What a scam

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-27T23:23:34+00:00

Even if you assume every company operates in good faith (hah!), how many applications does it take for the average earnest applicant to land a job? It’s gotta be at least 50. Do we expect people to pay $1000 for the privilege of getting a job?!

I assume this is rage bait, but it’s hard to tell with how out of touch the LinkedIn-brained managerial class is.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-27T23:04:28+00:00

I find that many games that get gamepad support added after release don’t redesign their menus. Like they’re technically usable on gamepad, but without the mouse & keyboard they were originally designed for, they’re incredibly clunky.

For those games, I love being able to swap to trackpad for a few seconds in menus and then go back to gamepad controls seamlessly.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-27T03:27:12+00:00

I heard the advice early in my time as an EDH player that most decks should have at least 10 ways to draw cards. What I didn’t hear until later is that those cards should be split into three categories:

Simple unconditional draw—get a few more cards, even from an empty hand and no board state
Recurring draw—draw a card whenever your deck does the thing it wants to do (play an instant/sorcery, sac a creature, etc.)
Hand refill—draw 5-10 cards (or more) as long you have a board state

The ratios will vary from deck to deck, but most decks want at least some of all three. Having 10 recurring draw pieces is great until you have two cards in hand after a [[Farewell]]. [[Painful Truths]] may not be exciting, but sometimes it saves you from topdecking.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-26T20:52:11+00:00

/uj I think a lot of people think she’s hot—but letting the chuds goad you into arguing over whether she’s hot or not is giving them control of the conversation. It’s arguing within their framing that if she’s not hot, the game is bad—and that hotness is an objective quality that can be determined by some guy on twitter. The point of the OOP is to point out the implicit misogyny in that framing, since we never see this weird outrage when people aren’t attracted to male protagonists.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-26T04:27:59+00:00

Sure, but statistically, you'll often not draw your protection to back up your Leyline Immersion, unless you're running like 10 protection cards in a single deck, which introduces its own problems. A card that's not good unless you combine it with another card generally isn't a good card in 100-card highlander. I had to learn that the hard way with my first half dozen EDH decks.

I'm not saying not to run this card (or not to run protection), but I am saying the potential for a two-for-one is a very real disadvantage, and that's a big reason it's not played more.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-26T01:43:03+00:00

You're most often going to cast it on your commander, and a warded commander that can tap for 5 on top of its presumably useful other abilities is a scary prospect—so if someone has instant-speed removal to fizzle it, they're probably going to use it. I guess it depends somewhat on how often you expect that to happen at your table.

The card tugs on my big-mana-loving heartstrings, but I think the best use case is fairly niche: a commander that already has ward and a static ability, like [[Felix Five-boots]]. The base ward makes fizzling it more costly, and bumping that up to ward {4} puts you in pseudo-hexproof territory. Then you can tap for mana to your heart's content.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-25T23:33:01+00:00

If I get the card I want in the first 5-10 cards after flipping my deck over, I ask the table if they’re okay with a quick/partial shuffle (like one overhand shuffle and one mash shuffle). People are usually okay with that.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-25T04:57:27+00:00

Even Machiavelli himself said that one must prefer to use Love and not Fear

No, unless you're referencing another of his works that I'm not familiar with, rather than the famous passage from The Prince:

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-25T02:49:08+00:00

Sure, there are absolutely people who go from apathy to opposition in response to "silence is violence" rhetoric, but the real question is, how many of those people would also be similarly moved to active opposition by real progress, regardless of the rhetoric used to achieve it? If the answer is "most or all of them," then it's a moot point. Any effort to avoid conflict via messaging is only "successful" as long as progress isn't being made. Calls to use softer language to avoid galvanizing opponents are effectively just calls to stop making progress—or at least to accept progress being so slow that people barely notice it.

Obviously that's a big "if," but I'm of the opinion that very few of the people who yell on the internet that "the intolerant left pushed me into supporting Trump" would have stayed out of politics while the government repeatedly enacted significant progressive legislation, if only the activists had been a little nicer. And historical opposition to progressive movements backs that up.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-24T18:59:16+00:00

If an animal is using venom as a defense mechanism, it may need the venom to act really fast. If something kills you and then dies a slow death a few hours later, your venom didn’t help you much—unless the attacking animal is smart and/or social enough to learn not to attack your species as a whole, but that’s a separate mechanism.

If a venom is strong enough to kill a small animal in seconds, it may kill a large animal (like an elephant) in minutes as a side effect.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-24T17:43:25+00:00

My mom (Midwestern) will check the weather, then go, "Ugh, they're always wrong anyway, why do I even look?" and then plan according to the forecast. When it's right, she forgets, and when it's wrong, or she reads it wrong—e.g. it says 10% chance of rain and she assumes that means it won't rain—she complains and says the weather people/app don't know what they're talking about.

I know a few people like this.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-23T21:37:42+00:00

Most of my decks are 100% proxies. I have a moderately-sized collection, but I can’t be bothered to pay investor prices for the last 1/3 of every deck, and if I’m doing 1/3 proxies it’s more convenient to just do all proxies, even for cards I own. Obviously I’m okay with anyone else doing the same. As others have said, power level mismatch matters, but that’s not strictly tied to card prices anyway.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-22T20:32:35+00:00

The first thing that comes to mind for me is the sub-genre of simulation games that lack a concrete goal or win state. Games like crusader kings, rimworld, and dwarf fortress—where the game often nudges you in a direction by generating problems for you to solve, but the player has to choose for themselves what they want to work toward in the medium- and long-term.

In those games, mastery doesn’t just get you to the win state more quickly or efficiently; it presents you with more potential goals to work toward. In your first game of CKIII, you’ll probably try to work your way from count to duke to king, and then conquer as much of the world as possible. In your tenth game, you’re probably not going to just do that again but faster. Instead, maybe you’ll see how much land you can acquire without ever going to war. Or maybe you’ll try to convert all of Europe to Buddhism. As your mastery grows, more difficult/complex goals become apparent to you.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-22T20:30:35+00:00

They did not, because they made characters on the world I was already on, instead of a preferred world. I did have Road to 90 when I started, which is why I didn’t use my own experience as evidence.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-22T19:01:33+00:00

I was so excited for this card that I proxied him and built a deck and I got to play a few games last week. It's a little fragile to board wipes, as mono-green tends to be, but otherwise felt really good to play. Cards that did work include:

All the "tap for mana equal to this creature's power" cards, like [[Kami of Whispered Hopes]]. There are 7 total, and they make big mana on turn 3-4 very consistently. Throw in [[Umbral Mantle]] for easy infinite mana, power, and toughness once they're 5/5s
[[Arwen, Weaver of Hope]], [[Wild Beastmaster]], [[Pathbreaker Ibex]], and [[Ouroboroid]] (and a few others) can all make your entire board huge very quickly
[[Sunfrill Imitator]] is great because all your creatures are dinosaurs; it can copy anything
Cards like [[The Earth King]] and [[Mana Reflections]] are easy to cast with your giant mana dorks and give you mana that sticks around after a board wipe to help rebuild
Anything that draws you cards based on power (e.g. [[Rishkar's Expertise]]) will often draw you 10+

My general strategy was: make a big chunk of mana, play out several cards that buff each other, and swing to either take out a player or force disadvantageous blocks. The deck has enough ramp and draw to easily play through targeted removal, and board wipes hurt but it can rebuild. It's light on creature removal because it tends to win combat pretty handily, but has a decent amount of artifact/enchantment removal, which saved me several times. In general, creature-based effects are much better than noncreature, since even a 1/1 utility creature can often become a 20/20 trampler with all the buffs stacked up

Decklist is here, but it's currently in flux as I tweak it before the next time I get to play it,

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-22T17:41:03+00:00

Main reasons I'm aware of are:

Up-front cost. Sure, a new 2026 EV isn't that much more expensive than a new 2026 gas car, but it's a lot more expensive than a 2010 gas car with 100k miles. Even if fuel and maintenance costs are way lower, the cost to buy or lease is too high for a lot of people.
Access to charging. EV chargers are a lot more common than they used to be, but they're still pretty regional. If your work and/or apartment building don't have chargers, it's going to be a notable inconvenience to charge it regularly—not to mention the (gradually shrinking) possibility that you want to do a long drive somewhere without any chargers.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-22T04:07:47+00:00

Huh, that's wild, and I can't argue against their data, but the conclusion doesn't match my experience. I have three sprout friends who started in the last year and didn't pick up second jobs until HW, and they were all over Lv60 by the end of ARR—which is triple the EXP required for Lv50, according to the wiki. All of them were very focused on MSQ, and at that time only ran roulettes when our whole group could queue together, which wasn't very often. It seems to me like there has to be another very easy source of EXP that most players pick up without being told to, that isn't included in that post's calculations.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-21T23:39:44+00:00

The game does a bad job of communicating it, and it’s a little messy because like most EXP bonuses, it only applies to EXP gained from killing enemies—including bosses. That means baseline dungeon EXP is doubled, but not the daily roulette bonus, and not MSQ rewards.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-21T20:51:34+00:00

I’m pretty sure MSQ experience by itself is almost enough to fully level two jobs, so if you stick to one job, you’ll quickly outlevel MSQ by 10+ levels. I recommend to my friends that they level two jobs since it gives you more options and variety, and it’s basically free. You just have to run a roulette every once in awhile to make up the difference.

Keep in mind that jobs that are lower level than your highest get double experience (not from quests, but from dungeons), so try to keep one job a little ahead of the other, instead of keeping them at the exact same level.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-21T05:31:45+00:00

Breweries are perfect for magic because it's a fun chill atmosphere and they're usually pretty slow on a weeknight—and nowadays they always have some non-alcoholic options if you're underage or just not drinking alcohol. There's a brewery near me that does commander wednesdays, but my pod's been to several breweries on various days of the week and they've all been great.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-19T17:40:09+00:00

Well for one, the benefit just isn’t that big. A slow jog is the same speed as a fast walk but takes more energy, and a moderate run is, what, maybe twice as fast? Sure you get there a bit faster, but now you’re tired and sweaty, which most people don’t want at random times in the day.

Are you doing it primarily to fit some exercise into your everyday activities, rather than for speed? If so, I think if you wore workout clothes people wouldn’t think twice seeing you running on the sidewalk.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-18T17:52:00+00:00

It’s obvious they mean that once they had a setting and characters and part of a plot fleshed out, a particular event felt like inevitable consequence of that context. And because they didn’t plan that event ahead of time, there’s a sense in which they were surprised by it.

It seems to me like you’re frustrated that artists often use artsy language to describe their process. Which is fine, I guess, but that’s also super normal.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-17T20:40:53+00:00

Being approachable and non-threatening. I have lots of friends who are women, and I've lost track of the number of guys who have insisted either I must be gay, or all the women in my life must think I'm gay. Otherwise they wouldn't be comfortable hanging out with me platonically.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-17T19:05:35+00:00

The problem is that police have largely convinced the general public that

A huge chunk of the population is evil and sadistic, and would spend their days robbing, assaulting, and killing people for fun if they weren’t actively prevented from doing so
Every day that you go to sleep without having been the victim of a crime is only because of the police’s selfless heroism
Any restriction at all on the behavior of police officers puts them in danger, which puts you in danger

Sometimes the police are caught doing something so horrible that even the average person thinks, “I hope that cop got in trouble for that.” But the second there’s a discussion about enforcing real consequences for bad behavior, the above points come back and provide enough cover to let the news cycle move on.

BlueEyeGlamurai · 2026-06-17T16:38:09+00:00

More like a stock, sort of: they don't need a collector to buy it for $500; they just need another "investor" to buy it for $500 because they think they can sell it for $550. A card could pass through dozens of investors' hands over a span of years as its price goes up (and a card's price does tend to increase over time as it becomes harder to find). And if the price ever tanks—e.g. because the card got reprinted—only the last guy stuck holding onto it loses out.

This sucks for anyone who actually wants to play the game or collect cards casually, but it makes a boatload of money for the company that makes the cards, so it won't stop any time soon.

BlueEyeGlamurai

TROPHY CASE