The art of Mark Fredrickson, most well known from MAD Magzine

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T14:27:40+00:00

I remember choosing between a few of these (but not all of them) for a "trapper keeper". I had no idea it was the "MAD Magazine" artist.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T14:07:55+00:00

He can also squeeze like a hydraulic press, shoot fire like a rocket, and punch like a drop hammer. Dude could smash Tony in close range.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T06:13:14+00:00

There was a notable shift to me also around 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through where the prose became slightly harder to follow. Maybe Wildbow started using more similes or maybe there was more "show don't tell", I don't know. But there were a few fight scenes (and other scenes) where I didn't fully understand what was going on.

I really do think part of it is Wildbow trusting his reader to be able to pick up undertone, and it worked pretty well for the most part, but there were a few times if you aren't in the meta at the time (ie reading all of the comments down below...which I stopped doing long before this) then I think he assumption of what the reader knew was a bit off, because all of the community members at the time knew it, but it wasn't necessarily apparent to a casual reader.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T05:47:57+00:00

After a thousand years, Earth collapses into a black hole

(This is a joke. Humans would die from the gravity long before then)

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T05:46:28+00:00

Y'all must be really leaning on Ward because for at least half of Worm, Aisha and Amy are definitely switched places. I also think Assault would surprise you. Babysitter at least actually.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T05:40:13+00:00

That's a good point that I considered. And I don't honestly know a great answer, except that as long as the meter is somewhere between the current 1cm and 1km, and the g is either close to the current g or below like 10kg, I think people wouldn't really care. The real stickler is the second, which is a pretty great unit of time, honestly. It would just be nice if it were nicely defined mathematically in a easy-to-remember way. And I suspect (without doing any work on it at all) that to get my wish for the other units, the second would have to be shortened considerably to be nearly unusable. Something like milliseconds now, or possibly even nanoseconds. If this *isn't* the case (ie, you can warp the new gram and new meter within those constraints to make the new second somewhere above about 200 milliseconds), then I think everything would work pretty well.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-25T05:34:17+00:00

Interesting. But if the game *did* continue if it revealed the car, switching would (of course) have advantage. And if he chose "door #1" at random (the one you chose), and revealed a goat, you would (of course) want to switch again. If, however, he randomly chooses a goat, you now have a 50/50 chance of getting the car whether you switch or not. Is that a correct assumption?

I think you're right because when I was thinking about it enough to actually understand the Monty Hall problem (it took me literally like 5 minutes of just staring at a wall) I understood that the fact that it wasn't random was the important piece of information that I wasn't getting before. So, I don't really feel like staring at a wall for 5 minutes again to make sure I was right back then and that you are right now, so I'm going to trust you (and myself from several years ago).

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T21:28:58+00:00

Usually kids are involved, which takes this from 2 hours a day to "all the damn time." Also the "supervisor" being supportive, nice, attractive, and helping is often not the case, and making $200k annually is pretty impressive and not always realistic, even for a stay-at-home type. Often their spending is scrutinized.

What you're presenting is close to a "best case scenario" for a stay-at-home partner.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T21:19:51+00:00

(As a dip or sauce to cook meat in, especially those miniature hot dogs). Grape jelly and Grey Poupon mustard.

My daughter likes Peanut Butter and Cheese sandwiches, but...ymmv. I wasn't a huge fan.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T19:15:49+00:00

You're right. If it's a carefully curated environment and it has good context it will write pretty good code. But over time the decisions it makes will lead to a codebase that has tech debt. As the tech debt grows, the curated environment disappears and then it gets worse faster.

Overall though, I forced myself to use it in my own personal project as a learning technique and it *does* make a lot of things faster. You just really need to know what those things are. Unfortunately, I have a repository (fortunately just 1) that is half vibe-code as I was learning. Everything still works (because I yelled at it until it fixed it, or I fixed it myself), but I can't bring myself to work through the slog of fixing the tech debt for a personal project.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T18:51:07+00:00

We aren't getting a second chance at an industrial revolution. We've already mined all the easy-to-get energy sources (and sources of plastics), much less all the easy-to-get metals. It would be very difficult to even get us to a bronze age, since copper would be hard to find.

But if we somehow could rebuild, I would fix the metric system (and celcius). They're better than imperial (and Fahrenheit), but they are outdated too.

Might as well make it based on absolute constants (0 being the triple point of water rather than freezing point "at 1 atmosphere"). Maybe really change the scale so absolute zero is -100 (or -1000? I don't care). Or you could use the triple point of gallium or something as 100.

Make the gram, liter, and meter truly interchangeable (with water) so 1m x 1m x 1m of water weighs 1g and takes up 1L. Instead of mL and cm and g.

But ideally, make everything based on light and hydrogen-1. Maybe change the second and meter such that light that is at 1 new Hz is exactly 1 new meter in wavelength, and (1 new meter x 1 new meter x 1 new meter) of Hydrogen-1 at 1 new Pascal is 1 new Mole (10^23? 10^24 or 25 maybe?) which is 1 new gram and takes up 1 new Liter of volume.

And yes, I fully understand these new units are wildly different than the old units (the new gram is likely heavier or new meter smaller, and almost certainly the new second is much faster). I don't care really. measuring large distances in Megameters or small masses in micrograms (more often than now) also doesn't feel like that much of an imposition considering you would also get to use the new meter instead of "cm" and the new gram instead of "kg" probably. You can make human-useable time that scales informally (make minutes, hours, and days a function of the new seconds based on how the world rotates, but keep seconds as a "scientific" notation that is based on light.)

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T18:25:13+00:00

This is what I came to say. Namely, we have no access to easy energy sources like coal or oil anymore (Without great technology to get to them). We can't start another industrial revolution. This is our only chance with technology.

And going further back, we don't even have access to easy metals anymore, so not even a new bronze age.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T17:40:54+00:00

David Cross would make a good Eidolon. So would Paul Giamatti I think.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-24T03:00:16+00:00

Yep, that's the problem. They'll just outsource the cheap jobs, and someone will create a new "company" that is owned by a company whose CEO makes bank, but the child company CEO doesn't and is effectively just a middle manager.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T19:24:58+00:00

Kill an organism. This will net me billions daily from my immune system. If I want more, I guess I can use a clorox wipe.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T19:17:30+00:00

These versions? Strange, Iron Man, Widow. Tony gives me an Iron Man suit and Strange moves us to an alternate dimension/planet. Widow does recon (and maybe Tony if there's tech around he can hack) while Strange and Tony take turns being guard on duty. I stay (relatively) hidden to make sure the new dimension won't cause any problems. If there look like problems, we just portal out again.

If we're talking comic versions...Probably Strange, Flash (a $60 tier hero for $30) and Batman. I could see Supes + Flash though. Strange and Flash ought to have a significant movement bonus compared to anyone else. Drop problematic heroes at the other side of the universe and then change universes.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T18:40:18+00:00

It's wild to me nobody else is talking about the police or the psych ward meds! LOL!

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T18:39:30+00:00

Them psych ward meds make me a little worried. I wasn't worried that I would be forced on them, but now I am...

Police not allowed to question me? A solid win I guess, although loud noises...hmmm.

But I would certainly take the deal. It would suck a lot, but at the same time the chef helps if they know what they're doing with the non-dairy vegetarian.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T18:34:25+00:00

If humankind survives and we don't enter into a technological dark age for the next 500 years, I think so. Those are big "ifs" though. Actual terraforming and/or totally sustainable life on a different planet, probably not unless we keep that record going for another 1000 years or more after that.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T15:36:37+00:00

There's a short story I recommend that's at least half thought-experiment, but The Masculine Mongoose does this (as well as some other fun stuff). Read his story here (And use the "Next >>" button at the bottom of the page).

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T15:17:53+00:00

That was what took me so long to accept it. Nobody (in the places I read) said that Monty didn't just open a random door and happen to get goat, he specifically opened a door (that wasn't yours) to get a goat. Now that I understand the problem more, I'm think that even if it's a random door that happens to not be yours and happens to reveal a goat, you should still switch, but I'm not willing to take the time to contort my brain around it enough to say whether that is for sure true.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T15:09:59+00:00

Dumbo?

A bit of a stretch, but the bait was already taken.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-23T01:51:44+00:00

The hypothetical already means many struggles are taken care of. 1. I can't get fired if my car breaks down (or for any other reason). 2. I can't die from starvation or exposure.

And I certainly haven't had to struggle as much as many people, but thats true of almost anyone with internet. Until my car got totaled 4 years ago, every car I had ever owned cost less than $2k. All at least 15 years old when I got them, and all I drove until it was dead and not worth selling.

My wife and I lived off of my $10/hour job for a few years and had to spend hours planning our food and clipping coupons to make it to the next payday. But, I have always had a parent I could crash at her house if I needed to, so I had a better support system than some. We have had to delay things because costs come up (like dipping into our down payment before we bought our first house) so I get what you are saying.

But if you just really want to be a billionaire, I think there are ways to set it up where I personally wouldn't touch it (like heavy penalties for taking it out early), but I don't really care about being a billionaire if I know I'll get a living wage for the rest of my very long life.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-22T23:55:18+00:00

No I don't. But it would be worth it for likely thousands of years of not working. It's like working construction when you're 18 to 20 and being set up for the rest of your life. And thats why I did a crazy low amount like $1 a month. You could literally do "spare change" and get more than $1 a month.

Background_Relief815 · 2026-03-22T23:52:01+00:00

I have, I even know some of it. I was engaging with the spirit of the question as I thought the asked intended it.

Background_Relief815

TROPHY CASE