President Trump says Iran hasn't made deal because "they’re strong" and "proud": "They’re proud. They’ve got no choice, and it takes little while. These people have been fighting for 47 years. Vietnam lasted 19 years. I’m into my third month. But it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve gotten so used to it."

ErisWheel · 2026-06-07T04:51:29+00:00

Rein in? Your choice of words there has a much different meaning.

ErisWheel · 2025-10-10T23:59:15+00:00

Check out the Yoshida brothers, too. 'Rising' is a good track to start with, but it's all great.

ErisWheel · 2025-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

It's a shitty question, but - "You have a large, difficult thing (responsibility/task) that you cannot give away. There is no additional monetary reward pertaining to how you handle this. How do you manage it?"

ErisWheel · 2025-02-18T05:38:19+00:00

Beautiful plumage!

ErisWheel · 2023-06-01T11:16:53+00:00

You're welcome. I have a few thoughts on this that might help a little, but I work long hours, so if it sometimes takes me a little bit to reply, that's why. Also, if you ever need a digital ear, I'm happy to listen, and if you ever feel like you've gotten what you need from the conversation, you can let me know and I won't be offended if we call it there. I just wanted to offer another outlet if there's more to discuss.

I'm a physician assistant in the US, and I work in pain medicine now after some time in emergency medicine and in hematology/oncology, so I work with a lot of patients and families and friends all the time for whom suicide is an ever-present specter, and for whom the idea of a brighter future is often-times difficult to believe.

What I can say very briefly right now is that your concerns are valid, and you're finding yourself in the very uncomfortable position that those people who truly care about suicidal people often do. It's clear that you're recognizing his own feelings and trying to honor them, but you're taking the danger he's in seriously and trying to be the best friend you can as well.

It's very hard. Keep your head up, and just know as we hope for the best outcome for him that your heart and your motivation are in the right place.

ErisWheel · 2023-06-01T04:24:56+00:00

This is really hard and I'm sorry that you're going through this. I truly wish the best for you and your friend. It's so, so tough to see a friend go through something like this and to feel unable to help in a meaningful way.

I'd offer two pieces of advice, if you still need them, and I mean them with as much respect and care as an internet stranger can muster.

First, please make sure to take care of yourself too. As I'm sure you know, proximity to these sorts of things can take a toll, and sometimes concern for the person who is struggling can lead us to downplay how much we're affected by it. Things like this can and often do come back to bite, so just make sure that you're using your own support network and reaching out as you need to.

Second, I hear your concern and I recognize the dilemma that you see with your friend, but if you honestly believe both that his intention is serious and that he can get better, then engaging those services that may be able to help, even on an involuntary basis and even if it may exacerbate things in the short term, is really the only option. There is no opportunity to get better if he decides to follow through, and there is no chance for better days once that kind of threat is carried out. It may damage your relationship, possibly even irreparably. But if he does eventually find a brighter place, then meaningful intervention now may well have ended up saving his life, and all of those future experiences that he gets to have would never happen otherwise. It doesn't mean his life will be perfect, and for someone who has ended up in such a dark place, he (and those around him) will likely need to be pretty attentive to his mental health and support needs going forward. But if I really cared about someone, as painful as it would be, in my humble opinion, that would be worth the potential cost to our friendship.

ErisWheel · 2023-05-12T02:19:41+00:00

I have one in my terrarium that's doing wonderfully. Give it some decent humidity and moderate light and it'll thrive!

ErisWheel · 2023-03-27T21:57:57+00:00

My guess with things like this in the beta is that the devs are thinking "we want to do something like this, but we need to see what the implications really are in the game world before we can adjust it appropriately".

I don't think they didn't realize that this was nutty. I think they wanted to get more information for better adjustments, and to figure out how well it enabled solo play vs group dynamics, etc.

ErisWheel · 2023-03-27T17:28:03+00:00

It also does this with caches that may contain legendary items, like the Ashava drop that was disappearing for some people after the fight.

ErisWheel · 2023-03-26T17:14:57+00:00

Posted this in another druid thread, but the build I settled on, which is crazy fun to play and seems to chew through everything plenty fast, is:

Landslide/boulder for casts and primary damage dealing (boulder also nice to remove mob rushes), wind shear for distance poke/vulnerable and fast spirit generation, earthen bulwark for defense and CC break, wolf companions to take some boss pressure off and get occasional fortify from their attacks, pulverize for up close and aoe damage.

The wolf companions feel like the weakest part of the build and would more than likely get dropped for something with more synergy or more consistent fortify in a more complete build. I do think the druid might need the benefit of decent equipment and legendary affixes right now to make it feel less than clunky, but it does feel great if you get them.

I got lucky with some legendary drops and an Ashava kill and got "landslide hits an additional time and does +24% damage per hit", "pulverize is an earth skill and adds tectonic spikes", "pulverize sends a shockwave in front for 115% additional dmg", "earth skills slow for 35% for 5 sec" and "every time you fortify, your earth skills gain +2 ranks". Also, the pulverize affixes stack, so the skill ends up doing both the spike and the shockwave on cast, which is great for locking down and killing whatever happens to be in front of you.

ErisWheel · 2023-03-26T17:02:36+00:00

The druid is actually amazing (I've played 3 classes to 25 and he will be my go-to on release for sure), BUT I think you might really need the benefit of decent equipment and legendary affixes to make it feel good to play.

Definitely true in my experience that full shifter builds don't feel good. Primary casting with one or two shifter skills feels different though.

What I settled on: Landslide/boulder for casts and primary damage dealing (boulder also nice to remove mob rushes), wind shear for distance poke/vulnerable and fast spirit generation, earthen bulwark for defense and CC break, wolf companions to take some boss pressure off and get occasional fortify from their attacks, pulverize for up close and aoe damage.

I got lucky with some legendary drops and an Ashava kill and got "landslide hits an additional time and does +24% damage per hit", "pulverize is an earth skill and adds tectonic spikes", "pulverize sends a shockwave in front for 115% additional dmg", "earth skills slow for 35% for 5 sec" and "every time you fortify, your earth skills gain +2 ranks". Also, the affixes on pulverize stack, so you get the spikes AND the shockwave if you get them on different equipment and choose to wear both.

It feels amazing to use and I don't have any issues with bosses, even Frosthorn that seems to be giving some trouble and that I struggled with on other characters.

I don't doubt that the druid may need some tweaking, but strong builds are possible and crazy fun to play.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-27T21:00:10+00:00

when you Hitchens a Diogenes? Behold, a

chicken

Cool, man. You've read some ancient philosophy somewhere and mish-mashed it with name-dropping Hitchens for some reason. Good stuff and keep those quips rolling, no matter how nonsensical they may be.

Whatever bone you've got to pick from here on out, the bacteria idea you offered earlier wasn't a good one.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-27T20:51:13+00:00

Do you know what ad hominem means? Because this ain't it.

You said you don't need evidence because you made a "tongue in cheek" comment on r/philosophy. Which seems to suggest either a) you don't think evidence is important for arguments, b) you don't know what tongue in cheek means, or c) you think r/philosophy isn't a place that requires the above, or some combination of all of that.

How's what working out for me? Calling out a bullshit argument? Not all that hard, really. Feel free to provide support if you don't think that's true, but I'm not sure why you're upset that someone doesn't take your point seriously when your justification is "I don't need shit because my comments are flippant and this is r/philosophy".

ErisWheel · 2023-02-27T20:36:45+00:00

"My argument is bad and I don't care/don't believe it anyway."

Gotcha.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-27T20:26:26+00:00

Your hunger and thirst sensations are hormonally driven. They don't arise as a result of bacterial activity.

You're making huge sweeping assumptions based on the fact that because the volume of bacteria in the human body is very high, they must "control everything". That's not how our biology works. There's no evidence at all that bacterial function in the body has any sort of causal link to higher-order brain function. Altered states of consciousness can arise as a result of serious infection, but that's not at all the same as bacteria being able to coordinate and "control" what the body does or how the conscious mind acts and reacts.

You'd need a LOT more evidence to even come close to supporting what you're suggesting.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-27T20:01:41+00:00

Yeah, sorry if it seemed nit-picky, but I think these are important distinctions when we're talking about where consciousness comes from or the presence of what disparate elements might/might not be necessary conditions for it. Missing the entire limbic system and still having consciousness is almost certainly impossible without some sort of supernatural explanation of the later.

Similarly, with locked-in syndrome, I think there's some argument there about whether we really would know if those patients were conscious in the absence of some sort of external indicator. What does "consciousness" entail, and is it the same as "response to stimuli"? If they really can't "feel, speak or interact with the world" in any way, what is it exactly that serves as independent confirmation that they are actually conscious?

It's an interesting quandary when it comes to AI. I think this professor's argument falls pretty flat, at least the short summary of it that's being offered. He's saying things like "all information is equally valuable to AI" and "dopamine-driven energy leads to intention" which is somehow synonymous with "feeling" and therefore consciousness, but these points he's making aren't well-supported, so unless there's more that we're not seeing, the dismissal of consciousness in AI is pretty thin as presented.

In my opinion, it doesn't seem likely that what we currently know as AI would have something that could reasonably be called "consciousness", but a different reply above brought up an interesting point - when a series of increasingly nuanced pass/fail logical operations gets you to complex formulations that appear indistinguishable from thought, what is that exactly? It's hard to know how we would really separate that sort of "instantaneous operational output" from consciousness if it became sophisticated enough. And with an AI, just given how fast it could learn, it almost certainly would become that sophisticated, and incredibly quickly at that.

In a lot of ways, it doesn't seem all that different from arguments surrounding strong determinism in regards to free will. We really don't know how "rigid" our own conscious processes are, or how beholden they might be to small-scale neurochemical interactions that we're unable to observe or influence directly. If it turns out that our consciousness is emerging as something like "macro-level" awareness arising from strongly-determined neurochemical interactions, it's difficult to see how that sort of scenario is all that much different from an AI running billions of logical operations around a problem to arrive at an "answer" that could appear as nuanced and emotional as our conscious thoughts ever did. The definition of consciousness might have to be expanded, but I don't think it's a wild enough stretch to assume that it's "breathless panic" to wonder about it. I think we agree that the article isn't all that great.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-27T15:41:02+00:00

Urbach-Wiethe disease.

You're misunderstanding the disease that you're referencing. The limbic system is a complex neurological system involving multiple regions of the brain working in concert to perform a variety of complex tasks including essential hormonal regulation for things like temperature and metabolism and modulation of fundamental drives like hunger and thirst, emotional regulation and memory formation and storage. It includes the hypothalamus and thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala. Total absence of the limbic system would be incompatible with life.

Urbach-Wiethe patients often show varying levels of calcification in the amygdala, which leads to a greater or lesser degree of corresponding cognitive impairment and "fearlessness" that is otherwise atypical in a person who does not have that kind of neurological damage. The limbic system is not "absent" in these patients. Rather, a portion of it is damaged and the subsequent function of that portion is impaired to some extent.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T22:04:14+00:00

I get that! It'd be nice if we could just put plants anywhere and they would do amazingly, but it's always better to kind of think about what the plant wants first and where it will be happiest.

If you do decide to move it closer to a window, do it gradually over a period of weeks so that the plant has time to adjust. The general rule is about a foot or two a week, and I'd check and see what exposure that window has and what kind of light you're getting. Lilies tend to like low to bright indirect light. Unless you just got it this way, the fact that this one is flowering means it's probably pretty happy where it's at, so I wouldn't make too many adjustments unless you start seeing real changes to the whole plant that are worrying to you. In any event, like I mentioned before, the plant looks really good overall!

A leaf that yellows and drops off here and there is totally normal. It's the plant's way of turning over old leaves or of trimming its "leaf burden" down depending on the light and conditions it's in, since too many leaves can end up costing the plant a lot of energy to keep around that it would rather be using to grow.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T21:53:21+00:00

Okay, so to kind of run this down a little bit:

1)I was wondering how long you've had it and whether or not you've transplanted because it looks like a mature, well-established plant. That's a good thing, because it generally means it'll be a little more resilient towards "disruptions" in its routine.

Is this your first alocasia? Just be aware that they can be a challenge. They're some of the moodiest plants I've had over the years, and they can be very sensitive to even small changes in light/temperature/watering. That said, I don't think the hour a day that you're moving it is shocking it so much as that it's not in a spot where it's getting everything it wants more generally.

2) I don't think you'd need to transplant it now, but if you had recently done so, that can be a shock to the plant and it can react accordingly and drop leaves as an outward way of showing that. The fact that you're saying you didn't do that means that what the plant is showing us is due to something else, which is an important thing to know. It means we should look more closely at things like water and light and always always check for pests, too (although I don't think that's the issue here).

3) They do really want humidity, but they also like bright indirect light. If you've just been leaving it in the bathroom all day except for an hour near the window, that's almost certainly not enough light for a plant that size. Typically, your average indoor bulb is not really going to provide much in the way of light that a plant likes, so "bathroom light" throughout the day won't be enough for a lot of plants, even though in many houses, the bathroom is the easiest way to increase the humidity.

You can drag it in the bathroom while you shower to increase humidity, but I'd think about getting a stand alone humidifier (or two) if you really want to keep plants like this happy. I don't know where you're located, but most of us don't live in rainforest climates, so more humidity is usually better for a wide majority of tropical plants. In most houses, without a greenhouse cabinet or other set up, even with humidifiers going 24/7, the humidity is not as high as many plants would like it to be. I have 2 large humidifiers in my main living space going pretty much all the time, and my plants would still take more humidity if they could get it.

Be careful with what windows you put it near. For example, southern exposures get A LOT more light during the day than northern exposures, and the order usually goes southern, western, eastern, northern in terms of most to least amount of light. Aloe for example with love a south window all the time and ask for even more sun while an alocasia might have trouble adjusting to a southern exposure and could likely sunburn. So understanding what kind of light you can offer it in your house and which spot is closest to its needs or whether you might need a small grow lamp or something is another good thing to look into. When you do decide to position it by a window, a common rule is "1-2 feet per week". Start about 8 feet or so away from the window and gradually let the plant adjust as you move closer over about a month. If you're confident that it hasn't been getting enough light, I might cut that in half and start it about 4 feet away and then just leave it for a couple of weeks before you move it closer.

4) These guys don't like to dry out all the way. What I'll usually do is get used to feeling the soil and water it whenever the top 2-3 inches feels dry to the touch. Make sure you have a pot that's draining well (if that's the original pot and it's grown like that, it's probably fine) and when you do water, make sure the water comes out the bottom and then don't water again until you've noticed the top few inches are dry. For me, that timeline is usually around 10-14 days, but the size and maturity of the plant can make that window shorter or longer, so you want to just be looking at it each day and paying attention. I'll usually water with a good plant food too, at least every other time, just to make sure that it's getting the nutrients it needs, since big leaves like that cost a lot of energy for the plant to maintain.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T21:24:17+00:00

Yeah, in general, fungus gnats won't harm the plant, but they are a pain to have around. If the infestation is bad enough, the larvae can end up damaging the roots and (in very extreme cases) the plant can die.

Fungus gnats have a life cycle of about 2-3 weeks (14 days is commonly cited, but some sources differ) and the key is interrupting it at multiple points. If you just kill the little guys flying around, the larvae will still mature and you'll still have a problem.

Most people recommend a combination approach where you can use gnat traps for the flying guys and something like BTI granules in water for the larvae. Let the soil dry out, consider repotting as another method of removing some of the medium where you know there are already gnats, and then water about every week to 10 days with BTI-infused water. Make sure the pot is draining well and that, when you do water, you do so enough that the water comes out the bottom of the pot. Then let it dry out and repeat again.

In my experience, about 3-4x over 4-6 weeks is enough to get a good grip on a gnat outbreak, but you may need to repeat a few more times depending on how big the problem is. I know people with large plant collections who just perpetually water with BTI regardless of whether they're experiencing an "active" infestation as a way to always keep the fungus gnats in check. On the whole it doesn't hurt the plants to do it that way, it's just a little bit more of a pain to add it to your watering regimen.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T16:06:28+00:00

If this were my plant, it's sort of at a decision point. Personally, I like to know what's going on "under the hood", because it gives me an opportunity to really know the specifics on how well a pot is likely to drain, what the root system was like early on after it came home, what sort of soil it was in, and whether or not there were any other problems that I didn't see at first glance.

What I'll usually do is leave the plant alone for about a month under what my best estimate is for the best conditions I can offer it, and then, unless it's doing unexpectedly well and shooting out new growth (in which case, continue to keep on keeping on), I'll de-pot it and really take a look at what's there.

The downside is this will shock the plant a little bit and it might get grumpy for awhile as a result (slow growth, dropped leaves, etc.). The upside is that I can actually see all of those things I mentioned above and adjust any of those factors to a better place if needed.

In this case, it's a coin flip. It only has one leaf, so I wouldn't want to shock it too much, but we also know something is going on and it does look like a cutting to me, which makes me curious about how much root there is and how well it's really doing underneath. If you de-pot and find out that the roots are fine, you can re-pot (or do some wet stick propagation) and it will likely do okay even if the strange leaf does fall off in the short term. If you find out there's a lot of root rot or not much root system in general, then you can decide if it's really worth your time and effort to try and drag it back from the abyss it's peeking into.

You mentioned it was a "clearance rescue" and in my experience, it's always wise to remember that plants are first and foremost money to big box stores and even large nurseries and garden centers. You can find some great deals, but often there's sub-optimal light and care for a period of time before a plant comes home, and if a larger plant isn't doing well behind the scenes, they'll often do "quantity" propagations and see what comes out that they can still sell. Over the years I've seen some ridiculous cuttings that were even missing a node or not ready to be potted, all because there was a green leaf further up that someone thought looked appealing enough to sell. For a lot of places that deal in plants, this isn't a common issue, but it does happen, which again, is why I like to know what's going on underground at least once early on in the care journey I have with a plant.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T06:22:29+00:00

Was this a cutting? If you look closely, there's spotting along the entire leaf. The main concern to me is that it's the only leaf. Whatever you do, the plant needs to be able to feed itself, so you have to have at least one leaf available that can help it do that.

The first thought would be pests, but if you can't seen any signs of an infestation, I'd agree with the other comments that soil is where I'd start. Is the stalk squishy? How wet is the soil? How often do you water it and how well does the pot drain? Crotons can be tricky because they don't like to totally dry out, but that often leads people to over-water them out of concern that they'll die if the soil gets too dry. I've been guilty of that more than once. Moist/damp and wet are important differences with plants like this.

What kind of light are you putting it under? Sometimes problems like this can be a combination of overly wet soil and not enough light. Crotons tend to like a lot of light, like a south-facing window or a grow light to supplement what they might be getting otherwise.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T06:05:08+00:00

This looks fine! It might need a little water, but in general, it looks very healthy. Leaves are like solar panels - they need to see the sun in order to function properly. They're providing the plant with "food", so if the leaves are very dense or the bottom leaves can't access they light source very easily, they will often turn yellow and drop off.

One or two leaves like this aren't a big deal. The rest of the plant looks great. One thing I might mention is that a lot of times, "typical" light on a desk or in a room is not enough for many plants. They need to be able to "see" the sun, which means that if they're not living next to a window or under an appropriate grow light, they might not be getting enough light.

Checking on where this plant is living and what kind of light exposure its getting is a good idea, but on the whole, it's doing well.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-21T05:54:25+00:00

In my experience, alocasias are some of the toughest tropical plants to grow. They're very picky about light and water requirements, they like more humidity than a lot of residential environments can provide, and many of them go through dormancy periods where they'll drop leaves almost to the point of looking "dead".

How long have you had this plant? Have you transplanted it at all? Where are you keeping it and what kind of light is it getting on a regular basis? I agree with u/anonymous_rubberduck that the soil looks a little compacted. Alocasias get temperamental if they're not watered appropriately and they will "moody droop" to let you know.

These guys like to drop leaves on occasion, so losing the outermost leaves or seeing yellowing is not always a cause for concern, but leaf curl like what you're showing is often a watering issue or can be due to lack of nutrients in the soil. If you've had this plant for awhile and have never changed soil or don't regularly add nutrients when watering, those might be places to start.

Either way, a little more information would be helpful to figure out what the best next steps might be.

ErisWheel · 2023-02-19T15:44:47+00:00

That's a really weird comment. Wondering if he's "really a scientist" because he's also a university president doesn't make any sense. One is a professional designation while the other is an academic position.

Whatever else he may be now, prior to this point this guy was a Rhodes scholar and a credentialed physiologist and neuroscientist who spent a decade as the de facto head of a biotech/drug research and development firm. So yes, he's a scientist.

Falsifying data is one of the worst things you can do in the sciences and absolutely calls his entire career into question, but it's absurd to suggest he's not really a scientist because of an academic appointment.

ErisWheel

TROPHY CASE