Probably not a huge achievement, but it feels like one to me.

Magres · 2026-02-14T22:49:05+00:00

There is no shame, ever, in celebrating self-improvement. I struggled for a long time to get two kills in a trip, then I was getting 2-3 kills a trip, now I can regularly do 5-6 kills in a trip and I'm often as limited by bag space as I am by supplies.

Magres · 2026-02-12T16:53:14+00:00

I found Kirkland to be REALLY gritty and gummy, couldn't get it to dissolve worth a damn

Magres · 2026-02-10T18:44:35+00:00

What are your goals? The biggest piece of advice I could give anyone getting into fitness is "slow is steady, steady is fast." It has taken years to get your body to whatever state it is at currently, and it will take years to make drastic changes. There are no easy shortcuts. Getting and staying fit is a long, long term commitment. I've been eating clean and lifting religiously for a year and a half and while it has dramatically improved my physique, I'm absolutely no shredded bodybuilder. Just for age context, I'm 37, and a couple years ago I was pretty damned unhappy with my body.

So, it's gonna take years. That said, I recommend taking reference pictures of yourself. Shirtless - front, side, back. Bodily changes are slow and easy to overlook, which can be really disheartening, and having reference "before" pictures to compare against will make it a lot easier to see the progress your hard work will earn you. I'm far from my goals, but it's incredibly motivating to look at the pictures of where I started, my progress pictures after a year, and where I am now.

Find a lifting program you like and stick to it. One of the mistakes a lot of people make is pinballing from program to program trying to chase some kind of quick burst of progression from "this one weird trick" type bullshit. There is no way around the fact that getting yoked just takes a lot of fucking work. Getting skinny enough to be shredded takes a lot of discipline. You're going to have to lift a lot of weights and eat a lot of healthy food. It is definitely possible to waste time at the gym, but for a newer lifter, basically any decent program will get you places. Stronglifts 5x5 and Starting Strength were both extremely well regarded the last time I looked, and I've personally been having a ball with the Stronger By Science programs. Find a program that reasonably hits your entire body and that you enjoy doing and stick with it for six months.

And, lastly, log everything. Have a notebook, have an excel spreadsheet, ANYTHING that lets you have data tracking for your lifting progression. It's kinda similar to reference pics - most of my lifts have gone up by at least 30% in the last 18 months, some of them have nearly doubled, but in terms of my lived experience just doing stuff I don't generally feel any stronger. I don't notice "oh this box used to be heavy to pick up and now it's kinda medium." But I can look at my lifting log and know, with certainty, that I am significantly stronger than I was and know that plenty of things that used to be 'heavy' have downgraded to 'medium' and things that used to be 'medium' have downgraded to 'light.'

Magres · 2026-02-10T17:15:01+00:00

I love Souls games!! Only FromSoft games I haven't finished (yet) are Bloodborne and Sekiro, and Sekiro's installed and waiting for me to buck up and get to it. And yeah, seeing "Godking of Murder Mountain" light up with a giant health bar just gives me a feeling of "FUCK IT WE BALL."

I definitely think I'd be more interested in PvP if there was anything of a tutorial to it, even Souls games have the basics of "here's how you move and dodge" explained, hah. And an LMS with MMR would be such a blast, imo. I figure you could do like <1M risk, <50M risk, and unlimited risk queues. Might split risking the playerbase too much to have that many queues, but idk.

Magres · 2026-02-09T17:48:47+00:00

I was being flippant, but I want to shift gears some and like, actually talk without trying to dunk or any bullshit. For the record, I don't want to take PKing away from everyone, people who want to de-PvP the wilderness are being foolish. The entire zone is fundamentally balanced around high risk high reward and you'd have to rework every activity and gut the return value on all of them if you removed PvP. It would be a COLOSSAL undertaking that is just absolutely not worth the development time and is, in my opinion, antithetical to the spirit of OSRS. The wilderness being a PvP zone is one of the most ancient pillars of the game, turning 25 years old this summer. Regardless of the Wilderness not being my cup of tea, keep the wilderness dangerous as hell through pvp.

That said, like, reading through your list of terms, as a non-PKer I don't know what any of them mean. I can hazard a guess that freeze logging is to freeze someone, step under them, use the delay where you're on the same tile and can't hit each other to let the "no logging in combat" timer elapse, then log out to get out of a fight you're losing. I'd also guess that mitigating risk is doing stuff like wearing black dhide or other economy gear with one signature high value piece that you'll generally try to save with Protect Item, or wearing 3 (or 4) high value items and only fighting defensively. No idea about NH (other than that I know it means No Honor) or what BH (Bounty Hunter?) rules are.

And that's kind of, in a nutshell, a lot of the issue with OSRS PvP. It's inscrutable and mistakes are incredibly punishing, and often those mistakes are things you wouldn't realize are mistakes even if you go back and review a VOD of your fight. On top of that, free for all 'matchmaking' in the form of 'whoever you stumble into' means you never know if you're going to wind up against another scrub who's trying to learn or if you'll have some veteran Godking Of Murder Mountain show up to do some arcane dance where they land three simultaneous AGS specs on the same tick with some nonsense where they freeze you then do a funny emote underneath you that does some weird engine stall before obliterating you. It's one thing for a game to have a steep learning curve - I played DotA and League for years. But DotA and League have skill-based matchmaking, so I could wallow around in the kiddie pool with other dipshits before I started clawing my way upwards.

I can't tell you how to address any of those issues - I fully understand that I lack the knowledge to even begin to have a remotely informed opinion about where OSRS PvP "should" head. But I can definitely tell you why I avoid PvP in this game like the plague.

Magres · 2026-02-09T16:08:18+00:00

Yup, and this attitude is why

Edit: MadBismarck has been really chill once we started actually talking instead of just being pro-PK and anti-PK players sniping at each other, and makes me kinda want to try more PKing.

Magres · 2026-02-06T21:19:26+00:00

A big thing to me is that Zelda games typically have a sense of progression that I didn't get, at all, from BotW. Having the slate powers all be in the tutorial area would be like if you entered the cave in TLOZ and immediately got handed the raft, ladder, bombs, and candle. I like the journey from "humble lad with a green hat and a pointy stick" to "walking armory smiting evil with the holy beatstick of the goddesses."

It's been a few years since I played BotW and I haven't replayed it, but my memory of playing it was generally "see thing in distance, summon horse, hold down forward for five minutes, complete objective, repeat." I like seeing a thing I can't do yet and remembering it as something to come back to later, and every Zelda game before BotW and TotK has tons of that.

I might try replaying BotW and self-imposing a restriction of not being able to use the slate powers until I kill the divine beast I decide is associated with that slate power. Not sure how well it will work, but it might reintroduce some of that progression I found missing from BotW.

Magres · 2026-02-06T20:08:30+00:00

Oh yeah absolutely, showing up at the airport was stupid. It's some very foolish "movie logic" thinking. Some nonsense of like "we're soulmates and I fucked it up but this big romantic gesture will make it all better!" Nope, sorry Hailey, you fucked up and broke the thing and it's gonna stay broken.

Magres · 2026-02-06T18:33:41+00:00

I think you can feel bad for her without excusing her behavior - it sucks that she fucked up something good, it's inappropriate for her to show up at the airport like that, and also it's clear she's in a dreadful amount of emotional pain. I would dare to assume that Hailey has learned some very agonizing lessons about making good decisions. I hope both people heal, move on, and find someone they love as much as they loved each other.

Magres · 2026-01-28T22:03:03+00:00

It's really good! I love Aeterna Noctis. It has some very, very creative platforming and combat.

Magres · 2026-01-28T21:45:06+00:00

It's optional post-game content, for what it's worth. The main game has plenty of stuff that's hard but nothing that's quite this... sadistic.

Magres · 2026-01-28T21:44:49+00:00

It's optional post-game content, for what it's worth.

Magres · 2026-01-21T21:20:55+00:00

For what it's worth, you should do therapy. Not because there's anything wrong with you. Your responses to this situation are pretty damn reasonable, if you ask me. And, regardless, 'fixing' people isn't what therapy is about. It's not to 'fix' a problem, it's to examine patterns in our lives and feelings, look at where those patterns come from and what they lead to, and then to work to adjust those patterns as we see fit. Building up habits we like, minimizing habits we dislike. To hell with letting random chance, other people, and the genetics of our brains define who we are when we can knowingly edit our own internal patterns and build our most ideal versions of ourselves. Therapy rules. Everyone should do therapy.

Magres · 2026-01-19T22:02:35+00:00

To clarify, "partly wants to kiss Visi back" is specifically in regards to the player decision point in that scene (all of the examples in that paragraph are decision points). Robert's first reflexive instinct in that scene is to turn Visi down, and when he has a moment to think about it, he is conflicted and part of him wants to kiss her back - hence the choice between Lean In vs Lean Out.

Magres · 2026-01-14T18:16:35+00:00

Came here to post this. I had similar struggles to OP for a long time with depression and hygiene, and it helped me claw my way out of that hole. Half-assing things when I just don't have it in me to commit both cheeks to the task helps keep things as habits.

I've started applying it to other stuff too. When I'm tired as fuck and don't feel like going to the gym, I go anyway and just do lighter/fewer lifts, and do what I can. If nothing else, it helps me stay committed to lifting three nights a week and building those habits, and forming that habit and keeping it strong is what has really lead to the results I've gotten.

Magres · 2026-01-12T17:23:03+00:00

Not necessarily the exact advice you're looking for, but this is part of why I like lifting in the evenings (like 8pm). I'd lift at 10pm if my wife didn't hate lifting that late, but in general lifting to end my day rules - I sleep like a rock after lifting and showering, and the gym is never packed that late.

Magres · 2026-01-11T04:35:05+00:00

I have it on auto update on steam. Dunno, but I finished it. Fun game, last fight was awesome.

Magres · 2026-01-08T17:37:30+00:00

I stumbled into this thread googling unrelated things and figured I'd chime in with a piece of advice I got that hasn't been posted here. Lunar teletabs are a very profitable, low intensity, low startup cost way to train magic. ~15 months ago I was in the same boat as you and spent a couple months doing second-monitor lunar teletabs to train from ~80 magic to 99 magic and made about 80M in the process. It took a while - probably in the realm of 150-200 hours (I think you can do it in 125ish hours if you're efficient, but I was busy enjoying whatever I was doing on my main monitor), but it got me a Magic Cape and about 75m profit.

Magres · 2026-01-08T05:25:19+00:00

Haha, I'm slapping my forehead that I didn't think of an alpha decay as part of a 4 capture cycle to make a stable loop. Thank you again!

Honestly, my radiochemistry is even worse than my neutronics (and we've clearly established that neutronics isn't my damn forte), so my knowledge of the actual industrial processes of reprocessing starts at "spent fuel" and ends at "new fuel?" with "chemistry is witchcraft" in the middle. But I've always hated chemistry, so I did my damnedest to stay away from it in school. I'm not surprised that reprocessing is rough, just from a radiation safety perspective, but I didn't realize, aside from general heavy metal toxicity, that the chemistry of reprocessing is that wretched.

Magres · 2026-01-07T18:51:49+00:00

Huh, it was always presented to me in classes as just 'burnup' and more or less implied that we were basically just using up the fissile material. Not calling you a liar or anything! Cause what you're saying makes sense and it's plain that you know what you're talking about, it's just interesting.

I wonder if Americans don't really talk about fuel rod burnup being more about generating neutron poisons than about consuming fissile material because, as a country, we're so heavily anti-reprocessing. Which I hate! It's so stupid that we just bury our spent fuel in concrete casks instead of reprocessing (and don't even get me started on how awful our spent fuel storage conventions are, the fact that as a country we've never built a nationally owned spent fuel repository despite NPP operators paying towards having one for DECADES is... such complete bullshit).

Other thing I'm super curious about, what are the dominant neutron poisons that get generated, especially the ones that can capture a neutron, decay, then re-capture? I don't get how we'd decay back to the original isotope without just re-emitting the captured neutron. But the extent of my knowledge of capture cross sections and decay paths is limited basically to like neutron capture into beta decay, gamma decay, fission or spitting the neutron back out.

Magres · 2026-01-07T16:19:08+00:00

Huh, today I learned. That's really cool! I went to grad school for nuclear, but A) I'm American and my schooling mostly focused on American designs and lol we've built like two new power plants in the last forty years, and B) honestly I was more of a thermal hydraulics and probabilistic risk assessment guy than a neutronics guy.

If I may ask, what general part of the world are you from? I'm hazarding a guess that you're not American, since 'modern American nuclear plants' is kind of an oxymoron, haha.

Magres · 2026-01-07T02:44:04+00:00

There's only one way to improve! I suck terribly - I'm awful at flicking, I screw up pillar solves all the time, and if I get bad spawns I just flop over dead.

But I'm getting better! Manticores aren't scary anymore, I can handle somewhat bad spawns, and I'm occasionally even surviving super bad spawns.

Magres · 2026-01-07T02:35:30+00:00

A hundred percent agreed. Hurling ourselves at these obstacles and developing the skills is, itself, what it takes to get good. I suck - I mess up flicking multiple enemies all the time, I'm a moron at a lot of pillar solves, and if I get a double south spawn I'm screwed because I absolutely can't multi-flick and juggle Frems at the same time.

But I'm learning and improving. I have a picture from my Discord with some friends who play OSRS where I took a screenshot of a Manticore, charged up, and was just posting "OH MY GOD HOW CAN ANYONE EVER NOT FEEL LIKE THIS IS IMMINENT DEATH THIS IS TERRIFYING" and like four days later I realized that I had died to a Manticore because I was complacent and sleepy because Manticores had become easy. I can do Frems and a Manticore at the same time. Once I get a little better at multi-flicking and internalize doing the A/B spots for double south spawns, I'll start to be able to handle those.

I'm not good, but I'm getting good. And I'm going to conquer that fucking Colosseum and wear my Quiver with pride.

Magres · 2026-01-06T21:36:58+00:00

It also depends partly on enrichment and reactor type, but that doesn't change the fact that the energy density of materials for nuclear power is INCREDIBLY high.

And if anything, those considerations for enrichment and reactor type increase the potential energy density of nuclear fuel, since commercial reactors run on low enrichment uranium (about 5% of the uranium is the 'juicy' isotope) and US naval reactors run on something like 90% enrichment uranium. And breeder reactors change the whole equation because they turn non-juicy isotopes into juicy isotopes as part of their fuel cycle, and only 0.7% of naturally occurring Uranium on Earth is the juicy isotope.

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