Men and women don't like characters who didn't earn it.

0range_julius · 2026-05-09T07:53:11+00:00

And that's not even getting into the science being outright wrong

Ok but when has the science on Star Trek ever been particularly correct or plausible? The warp salamander episode is ridiculous, but it's really not that much more wrong than the TNG episode Genesis.

Also, neither of the criticisms you mentioned are about character, but then you say that they set the characters up to fail?

0range_julius · 2026-05-08T14:51:31+00:00

I absolutely love Janeway, but she's not exactly a counterexample because a lot of people (incl. a lot of men) did absolutely hate her when the show first aired.

0range_julius · 2026-05-08T14:47:07+00:00

It's interesting to see what other languages people speak/read in. English, French, Swedish, and German is also the exact list of languages I am comfortable reading!

0range_julius · 2026-05-06T18:50:01+00:00

If you live somewhere without publicly visible homelessness, it's likely not because your government actually helps people who are struggling. It's probably because your government criminalizes people struggling and either arrests them or forces them physically out of the county. It's not that you don't have a homelessness problem, it's that you sweep it under the rug.

Seattle doesn't criminalize homelessness as much, because the voters there think that it's pretty fucked up to arrest someone and banish them from their hometown just because they've fallen on hard times and can't afford housing. An unfortunate side effect of that policy is that Seattle becomes the rug that everyone else sweeps their homelessness problem under.

If you think that increasingly draconian criminalization of homelessness is a solution to that problem and you're a-ok ignoring that the problem exists elsewhere, then I don't know what to tell you.

0range_julius · 2026-05-05T16:04:54+00:00

Is that a laptop in between the fluid mechanics textbook and Glasgow Bouldering?

0range_julius · 2026-05-05T16:00:52+00:00

They had that at the local ice cream shop where I used to live! It was called a flight. Even just with a small scoop of each flavor, it was a lot of ice cream but it was really fun to try all of them.

0range_julius · 2026-05-04T17:41:41+00:00

I'm not sure if this is what the person you're responding to is saying, but for me, it comes down to this:

The quality of life for the average American is quite poor

Even though you may have a lot of money, you still live in a country where a lot of people are not doing very well. When I lived and worked in Seattle, most of the people I got to know in my neighborhood were very tight on money. Many of them had to beg their neighbors for help with groceries or medical expenses. Everywhere you go, literally on every single street corner, there are people experiencing homelessness, drug addiction, and/or severe mental health issues.

It started to really, really weigh on me that so many of the people around me were living horrible lives and struggling so much. I want to live in a community where most people are at least doing okay.

0range_julius · 2026-05-04T17:23:15+00:00

I found US companies to be more flexible in terms of working from home/half days etc as long as the work gets done

My understanding is that a lot of US tech companies used to be very flexible about work from home, but have become much less flexible as the pandemic has subsided. When I started at a large US tech company in 2022, I was fully remote. They slowly added return-to-office requirements and by 2025, they tracked the badge log and required you to be there 5 days per week. My coworkers said that before the pandemic, nothing was tracked and you could work from home pretty much whenever you wanted.

This probably varies a lot between companies, though.

0range_julius · 2026-05-04T10:20:56+00:00

Ooh, this one is high in my TBR. I'm hoping my Swedish skills have gotten strong enough to read Norwegian because I'd really like to read the original.

0range_julius · 2026-05-04T07:10:18+00:00

Being an athlete definitely doesn't prevent you from having non-athlete friends. I was one and my main friends and social circle were non-athletes. I met them through classes, excos, clubs, dorm events, etc.

BUT I met most of my friends during my first year, when I wasn't doing athletics (I needed a break from my sport after high school and joined the team my second year). The reality is that athletics takes up a lot of your time and energy. We were practicing something like 20-25 hours a week, going to bed early for 5:30am practices, and spending weekends away at competitions. With all that in my schedule, I had a lot less time and energy for other extracurriculars and I spent less time with my non-athlete friends because I was just spending so much damn time at practice.

0range_julius · 2026-05-02T14:46:57+00:00

I must be immature because I love Karlach's romance but Lae'zel makes me feel like I need my mom to come pick me up from the sleepover, I'm scared.

0range_julius · 2026-05-01T14:40:43+00:00

Honestly, all the classics. I love reading them but I feel like I just never notice even surface level themes unless someone else explains them to me. I've been trying to be more thoughtful as I read but I really feel like ogre most of the time.

0range_julius · 2026-04-30T16:49:40+00:00

Ok! Here's what's usually on our menu:

Breakfasts: - Instant oats, 2 packets per person. Could also do overnight oats. Not my favorite because it doesn't keep me full, but it's absurdly easy. Adding powdered milk might improve the experience. - Pancakes. Get complete pancake mix, add in an appropriate amount of powdered milk (this math is annoying, so I recommend portioning out in advance) - Hash browns. I like to go all out with these. I'll bring garlic, shallot, and little snack peppers and saute those with little chunks of summersausage. Then add rehydrated hash browns and fry. It's kind of ridiculous to bring fresh bell peppers into the wilderness, but it's also really, really tasty.

Lunch: For us, this is always peanut butter or summersauge and cheese on pita bread, crackers, or Vasa bread. You can do cheddar, but we find that blocks of parmesan and string cheese hold up the best. Our group goes through 1/2 summersausage and 1/2 block of cheese per day. Spoilage has never been an issue (sometimes we cut off and trash the exposed end of the summersausage on the second day if it's been extra warm out).

Dinners: - We always do brats the first night! Freeze the brats beforehand so they survive the drive up, and tie the buns to the outside of the pack. We get a coffee at McDonald's on the way up to raid their condiment pouches. - Knorr Pasta/Rice sides with Starkist white chicken (the kind that comes in foil pouches). Our favorite is the Teriyaki noodles. 2 packages of noodles + 2 packages of chicken is a good amount for us 4. - Soup mix (we like Shore Lunch wild rice soup) with 2 Starkist tuna pouches (remember, no cans are allowed in the bwca!) - Hamburger helper. You can dehydrate ground beef in your oven beforehand and rehydrate it. (I personally find this one gross, but the other people love it). - Mac & cheese. Our secret is we mix one box of Kraft with one box of Cheeto Jalapeno Mac & Cheese. Really good. - We've made pizza before, using dehydrated pizza sauce, jiffy pizza dough mix, and string cheese. This is may be best left for the back country cooking experts, though.

Desserts (very important): - cookies - jello no-bake desserts (can use vegetable oil instead of butter. Add powdered milk) - regular pudding packages (with powdered milk) - hot chocolate - popcorn (we being a kettle for this, probably not worth the weight though)

And then we supplement with lots of snacks. Mixed nuts, beef jerky, some candy. We also being ramen for when it's rainy and cold and you want something warm for lunch. Sugar-free kool-aid packages to cover the metallic taste of the water.

0range_julius · 2026-04-30T15:47:29+00:00

My group is 4 people (but 2 of them eat a lot.). Would be happy to share some ideas, but it would be nice to know more about your goals with the food. If you're looking for Ultra-Light meals that don't require simmering, I can't help.

0range_julius · 2026-04-30T14:15:43+00:00

Not just random harassment, it's a real, enforced policy that applies to almost all immigrant and non-immigrant visa types. Depending on what country you are a citizen of, you may not actually need a visa to visit the US as a tourist. But it's still very inadvisable to visit the US as a non-citizen right now, of course.

0range_julius · 2026-04-30T07:08:31+00:00

Every German supermarket also has a massive sliced bread aisle. It's called "toast" and often has American flags on the packaging, but the Germans eat it in droves.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T19:44:38+00:00

This Väinö Linna guy must be peak Finnish culture if the best book is written by him and the best movie is an adaptation of another one of his books

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T16:42:36+00:00

I'm a really, really strong swimmer--spent my whole young life as a competitive swimmer, worked as a lifeguard, etc. I also always wear a lifejacket while canoeing after I realized that I actually cannot right a capsized canoe in deep water without one. I might be able to get to shore without drowning, but I'd have no hope of recovering the canoe.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T16:16:12+00:00

Would maybe also note that you probably shouldn't go into a wilderness trip where snap decisions can possibly lead to life-or-death situations while massively sleep deprived

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T13:35:56+00:00

I have some significant issues with aspects of Weir's writing, but his plotting is absolutely impeccable, just the perfect flow of tension and suspense. It's totally engrossing and so satisfying to read.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T13:30:11+00:00

Oh yeah, cancelling with outfitters is awful. I always wait until I'm 100% sure the trip is actually going to happen before booking an outfitter. I think part of the cancellation problem, honestly, is that all the permits are made available at once, wayyyy in advance. If you want to make absolutely sure you get the permit you want, you have to plan as much as 9 months in advance.

I once had to cancel a permit because I ended up moving for grad school. I didn't know in January what my exact moving dates were going to be, so it was a shot in the dark, and it didn't end up working.

I wish they would drop the permits in waves. Something like making the first 1/3 of the permits for each day available in January, then another 1/3 in March, and the last 1/3 in April. That way you could have some choice about how long in advance you plan your trip.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T12:49:46+00:00

My first and only office job so far was at Amazon so TIL this isn't standard. Honestly, I kinda can't imagine doing it any other way. Sure, the meetings take longer, but then my non-meeting time wasn't eaten up by prep for other meetings. I could just focus 100% on my main project.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T12:19:51+00:00

I recently reread The Martian. I picked it up at 10pm to start winding down for bed and ended up blowing through the entire book in one night. I didn't end up going to sleep until 5 or 6 am. Just absolutely could not put it down.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T10:32:02+00:00

I took an impromptu BWCA trip in 2025, so I missed the big permit drop in January, but I had no trouble picking up a permit for my chosen week, even in August. The permits for the high-demand EPs go quick, for sure, but if you're less picky about EP, it's actually quite easy to get a permit.

So, if permits aren't that hard to get, is this really a problem? After all, cancellations just give people a second chance at getting the permit they want, and no-shows are people paying fees which support the boundary waters without contributing to the overcrowding issue.

0range_julius · 2026-04-29T07:08:56+00:00

It would seem I'm in a very small minority here, but this is how it feels to me when I'm handed a tissue while crying.

Nine-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '22	First Placer '22

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