There’s that bit in Baldur’s gate 2 where some NPCs decide they can take you on, die, and then reload the game.

It’s like when people say they hate obamacare but they love the ACA. They don’t know what they’re talking about, but they have a well worn heuristic of “what does my in-group say?”

Or it’s like that spongebob meme with patrick and the wallet

“So you want workers to be treated with respect” : “Yep”

“And they should be paid a fair wage for their work”: “Sounds good to me.”

“And vital services like health care should be provided to everyone” : “Of course”

“So you’ll vote for the left wing candidate” : “No, I don’t like left wing policies”

I hated how the office I used to work in kept the cold air blasting. I had to wear layers in August. And because of how bad the building’s HVAC was, it was still warm on the other side of the office.

I bring this up whenever people suggest working in the office is more productive. Being physically uncomfortable is not good for focus, Jeff.

My elderly parents historically have been middle of the road democrats. Hated Reagan, hated bush.

Today my dad said “the radical left takes things too far”. My mother said, “I don’t feel safe in new york city! they’re targeting old white people!”

I don’t know what sludge they’re consuming but it’s not factual.

Why don’t these idiots ever suffer any consequences for being so stupid and/or deceptive? Probably because most people are also kind of stupid and dishonest.

Probably max out all skills by spending time in appropriate settings. If I can learn magic as per, say, mage the awakening, then I’m doing that as well.

Then I’m coming back here and fixing the world with extensive application of five point Mind and Fate magics.

Easier maybe, but less likely to have the best outcomes. I’m sorry dating has been bad for you, and the apps are absolutely predatory, but there’s always hope

Emotions are unfortunately tied to certain political issues, thats the way it is.

Does that mean the topics that elicit emotions are invalid? What does it mean?

Ok, let me amend my position: body mass is not a universal deal breaker. There are people who will reject someone on appearance or weight, but there are many people who would find that same person attractive.

What does this mean exactly?

If your an average Joe like me, there is no reason your identity should be extremely political.

I feel like you almost discovered the concept of privilege here.

If you consistently become emotional about political issues, you might need to take a step back and re-examine yourself.

But then kind of whiffed here.

Someone’s identity as a gay person or black person should not be “political” (whatever that means. Care to define it?). But it is.

Like, it was in living memory that black people had to sit in the back of the bus, and couldn’t buy property in certain places. Women couldn’t open checking accounts of their own until like 1974. Trans people are routinely subject to hate and danger.

Why do you think people are “regurgitating propaganda” rather than describing their experiences? Why is your baseline cool and normal and theirs is “led by the nose”?

And it’s extremely lossy to compress all of politics down to “sides”. There are details. People experience and believe things. It’s not just like rooting for a baseball team (though for some people it can be, admittedly).

I know plenty of larger men who are happily dating. The problem isn’t the body mass.

My friend has a toddler and I always spoke to her like a regular person who just happened to not know things. She seemed to respect it a lot.

It’s hard to break into the mainstream when the mainstream is increasingly owned by rich assholes. They have a lot of influence over culture. Not total control , but enough that many people who might have found punk instead brain rot through their day in Spotify or tiktok or whatever.

How new is your computer?

I found Pop!_OS worked out of the box fine on my new desktop.

Mint had problems, but worked fine on my older computers.

Back up any important software (like, on a separate drive or online). Get a couple flash drives. Try out mint, popos, bazzite. They’re all free so it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t like one.

I don’t recommend trying to dual boot on one drive because windows is a rude room mate.

I think it would be pretty funny if jesus did return and cast all these rich assholes into the lake of fire. Because they fucking deserve it.

Innate spell resistance is hot.

Still mad about

Some rich assholes want to go live in whatever the city from BioShock was called so they can do evil to vulnerable people. Many of them want to live somewhere with culture

I remember when I played ff10 thinking “Rikku is kind of hot”, and then reading she’s 15 in the fiction. 17 in the sequel where she’s even more naked. Nope. Why? Unnecessary. Just make her an adult!

At least ff7 Tifa is 20, which is still a little young. I didn’t have a big crush on her, but I did think her suplexing building sized monsters was hot.

Time to repeat my topical story.

I worked for a startup that prided itself on being “data driven”. They’d talk about how other startups were doing stupid things because they followed their feelings instead of data.

One day in one of those all hands meetings, the CEO was taking questions. Someone said, “Studies are showing that four day work weeks are more effective on like every metric. Can we look into that?”

The CEO said "No, we’re not doing that ". Didn’t read the linked studies. Didn’t entertain it at all. His mind was made up, and the data was irrelevant.

Because he doesn’t really care about data. He cares about feeling smart and irreverent. He cares about being seen as a cool disruptive startup guy who’s going to grind his way to success.

The dishonesty makes me want to puke.

But you know what also makes me sick? All the sycophantic boot lickers that would gather round and tell him his every idea was great. The people who would work unpaid long hours to “get shit done”. Bunch of fucking wormtongues who would sell out their coworkers for crumbs.

Maybe he was a real person once who really did care about data. But by the time I met him, he was an empty suit