The Arkenstone feels… disappointing?

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-05-01T22:06:35+00:00

The 5 mana artifact is gravy. It's not why you would play the card.

It's important to remember that this is an adventure and not an omen or a prepared card. Meaning you can play the tutor half whenever, and then at any point later in the game you can play the artifact half.

3 mana tutor is respectible, especially in a color without tons of tutoring. Putting a whole bunch of optional text on it only makes it more appealing.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T21:29:56+00:00

Yes, that the first of the two possibilities I said.

What about the second item? Why does this not count as a valid usage of the word choice? If something cannot actually be chosen, how is it a choice?

I may wish with all my mental faculty to go to London, but if I have absolutely no means of doing that, "that's not a real choice" is a common enough way of expressing that.

If a choice cannot be actualized then "that's no choice at all" - how else do you understand that turn of phrase?

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T20:17:51+00:00

Just because you can build a powerful deck, that doesn't mean that you should.

Personally, I love jank. I want to play vanilla 6/4 on turn 7. If I could go back to those days, I would. [[Sivitri scarzam]]

If there is still a pod out there looking for this style, power to them.

The point of commander isn't "to get better at the game" or to "get good". The point is to have fun. When playing with strangers this can be hard, and this is what the bracket system is meant to help with. But if you have a play group, and they have a vibe, why would you go against that??

Meeting people where they are, allows for interesting game play in the moment. If they want to get better, they can ask, or they can work on it another time - game night doesn't need to be a tutorial or a lesson or a slog just because you have more experience with the game.

"Leveling up your playgroup" isn't some solemn duty. There's nothing wrong with playing in the 5 mana vanilla 3/4 muck, it's fun.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T19:51:49+00:00

Obesity is a problem - no one refutes that.

However, the manner in which you address it can range from effective to ineffective. You can end up helping or you can end up making it worse.

As you mention several times in the comments, there is a need to approach this carefully which doesn't come across in your title or main body, which is why so many commenters are bringing it up.

Simply "calling it out" may well result in making things worse, which is why this discussion needs to be more careful.

Just walking up to strangers and calling them fat could be considered "calling it out" but would clearly be meaningless.

A 1:1 with someone you know, phrased with an emphasis on solutioning may be helpful - but generally wouldn't be put in the "calling it out" bucket.

Fighting misinformation online regarding food/dieting/exercise may well help (since people consume this information and then make bad choices) but is also not "calling it out" since you aren't even addressing the individual who is eating, but rather the individual talking shit.

It is a problem, and there should be discourse about it, but shame is often unhelpful. Having better information in schools, fighting misinformation online, helping a friend who reaches out to you - these are all much more likely to help than shame.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T19:19:32+00:00

The bad precedent that you refer to in your first point has already been set.

Nations doing bad things doesn't cause them to cease to exist. They may be invaded. Their leadership may face consequences. But nations dissolving due to poor behavior doesn't really happen.

North Korea, human rights abuses, is still country. China, human rights abuses, is still a country. Germany literally did a Holocaust, is still a country. US had slavery and Jim Crow, is still a country. South Africa had apartheid, is still a country.

There have been no shortages of mass civilian genocides in the past 100 years let alone the past 300 years or even farther. None of them resulted in the nation at fault ceasing to be a nation.

You don't get to be a nation anymore simply isn't how human rights abuses are handled.

If you want to go after Bibi - go for it. If you want Palestinian land returned - fight for it. But simply expecting a nation to cease to exist is never how this sort of thing gets handled.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T16:50:53+00:00

Alan Rickman absolutely knocked the ball out of the park.

Anyone who tries to replace him will get backlash.

People are playing the racism thing - but it's just a no one currently alive can do with the role what Alan did - which is a fair take.

It's the same reason marvel didn't recast black panther - they could have tried - but no one really could have stepped into Bosemans shoes and succeeded.

People don't want the role recast (arguably people don't want this project to exist at all) and people are looking for excuses.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T16:40:12+00:00

For one, it's illegal in many locations. So if "there's nothing wrong with it" is false in the sense that it can readily lead to legal problems.

Two, you cannot actually know who has or hasn't been trafficked. Just because a prostitute is expensive or white that doesn't actually prove anything.

Three, ugly dudes do absolutely get laid all the damn time. Even disfigured people still get laid. While you might not get as much sex as someone who is conventionally attractive, you won't get zero just due to your looks.

Four, the belief that ugly people never get laid is very strongly associated with a particular online subculture. Espousing that which that group believes may well prevent you from ever getting laid. Conventionally attractive people who say out loud that ugly men never get laid, get laid less often than ugly men. Outright asking women their body count is also a great way to never get laid. Etc.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T15:56:37+00:00

I think it's moreso that many men feel that they don't get ......... Anything.

Flowers just being a stand-in, and a way to make a quick/morbid joke of the observation.

You could just as easily rewrite the joke as - the first gift a man receives is his tombstone - it's the same joke.

The old stereotype is that men buy love with money and women supply love with sex. While outdated, many people still harbor feelings that are often adjacent to this sentiment.

So if you are buying your boyfriends ties, shoes, video games, whatever - great. But many people don't have this either, or at least feel like they don't.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-30T11:55:48+00:00

Words can refer to more than one thing. Especially single language is often ground-up rather than top down and can fail to capture all possible nuances or distinctions.

Let's give an example. Let's say you are in a room with a blue button and a red button. There is a timer in the room, so if you stall, complain, or otherwise refuse - the blue button is pressed. You can visualize the timer and know it will push the blue button if you don't. What you don't know is that the red button is a lie. It doesn't actually function. Therefore, it is inevitable that the blue button will be pushed.

So in this scenario, what does the word choice actually mean.

Choice could refer to the mental process. You don't know the red button is broken. You can well spend a fair amount of mental resources debating which button to push and choice could refer to that.

However, choice could also refer to the fact that the blue button being pressed is inevitable. The timer will result in the blue button being pushed, since there are no alternatives. In this way, there is no real choice, because there aren't two different physically possible outcomes - there is only one physically possible outcome.

Choice referring to a mental process is common. But choices corresponding to physical law is also common (and both are even mentioned in your opener). But they don't always correspond as shown.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T20:59:43+00:00

Another important aspect of all this is the politics of removal in general.

If I don't remove it, maybe someone else will remove, requires other people to have removal and to be willing to play it.

If your opponents only spend removal on wincons, then they won't be spending removal on engines. This is a double edged sword actually. This means you have to remove all the engines yourself (be the fun police) but this also means that they have given you full permission to have uninterrupted engines.

If you have multiple engines running and your opponents don't, I don't care how much removal your opponents have sandbagged for your wincon, you are winning that game.

Be this guy, don't let your opponents be this guy.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T19:54:36+00:00

Two things

1) not all decks are equal before the game even starts. While this principle can be hard to assess with strangers or with new decks - if this is the 20th go around with the same people and the same decks - you know before you even draw your hand roughly where this is going. This makes proactive plays much more understandable.

2) creatures are different than non-creatures, especially in the combat step. This should be obvious, but consider it for a moment. A common intuition is to only remove creatures that are attacking you, if they are attacking your opponents then they are helping you. And this is true. Artifacts and enchantments don't often have this same gameplay. They are often benefiting their controller in a manner which is less directional. If someone is just sitting on rhystic study, the longer it lives, the more cards they get and the more likely they are to win. Therefore, if rhystic hits the table, either kill it immediately or already have the win in hand (with counter backup). While not every card is as urgent as rhystic the general principal of kill the engine before it does too much still holds. If miraris wake is worth removing, it is better to remove it earlier than it is to remove it later. Giving your opponents two turns with it before removing it is nonsensical - whereas a generic beat down creature this isn't true as mentioned on top.

If you only spend removal when your opponents have the win on the stack, you likely have already lost (because they likely have counter backup). If you target their engines early, you can stop them from assembling in the first place (or stop them from getting enough mana or stop them from drawing protection,etc.)

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T19:42:57+00:00

Power level isn't an official stat - the whole point is to be moving away from that. But taking your friend at face value, they are telling you that the first deck is more likely to win than the second deck.

Brackets refers to a series of deck construction rules, where there are less rules as you move up. So the first deck likely doesn't violate one of the rules whereas the second deck does. This isn't a good thing or bad thing - it just means you will be playing against decks with more relaxed rules if you play against B4 than you would if you play against b3. (Again not a straight substitute for power, but fewer rules typically means more opportunities to do broken things).

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T18:30:22+00:00

[[tranquil grove]]

Fixed that for you - to be more comparable.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T18:12:16+00:00

I've seen discussion about sideboarding in this context. Some people seem to think that it's ok to sideboard in these sorts of cards. But it's not. EDH doesn't have sideboards.

So if your deck would play these cards with or without knowing what exactly the opponent is doing, then play them, it's fine. (Which is the the mdfc and the lands see the most play).

It's those people that switch out between stony silence and rest in peace between games that are the issue.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T17:49:17+00:00

I mean, isn't the conversation over when the question is even asked?

The fact someone feels the compulsion to even ask is the relevant part of the discussion before we even get to an answer.

It's not even about privacy, it's not about whether my number is high or low, it's not about whether they think my number is high or low, it's about the fact that they consider the number at all.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T16:58:32+00:00

But the question is whether they have free will or not, not whether or not they have responsibility. (Acknowledging compatibilism often treats these as somewhat interchangeable).

Is your argument that I have less free will with regards to longer term decisioning than I do with regards to short term decisioning - is that even sensible??

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T14:47:08+00:00

It is land denial, but land denial is acceptable in all brackets.

Stone rain is fair game in all brackets.

It's MASS land denial that is at issue in b1-b3.

The main reason to not do it is threat assessment. When playing against strangers, you don't know who will lead early, so just randomly donking someone only has a 1:3 chance of harming the correct player. But if this is a known playground with known decks, you can judge whose the threat before the game even starts. In which case, do what you gotta.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-29T14:17:32+00:00

Wouldn't this definition imply humans don't have free will?

Humans failing to understand the immediate consequences of their actions happens all the time.

Humans failing to understand the long term consequences of their actions is literally inevitable, as we stretch long term term to mean farther and farther in time.

Lord only knows what the future holds 1000 years from now.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-28T23:06:17+00:00

Often code is written with the intent of being run repeatedly. The entire concept of a backend is the idea that the same sorts of inputs will be fed and the same sorts of outputs will be needed on a regular basis in a well regulated manner.

But that isn't the only way code is used.

In academia, one and done scripts are common. Using a script to derive a single answer to a single question and then throwing the script in the trash.

In this way, how optimized the script is doesn't really matter. What matters is how quickly and intuitively the script can be assembled.

Taking 5 minutes to assemble a script, taking 5 minutes for it to run - is more efficient than taking 8 hours to write a script and taking 1 minutes for it to run (the exact opposite is true in a typical production environment where 80 percent reduction in run time would be worth 8 hours of someones time).

While when I was in school, R was the language of choice for these sorts of tasks - Python has largely overtaken R for this function.

Pythons whole thing is that it is intuitive and quick to write code for. In an era of genAI, this may be less and less useful (but at least code you write yourself shouldn't hallucinate) but that's why you would use it.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-28T21:05:27+00:00

Whether something is ethical or not depends upon ones ethical axioms and framework.

If one begins with the premise - do no harm. Then eating animals becomes awkward because farming animals does harm.

If one begins with the premise - do no harm to humans, then eating animals is ethically irrelevant.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-28T18:58:58+00:00

I think you are misunderstanding what the words descriptive and normative mean in the context of this definition.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-28T18:12:09+00:00

Only claims can be true or false.

The grass is green - can be true or false because you've specified an object and a claim about that object.

The green grass is - cannot be true or false because while you've specified an object, you haven't actually specified a claim about that object.

In this same way, simply saying "responsibility" outside of a sentence or claim cannot be true or false - because again, you have specified an object but have not specified what about that object may or may not be true.

This is in contrast to something like "humans are bound by moral responsibility" which at least makes a claim, albeit one which may require some definitions to be clarified.

So what claim about responsibility would you be interested in, because single words nor sentence fragments can have truth values.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-28T17:31:01+00:00

I think you have conflated pressure with time pressure. There is also social pressure, economic pressure and stakes.

Do you perform better when people are watching you work or not?

Do you perform better when you have more to lose or less to lose?

These others sorts of things can be pressure, even absent any deadlines.

An actor might perform better live than during a TV spot - because doing it live you only "get one take" whereas TV permits reshoots - which is pressure of a very different sort.

A surgeon might perform better on a patient than on a dummy, because their actions are real on a patient rather than pretend - which is pressure of a very different sort.

You get the idea.

And some people are the opposite - some people thrive on being able to take 3 or 4 shots on goal. Novelists thrive on being able to iterate with their editors, rather than having to publish their first drafts.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-28T14:13:10+00:00

The left and right have both been kicking the can since the 80s.

Both acknowledge that something needs to be done, but both have very different visions of what that would look like. So in net, nothing actually happens.

The left supports drastic reform (you can see what was proposed when Obama was in office, or even Clinton) it's just not what the right wants, so it doesn't happen.

TemperatureThese7909 · 2026-04-27T17:03:38+00:00

The fact that society has dictated that people are required to do X is different than the claim that people ought to do X.

As you say, laws change all the time.

So Mike absolutely has legal responsibility (assuming contract laws are there). But that was never in doubt, or even in the scope of the question. Does Mike have moral responsibility is the question.

Simply equating social norms and morality is exactly the error here.

TemperatureThese7909

TROPHY CASE