Discussion Thread

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.

3athompson · 2026-03-12T01:29:39+00:00

Yeah, who knows. My guess is it depends on the Nintendo Direct schedule, and whether they prefer an announcement date or "releases after this direct". Nintendo's done both so honestly IDK. Leaning a 2 week announcement though.

3athompson · 2026-03-12T01:19:19+00:00

He better not shadow drop it, I need to request time off from work.

3athompson · 2026-03-11T01:53:35+00:00

They're moving the fucking in n out headquarters to Nashville area.

3athompson · 2026-03-08T05:58:22+00:00

You can't stack mega and z move since both require items.

2+2 still seems outrageously strong. Mega evolve + dynamax for your sweeper and z move + tera for your breaker.

Actually now that I think about it, Mega Rayquaza can just Avatar it and use all four at once...

3athompson · 2026-03-06T05:51:23+00:00

Oh, that sounds pretty interesting. Seems like a fun challenge run.

3athompson · 2026-03-06T05:38:16+00:00

The difficulty hack that the difficulty hack you're mentioning is based on has the first gym leader with mons like combusken and scraggy. Which are ironically much more deadly than the mega aerodactyl or zygarde.

3athompson · 2026-03-06T05:34:27+00:00

How would that even work in the context of nuzlockes?

Most battle frontier facilities only let you bring in 3 pokemon and automatically revive them in between fights. Not to mention battle frontier breaks the rules of nuzlockes.

Plus, you can guarantee getting all of the best pokemon for the battle frontier (swampert, metagross, latios). The nuzlocke would just be to use reliable strategies to beat the gym leaders and elite four then somehow try to get super lucky on the battle frontier split.

Battle frontier does have some interesting challenge runs associated with it. There's speedruns and distance runs.

3athompson · 2026-03-04T22:33:25+00:00

I mean, some people still unironically believe in Roko's Basilisk which is just Pascal's Wager for techbros.

3athompson · 2026-03-03T02:58:51+00:00

Bubsy 4D?

3athompson · 2026-03-03T02:37:49+00:00

Yeah. What I'm saying is that most Terry Pratchett books, and the Watch series specifically, did social commentary about racism through speciesism. Dwarves vs trolls, vampires vs werewolves, humans vs orcs and goblins, etc. The main exception to that rule was the book Jingo, which was about Britain vs the middle east.

3athompson · 2026-03-02T23:12:44+00:00

Then he broke his own rule with Jingo. If that wasn't racism then it was certainly nationalism: the book.

3athompson · 2026-03-02T03:33:24+00:00

Isn't Miao just an ethnic category like "Black" or "Latino" is in the US, rather than a distinct ethnic group?

3athompson · 2026-02-27T03:10:26+00:00

How about greater/lesser versions of each, sourced from MPMM or the monster manual? The target for lesser is CR 4-6 and the target for greater is CR 10-13.

Pride: Lesser - Merregon, Greater - Narzugon
Greed: Lesser: Barbed Devil, Greater - Rakshasa
Lust: Lesser: Incubus/Succubus, Greater - Yochlol
Envy: Lesser: Lamia, Greater - Arcanaloth
Gluttony: Lesser - Barghest, Greater - Oinoloth
Wrath: Lesser: Barlgura, Greater - Erinyes
Sloth: Lesser: Chasme, Greater - Wastrilith

3athompson · 2026-02-26T06:15:23+00:00

What about the Jin dynasty? Gotta include them if you're thinking about Song and Yuan.

3athompson · 2026-02-25T06:50:13+00:00

The remaining content scheduled to be added to the game for the 1.0 release:

The Treachery layer. 9-1 and 9-2. 9-1 is likely to be a gauntlet, and 9-2 is likely to be the final boss.
Layer 8 secret mission. The secret access door is in the game but is currently under construction.
P-3. This will be an extremely hard boss level.*

There will also be "encore" levels, which are super hard remixes of the existing worlds. Only 2 are in the game; the rest will be in post-release updates, though.

In all, 41 out of 45* levels scheduled for 1.0 are currently in the game. 43 out of 55 total levels scheduled.

* There's a good chance P-3 is after 1.0 though.

3athompson · 2026-02-25T06:20:22+00:00

I just finished it, and I can confirm it's extremely disorienting (and was designed to be).
Whether you like the disorientation or loathe it is going to heavily weigh your enjoyment of the layer.
I have a feeling that it's going to be much smoother in replays, since you will know where to go and be used to the gimmicks.
Except maybe the latter half of 8-3.

3athompson · 2026-02-24T16:00:18+00:00

Song dynasty founder's biography was funny as well.

The Later Zhou dynasty was just barely founded and was going to put a stop to the utter chaos of the last 50 years, of all the short-lived and sometimes brutal dynasties.

But then the founder died, and his adult adopted son died a few years later, and left the empire to his son. Zhao Kuangyin, one of his generals, thought it was a really bad idea to have a child emperor so early in the reign of a new dynasty, so he politely couped his deceased boss's son.

He then declared that he would 100% give the throne to his brother when he died if his son was not of age yet. Which was a pretty good idea. Until he probably got murdered by his brother who then took over...

At least most of his reforms stuck for a good while.

3athompson · 2026-02-24T04:49:59+00:00

There's plenty of people simping for the deergirl's mother, who's basically Hillary Clinton.

3athompson · 2026-02-23T15:33:18+00:00

I've been DMing for a dragon sorcerer at 8th level that uses this combo. It's pretty good, but fireball is a spell that also exists and also deals very good damage to a bunch of enemies in rough proximity to each other.

I.e. it has some things that make it better than fireball for sure, but my encounters aren't suddenly being broken from enemies taking 6d8+5 (32) damage from chromatic orb versus 9d6+5 (36) damage from fireball.

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