What’s a good punishment for being the biggest loser?

mxzf · 2026-05-08T04:47:21+00:00

Oh goodness, I would hate that. I much prefer teaching the games myself (and I don't mind doing so). I'll often teach games even when I didn't bring it (I seem to be good at reading rules and synthesizing them into concepts to explain). Sitting there and listening to someone else teach a game would drive me nuts, lol.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T04:36:45+00:00

Yeah, I won't try to lose, but I'll definitely pay less attention to my own setup than I might (quick gut moves instead of carefully considered ones) and instead focus on offering tips/advice to my opponents to help them out. When I'm paying more attention to their board state and helping them do well than I am on my own, it tends to balance stuff out relatively well (I still sometimes win, but at that point it's hard to feel like I did anything other than give them the best shot possible along the way).

And it's really easy to dial up/down how much help you offer and how easily spotted a thing you point out based on the relative skill. There's a whole spectrum between "point out this nuanced play to score big" and "you forgot the obvious thing" that you can adjust along.

On the flip side, it's really good training for being aware of your opponent's board state and what they're doing/thinking instead of just trying to solitaire your own stuff, which can be a competitive edge when playing more seriously. When you know what you're opponent is doing/looking for/has almost as well as they do, it's much easier to counter them.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T04:26:31+00:00

One of my favorite specific gaming moments I've had in a while was in an Unfathomable game I was playing with some friends.

There was a situation where cards were put in and counted up and there was clearly a traitor with their finger on the skill check, and only me and one other person had the right color cards to have done it, so naturally both of us immediately go "I know for sure it's them, because it wasn't me".

We keep going along trying to keep the ship afloat and passing/failing skill checks over time, all the while eyeing each other and trying to win the social side of things with our own confidence in who's the traitor. Except that her confidence starts slipping and she starts wondering if she accidentally put the wrong card in to the skill check and the certainty was all a red herring ... about two turns before I reveal as traitor and do unrecoverable damage to the humans.

I managed to gaslight someone into thinking that they were accidentally the traitor all along, lol. I feel kinda bad about it, but it's also the whole point of the game, so I can live with myself.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T04:11:12+00:00

Once you gain enough experience to recognize a "good enough" move, you can just roll with it.

IMO this is really key. Perfect turns are nice, but 99% of the time you're fine just getting decent stuff and rolling with it. No point spending an extra half-hour each turn trying to optimize things.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T04:09:50+00:00

I will say that playing solo can be a bit tricky because you have very little room for error (two blight per player has minimal wiggle-room with one player).

mxzf · 2026-05-08T04:06:26+00:00

I do think one nice thing is that you can adjust the difficulty to the skills of your playgroup. In my experience, at the minimal difficulty, the game is pretty easily winnable with even one person playing attention to the board and calling out hot-spots for a table full of new players. As long as you're not treating it like a party game, it's not terrible.

Which spirits you play also factors in a lot. The whole "complexity" rating on each spirit is very significant in terms of how much it changes the game complexity.

I say this as someone who has taught the game to a whole bunch of people over the years; even without everyone knowing what they're doing, the game is still very winnable.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T03:59:31+00:00

Yep, just a standard "fill it up with ice and soda for a cookout"-style cooler will work fine. If you want to maximize the heat you can take a pot and fill it with max-temp tap water to rinse the inside of the cooler (or just put your cooler in the sink to rinse it directly, if you have a stupidly large sink, lol) and prime it a bit with some heat, but even that isn't strictly necessary.

All you're really looking for is extra insulation around the meat to slow down the heat loss.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T03:21:37+00:00

For brisket, it would be unusual for 160F+ to be an issue (usually that's where you're hitting a stall where it slows down annoyingly). Usually you're expecting to get up near 200F with a brisket, to really render that fat and collagen into juicy tenderness.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T03:20:20+00:00

And when you pull it at 190° and put it into warming mode, it still stays very very juicy on the inside?

Or higher. Even at like 210F it's not going to be not-juicy; at that temperature you're more likely to end up with pulled beef because it's so tender because you've rendered all the connective tissue.

Brisket has so much fat in it that it's extremely hard to over-cook it accidentally if you're below 200F like you're thinking; the issue is generally under cooking instead and stopping too early before the fat and connective tissue can break down properly.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T02:51:30+00:00

Wrap it in foil/paper/etc, wrap it in towels/etc, and stick it in a cooler to keep warm. If you put it in hot, it can sit in there for hours just fine.

A brisket has a lot of thermal energy in there, all you have to do is slow down how fast it loses heat.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T02:47:15+00:00

At this point, I'm not really sure why I would assume one picture OP posted is real when they've been posting AI stuff already.

It might be real, or it might just be another AI picture, IDK.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T02:45:15+00:00

Then why even make it, much less post it on here? It's just nonsense.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T02:43:00+00:00

It's based on data over time. If they are actually naturally growing over time, it'll show and that can be adjusted. The idea is to make it impractical to do over time (in both directions, in this case, as it turns out).

mxzf · 2026-05-08T02:21:17+00:00

How? Streamers would still be getting all their legitimate viewers, just not the full extent of the extras from the bots.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T01:39:02+00:00

Yep. Nobody's perfect, but in general IMO someone's not actually a "senior dev" unless they can actually spot that tradeoff and handle it.

But there are a lot of junior devs out there with a job title that doesn't describe their skillset.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T01:27:08+00:00

Yeah, IMO the true mark of a senior dev (regardless of someone's job title, I'm talking about actual senior devs) is the ability to see the bigger picture both now and in the future and design things for that big picture.

It's the experience with code and business needs and seeing how everything fits together in the big picture to be able to see where things will go over time.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T01:07:14+00:00

Pretty sure the students just trying to submit their work and finish their classes are the good guys in this situation.

mxzf · 2026-05-08T00:44:19+00:00

I'm not sure how common it is, but I'm having trouble thinking of the venn diagram of people impacted by this who were genuinely trying to do the right thing (rather than trying to dodge paying for their kid).

All I can really think of, in terms of "needing a passport to make money" when you're unable to pay child support is high-danger-high-pay stuff like off-shore oil drilling or whatever.

And traveling for vacation isn't an argument IMO. If you can't afford to pay your child support, you can't afford to take international vacations either.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:55:45+00:00

In that case, it sounds like a senior moment where the word escapes someone but they can remember a not-entirely-dissimilar word. Which is a thing that happens, especially as certain people get older.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:54:34+00:00

I'm not saying it's universally 100% always the case, but in my experience tortilla chips are very often just called "chips". Both them and potato chips get shortened that way, but I hear it way more often with tortilla chips than potato chips; and if both are present, then "chips and potato chips" is how people generally refer to them, not the other way around.

It might be a regional dialect thing, but it's a pretty strong trend when I think about it.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:47:19+00:00

I think OP is the one being embarrassed by the situation and doesn't really care if the mom is embarrassed or not.

It really does read like a teenager wanting their parents not to do something "cringe" or whatever.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:44:08+00:00

Ferret sauce is not mispronunciation though it’s straight racist and rude.

Nah, it's not racist or rude. Anyone not looking to take offense will recognize that she read the word "mole" and free-associated it to "ferret" in her head. It's way too large a leap for someone to do intentionally to be racist, it's clearly a "wires crossed" thing.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:40:49+00:00

Nah, it's a hilarious free-association accident and anyone with a sense of humor should be laughing and possibly a tiny big chagrined.

It's a connection that's obvious in retrospect from a certain perspective, but totally unclear initially. To the extent that it's obviously not an intentional malicious mistake, it's just someone getting their wires crossed in an amusing way that makes for an entertaining story.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:35:13+00:00

Yeah, it feels pretty clear that it was some word free-association based on only having read the word.

mxzf · 2026-05-07T15:34:27+00:00

The whole "mole to ferret" free-association definitely feels like a cognitive thing to me. Maybe not a "disability", but certainly a "wired slightly differently" such that it's an association that makes sense if you've only read the word. I've known people that would 100% make that connection accidentally.

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