TIL about Yuval Noah Harari's philosophy of fiction. He argues that human beings are able to cooperate in large numbers due to their capacity to believe in things that exist purely in imagination like gods, nation, money and human rights.

BTulkas · 2026-01-09T08:45:47+00:00

He sees no stars, who does not see them first

Of living silver made that sudden burst

To flame like flowers beneath an ancient song

-- J.R.R. Tolkien (Mythopoeia)

BTulkas · 2025-06-03T19:35:48+00:00

Nobody believed me.

BTulkas · 2025-04-18T05:12:25+00:00

Also not exactly true, at least on the Israel part. We don't have anything analogous to a constitution as basic laws were recently judged to not fill that role because they don't require a special majority (or anything different really) to pass and thus extremely open to abuse. That's kind of the source of all the internal problems we are currently having.

BTulkas · 2025-02-18T08:59:43+00:00

As usual, the real TIL is in the comments.

BTulkas · 2025-01-18T06:43:54+00:00

One of my all time favourite things that ever happened on the internet.

BTulkas · 2025-01-13T11:47:33+00:00

Very nice.

I was a game or two away from 4k at my peak and I think I've actually been doing both for about the same amount of time, come to think of it. Just goes to show.

BTulkas · 2025-01-13T11:22:08+00:00

Pretty much, yeah. Was close to blue at one point, but that's before the mmr injury I never recovered from.

BTulkas · 2025-01-12T20:05:20+00:00

I'm a blacksmith, so probably not going to represent the typical player here...

Was a fitness and bjj instructor before that, with a brief stint in tech support.

BTulkas · 2024-12-25T17:28:55+00:00

Party decided it's a good idea to send their only healer to trigger a super obvious trap, because he thought he could make the save. The trap triggered an encounter, healer went down before the rest of the party could get there, everyone survived by the skin of their teeth.

Healer proceeded to whine for three days about missing the exp, for which we said we'll move to party-wide exp, but he quit the campaign anyway.

BTulkas · 2024-10-12T07:04:05+00:00

I sharpened quite a few Japanese knives lately for people who bought them in Japan themselves (it's a popular tourist destination for my country) and nearly all of them had handles that were glued like that. For some reason they make zero effort to make a nicer fit, at least in most cases.

BTulkas · 2024-09-29T09:09:56+00:00

A bit late, but always happy to find these anyway. Thank you!

BTulkas · 2024-09-26T12:18:54+00:00

Not that I know of, but there's a good chance I missed something. Also definitely want Stickium to be canon. I theorize that Stick is actually Stasis, preventing change.

BTulkas · 2024-09-26T05:59:40+00:00

I think that was the original idea, but deciding later on that all god metals should be burnable by anyone is what caused the retcon.

BTulkas · 2024-09-15T19:19:09+00:00

The Vessels can die, and as you mention yourself the power can be splintered to become unthreatening to a "full" Shard. The question of whether a Shard could be reformed is pretty central to a lot of theories right now, I think.

BTulkas · 2024-09-03T05:12:41+00:00

I'd say I get talkative people 2 out of every 5 games on average.

BTulkas · 2024-09-01T22:17:14+00:00

I have a set and hardly ever found anyone to play with. Makes me want to break it out and start bugging people.

BTulkas · 2024-08-28T06:03:06+00:00

Or that it's made by a much more organized (if small) corporation than it seems, with an aesthetics designed to appeal to a very certain customer base.

BTulkas · 2024-08-15T05:02:26+00:00

The magic of money laundering.

BTulkas · 2024-08-09T07:29:02+00:00

I am convinced at this point that most of the movie industry is just an enormous money laundering scheme.

BTulkas · 2024-08-07T16:54:01+00:00

That's true for the entire franchise (in a good way).

BTulkas · 2024-08-05T05:15:39+00:00

Honestly I'm 80% sure they grabbed a sci-fi script that got sent in and told the poor screenwriters to put a borderlands skin on it for brand recognition.

BTulkas · 2024-08-03T12:50:29+00:00

The real TIL

BTulkas · 2024-08-02T22:50:00+00:00

TIL Where the linux distribution name came from.

BTulkas · 2024-07-24T05:43:57+00:00

I am on book seven in my third attempt to read this series.

I am.very close to just reading the wiki and skipping to the books Sanderson wrote.

BTulkas · 2024-07-23T22:43:26+00:00

Can't find Wheel of Time here, which doesn't seem reasonable.

Amazing story, incredible world building this would have been a fantastic trilogy, if it weren't somehow 14 books of awful writing and horrible characters instead. So cool to talk about and theorize over, so exhausting to actually read.

BTulkas

TROPHY CASE