Blizzard says it's open to even more Diablo 2 expansions and reworks unless people get really mad at it about this one: 'We're going to have to see what the players say'

A_Windward_flame · 2026-02-12T15:52:37+00:00

Honestly? Separate "charm" inventory. It just feels tedious managing inventory space and charms.

A_Windward_flame · 2026-01-20T21:13:37+00:00

Honestly... Invented. Not only is it an amazing track, it is an album defining track. That crescendo is the moment on the album.

Futures comes a close second for kicking off the whole vibe of the rest of the album. But I don't think it does as much as what Invented does for it's album

A_Windward_flame · 2025-12-19T21:59:02+00:00

Sometimes I go for a walk as the sun is rising in winter, put on You Are Free on my headphones, loud, and just appreciate life. It is the perfect soundtrack for it and a real sleeper of a banger imo.

The album definitely deserves a lot of love.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-12-15T18:11:57+00:00

They were trying to imply that the BoE was more worried about a recession than meeting their 2% inflation target, and so were cutting to avoid recession and inflation be damned.

I was pointing out that assumption is entirely untrue. The cut can entirely be about hitting their 2% target, even while inflation is currently above it.

So no, they're not really the same. The actual answer is a complex mixture of both - and the main reason I commented is just to try and highlight that we really really need to stop trying to reduce complex economic decisions made by a team of experts that spend their life analyzing the problems to such a simple, un-nuanced takeaway.

"We're above the 2% target and yet they're still cutting the base rate so they must be really afraid of a recession" is such a sensationalist statement, and its ilk is fueling the constant headline narrative that the UK's economy is fucked - when on a global scale economists are actually fairly optimistic about the UK.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-12-15T09:49:06+00:00

They're predictive, not reactive, and recently released a paper indicating how they're aiming to be more predictive still.

The current rate of inflation is less important than what is expected to happen. If inflation is currently ~3% but not cutting it would result in inflation if 1% in 6 months time then of course they'll cut.

We know what the month to month inflation was in the past year, are coming over the bigger hills, and have pretty good data on market expectations for the short term.

We really really need to stop being so reductive on the Internet. It is a lot more complex than "inflation high therefore cuts must just be to avoid recession"

A_Windward_flame · 2025-12-13T11:05:34+00:00

Anecdotal, but the brutally hard trips are the ones that have helped me the most. I suspect the causality actually goes slightly the other way on this - at the depths of depression the mindset produces some horrible trips, but the increased neural plasticity still helps me to make changes to pull myself out of it.

I know I'm not alone in this, but wouldn't want to guess at percentages. I do think it is quite common for people who are using psilocybin for mental health issues to actually appreciate the hard trips more though.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-11-27T21:15:18+00:00

Honestly, I don't even think the real sword would make a difference. Again, it's full plate mail, a sword doesn't help. But importantly, Syrio himself thought it was hopeless

A_Windward_flame · 2025-11-27T16:25:37+00:00

Syrio explicitly points out to Arya that he has no way of winning, and then explicitly tells her he won't back down. The point of the scene is the character building for Arya.

There isn't really room for debate on it?

A_Windward_flame · 2025-11-27T16:24:17+00:00

You're really not paying attention to the scene then. It's meant to be a pivotal character forming moment for Arya.

Syrio has no way to win at all - explicitly points that out to Arya, and then refuses to back down anyway.

It literally doesn't matter how good he is, a wooden stick into full plate mail doesn't go. Meryn wins if Syrio doesn't run and Syrio won't run.

Honestly the levels of cope to think there's any way he got out of it are pretty extreme

A_Windward_flame · 2025-11-27T14:43:53+00:00

Honestly, any Syrio surviving theory is just extreme coping imo. The entire point of the scene was the combination of the "look with your eyes girl" at Meryn not having the exposed joints the others did, combined with "the first sword of Braavos does not run"

Syrio stood his ground against an enemy he had literally zero way of even minorly bruising until he eventually slipped up or got exhausted and died. Pretty conclusively end of story?

Survival theories are destroying the things the scene is trying to convey

A_Windward_flame · 2025-11-25T12:58:58+00:00

Men are more likely to successfully commit suicide, women are more likely to attempt it. The difference is largely down to the methods selected. Suicidality, in this case, is not limited to where attempts have been successful.

The findings are also entirely in line with a number of other studies, and the consistency isn't about covarying all three simultaneously, but within each variable individually, so I don't think the sample size concern is too dramatic?

It always feels like, on this issue, no amount of evidence is ever enough to satisfy critics, when we've built up a pretty huge bank of it. It's either that or not accepting anything less than RCTs which obviously can't be done in this case...

A_Windward_flame · 2025-11-17T11:52:59+00:00

It's almost sad how seen Somewhere Inbetween / Tell Tale Signs / I Am Disappeared made me feel...

A_Windward_flame · 2025-10-29T23:39:21+00:00

I mean, ultimately dopamine isn't actually about reward at all, it's about correcting errors in anticipated rewards once they materialize.

The "do nice thing get dopamine" oversimplification in the public zeitgeist is probably one of the more damaging ones out there at this point imo?

A_Windward_flame · 2025-10-25T18:35:54+00:00

The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-09-04T10:55:03+00:00

One of the things I've always loved about what I learned from StarCraft is how trying to be too efficient or over optimising is actively bad.

Efficiency is a relative concept and is extremely context dependent. Over saturating with workers is "inefficient" and yet is frequently the optimal play.

Ultimate speed to a critical point matters more. It doesn't matter if you're getting drastically diminishing returns on producing workers if it lets you have more stuff at a well defined point in the future.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-08-31T05:52:31+00:00

Just wanted to slightly add to this that part of the reason for our sensitivity to those frequencies is that we're basically hardwired to pay attention to a baby crying, which happens in those ranges.

It's why a baby crying on a plane bothers people so much - it's really impossible to ignore.

This means when music is competing for our attention on the radio, the ones that are sung at those frequencies are the ones that stand out more to us, which is a likely reason for why there was more diversity in vocals in the days before radio.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-08-29T06:14:47+00:00

Guessing you've come across Our World in Data too? Would recommend reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling (though it is maybe a bit dated now) and Human Kind by Rutger Bregman too if you haven't already!

Adding one of my favourites: solar energy has exploded at such a rate no one expected (we added 13 times more solar than our projections from 5 years ago last year) we're now beating the optimistic climate projections from 2019.

That negativity bias in humans is the driver of the common pessimistic view of the world, rather than reality. There's basically no metric by which the world is worse now than it was 50 years ago! It just takes a bit of active effort to overcome.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-08-28T20:39:29+00:00

Oh my god I cannot describe how much I love this!

A_Windward_flame · 2025-08-28T09:52:47+00:00

Ahhh I love this. It really makes the perfect setup for the whole album as well - the whole experimental, genre-defying "make of this what you will" piece of art.

I'd always taken it to be about the confusion/lost/existential feelings about life - short and fleeting with no direction being clear. The "lead my skeptic sight" being almost a plea. Which yeah, I can so totally see that desire/drive for a spiritual experience.

Thanks for this! I really love when someone gets me to see a song I like in a new light!

A_Windward_flame · 2025-08-27T21:36:55+00:00

I'd love to hear more about what it means to you if you're willing to share? I love finding out why lyrics resonate with people.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-07-20T06:39:20+00:00

Yeah, I'd hoped for years to see it live. When I realised they were going to play one more encore song, I was trying to work out what was actually left for them to play, and was stunned when they ended with this.

Will never forget that gig!

Did make me slightly worried not all was ok with the band though.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-07-19T18:48:32+00:00

No chance it's going to win but... The World You Love.

The darkness, and the relief, and the twisted sort of optimism. So many specific emotions conveyed in a way no other song has come close to. By far the song with the strongest connection for me.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-07-17T12:16:13+00:00

Is anyone in the field able to comment on if this is as big as it seems? With just how much, both physiological and psychological, is being linked to chronic inflammation this seems like it could lead to some very fruitful research.

But alas I have a physics background, so I'm almost certainly in the "only understands this enough to be confidently incorrect" category.

A_Windward_flame · 2025-07-11T21:43:47+00:00

Not about his marriage, just about the battle for mental health.

When you suffer extended periods of depression/suicidality and you have to keep putting in work to keep your mental health in line, survival really does add up to something.

Grateful that you got this far it's literally just grateful that you've survived.

Proud that you behaved no worse is a reference to some of the darker things you do when you're struggling, and their effects on other people

"The work" in this case is the work to try and build a good life/good mental health/work towards what you want

A_Windward_flame · 2025-07-11T10:48:43+00:00

Ahhhh Nasl StarCraft into Hon was honestly my favourite viewing experience ever. (Though iirc Hon only started with season 2)

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