages, culling some of the 'ZendayAthena gives meaningful looks' scenes, the cannibal ambush, the temple ambush and some of the girlboss moments for Helen and Penelope for a bit more pre-sacking Troy character establishment would have gone a long way. Cyclops scene having no direct Odysseus-Polyphemus dialogue is insane when it's like his big moment.

Random complaints from this point.

The Cannibal ambush being generic Dark Souls miniboss guys did nothing for me. There was this general air of 'Movie is telling me Odysseus is a super smart genius but he's never really shown giving any thought to anything and it's like a highlight reel of Odysseus moments half of which feel unearned or kinda-random in the scope of this movie'. There's a repeat flashback to a young Elliott Page and Robin Pattinson where Pattinson is played by a de-aged CGI version of himself and Elliott Page is like some random generic looking chubby young male which feels super incongruous since Page Junior looks literally nothing like Page senior. The way they keep using the word 'Collapse' to try and push through some sort of 'The Trojan Horse killed the norms-based political system of the Aegean and Odysseus is the Sea People who everybody is scared of' take is like... okay but Nolan really harps on it. Using a bunch of MCU B-listers in the cast took me out of it, even when reasonably racially-appropriate.

I also feel like the movie should have made a stronger choice between being agnostic (since the gods rather pointedly are never shown clearly) and being supernatural. The Lotus Eater plot device makes it super easy to use flashbacks of dubious veracity in order to contain all the supernatural elements of the movie and introduce an element of unreliable narrator where Odysseus has essentially spent 10 years in an Opium den. Trying to deny the existence of the gods when there's cyclopses and giants and undead and tentacle monsters feels a bit offkilter.

The Odyssey is not a bad film.

I strongly disliked it, but that is because I am a curmudgeon and I wanted it to be better. It is not better. What works about it is what works about the original story.

It is also curiously bloodless, not in the sense of violence or gore but in the sense that it lacked any bone-deep humanity, grand drama, emotion, pain, and anguish. The women are the only ones who show this, Anne Hathaway especially, because she refuses to be bad in any role.

Nolan still does not know how to film action, and the walls of Troy are so unimpressive I refuse to believe any serious army was stymied by that for ten whole years if they had craftsmen capable of building the Trojan Horse.

The Odyssey is not a bad film.

I strongly disliked it,

The real question is why did you watch it?

Because I wanted to see it?

This week's thread went live recently, you might want to post this there as well.

I have no interest in seeing The Odyssey, as I've long felt that Nolan is an overrated writer-director. With each passing year it seems the shine is starting to come off for more and more people, and his limitations are becoming more obvious.

To my knowledge there has never been a Supreme Court decision where the 3rd amendment was the primary basis. If you were a writer on The West Wing, how would you work an interesting 3rd amendment Supreme Court case into an episode?

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was blocking National Guard from staying at DC hotels in 2020 and was arguing that the Third Amendment prevented the feds from overriding. It never went to trial. You could run with that idea pretty easily.

There was speculation that the 3rd amendment would come into play if Trump had sent the national guard into Minneapolis.

Honestly, increased state capacity has essentially rendered the harm the Third Amendment is intended to protect against obsolete. The government simply has no need to outsource the room and board of its soldiers to unwilling random civilians. Maintaining a large standing army is no longer the type of expense that can bankrupt a modern country, and ensuring soldiers are adequately fed is not a substantial drain on resources. Policing and adjudicating the conflicts quartering of soldiers would inevitably cause would almost certainly swamp any potential savings. Especially when the army can just commandeer a public building or block rent a few hotels, or literally just build a new base to their exact specifications anywhere on the millions of acres of federal land.

The most plausible modern application if the Third Amendment I can think of would be in a context like last year's emergency national guard deployments, where a large body of soldiers are suddenly brought into a locality to assist with riot suppression and there are no adequate facilities available to house them all. But again, it's a lot easier/cost effective to just rent out local hotels and set up cots in random federal buildings or even an empty field somewhere than billeting them in private homes. Even if it was cost-effective, the army probably doesn't want its occupying force distributed randomly throughout the (presumably hostile) civilian population, where it's difficult to quickly mobilize and individual soldiers are exposed to retaliation. It wants them in a nice and secure compound from which they can project power.

When people ask me what kind of law I practice and I don't want to tell them I just say I mostly do Third Amendment stuff. Then they proceeded to tell me about whatever child custody or bogus medmal issue their brother in law is dealing with despite my repeated assertions that I know nothing about either of those things.

Has nobody ever called you on that?

Not once.

It almost happened during COVID. The Biden admin had an eviction moratorium and this also applied to military personnel.

I saw claims from the other side about national guard housing violating the third, but I assume that it was requiring that something be taken out of context or squinted at.

I'd probably start by using Mitchell v. City of Henderson as a template. Start with a heavily armed, hierarchically structured federal agency with an unambiguous power to kill. Have them take over a home for a surveillance operation. Argue that it's not a 3rd amendment violation because of semantic games about what a soldier is.

Boom. Instant drama. Maybe shoot a dog for added pathos.

Would shooting the dog add pathos, or would it just make the story more realistic? I suppose it would depend on how it's written lol.

I often find myself feeling as if there's something inherently controversial about me that will create friction between a woman I'm interested in. I've spent my formative years living in a rather remote area with a narrow dating pool, and the few times I have approached women to ask for their numbers, they've told me without fail that they are already in a relationship. The high-quality women around here clearly are quick to get taken for good reason. I've never been on a single date, and I've never had a texting stage with a girl. To add insult to the injury, my upbringing has led me to struggle with paranoia and me psychoanalyzing every detail of an exchange I have with an attractive individual of the opposite sex.

I'm 6'8" and consider myself to be socially adept enough, well-groomed, well-mannered, and decently-read for my age. I've been told I'm tall to a fault where my towering over everybody is just too intimidating. I work out regularly, and given my height, I'm in no means obese at 225lbs, but I've given up trying to reach the ideal body fat-to-muscle ratio and have prioritized raw strength. I also have hair down to shoulder length, and I personally believe it is harmonious with my facial structure, but it probably lowers my mass appeal. I'm too conservative for the median chronic Instagram Reels scrolling woman, too liberal for the median grass-touching, actively churchgoing woman. I'm old enough for dating apps on paper but too young for them to be a widely used, effective avenue among my peers.

I feel as if all my dating prospects are behind a glass wall that I just can't shatter. I'm not some unkempt maladjust, but my circumstances have made it difficult for me to develop the same connections that many people at my age do. I've been told that this is bound to improve the second I get to college, where there is a density of like-minded cohorts, but right now I can only say that I'll believe it when I see it.

High school can be awful, I can't imagine a small town. Hopefully you visit all the colleges you might attend to get a feel of the campus. Based on your preferences, you should probably pick a US based college where you blend in. Maybe BYU?

You do seem a little high strung, though I remember feeling the same way at your age. I was never good looking and I'm 5'3", so I'm short. I did much better in college, there were simply way more women of a similar background and intelligence to meet. But I did badly at first with women, until I watched how my guy friends behaved around women, and took those lessons to heart.

You are the type of guy who would benefit from joining a frat, they would teach you through example of how to be more relaxed around women. I think you don't have the basic comfort level to merely be friends around women like @ser has suggested.

Based on your preferences, you should probably pick a US based college where you blend in.

That is the plan, I will stick around in Europe for another year on logistical grounds, but I expect to transfer from there. BYU undergrad and Ivy postgrad/postdoc is the route I intend to take.

You do seem a little high strung

I've talked about this on the Wednesday Wellness thread before, I grew up in a very psychologically volatile household and had little to no avenues to socialize the first two years after relocating to this town, which has exacerbated my interpersonal paranoia. In recent years, thanks to my social life generally improving through church, my prowess in approaching women and asking engaging questions has improved considerably; it's just that I often find myself ruminating extensively post hoc on every exchange with women, but I don't believe it affects the exchanges themselves. I do have female friends outside of my immediate area who are part of a larger friend group, but so far it's just that with no ulterior motives.

Another thing I didn't include in my original message is that I've also had women turning me down because I'm too young for them, due to my preference for women 2-3 years older than me.

BYU is going to be a good choice for you. I'm going to add on a few things. If you have the funds for it, I think you should think about taking a light course load the first year and plan to graduate in 4.5 or 5 years. Although, freshman-level classes are typically very easy, so you might breeze through even with a lot of classes. You would use the extra time joining clubs and/or service organizations to network with more people. Try a lot of different groups and stick with the groups you enjoy the most. There will probably never be another period of your life that you will have social access to young, single, virginal, and upwardly mobile women in great quantity and concentration. Since you prefer slightly older women, consider taking more elective-classes like foreign language that students of all ages enroll in.

Given your circumstances, stop worrying about it until you get to college. When in college, get 2-3 female friends that you won't try to get romantically entangled with. Use them to learn how to be comfortable around women as a man, learn how to drop the "I'm not like all the other normies" mentality that you mentioned in other replies, even if you're not like them, you're probably overestimating how different you're anyway, that's how most people are and you're going to be surrounded by people like that your whole life anyway, so just accept it. Stop disqualifying yourself with premade assumptions (too conservative, too liberal, blah blah blah) from social situations, treat everything as an opportunity to get better. Eventually, everything will fall into place. You'll level up your social skills, your women friends will be your social proof that you're normal and will likely help you find someone to date. Good luck

learn how to drop the "I'm not like all the other normies" mentality that you mentioned in other replies

I specifically said that I've fared perfectly fine in more affluent suburban settings. If that's where you were raised and have little exposure to what it's like being a bored high school kid in a small town where you don't fit the mold, you may surmise that the baseline quality of your peers is more or less universal anywhere, but that's not the case. I hate being the most intelligent person in a room exactly because I am well aware that I am far from a genius, and I actually want iron to sharpen iron because I gain no joy out of a petty dick-measuring contest and realize that I have not yet found the right tools to realize my full potential here. I live in a town that has a pervasive anti-intellectual culture, think a Norwegian equivalent of a rust belt town that has seen better days. I do believe that there is less of a disconnect between my peers and me in a more prosperous locale, which is why I'm more frustrated by the fact that I'm currently not in an environment where I am perfectly capable of thriving.

Honestly, it seems like the reason you're struggling is because you hold everyone you interact with in contempt. You either need to learn how to enjoy and value interacting with people who don't share your narrow interests, or you need to accept that you're going to be lonely at least until university.

Though be warned: these educated elite peers you pine for will be just as petty and small-minded as the country yokels you leave behind. Most people--even educated people--are not deep thinkers who you will connect with on some deep intellectual level. Girls at fancy schools aren't any more attracted to spergy themotte-style debates than the ones you're used to. And it gets even worse once you're out in the real world and no one needs to pretend that they did the reading.

I know your misanthropy seems rational to you in your current circumstances, but I promise you, these better people you're looking for don't really exist, and if you neglect forming and maintaining relationships until you find them, all that will result in is a lifetime of loneliness.

Don't wait. Build the skills you need now, when it's still relatively easy for you. Learn to value people very different from yourself, because by the time you find your weirdo fellow travelers, it will be too late. And hey, you might be surprised at how cool a lot of the lowlife scum you're currently surrounded by actually are, once you give them a chance.

Honestly, it seems like the reason you're struggling is because you hold everyone you interact with in contempt.

You're reading something into my message that simply isn't there, I believe your post contains many conjured assumptions that are not congruent with my actual situation. I have now repeatedly stated that there are several settings where I haven't experienced the issues that I currently do. I have specifically said that I don't expect a random individual on the street to have read the exact books that I have, so I fail to understand where you could've possibly read into me saying that I expect everybody to share my exact interests.

Edit: How that egregious misrepresentation of the grievances I've actually expressed garnered 10 upvotes is beyond me, but I digress.

Here is what I've actually said:

If you're not into soccer, Instagram Reels, or getting blackout drunk and then bragging about getting transported by paramedics, your options in this area are very limited. I want to date a peer, not be a babysitter. Back in my suburb of a large American metropolitan area, you had a culture of go-getters who were passionate about one thing or another; crochet, photography, floral design, dancing, w/e, which is substituted here with a pervasive unsophisticated bro-hella-dope culture.

At no point have I stated that I expect my social circle to consist entirely of people who participate in spaces like this. I treat everybody with fundamental dignity and have frequently been told that I'm charitable to a fault, though I simply don't draw conclusions about a person from one interaction when I'm not privy to their background, and always wish to assume well-intention among people I speak to. I have pals at church and former classmates with whom I can grab lunch, take a hike, or go to the beach and bond over shared experiences. I don't think I'm unreasonable in setting standards for whom I wish to develop a long-term friendship with. In my town, it is commonplace for people to make overtly sexual jokes around children, people prying into my political views at random right as I introduce myself, people at functions reaching for food in a communal bowl with their hands instead of using the spoon or tongs in it, people nudging me with their shopping carts or standing like deer in headlights instead of asking me to give way, people breathing on me through their mouth as they reach for some frozen pizza, etc. I'm not asking for a highly curated social circle, just that some baseline of social etiquette, curiosity, and open-mindedness exists.

When it comes to a dating partner, I am dating first and foremost with the desire to find a woman I can see myself living with together for eternity. I don't want her interests and background to be identical to mine as I want a relationship where we can mutually refine each other. I do want her to be decently ambitious and well-read.

In my town, it is commonplace for people to openly make overtly sexual jokes around children, people prying into my political views at random right as I introduce myself, people at functions reaching for food in a communal bowl with their hands instead of using the spoon or tongs in it, people nudging me with their shopping carts or standing like deer in headlights instead of asking me to give way, people breathing in my mouth as they reach for some frozen pizza, etc.

Huh. I'm having some difficulty interpreting this. I've lived in small American towns, and didn't notice these sorts of behaviors, or not in a way that got on my nerves. Perhaps it's best to treat it anthropologically, rather than looking for a soul mate. I enjoyed living as a single young person in a very small town. They thought me to cut fish, let me participate in town festivals, it was interesting.

Try applying your own curiosity and open-mindedness to your situation, and it will lead to amusing anecdotes you can tell your future girlfriend once you get to college.

I've lived in small American towns, and didn't notice these sorts of behaviors, or not in a way that got on my nerves.

Well at this juncture, I am based in Europe. I truly believe White Americans possess higher levels of human capital than Europeans of the same class. I've had plenty of constructive conversations with individuals that many Bostonian elitists would write off as rednecks and country yokels. Some of the American missionaries in my church that I highly respect attend open admissions schools and are not rocket scientists, but nonetheless pleasant people to be around in a way that many of my classmates weren't. I was actually raised in an upper-middle-class pocket of a lower-middle-class Southern suburb, and on paper, that's the same variety of community I reside in in my current area, and yet it couldn't be any more different.

I attend municipal concerts, participate in volunteering initiatives, and even got involved in municipal politics for a brief period. I have met some upstanding people who are highly unlikely to share many of my hobbies, the problem is that those kinds of encounters tend to be sporadic and those people tend to be decades older than me.

If I may ask... what brought an American upper-middle-class person/family like yourselves to your current Euro-yokel town?

At the risk of doxing myself, O&G is all I'll divulge. Hence I'm in Norway.

I do think the anthropological lens applies to an even greater degree in Europe. Have you read any Orwell? I'd recommend The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London. I've spent some time in Albanian and Georgian villages, and, yeah, probably wouldn't want to marry there and remain forever. But, also, I generally liked the people, they were interesting, passionate, had strong ties to ancient cultures and traditions, made labor intensive cultural foods. They may have been less drained by emigration than some areas, though, and strong cultural self image.

A few thoughts I had after reading over your posts in this thread:

  1. I think the idea that it will be much easier in college is probably correct. The increased numbers alone are a great thing.
  2. I can't think of a reason for you not to try dating apps. Your height and fitness alone might mean that you would do well. And the women who would be attracted to you based on such superficial factors aren't necessarily stupid, though I'm sure that some of them will be.
  3. I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't benefit you to be open to the idea of dating women who are older than your peer group.
  4. You seem to be looking for a deep long-term relationship with a very smart and intellectually curious woman. I would advise being open to having at least a bit of experience with women who don't fall into that category, even if it's nothing more than flirting. I like intelligence in a woman, but it's not the only factor. Kindness and just plain being fun to interact with are also very important for me in a long-term kind of thing. Also: the better you get at interacting with and flirting with women in general, the easier it will be for you to get a romantic connection with the kind of woman you're mainly interested in. Given that you seem to be seeking a serious relationship, I also wouldn't advise you to spend many years becoming a pick-up artist or something, since given your desire that would probably be a waste of time. But generally speaking, getting better at interacting with women in general can only be a good thing for you.

I feel as if all my dating prospects are behind a glass wall that I just can't shatter.

Yes it's called being a teenage boy. Dan Savage used to have a stock response to teenage boys who wrote in complaining they couldn't get a date, which was to say yeah you probably can't get a date at 15-16-17 and there's nothing you can realistically do to get yourself laid at that age because teenage boys are inherently malformed and disgusting; but what you can do is build yourself up now to set the foundation to be the kind of guy who gets laid alot later, be more interesting and in better shape and going somewhere etc.

Most young men go through this kind of transition at some point in their lives. It's not comforting now, but it really is just something you have to wait out. I certainly did.

See I'm a tad older than 17 and have been told by many people that once I find the right people in college, my situation will change drastically. I'm just venting about this right now, as that notion sounds so inconceivable to me, operating on my observations from the first 19 years of my life. I could and perhaps should wait another year to see what happens, but right now I feel suffocated.

I think you're right to be wary of the "just wait til college" advice. You're not going to arrive on campus and suddenly everyone is an open-minded philosopher who you'll form an instant connection with. Also fuck that. Don't wait for happiness later; try to be happy now!

I had similar concerns at your age, and have always struggled with forming deep connections with people. Something I've found is that the key to being interesting is being interested, and everyone can be fascinating with the right mindset. Don't assume different interests automatically means a lack of compatibility. I'm friends with everyone from ambassadors to farmers to communist labor organizers, and my life is greatly enriched by all of them. Learn to savour the differences the way you would a varied diet. The last woman I want to date is myself with tits.

Here's something I tried that seemed to work for me. Have two goals for every single human interaction: learn something new and mention one positive quality about the person you're interacting with. It helps generate positive emotions in both directions, and encourages you to instinctively look for for the good in people rather than the bad, fostering meaningful connections.

I get that. That's exactly how I felt at 17-18, then all of a sudden everything "clicked" with girls and I went from being dateless from roughly 2004-2010, to rotating through four different girls the summer of 2010 before going to college. For me, the inciting event wasn't actually going to college, but primarily when I got into a horrible car accident on my way to a college visit. T boned by an f350 at an intersection, essentially unconscious for a week, out of school for the better part of a month. I'd been texting with four different girls beforehand, all of them were likely to friendzone me later on based on history, but then I just disappeared. And that was the trick, reappearing weeks later with some scars ultimately closed the deal with all four of them. That was the sudden change of perspective that changed my luck.

For a lot of Americans that is college, because you're suddenly in a whole new social ecosystem and your old status isn't important anymore. I remember in high school we had one buddy, Jerry, who was kind of the butt monkey of the group. The dre of the group. We were friends, but we all kind of made fun of or denigrated him, he was a dork, a naif, a loser, nebbish, unable to seize the initiative in any situation. At the poker table, he was the fish. At basketball, he was bait despite being 6'2". He wasn't dumb, but he wasn't top of the class either.

Then we went to college and a year later he was a frat star. Because he made new friends who didn't treat him like shit, and met new girls who didn't see him get treated that way. There he was just a 6'2" blond beast of a man, and he asserted his rights like anyone else.

So, take heart, have hope, It Gets Better.

FWIW if we're doing male-lifetime-hotness, your absolute hotness will probably peak around 22-26, when you have a lot of potential but you won't be expected to have done too much yet, and your body is in its prime. Your relative hotness might peak later, but your true prime is right in front of you.

It sounds like ypu are still in high school? I would stop overthinking. You will have a much larger social pool and available activities to organically meet people in college. If you really want to maxx, then pursuing a six pack will guaranteed work in college.

I just graduated. The European country I'm based in has a 13th grade, which has left me stuck in this town for another year. I do have visible abs, and I know plenty of people to whom that has been of no aid.

It sounds like you just don't have enough casual social contact with girls.

Also you're too young to visit youth hostels in different cities.

I think your best bet is to sign up for dance classes. Something like Ballroom, Salsa, Two-Step, or whatever is popular in your area.

Think of it as networking with girls. Even if none of them like you they probably know a tall girl who is dying to wear heels at events without being taller than her date.

If you're not even in college I'd avoid getting into any discussion of politics, being politically compatible shouldn't* be a thing at your age. You're teens trying to have fun together, not build a life.

It sounds like you just don't have enough casual social contact with girls.

Not at my school, though I do interact extensively with the American female missionaries at my church at Bible study and young adult activities. They tend to be 2-3 years older than me and are typically chaste and cordial, which cannot be said about most of the girls in my area. Like Orthodox Jews, Mormons typically try to date within the covenant, though as I'm not in the Mountain West and not at an age where I'm preparing to get married, I do want to gain general experience connecting intimately with women. There's one that has recently finished and returned home to be an ordinary member of society. I DMed her my number, but my message has been sitting for 24 hours now (she's 7 hours behind me FWIW), which is actually what prompted me to write this. I'm currently based in a remote, blue-collar area because my parents got a sweet job offer here during COVID, and there is a significant chasm between my worldview and aspirations and those of my peers that did not exist back in my old area to the same degree. I don't mean to harbor a sanctimonious attitude, but I don't believe that any of the local girls can bring anything to the table in a relationship. If you're not into soccer, Instagram Reels, or getting blackout drunk and then bragging about getting transported by paramedics, your options in this area are very limited. I want to date a peer, not be a babysitter. Back in my suburb of a large American metropolitan area, you had a culture of go-getters who were passionate about one thing or another; crochet, photography, floral design, dancing, w/e, which is substituted here with a pervasive unsophisticated bro-hella-dope culture. I live 2 hours away from my closest major city, and now that it's summer, I make the pilgrimage there once a week, but randomly scouting people out is a fool's errand.

Also you're too young to visit youth hostels in different cities.

I'm 19 and about to start college, so this may be a possibility. As I've mentioned to another user, the country I'm in has a 13th grade which has led my circumstantial social inadequacies to prolong.

I'm 19 and about to start college, so this may be a possibility.

Yeah in that case definitely try traveling to some youth hostels if you have the cash. The girls there are pre-selected to want to meet new people and be open to some vacation romance.

Not looking for hookups for obvious reasons, but sounds like a good idea otherwise.

I want to date a peer, not be a babysitter.

Unfortunately for you, dating as a heterosexual man does highly resemble high stakes babysitting, for a chick will expect you to take the lead in driving the interaction forward, feeding her (“feed me and tell me I’m pretty”), protecting her, and entertaining her (“make me laugh”).

The sooner you accept and internalise that, the sooner you can git gud at it.

Those are just common gender dynamics which I am well aware of. What I mean is I want to date a woman that is intellectually compatible with me (shouldn't be a big ask) with whom I can have profound conversations with, beyond reality TV programs and social media slop.

Women are, on average, more basic than men (e.g., the consistent finding that women substantially underperform men on knowledgeability tests), which will only be exacerbated at the tails. And young attractive women are perhaps the most basic segment of women. Thus, expecting a young attractive woman to have even a fraction of your interest in Motte-adjacent topics would be setting yourself up for disappointment.

Just like when babysitting you engage the kid(s) in topics that interest them (such as their favorite toys or cartoons), when dating women you engage them with topics that interest them, such as reality TV and social media slop. You can also monologue to them Patrick Bateman-style about topics that interest you; however, that generally requires a higher level of frame and attractiveness (and lack of unattractiveness), lest they—ironically enough—find you BORING.

I've read up on this subject before. The question that arises is, can't I weed out the more basic women by attending a school with selective admissions and look within my major? I'm not expecting to talk Wittgenstein and Krauthammer with a random girl I bump into on the street, but surely within a more curated environment, I can find women who have the curiosity and intellectual hardware I'm looking for?

No one person can possibly satisfy all of your needs at once. What you prioritize in platonic friends should not necessaily be the same as what you prioritize in romantic partners. If you find someone like that, great, but most successful relationships are not built on that kind of intellectual foundation. Your girlfriend will never be able to replace your drinking buddies (and vice versa) and you wouldn't want her to try.

If it's really important to you, by all means, hold out for Mrs. Right. Just know that it's a hell of a lot easier if you compartmentalize a little and accept that different sorts of relationships fill different sorts of gaps. Maybe deprioritize intellectual compatibility just a tad and scratch that itch by setting time aside to hang out with the boys.

There's also something to be said for not inserting potential points of conflict into a relationship of you don't have to. There are already so many vectors for disagreement and hurt feelings. I like to play a little rough with my intellectual sparring, and that's a lot lower stakes (and more fun) with male friends than it is with a girlfriend. Romantic relationships involve a lot of compromise and swallowing of pride, and that's not really something I'm looking for with a political or philosophical argument. Are you willing to lose the argument and apologize when a political debate gets heated? I'm not confident of my ability to do that in the heat of the moment, and so prefer to keep those debates to a lower stakes forum.

It really depends. As a female political science major who actually wanted to nerd out about "deep topics", my dating value skyrocketed because this was a rare find even with the department. You will probably need to accept a bit of tomboyish/masculine personality or some "neurodivergence" or both if this is something you want in your partner.

I feel like I want to underline the "probably" in what you wrote by giving an example of an exception: my first girlfriend was a very smart philosophy major whose personality, while not being exceptionally feminine, was also not masculine or tomboyish, and she didn't show any signs of neurodivergence.

(shouldn't be a big ask)

You post here. Yes, it very much is.

Even at an Ivy League school, or a school with selective admissions?

In a curated environment like that you can definitely better your odds of finding someone with interests closer to your own. But at the same time, you increase the quality of your competition. That brilliant girl with esoteric interests at Yale is also getting chatted up by the genuine genius and the bro with generational wealth.

I'm not telling you to "abandon all hope, ye who want a girl that's read Nietzsche", but much like the women who want a 6/6/6 guy you should understand that you're restricting yourself to a small portion of the pool. Especially if you also want her to be, e.g. hot and personable and not so short that your sons will resent you.

College will help, but you need to practice interacting casually with girls you could find attractive with no ulterior motives.

Or just practice interacting with girls you find attractive while having ulterior motives.

I mean, if he's capable of jumping right to it sure, but the ulterior motives means that there are stakes at play, which adds stress and nervousness which lower his confidence. At least that's how it was for me back then. Removing the motives, not even letting himself think about anything further than the current conversation makes it easier to talk confidently. Once's he's established he's as capable of confidently holding conversations with pretty girls without getting flustered or intimidated, then he can start thinking about flirting with them.

You are probably autistic (because you post here) and are probably a locationcel (as the incels say). Have you heard the term locationcel? Did you know location was considered important enough to make that category?

This is the Friday Fun thread, but this is not a Fun topic. I also notice there's no question so its not a good fit for the Small Question thread either. Perhaps Wellness Wednesday is the best fit.

Like I said, I'm socially adept enough and have seldom struggled with social cues growing up. I recently found out that I'm a highly probable candidate for inattentive ADHD that has flown under the radar as I'm not meaningfully hyperactive, which may explain why I've never been able to stop at a one-liner in the name of precision and clarity and have managed to focus intensively in subjects I enjoy.

I decided against posting this on Wellness Wednesday, as I imagine this issue may sound comically trivial when juxtaposed with the other posts.

Failing completely, thus far, at finding a mate is not trivial, and I don't believe that you believe it's actually trivial.

I've been told I'll bloom in college, which is just a couple of months away. I simply haven't lived long enough to see it and attest to it yet.

Oh, lol, you're around 18 years old. You're tall as fuck, you'll be fine.

What if I get plenty of women telling me I'm too tall?

The lesson as usual is don’t take what chicks say seriously (“omg you’re like way too tall, teehee”).

6’8” is right in the wheelhouse of optimal male height. Chicks seek a daddy they can choose, a man who makes them feel smol and like a powerless child.

Plenty of women will reject you, that doesn't matter. Nobody cares about efficiency metrics in picking-up-girls, least of all Mormons. Your true-shooting-percentage doesn't matter. Just the number of points you score.

You're very tall but not deformed tall, it's gonna be fine.

It is not comically trivial. This is the sort of problem the Wellness thread is for.

Evidence of the Vibe Shift is surfacing.

I'm a reflexive contrarian. I'm a libtard when I'm at a megachurch picnic, and a superfascist at a liberal arts college. When I watch a biopic, I tend to try to critique and read-between-the-lines so much that I walk away with the exact opposite of whatever opinions the filmmaker was trying to impart about the subject.

And lately, I'm running into stuff and feeling wokeness rising like bile in my stomach.

I took my father and mother to see Million Dollar Quartet for Father's Day. Which was good for them, it's boomer-candy, barely a play and more of a cover-band night with four performers and an mc all pretending to be from 1950 or whatever. My parents had a good time, which is what matters for filial piety. But the whole plot, such as it is, the conflict revolves around who gets "credit" for songs. Carl Perkins wrote Blue Suede Shoes but Elvis got it on TV first so now it's an Elvis song and Perkins gets told he's a cover artist! But throughout the play the artists play covers from black artists of the time, Long Tall Sally and Who Do Ya Love? among others, and don't acknowledge it; the play isn't clever enough to be doing that intentionally. Black people, who still owned Rock and Roll at the time of the setting, and they're just erased from the story here! RnB was still considered "race music" at the time! Most of the great artists were negroes! There's no way that they hung out and discussed what rock and roll music was and didn't talk about that! And I'm not asking for some woke-confession speech where they talk about stealing rock and roll, but the play would be 1000% more interesting if they did a little bit of Mad Men where they used period accurate attitudes to race to make the viewer think about the issue.

Then I saw the NYT list of greatest living American songwriters, and sweet suffering Jesus, where is the melanin at the top? Are you kidding me? Taylor Swift makes the list just even with the first negro? The highest ranked rapper is Kendrick at 17, and that just seem so wrong when hip hop has been the artistically dominant pop music form for at least twenty years. Kanye at 72 while Dolly Parton is in the top ten? I realize this is mostly boomer bias here again, but to deny the unique cultural contribution of American blacks to modern popular music is just...odd.

And I don't feel like I ever had room to think something like that a few years ago. So the vibes are shifting.

I think the word living is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Most of the old rock n roll and early soul luminaries are dead. A lot of the really excellent black hip hop artists of the early 90s died early violent deaths, so Eazy-E, Tupac and Biggie Smalls aren’t around to get nominated. So you are left with an awkward selection of mediocrities from the nadir of American hip hop music in the 2000s, and the remnants of the old greats.

Jay-Z and Nas are still alive. Kanye is still alive, if crazy. Rakim is still alive. Big Daddy Kane is still alive. When I glance at Billboard's Top 100 rappers I only count three or four dead in the top 30.

Like OK boomer bias is a big thing, but why is Taylor so high then?

I could equally point to an anti-country bias on the list, but that's a bit different and outside my current thoughts.

Jay-Z is a hack who was mostly carried by Kanye West, his wife, and the Democratic Party apparatus. Kanye is the obvious choice for the list but they can’t pick him for political reasons.

Taylor is on there because the vast majority of pop stars don’t write any of their own material and the fact that she has even some creative input on her music and style makes her unique.

Country is mostly either shit or turbo-underground indie bands, so that doesn’t surprise me.

My boomer father thought Claude was being politically correct by including "Negro performers" in a playlist for a party. I had to explain to him that many great musicians are black.

The term "Negro" is something that is making my eyebrows rise, because unless the latest reshuffle of terms has brought this back, nobody uses it casually. So what is going on here?

I always interpret it as a refusal to participate in the absurdity of the euphemism treadmill.

"Negro" is a time-period-marker; a 1920s jazz musician who smokes reefer is a negro, a 1990s rap musician who smokes pot is an African American. A 2020 hip-hop artist who smokes cannabis is a Person of Color, or possibly a Black Body.

A 2020 hip-hop artist who smokes cannabis is a Person of Color, or possibly a Black Body.

Would that make a 2020s hip-hop artist offed by the FSB a black body radiator?

I admit this conversation wasn't in English.

I'm using it in my comment as an intentional anachronism to fit the period of Million Dollar Quartet and the period when music made by black people became culturally dominant across the United States and thus the world, and to signal a degree of irreverence can be maintained while still acknowledging the absurdity of having Taylor Swift ten spots ahead of any representative of the dominant cultural mode of popular music for the past twenty years.

I saw someone put a traffic cone on a statue in Glasgow. It felt like seeing a real, live leprechaun.

There were police waiting for him, by the time this ginger man gingerly clambered back down. They had a very polite conversation, shook his hand, and he stumbled off to to cone another day. I'm not sure what you can even charge someone for, if they do that. It's just part of the civic culture really.

Does anyone have any thoughts on so-called Chinese Salvationist Religions?

I have no thoughts on Chinese Salvationist Religions. Or at least I didn't, and now I must know. More Jesus's lil bro and 1 gorillion dead stuff?

I can hardly find anything on it. Seems like an interesting neo-Confucian syncretism religious movement that may or may not be extinct.

There are currently extant Chinese salvationist religions, they're not extinct and are quite alive and well. Falun Gong is a prominent example of a currently-extant salvationist religion, and it's only one among a crop that emerged throughout the Sinosphere in the 20th century; Weixinism, Tiandiism, Shanrendao and so on. There's also those which trace their roots all the way back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, such as the Luoist religious sects, Jiugongdao, the Eight Trigram teachings and Sanyi teachings. They tend to be syncretic and have some focus on personal and social redemption. It's difficult to really "give thoughts" on these religions given the broad nature of the category, the term encapsulates quite literally hundreds of different unaffiliated religious strands.

In general Chinese religions are very heterogenous, non-exclusivist and difficult to pin down, and once you look beyond the oversimplified Buddhism-Confucianism-Taoism trifecta there are a million unique local sects with different sets of beliefs, gods and practices which aren't really amenable to broad analysis (the level of heterogeneity is to such a degree that there are literally extant practicing Manichaeans in the hills of Fujian). Throughout ancient and modern Chinese history alike the state tended to police these societies due to the risk of a Taiping situation if left unchecked, but the creation of local religious movements still goes on nevertheless.

East Asians enjoy hardcore religion when they go for it. I dated a Chinese classmate briefly in Australia and ended up getting roped into a Sunday service at their church and it was full speaking in tongues, baptisms once a month and whatnot.

My partner and I are booked for a family dinner tonight, so I made some fresh sourdough bread and hand churned some butter to take with us.

Sometimes I wish that the economics of food service made sense. I don't think I'd mind the long hours and hard work.

I think if I get to retire early I'll hop back into food service for at least a year, maybe 2. I miss it quite a bit.

Every single-person-owned diner/restraunt I've been too(and at one point, the area I was in had alot and they were all good) pretty much run on margins and prayers and potential free-labor from family members.

It's both sad and frustrating for someone who always enjoys those sorts of places.

In actually Michelin starred restaurants, it is not uncommon for servers to make $150k+ inc tips in NYC, which is probably more than, say, the average New York Times journalist. In France it is not uncommon to make 3x the (much lower) average wage, which is why you see perfectly respectable people in their fifties do the job.

I waited tables and tended bar for years.

I'm thinking more about the restaurant ownership side of things. Unless you own the property, your landlord is going to jack up your rent every year so you're just barely not broke. I know a handful of people who have left the industry for exactly that reason. I might be able to make the economics work with a food truck, but that's about it.

Bartenders too can clear large amounts of money in tips in hip, expensive nightclubs. Tips for service as a percentage is rather non-sensical.

I'm sure some snobs would argue that the service in a Michelin starred restaurant is worth paying 10 times than that in a local diner, but as a thought experiment what would happen if you were to exchange the wait staff in both but keep the same food? You'd probably have a massively more popular "Michelin starred restaurant with diner staff" (probably barely less popular than it was with its original staff) than "local diner with Michelin starred wait staff", which tells me that the service is a lot less consequential than the food.

True but they tend to be attractive young people. Waiters are more diverse in terms of age.

The waiter at the starred restaurant which I most recently patronized was a dead ringer for Jason Momoa.

I recently had my third child and my much younger brother broke his leg. As a result, I’m spending a lot of time in doctors offices, medical offices, and physical therapy outfits.

For whatever reason I started to notice that every one of these places have these big horseshoe front desks with somewhere between 6-12 women working. They’re generally between 20-60 years old, natural blonde or dye job, mostly slightly overweight or seriously overweight, at least one tattoo, and all of them pretty miserable. These are the working women proles. When people talk about the outrageous healthcare costs, I can’t help but think that it’s all a racket and jobs program. Healthcare companies make a nice margin and get an army of women that toe the line with “public health” and collect a paycheck.

I’m 42. It wasn’t always like this.

I’m saying this all tongue in cheek for Friday fun. But I am kinda curious what people think about the socio-economic-political forces that are driving this.

Is it the same in the UK? In China? I’ve been to a Chinese hospital. That seemed like a lot of young village type Chinese in white uniforms and hats.

What makes these people so miserable? Do people go into this field and turn into this stereotype? Or do the stereotype people get attracted to this field?

The last time I went to a doctor's office there was a young, thin black guy alone at the front desk. It was not horseshoe shaped.

Shit, that's like finding a unicorn. I don't think I've ever seen a man involved in the front of a medical/dental office. Closest would be a male ER nurse. He was a black guy too and when he tried to take my blood pressure, the cuff wouldn't fit. He said "Woah! Gonna have to get the big one!" I think he was probably overselling it but that carried me emotionally for a couple of years.

My last two healthcare visits (a GP and a physio) had a desk with one person behind it. I can confirm they were 20-60 (like, ah, most of the working population, I presume) but you didn't get the other particulars right.

I’ve occasionally seen a horseshoe desk, though much more rarely than a “bank teller” setup or just a single desk.

I concur that any of these desk types are almost always staffed by women, and that those women are between 20 and 60. You know, like most American workers.

None of the rest fits my experience. It’s like you’re sending a message from an alternate dimension, maybe the same place from which Ben Shapiro pulled his fiction.

Okay, hold on. I have a cousin who fit a number of those checkboxes, and she totally worked healthcare support up in the Midwest. No word on her desk style. I think she’s moved on to education now that her kid is in school?

The women womanning desks in Tokyo hospitals are brisk but usually cheerful, or at least straight-forward and professional. I certainly wouldn't call them miserable.

A couple of things are happening here.

Part of it is the decline the secretary - it used to be that most of these people would be one capable secretary, those women now work "real" jobs and much of the duties have been outsourced onto doctors, outlook, and other similar stuff. Some of the job remains, but the talent pool is...lower.

Healthcare often actually involves razor thin margins, immense government subsidy, unions or government employees and all kinds of other crap. Someone has to man the phones and officially do the job. Usually they don't, so you hire more people hoping that enough women at the desk creates some function.

It doesn't. During training usually I did my job and the front desk's job.

I find this conversation so triggering so I'm a bit disorganized here but other poster's have noted an element of claims and other things, usually the people sitting at the front desk are the front desk staff and do front desk things, but it's not necessarily going to be obvious if it isn't also an MA workstation, or someone who does insurance stuff, it just seems like a homogeneous pile of women.

I’m 42. It wasn’t always like this.

William Baumol (yes, that Baumol) coined the term "pink collar" in 1967. The category referred to teaching, nursing, secretarial and social work--the kind of work disproportionately done by women. You might not have noticed it 30 years ago (and certainly you would have seen less obesity and fewer tattoos) but the basic dynamic has been in place for decades at least.

I would suggest that these people are not so much miserable as they are irritated by the presence of patients. In most medical practice today, the patient is not the one paying the (lion's share of the) bill. And if you are not the one paying the bill, you are not the customer. A really good day for most medical office workers is one in which a large number of cancellations or no-shows allows them to spend the day scrolling their phone (or, a touch less cynically, getting a lot of insurance billing paperwork done because there are no humans distracting them with questions or, worse, complaints). They get paid the same either way.

And the office workers you're talking about were probably not attracted to "this field" so much as to a flexible-hours, prestige-adjacent job with air conditioning and low physical demand. Ideal conditions for parents of young children, of course, but also not a terrible compromise position for childless individuals who would prefer to not be working at all but aren't in a financial position to actually take that route.

I haven't seen any horse-shoe desks, including at the multiple hospitals I've worked in, in Scotland. But blonde receptionists? Could buy two dozen for a dime, thanks to inflation. I can't say they've been particularly bitter, but in smaller towns, my female patients and pub acquaintances have told me that they're almost always incredibly nosy gossips. That's the main perk of the job.

I can't say they've been particularly bitter, but in smaller towns, my female patients and pub acquaintances have told me that they're almost always incredibly nosy gossips. That's the main perk of the job.

This kills the crab doctor-patient confidentiality.

I'm surprised you missed the hoe-flation joke. Had it all lined up for you.

The word "hoeflation" did come to mind while reading @Rex's original post.

However, given that "hoe" in modern colloquial usage generally pertains to young women with at least some sexual relevancy (e.g., "im glad he doesn’t have hoes but why does he not have hoes??? am i fighting for a spot no one wants??!!"), it felt too expansive and/or flattering to apply the term to the following demographic as a whole:

20-60 years old... mostly slightly overweight or seriously overweight

Plus, given the ubiquity and expectedness of hoeflation, I already have it mentally priced-in, hence the doctor-patient confidentiality aspect was more novel to me.

At my dermatologist recently, it was all female receptionists, but they were pretty diverse otherwise, and mostly pretty cheerful.

In general, dealing with healthcare claims and companies is miserable. This is these people's whole job.

Video Game Thread

What are you playing? Did you pick up anything great in the Steam summer sale?

I'm working my way through Half-Life (1998) and its expansions. It's pretty great even beyond the nostalgia, and I like the general feel of the engine and how you move around in it. Even the much-criticized Blue Shift is kinda fun. The engine was always one of the main strengths of HL and played a large part in its many mods' successes too, IMO. I'm playing with the 'original models' because I prefer how those weapons look and sound. I tried Black Mesa again briefly but I don't really like many of the changes they made. It's not a faithful remake.

I've been slowly working my way through Deltarune on stream, and for multiplayer fun I've been playing Deadlock (when I'm feeling alert enough) and SkillShot City (when I feel like playing something more casual).

I picked up Risk of Rain 2 in the Summer Sale, and I've played it a bit, but honestly I don't really have the energy to be playing four games at once (in fact I usually limit myself to two).

I’ve got about 30-40 hours left in modded Cold Steel III.

I’ve also been following the slow moving crash of Civ7 on CivFanatics now for past year+. Amazing stuff going on there. It motivated me to reinstall Civ4. I mainly play Civ5 Vox Populi, but for whatever reason I want to give modded 4 a spin now. I found AdvancedCiv mod for 4. A moderate gameplay mod that improves the difficulty curve and does some UI updates. I’m a bit torn though between this and vanilla gameplay. Civ4 is not flawed like 5 is, so ai tweaks being a positive or negative is hard to assess.

I guess my thought process is this: I have 1000s of civ hours over the course of my life. If there is a mod for a 20 year old game that still has an active forum and active development, I reckon they will have it better tuned for my tastes. Better than even peak Firaxis who is still catering to a much broader group than players like me.

I’ve also been following the slow moving crash of Civ7 on CivFanatics now for past year+. Amazing stuff going on there.

What are they getting up to, if you're willing to summarize?

Learning the ropes (and bugs) in Empire of the Fading Suns.

Basically space Rome's fall leaves 5 great houses in a dark age with a fraction of a planet and a few examples of lost tech they can't build yet and the first tremors of an alien invasion. You rule one great house with the goal of being elected regent twice in a row. 5 houses and two NPC factions (the church and the trade guild) get votes for regent.

The UI and bugs are something only a 90s era strategy gamer could tolerate (you right click to select and there's no map moving except clicking and one pixel of border movement around the map). It's got the potential to require your tiny freighter fleet to move all the 15 materials (including food so your invading troops don't starve and rebel) to where they're needed.

I've really enjoyed rediscovering lost tech like building air planes and then dominating rebels with air superiority. But the rebels sometimes have lost things I can't make (like Fusion powered weapons surprise). And votes are done by nobles I'm a certain place at a certain time so sniping irreplaceable nobles is a thing!

It along with Star Fleet II are probably the two games I'd love to see get a take that modernizes the game keeping as many mechanics as possible while modernizing the interface.

Just put a picoboot in a gamecube; i've been playing crazy taxi and star fox adventures. good nostalgic times.

Picoboot is a RPi2040-based modchip, do I understand that right? And the main thing you can do with it is play burned games? Just thinking about whether I need to do this myself, or whether my softmodded WiiU is going to be enough to keep me busy.

Yep exactly. It's got a clever little ribbon cable that inserts between the board and the disc drive, so it retains disc drive functionality unlike some of the past mod chips. It can run burned games, various cheats can be loaded in, and in theory you can boot up the gameboy player attachment without the startup disc (haven't tried that yet).

A softmodded WiiU should be able to run most of the same games, as I understand it.

I happened to pick up a gamecube for cheap at a thrift shop and wanted to do something with it. I've got a Japanese WiiU in my project closet and plan to softmod it eventually, but with the language stuff I think it'll take a fair bit longer.

Very cool. The WiiU is a lovely little machine because you can emulate so much with it. Underappreciated in its day.

Playing the new-ish Rogue Trader Trazyn DLC. Owlcat does make a nice CRPG. I'm trying to go for a balanced alignment run where I don't exceed rank 2 in any alignment. They show a mirror universe character with that affliction but I'm not sure its possible with all the colony buildings.

rrazyn

Donny Jones makes a guest appearance.

lol typo.

I loved the Owlcat Pathfinders and Rogue Trader, but with RT, it felt like I could see the rails on the universe much more clearly than with the others. It felt smaller. Not sure if it actually is, but it feels that way. Maybe it's that a lot of the tedious mechanics (e.g. wealth, inventory) are handwaved because you're a Rogue Trader who doesn't need to deal with such trivial inconveniences, and those are actually load-bearing on the immersion. Maybe it's the reduced narrative complexity and choice branches. I don't think I could bring myself to start another RT playthrough today, whereas there are still things I'd like to try in WotR or KM.

and those are actually load-bearing on the immersion

(Disclaimer: I've never played the tabletop game nor do I know anything about 40k.)

When I did background research on Rogue Trader, I wanted to learn about mechanics and gameplay, but (I guess because its a TTRPG) all the answers online are explaining the 40k lore or what a Rogue Trader is. I don't care! I had the same problem when trying to google "Difference between Warlock and Wizard 5e" -- I guess these games are for theatre kids instead of mechanic enjoyers.

It took me awhile to adjust to the shop system and the cargo system, because the game explains them in in-universe immersion terms. It took me too long to realize cargo was your cash and the items themselves are free (its mostly about the reputation, I think?). If you want tedium, I hear min/maxing cargo turn-ins requires you to micromanage to avoid overfilling units.

There's also the space combat minigame (I think it's quite complex for a minigame), that is prohibitively difficult compared to the rest of the game. I really like that it has it though, because I think it is immersive! I feel like the gameplay is reflecting (what little I've read) about the Rogue Trader fantasy.

The only immersion-breaking thing is that I am swinging a sword at all. That is Abelard's job, hello?

I did RT then WoTR so that probably colors my opinion. I really hated the army part of WoTR. I think the planet exploration is just a better version of it, and the battles are better. I noticed the rails in both, WOTR just had more "options". I think I also just like the 40k setting more than generic D&D fantasy setting. But I've definitely had some friends with your opinion, I think its just a matter of taste.

Also I like doing character builds more than story which might impact it a bit. I mostly replay to try different compositions and builds.

The only real complaint I have with Rogue Trader is that if you have any idea of how the universe functions, you're basically going to be so goddamn hardline in worshipping the Emperor, purging the mutant and killing the heretic you will give your Inquisitor conniptions fits because you're more hardline than he is and it drives him nuts.

...which, admittedly, I take great delight in, so maybe I'm a little bit biased. Xeno artifact whispering in my head? Into the energy reactor it goes. Demon-infestes super computer? Arengta, be a dear and please bathe this foul artifice with plasma. Chaos-corrupted nobles on my planet? Fire. All the fire.

I will never forgive Games Workshop for denying us a romance route with the Sisters of Battle, though.

you have any idea of how the universe functions

The fun part is you can role play as not knowing. Dogmatic is often the smart way to play but playing as a heretic is enjoyable, and trying to thread the needle on iconoclast between stupid and non-zealot is fun.

I will never forgive Games Workshop for denying us a romance route with the Sisters of Battle

I just want to romance my cog boys. Argenta is whatever.

Coming into it with barely any knowledge of the setting, dogmatic seemed lawful-stupid, or even pointlessly cruel. Look, I can get behind "for the Greater Good", or even "My Country Right or Wrong", but the choices were like:

  • [dogmatic] execute this poor commoner for having a reasonable complaint
  • [heretic] execute this poor commoner for the lulz, cackling maniacally
  • [iconoclast] don't execute the poor commoner

and like, it didn't do a great job of selling the appeal. I was interested in heretic initially because the evil artifact that will obviously obviously corrupt you seemed like a solid roleplay arc, but then the early heretic choices were chaotic-evil right off the bat. I was hoping they'd start off being written as neutral-evil power seeking and then by late game, you'd have frog boiled yourself into a servant of chaos.

Then, iconoclast was completely normal western liberal morality, and the game doesn't punish you for picking those options, so why not pick them?

Exception: idira - this was done well, and it's a rare thing in RPGs that the player gets the option to summarily execute a companion early on, and can reasonably decide it's the right choice.

Then, iconoclast was completely normal western liberal morality, and the game doesn't punish you for picking those options, so why not pick them?

The Void Shadows DLC takes advantage of the iconoclast naiveté very well. It absolutely punishes you for it, in very hilarious ways. The in-game lore optimal route is probably a mix of dogmatic and iconoclast. I agree that heretic is chaotic evil straight off of the bat, it would have been nicer to have different flavors of evil as well, or a slow build up. I don't think Owlcat's writing is particularly good, but I do appreciate that it doesn't morally railroad you in quite the same way as something like BG3.

I think with the DLCs increasing the number of alignment points that are available, you don't need to go hard down one path to be able to reach the end trees, allowing you to kinda set the pace in your own story a bit more.

the obvious way to fix this would be to adjust the events/choices such that strict hardline Emperor Worship is slow suicide, and you are going to need to bend the rules a bit in order to make ends meet.

Horizon's Gate, which is something like Final Fantasy Tactics stapled to a nautical exploration and trading game.

Haven't touched it yet though - still researching classes / builds / team comp

That... sounds like a very promising concept.

Haven't had much time for gaming, but I picked up on Steam sale Tactics Ogre Reborn, HOMM Olden Era and RACCOIN (think Balatro but coin pusher instead of poker).

After years away, jumped back in to Diablo III latest season to get a Crusader set I never tried.

Picked up CoH3 (fun! I'm awful at RTS games!), Fields of Mistria, and SRPG studio. Yes, I'm aware I'm too lazy for the last one. No, I don't care.

So the 'old' Company of Heroes 3? I saw there's a new CoH 3 with some subtitle, coming soon.

Is Fields of Mistria good?

New CoH 3 is a... wave defense expansion pack/standalone, effectively?

Haven't yet fired up Mistria. What I really want is Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, legit and legal on PC, but in the old artstyle rather than the new remade 3d style, and I'm hoping this will be about as close as I can get to scratching that niche itch.

New CoH 3 is a... wave defense expansion pack/standalone, effectively?

Yes. That made me a bit skeptical too, but it looks pretty good graphically. I will try it.

I'm glad you're having the same experience that I did. I played HL1 stone cold for the first time in... 2009? Zero Nostalgia. Still loved every second. The magic was very much still there.

A Vtuber I watch who was born after HL1 played HL1 for the first time this year, and she liked it enough that she went right into HL2 and then the episodes, despite not being a big singleplayer FPS person. It's nice to see affirmation that the classics really are that good sometimes.

I'm surprised, since I would have held HL1 and HL2 as examples of a shooters that pushed the envelope at the time but aren't necessarily mechanically better than newer shooters. But if as you say she's not a big singleplayer FPS person, maybe it's a better intro to it than most since it's not expecting years of built up experience on other shooters.

The HL2 pulse rifle is one of the most satisfying guns.... ever. I mean, the whole repertoire is good, even the pistol and SMG are fun. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I find the gunplay in HL2 and Counter-Strike to be a lot more compelling than "Parkour with a Rifle" in modern shooters.

What do you mean by mechanically better? And what newer shooters do you hold to be the best ones?

I mean that if I were fully unaware of any video games, and you put in front of me Half-Life 1 and almost any major developer's first person shooters since, I don't know, Far Cry 1? it would feel boring and simple­. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of Half-Life 1 and 2, because they were pushing the envelope at the time they came out, but those things they did that were groundbreaking are old-hat now, and when it comes to pure shooting mechanics of it, I feel like some older games aged better too (the Doom and Quake series, for instance).

As for better newer shooters, sadly single-player shooters are a stale genre nowadays, with pretty much nothing but Call of Duties. But some years back (oh god, ten years ago! I'm old!) my mind was was completely blown by the campaign on Titanfall 2; if you haven't played that I highly recommend it. It doesn't even lean on open world to differenciate itself, it does the same linear, spectacle as Half-Life does but it does it with everything pushed to the next level. Like Half-Life 2 did, there's so much creativity and skill at work here that they could create and discard gimmicks for single levels that lesser devs would make the entire game revolve around. If anything was able to push the envelope from that point after, I was not made aware of it.

What bout Prey (2017)? I haven't played it, but its Gloo gun seems like a spiritual successor to HL2/Portal's building the games around creatively using a gimmick weapon. It looks pretty neat.

It sounds like you're not experiencing what some people appreciate about these 'simple' games. The simplicity is part of the design.

And your answer to my other question is basically that there has not been anything great in the last 10 years. Titanfall 2 came out in 2016.

The simplicity is part of the design.

I would argue that at the time, it was not designed to be simple. It seems simple in retrospect and whether you find that endearing is up to you. I do like simple games too. But I'm not convinced I would be impressed if I were in a mirror universe where it had never existed yet everything else about the industry was somehow the same, and someone released Half-Life 1 today as an indie game.

And your answer to my other question is basically that there has not been anything great in the last 10 years.

I know, but in between Half-Life 2 and Titanfall 2, pretty much all major first person shooters did what Half-Life (1 and 2) did as a matter of routine, and often better than it did. All the Call of Duty games pretty much have it beat in the "run a mostly set route between spectacular set-pieces". Titanfall 2, to me, set a new bar that's high enough above everything else before that it hasn't been cleared in 10 years, but after Half-Life 2 and until Titanfall 2, I thought the bar was being regularly cleared. It helped that it was an era of first person shooters proeminence and now isn't (at least, not single player FPS).

Name the games that did what HL1 and HL2 did, better than they did, between 2004-2016.

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Item 1 of 6

Steve Jackson, leader of Steve Jackson Games and the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (which just celebrated its 40th anniversary):

I have just revised our illustration contract with a flat prohibition against the use of generative AI. I'll work on our writing contracts next. The problem is carving out a clear exception for those old-school spelling and grammar checkers which don't try to write the next dozen words for you. (I have accepted, with angst, that some truly fine writers will never learn to spell, and they need this.)

Anyway: No generative AI. If that's not blunt enough: This company will not knowingly publish AI slop (except, perhaps, to mock it), and any "creator" who tries to foist it on us will be rejected, blacklisted, and quite possibly named and shamed. Don't do it.

Item 2 of 6

  • In a residential zone, a municipal ordinance permits only single-family detached dwellings, where a “dwelling” is used by one or more families and does not include “hotels, motels, rooming houses, or other tourist homes”, and a “family” is “one or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption, living together as a single housekeeping unit”.

  • A real-estate investor buys a six-bedroom house capable of holding 17 people, and uses it as a short-term rental. The municipal govt. issues a violation to him, on the basis that the house counts as “hotel or other type of transient lodging” rather than “single-family dwelling”. The municipal zoning board and the trial judge agree with the municipal govt.

  • The appeals panel reverses (two to one). Since the ordinance fails to define “transient lodging”, it is ambiguous, and ambiguities are to be interpreted in favor of the owner. “Enterprises such as AirBnB have expanded the possible uses of single-family dwellings, and a township can address such uses in the zoning ordinance. However, amendments ‘cannot be effected by shoe-horning a use that involves renting an entire single-family home to vacationers into the definition of a “tourist home”’.”

  • The state supreme court reverses (unanimously). “While ‘single housekeeping unit’ is undefined in the ordinance, it is a term of art that is widely used in zoning ordinances. This court has adopted the common definition, used by courts throughout the country, as requiring the person or persons residing in the home to function as a family and to be ‘sufficiently stable and permanent’ and not ‘purely transient’. Thus, by defining ‘family’ by requiring ‘a single housekeeping unit’, the ordinance clearly and unambiguously excluded purely transient uses of property.” “The [appeals court]'s decisions have slowly eroded our decision in Albert [where we adopted this interpretation], from Marchenko (allowing some transient use) to Shvekh (allowing mostly transient use) and now in the case at bar (allowing purely transient use), differentiating Albert on less and less convincing grounds.”

Item 3 of 6

Excerpt from Wikipedia's Manual of Style:

Italics generally are used only for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works should be enclosed in double quotation marks. This particularly applies to works that exist as a smaller part of a larger work.

But practices vary. Some publishers (such as the aforementioned Steve Jackson Games) use italics for shorter works and bold+italics for longer works.

Reminder: In any of these situations, it technically is bad practice to just hit Ctrl-I or Ctrl-B on your keyboard. Rather, you are supposed to use semantic markup (such as the cite element in HTML⁎ or a custom style in Word) and apply styling based on the semantics. (Using CSS to generate quotation marks that do not exist in the original HTML is possible. However, I personally dislike that practice, since characters that do not exist in the HTML are invisible to copying-and-pasting. So just type those quotation marks manually.)

⁎Historically, the cite element has been badly misused by some software.

Item 4 of 6

  • A food manufacturer experiences salmonella contamination at a peanut-butter factory. It is targeted by thousands of lawsuits, and calls on its insurer for coverage, since it expects to incur total damages in excess of its policy's deductible of 250 k$ per “occurrence”, defined as “an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions”. However, the insurer points out that a later section of the same policy redefines “occurrence” as “any ‘bodily injury’ or ‘property damage’ that arises out of any one ‘lot’ of ‘your product’ that is prepared or acquired by you”—i. e., each 24-hour lot of peanut-butter production counts as a separate occurrence. The contaminated peanut butter was distributed over 225 lots, so the 250-k$ deductible must be reached on the basis of a single lot—not all the contaminated lots combined—before the insurer will provide coverage on that single lot. The manufacturer sues the insurer in order to get a clarification of which definition of “occurrence” controls.

  • The trial judge rejects the insurer's interpretation and adopts the manufacturer's, and the appeals panel affirms. The later section of the policy is ambiguous as to whether it is intended to redefine “occurrence”, especially when compared with other sections that do explicitly specify that they are redefining previously-defined terms. Even when considered in a vacuum, the second definition is ambiguous in itself: it is not clear whether, under the second definition, multiple injuries caused by a single lot are one occurrence or multiple occurrences. And it is circuit precedent that any ambiguity in an insurance policy is to be construed against the insurer that wrote that policy.

Item 5 of 6

Found via the YouTube algorithm: Mildly interesting video using popular Japanese Twitter posts to illustrate LLM stereotypes in that language (akin to em dashes in English)

Item 6 of 6

  • As part of a road widening, the state DOT (department of transportation) condemns a 13-foot-wide strip of land at the front of a person's residential property. The person's house would overlap this strip, but the DOT has modified the strip with a rectangular cutout in order to eliminate the overlap. Years later (presumably while the construction is ongoing), the person hires a surveyor to double-check the DOT's plan. Whoops! The DOT's survey fails to show a large concrete porch at the side of the house⁎, so the cutout failed to exclude that area from the DOT's taking.⁎⁎ (Disclaimer: Past this point I am far from certain that I understand what's going on in this lawsuit. But, IMO, this one paragraph is quite interesting on its own.)

  • The person sues for compensation—not just for the de jure taking of the land under the porch as shown in the DOT's plans, but also for the de facto taking of the porch itself as not shown in the DOT's plans. The trial judge allows the de jure claim to proceed, but rejects the de facto claim, reasoning that the de jure claim already includes any economic damages incurred by the DOT's misstatement.

  • The appeals panel reverses and remands for further proceedings. The economic damages have nothing to do with this question. This lawsuit may seem like double-dipping, but it is perfectly reasonable for the taking of the land+porch to be composed of de jure and de facto portions that must be considered separately.

⁎Google Street View indicates that this “porch” is large enough that “patio” may be a more appropriate word.

⁎⁎Can we pour out a drink for the hapless low-level civil engineer who was tasked with drawing the “survey” from old as-built plans and/or Google Earth screenshots, and now doubtless is being excoriated for this mistake?

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