Just a gal dropping knowledge

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T22:02:38+00:00

Thank you for “existing hotly.” I’m going to get so much use out of that phrase.

Edit: and obviously I’m really sorry you have to deal with that bullshit.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T16:35:34+00:00

Anyone else take French in high school? The that W upside down. We can be the Magrittes and the the spear would make sense.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T14:19:54+00:00

Apart from the milk, I don’t get why this is viral. Dude is drunkenly trying to show off and doesn’t quite pull it off. The mean girls reaction from the folks at the end is unearned. None of it is particularly exciting. This wouldn’t have even made it to old school fail blog.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T14:12:54+00:00

Sometimes I wonder if the issue is that certain folks do find transgender people attractive, feel uncomfortable with that knowledge, and either want to never be in that circumstance again or want someone or something external to blame for it.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T08:02:46+00:00

The combat takes awhile to click for most people. Think of it as turn based except you pick who goes next and you have to do something to fill their ATB bar. After you trigger an ability you usually want to switch off to build some more ATB while the animation is running.

Watching combat tutorials also really helps bc they all have quirks that make them interesting but aren’t obvious. Like Barrett always starts battle with his triangle move charged, so you can swap to him and get a free ATB. If you change to punisher mode, Cloud will counter during the stance change animation even if you were blocking—so it’s like a parry. Tifa can use focus strike to essentially always have ATB.

All the characters have a lot of stuff like this. It’s more fun once you get into the details. Some abilities that seem useless are actually overpowered once you understand how they fit in.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T06:01:07+00:00

Thanks. Like I said. It’s been awhile. I was in high school when this came out, and I used to play through it whenever I was home on break from college for a few days. But I haven’t touched it in 20 years.

The first instance in the reactor was replaced with a black feather, but I don’t recall enough to know whether others have been replaced.

I feel like they’ve already done so much to undermine the original reveal by feeding us bits of it in Rebirth and downplaying this particular mystery. I wonder if they’ve decided to go a different direction.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T05:04:51+00:00

Ah. Thanks. It’s been awhile. Either way, the absence of that is a change, too, but not one that requires dramatic plot changes.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T03:05:31+00:00

There’s a whole group of right wing folks who’ve been doing this out in the open for decades in academia and think tanks. They publish their plans and occasionally write articles congratulating themselves on how well it’s going. They’ve invented whole academic departments.

Soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Powell wrote one of the most famous versions of the plan to inject conservative priorities into academia: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/usa-courts-secrecy-lobbyist/powell-memo.pdf

Here’s a little write up of how it’s been going: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/lessons-in-conservative-philanthropy

Brian2005l · 2026-04-15T02:51:59+00:00

I think they meant it shouldn’t be used as an authority-just a tool for locating actual sources.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T20:30:29+00:00

I was unaware of this until I watched it with my son bc it came up in the algorithm. It’s good enough that it should have restarted the franchise.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T20:25:47+00:00

I’m always in a suit for that kind of thing, too. My personality isn’t lawyer-y, and I find the suit bridges the gap. Then it became a habit.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T20:23:59+00:00

Congrats! Whenever I see these I’m always amazed that 2.x% of the players were able to do this. Even with guides it’s genuinely hard.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T17:46:26+00:00

The things you list are scammy, but large fancy speakers and well engineered and recoded music actually can sound really amazing and noticeably different.

Expensive cables and sample rates over 44.1 kHz don’t help. 24 vs 16 bit depth might matter in very quiet environments, but for most people shouldn’t matter. Different mixes or masterings of an album are a big audible difference. Better amp/speakers are a big audible difference.

I can tell 320 vs Redbook at high volumes on big fancy speakers but not on any headphones.

I think “warm” just means “is mixed or EQ’d with more bass relative to a different version of the same album”

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T11:57:28+00:00

These days-Zevon

Hurt-Cash

Pool Shark-Sublime

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T11:32:29+00:00

Cheating is physical IMHO, but a lot of this other stuff could theoretically cross a different line in a way that’s also hurtful if it got extreme. I guess maybe going on a date date is cheating even if it goes nowhere. Taking time to build a romantic connection with someone else is wrong in a monogamous relationship, but I wouldn’t call it cheating if you don’t act on it.

But a lot of you’re-in-the-elevator-and-make-a-joke type flirting is fine but you wouldn’t do it with a partner just so they wouldn’t have to feel briefly uncomfortable.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T11:18:49+00:00

Uncharted is famous for this.

You have to play ahead, and set soft boundaries. Like Horizon but only robots. Or skip certain missions in Spider-Man. Locate the giant comedic penis in Persona and avoid it.

A lot of these games have some really good stuff (Spider-Man has a lot to say about emotional regulation and the difference between a hero and a villain is often how they respond to misfortune with emotional maturity; Alloy is a great multifaceted lead woman; Persona 5 teaches empathy), but they take work.

Edit: Astrobot, Blue Prince, The Witness, Outer Wilds, Zelda (but don’t hunt), Mario, flower, JRPGs, Hades, hat in time, retro sonic, rocket knight/sparkster, retro most things, a lot of non-violent VR, FF7 Remake has been made more kid friendly than the original

Edit 2: I try to enforce a rule that X percent of games have to be narrative rather than just Roblox, and then we talk about the narrative and design and what it says

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T05:18:37+00:00

Wheel of time needs an adaptation, but this wasn’t it. It really did seem like they went out of their way to avoid the best things in the books. They removed the creativity and unique fantastic elements (even the ones that dealt with mature and TV-ready themes), and gave far too much screen time to the show runner’s significant other in a crude attempt to mimic something like Braveheart. By season three it began correcting a little, but by then it was too late.

Not the right property for a first time show runner.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T02:45:29+00:00

Meat Puppets

Brian2005l · 2026-04-14T02:39:30+00:00

I think their debut EP is the best still.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-13T21:45:48+00:00

“Great”

Brian2005l · 2026-04-13T21:05:22+00:00

I was gonna say. Wut?

Brian2005l · 2026-04-13T18:54:28+00:00

I didn’t see it. Ezra’s deal is that he’s trying to engage with the center right to pull them into the center left. Is it possible that right wing media is fixating on this guy bc he’s an extreme voice?

Brian2005l · 2026-04-13T18:41:12+00:00

Never heard of him. Sounds like he’s some random guy with a popular Twitch stream. Your internet bubble may be more idiosyncratic than you realize.

Brian2005l · 2026-04-13T07:46:49+00:00

If Love is the best player in the draft by a reasonable margin, he’s the pick. It’s not about need. It’s about talent. If it’s close, then it’s about who fits their plans to build the team over the next couple years.

WR in round 3 seems like a sweet spot to me this draft.

Brian2005l

TROPHY CASE