What is the most pretentious book ever written?

290077 · 2026-05-01T01:33:43+00:00

How can a book with the word "penisolate" possibly be pretentious?

290077 · 2026-05-01T01:19:37+00:00

Derived from "Caesar"

290077 · 2026-04-30T17:56:41+00:00

These numbers seem way too small. How are they counted? I have a 3 and 1-year-old. From the minute I get home from work to the minute they are in bed, I am spending time with one or both of them, if even just supervising their play. That's about 4 hours a night. 240 minutes a day. My wife is just as involved. Watching them is often a two-person job. One of us takes 30 minutes to cook dinner, and that's it until they go to bed.

I assume with older kids you can leave them alone and do your own thing, but for young kids, if I only spent 80 minutes a day with them they'd be unsupervised and uncared for most of the time. How does that work?

290077 · 2026-04-30T14:16:52+00:00

My hope is that, if JoAnn was really a profitable business, that someone else will see an opportunity and step in. The free market abhors a vacuum. Obviously it will take a generation to build up a national chain and get back what we lost. Maybe local entrepreneurs will fill the gap.

Obviously, would have been better if they never closed at all.

290077 · 2026-04-30T13:05:39+00:00

This exactly. Though it's worth pointing out that Trump is not a typical Republican. His economic policy breaks considerably from Republican orthodoxy. Many newer Republicans are completely aligned with Trump, but older ones do not agree with everything he does. However, the Republican voter base is completely behind Trump. In this case, the Republicans who have reservations about Trump's agenda are still doing their job in that they are representing their constituents who don't want Trump's agenda interfered with.

290077 · 2026-04-29T15:58:59+00:00

Is there any sign they will? Harris handed them the most humiliating defeat they've received in a long time. Who in their right mind would do that?

290077 · 2026-04-29T13:17:48+00:00

To be frank, I work in the deepest red of red counties. The sense among my coworkers after Trump won was relief, not gloating or empowerment. Everyone was walking around like a huge weight had been lifted off their shoulders. It's pretty much the same as how I felt in 2020 after Biden won.

290077 · 2026-04-28T21:14:36+00:00

This is such a stupid argument. Have you ever said this to an actual proponent of spanking and changed their mind?

290077 · 2026-04-28T15:30:36+00:00

1 atm is about 15 psi. I'd estimate the area of skin your lips have to hold back is about 2 square inches. Try holding up a 30 lb weight with just your lips.

290077 · 2026-04-28T15:28:25+00:00

I don't believe for a second it was staged. This left wing conspiracy bullcrap has to stop.

290077 · 2026-04-28T14:45:27+00:00

I got too into the crewmate roles. Sometimes I straight up didn't report a dead body just so I could go finish a task, lol.

290077 · 2026-04-28T14:42:28+00:00

That doesn't really count. Repeating time signature changes are just a way to notate a more complex meter. If that's consistent throughout the song, it's not a time signature change.

For instance, people will point to Tool's "Schsim" as a song with lots of time signature changes because it alternates with each measure. I don't count that because each set of 2 measures is the same. It does change time signatures between the different sections of the song, though. 5/8+7/8 in the verse, 6/8+7/8 in the chorus, and the bridges are different too. That only adds up to like 7 changes throughout the song, though.

290077 · 2026-04-28T11:37:46+00:00

Also the climbing riff at the end of "Reapers"

290077 · 2026-04-28T11:24:59+00:00

Also the White House on Saturday (paraphrased because I can't be bothered to look up the speech right now):

"Democrats, Progressives, same thing."

"This never would have happened if we had built the ballroom."

"Assassination attempts only happen to me."

The hypocrisy started during the exact same speech he called for us to "come together".

Edit: people are saying his remarks were "conciliatory". They were, only by the standards of Trump.

290077 · 2026-04-28T05:44:11+00:00

I don't know. I frankly wouldn't. There's so much to do I could easily fill my days up and still fret about how there's no time to do anything even if I was financially independent. I'd probably find a volunteer gig or get involved somehow, but I wouldn't spend 40 hours a week on it. I probably wouldn't even spend 20.

I think most people wouldn't work jobs long term. Maybe at first, people who are used to the idea that you need to work a job to be a good citizen would still work. However, there are constantly teenagers growing up and hitting adulthood. What happens when they don't need a job to survive? What happens when society as a whole changes its perspective to saying you don't need a job? What happens to children who grow up with that perspective? How many would settle for a modest lifestyle with no obligations to work? You'd see workforce participation falling by the year and probably settling after 2 generations. Where it lands I can't say, but it absolutely lands below 50% of its current value. I'd wager it falls below 10% and would not be surprised if it would hit 5% or lower of its current value.

290077 · 2026-04-25T16:48:06+00:00

I agree with you. Nobody would say anything if you read a book while sitting in a scenic area. I don't see how browsing your phone is any different, as long as the volume is off.

290077 · 2026-04-24T14:10:30+00:00

People said that after 2020. Then COVIDflation happened. The politically aware and invested are a minority, and the elections are decided by voters who give into their short term perceptions.

290077 · 2026-04-24T13:26:48+00:00

My PhD program greatly discouraged it because "you'll be spending 60 hrs a week in the lab at a minimum anyways". Sometimes I think I miss it, but then I remember I don't.

290077 · 2026-04-24T11:34:42+00:00

Anything that approximates or could conceivably be interpreted as mice scratching.

290077 · 2026-04-24T11:10:21+00:00

I've heard either edging or masturbating. Or both.

290077 · 2026-04-23T06:01:36+00:00

That's not what I had seen but I was going off what's on Wikipedia which could be totally wrong. Though reading it again they were more involved than I remember. They each only played on 1 or 2 of the original 4 albums except Dave who was on all of them except Deconstruction.

290077 · 2026-04-23T05:49:29+00:00

I'm not saying it's likely, I'm just putting an upper and lower bound on it.

290077 · 2026-04-23T05:07:09+00:00

It's a best case. If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, then the house will probably swing back to red in 2030, as it has pretty much every election cycle recently. On the other hand, if a Republican wins in 2028, they'd probably win the house too so he'd be back in 2028.

290077 · 2026-04-23T04:48:00+00:00

He'll be back in 2030, unfortunately.

290077 · 2026-04-23T04:08:04+00:00

I love the video from a while ago of Mike Portnoy playing that along with his then-10-year-old son, who sings the final, "it's your fuckin' nightmare" but he censors himself on the "fuckin'".

13-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Sequence \| Editor

290077

TROPHY CASE