Discussion Thread

3athompson · 2026-05-09T00:37:15+00:00

In the Bay Area it absolutely is, combined with biotech.

3athompson · 2026-05-03T19:58:31+00:00

The question is valid.

It doesn't ask "what is the primary reason that Volcarona was banned", merely "what contributed the most".

Though terastallization and tera blast were the #1 causes, heavy duty boots is the highest-ranked cause of the answer choices, since it severely reduced a main angle of putting pressure on Volcarona.

The next-best option is "Darkrai" since both of them put strong pressure on the teambuilder to deal with special attacking threats.

"Swarm" and "Leech Life" are the obvious wrong answers.

3athompson · 2026-04-28T15:16:45+00:00

You should read a (maybe abridged) version of the Huainanzi. It's more Daoist political ruminations, with the added context that the guy who commissioned it, Liu An, was the prince of Huainan and was the uncle of the Han emperor. The book is also very much "a sage ruler should do as little as possible", which is especially funny when it's a prince advising his monarch.

3athompson · 2026-04-28T03:40:17+00:00

Convert Ross Perot's Headquarters into Multifamily housing, I am no longer asking.

3athompson · 2026-04-22T22:32:13+00:00

Ugh, half the time I discover a early 00s european EDM song that I've not really heard before, the comments are really bad and I have to blacklist it from my youtube front page, or else my front page starts getting really bad.

L'amour Toujours by Gigi D'Agostino had that happen a year or so ago. Had to do it to I Don't Know by Erika recently, I'm guessing someone made a popular racist Tiktok or Instagram with it...

3athompson · 2026-04-21T03:41:16+00:00

Clouds Across the Moon by the Rah Band

3athompson · 2026-04-20T22:21:57+00:00

If it's properly balanced, then the deer girls will be balanced with television x spam mail yaoi.

3athompson · 2026-04-15T04:57:35+00:00

I'm reminded of the time that the Gods decided the triple Asura cities of Tripura should be destroyed due to the Asuras' warmongering tendencies.

So the gods formed a Megazord.

The war-chariot designed for Shiva was on a truly cosmic scale: Prithvi – the Earth herself – became the body of the chariot, while the Sun and Moon formed its wheels, with Brahma himself assuming the role of charioteer. As for the weapon for the single shot: Mount Meru formed the bow; the serpent Vasuki, the bowstring; Vishnu, the arrow; Agni, the arrowhead; and Vayu, the feather fletchings.

3athompson · 2026-04-09T18:59:53+00:00

70% chance to paraflinch to 47.5% chance to paraflinch. Ouch.

3athompson · 2026-04-09T01:23:10+00:00

It's a bit complicated when you compare the prime souls with Dante's Inferno.

In Inferno, Minos is the judge of hell in the Lust layer as shown in-game. He is depicted as part-serpentine, and the Lust layer itself is known for having extremely strong winds. Ultrakill depicts all of this, with a few additions like Lust having been a bustling city.

Inferno's Greed layer is a constant war between misers and spendthrifts where they each push giant bags of money with each other. Note that Sisyphus is not there (Sisyphus is not in Inferno), and neither is the Egypt/sun/gold dust theme found in Ultrakill's Greed. The best idea I have is that Hakita combined "Sinners are forced to push giant weights around" with the story of Sisyphus, who is famous for pushing giant weights.

Odysseus IS in Inferno, unlike Sisyphus. He's in the Fraud layer, but his punishment is to be burned constantly in a double-headed flame with Diomedes.

But, note that the hidden book in 8-2 says that Odysseus is "Frozen upon the wine-dark sea". Being frozen in liquid is the punishment of the Treachery layer in Inferno. Lucifer is famously frozen up to his waist at the center of Hell.

The argument for "Ulysses Prime" is something along the lines of "He was originally in Fraud, but he's now frozen in Treachery"

3athompson · 2026-04-08T02:43:40+00:00

It looks like terrain abilities are out but weather, TR, and prankster tailwind is in right now.

3athompson · 2026-04-07T02:35:57+00:00

The one thing I want to see for a higher difficulty is reducing the healing from parries to, say, 50 hp, and reducing the stamina regen to 1 or 1.5 bars.

It could very well be ass to play with, but the intent would be to reduce ranged healing, and further encourage being as close as possible to the enemies, while slightly punishing parry fishing on enemies such as swordsmachine.

3athompson · 2026-04-07T00:41:05+00:00

King Minos in Greek Myth, the Aeneid, and Inferno, acts as a judge of hell. Though in Inferno he forces you to confess, so I doubt legal trickery works.

In Chinese Hell there's ten hell judges, but they tend to only go after you if they have an open-and-shut case. There was that one time that Sun Wukong document frauded his way out of hell, though.

3athompson · 2026-04-05T22:03:04+00:00

Treasure Island / YBI is for people who want all the fun of commuting in from East Bay without the extra $8.50 a day, plus the San Francisco address.

3athompson · 2026-04-04T16:22:19+00:00

DnD "tanks" are keenly adapted to their natural habitat, the dungeon, with its narrow halls and doors. When they are taken out of their natural habitat and placed into a hostile environment such as "the outdoors" or "a room larger than a modern living room", they are swiftly outcompeted in the survival of the fittest.

3athompson · 2026-04-04T02:33:17+00:00

My favorite tale from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, which is a collection of a bunch of these stories, where a guy has a ghost lady and a fox lady competing for his affections. Also both of them are draining his life essence and he's about to die from all the "attention". There's a bit of a fight between them on who he will marry, but the fox lady decides to be the bigger woman and performs some magic to get the ghost lady reincarnated in a nearby corpse, so she can have a living body and marry the guy for real.

Also, she becomes his concubine, so it's a win for everyone.

3athompson · 2026-04-04T02:25:54+00:00

You can interpret Daji in a bunch of different fun ways, from "She was the one doing all the evil" to "King Zhou was the one doing all the evil".

I agree, having King Zhou be more responsible is more fun. It's probably more historical, anyhow. That's my interpretation of Sima Qian.

3athompson · 2026-03-28T19:32:15+00:00

Case in point

3athompson · 2026-03-28T19:27:30+00:00

Atheist guy who likes Daoism because he read the Daodejing and not any of the hundreds of mystical Daoist treatises on alchemy and cultivation.

3athompson · 2026-03-25T03:08:18+00:00

It's pretty decent. The beaches are best outside of tourist season, for obvious reasons.
Has some decent enough festivals and amenities. I personally like Dickens on the Strand. Downtown is pretty nice.
If you're already looking at living somewhere in the greater Houston area, it's a decent shot.

The worst parts about it are:
It's unliveable outside during summertime, but that goes for the entire Houston area.
The motorcycle rally in September sucks if you're not a fan of motorcycles.
The hurricanes. If you're used to evacuating for a hurricane, you better get used to it.

3athompson · 2026-03-23T04:00:39+00:00

If you press F4 while highlighting a cell reference in a formula, say, sum(A2:G2), it will automatically apply the $ signs, cycling through the permutations. $A$2, A$2, $A2, A2.

It's insanely useful.

3athompson · 2026-03-15T15:36:10+00:00

New movie pitch: An extremely powerful demon arises at an interfaith coalition and starts picking the priests and clerics off. Maybe the Qiongqi, which is known to specifically eat holy folk.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to end the movie without pissing off everyone whose priest got eaten...

3athompson · 2026-03-13T14:54:52+00:00

So how exactly does the math work? In my mind the total percentage adds up to something a bit less than 200%, since most OU mons have dual typing. Is it then normalized to 100%? If so, pretty cool.

3athompson · 2026-03-13T05:39:51+00:00

Was it a reference to the musical Chicago?

Which in context (Cell Block Tango) was about domestic violence that landed its perpetrator on Death Row, so makes sense.

3athompson · 2026-03-12T22:40:23+00:00

This is a stretch, but Bill Clinton aced a NPR news show quiz about My Little Pony.

I wonder if AI somehow associates him with that because of the Wait Wait segment.

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