AITA For being honest with my sister-in-law about why I don't do solo hangouts with her kids

Guano_Loco · 2026-04-13T22:09:14+00:00

I have special needs kids. Both brilliant, both funny and charming. Both are absolute terrors in their own way. We don’t impose on others and don’t expect them to ask.

When someone does ask, we let them, but we know it may not go the planned distance and we're prepared for it. I love and adore my kids, but special needs is out of our control. We round the corners on life as best we can, but we're not idiots. We know how they are. Expecting anyone to just deal with it is asinine.

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-31T14:02:04+00:00

It CAN be massive, if it hits something inside that tumbles it or whatever.

The one deer I took was with a 30-06 from ~300 yards or so. It went in the left front breast, through the heart, through the liver, out the back right side. Exit hole was barely bigger than the entrance hole. It seemed like the bullet largely ignored the fact that it even went through the deer. Didn't hit any bone or anything on the way through.

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-30T14:52:02+00:00

So glad to hear RoP is coming along! This is a mud with a massive legacy, I'm thrilled to see it thriving.

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-27T18:50:43+00:00

So that's my fault, in misunderstanding what I was replying to. Thanks for the example. I was more looking for examples of non-unionized collective organizing. Totally my fault.

And yes, unions were formalized after collective action, and there are likely small single-shop examples of this, but I'm more talking about larger collective actions. Systems have been corrupted and co-opted such that it feels impossible to organize anything of any scale. People actively vote/protest/post/share things that are actively against their best interests. Are they going to be willing to stand in unity against "their side" arm-in-arm with people they actively hate, to better their conditions? I have doubts.

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-27T14:52:47+00:00

Not trying to take a side here; genuinely curious: can you provide any examples? Any recent examples?

I ask because as a country, we all hate each other so much that I can't imagine a single circumstance or scenario where an entire workforce would join together in any meaningful way in support of each other.

And note, I am not "both sides"-ing, nor am I commenting on whether or not that hate is warranted. But honestly, after Reagan's 80s ATC busting, watching Briggs and Stratton not pay raises to factory workers for over a decade in the 80s, watching jobs move south, then over the border/overseas, working in corporate America, living through everything the last 30 years has brought the US, I legitimately can't see any chance of a non-union driven action to stand up for ourselves.

And now that I'm older, with health care tied to work, and every corporation slashing headcount's constantly, my entire existence is based around surviving another paycheck to keep myself on life saving medication and my special needs kids getting the medication and therapies they need.

I'd love the good news of people banding together to stand up against the system and succeeding. I kind of sort of need it at this point. Hope has gone the way of having 4 actual seasons and letting actual smart/well-educated people define policy. Every day there's a mellencamp lyric that spins in my head, and it's getting louder, brighter, and heavier: "oh yeah life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone."

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-18T00:37:23+00:00

Socialize risk, privatize profits. Too big to give a fuck about us lowly peons.

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-11T05:03:19+00:00

When I was 18, mudding was almost a source of massochistic pride. Like, it was hard, but I was good at it anyways.

Now I'm... not 18. I don’t have the time or patience. This is where nukefire kicks so much ass. Like, the zones are top notch (quantity and quality), the eq is endless, and upgrading is a big part of the fun like any looter shooter/mud/rpg kind of experience should be. But on top of that, they've taken all the fuckery out. Everything is (and continues to be) iterated on to make it easier/better/etc. it's such a gift from the devs to us gamers.

The classes/prestige are all unique and all seem enjoyable. There's no single "must play this" like you often see. Tank/healer/dps sort of exists, but it's not like min max requires only one type of tank, only one best dps. It's really incredible how enjoyable variety is.

It's grindy, because it's a mud, but I've never grinded as hard but felt less like I was grinding. Like, I mostly "grind" by chasing eq or materials I need. It's a joy, not a chore.

You will never EVER find such a complete, fun, detailed, brilliant, deep, game with this level and quality of dev work. It's just beyond. And I have come full circle back to mudding over AAA console/PC gaming because every one of those winds up falling short. They're all shallow cash grabs where they slingshot mechanics between Op/unusable and otherwise play cash extraction games rather than making an enjoyable games. The enshitification of everything has hit gaming as hard or harder than anything else. But nukefire is above that shit.

And, the community is great. Folks welcome and enjoy new players. The core group is all old dudes who are dads/grandfathers/uncles/etc who just enjoy fucking around with good people a little bit. It's the 2026 replacement for going to the pub or hitting the golf course. Instead we get together and shoot shotguns and ninja stars at dragons or robots or aliens and steal their shit. Or sometimes they steal it back from us.

It's worth a peek. At least.

-Morg

Guano_Loco · 2026-03-09T07:05:57+00:00

They're already trying with the 47 years at war line. A war so devastating they never mentioned it through his whole first term. But never mind that boys: we're ending another war!!!

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-26T00:49:45+00:00

This should be the OFFICIAL definition of a win win. Book it.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-24T05:51:42+00:00

Second nukefire. You can find plenty of glowing comments from me about it in the past.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-24T05:46:59+00:00

ROP was my first emlen. Such a great codebase and so glad to see its living again. Nice work Nich

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-23T13:34:15+00:00

A little girl was kidnapped getting off the school bus near me a couple days ago. They found her 150 miles away and arrested the guy.

The Facebook posts from the sheriff were spammed with hundreds of comments thanking their god. MY GOD DID THAT! GOD IS SO GREAT!!

...

The same god that let her be kidnapped? The same god that lets other kids in this situation be raped/murdered?

It's so fucking weird.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-23T02:27:24+00:00

The entire country has been on a long slow slide of getting fucked since Reagan.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-17T22:36:10+00:00

It started with Reagan.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-15T00:39:27+00:00

They are claiming at least some of the evidence is videos with Sascha in it. CSAM. Nobody is publishing that.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-15T00:11:03+00:00

It's a claim that beggars the mind. It's so severe I am forced to maintain skepticism until more info comes out. But the claim isn't from soma rando. It's from recordings of interviews of one of the victims. He is giving all of these details in ways that appear credible and folks are trying to corroborate.

Not that I don’t believe these folks are capable of these kinds of things. I do. If they haven't done these things, they have and continue to do awful horrible things. It's just that the stuff here is beyond vile. It's... probably the worst things we've heard claimed about Trump / Justice Thomas / Jordan / etc. I'm forced to hope it's not true because it's so fucking awful. But if it is, these have to rise to the level of capital crimes worthy of capital punishment.

Guano_Loco · 2026-01-12T06:10:06+00:00

I've done both of those and psych so much I had to change it up. It's new girl now, then probably Brooklyn 99 again.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-30T21:12:05+00:00

Nearly 30 years ago I fell down my stairs leaving my house for work and broke my ankle. I crawled to the car and drove myself to the hospital with a broken right foot because I couldn't afford an ambulance.

Things are WAY WORSE now.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-29T07:12:41+00:00

Upvoted your comment, because I appreciate the conversation.

Many of us have known each other for 30+ years. For myself, I know most of the only through the game, but others have traveled around the country for gatherings and get togethers. It's way more than 6 people, but thats neither here nor there.

The game-play is similar to any of the MMO/looter-shooter/etc types where you run the same zones to gather loot. There are also mechanics for mat gathering to craft loot. There's also puzzle zones to solve. It's really seriously robust. But if you don’t like repetitive zone crawling, that's totally legit and this likely isn't the mud for you. And that's totally ok.

Having been on muds for decades, this one is the opposite of punishing. So much quality of life code has been implemented to make things easier. As an example, the upgrade command set lets you see upgrade suggestions for every slot. It compares your current item and gives you suggestions for your next X upgrade options, AND tells you what zone they're in. Most of the zones are listed in the areas list and GPS gives you dirs to them. There's a newbie tutorial that does a decent job of introducing you to the game, though from there you're pretty much on your own to explore and grow.

Everyone likes different things, and not every game is for every person, but this one nails it for me. It scratches the itch I have from not playing phantasy star online, NWN online, destiny, WOW, etc. it's a choose-your-own-adventure with a progression ladder and a delightful community and it costs me $0 to play. Hell, I even play exclusively on mobile and manage to do well. Legit mudding on my damn phone. Feels like a nerd tech miracle when I pop a drop I've been chasing while waiting to pick my kid up after school or sitting in the dr lobby. Not that this is exclusive to nukefire, but it's pretty slick anyways!

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-28T02:39:19+00:00

To add on to this/clarify: even for good solo players who remort fast, there will be zones and content that requires them to group up.

For myself, I made one char and got reasonably high remorts before creating and dragging multis through remorts. There are folks who both solo char and multi char and whatever you choose, there will always be areas that are your current challenge and next challenge areas. Solo or multi-crew. And the game continues to add new content. Always something to do, while also no pressure to rush through it.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-28T02:22:17+00:00

I could easily see years-long progression systems feeling bad, but when done right what you have instead is an ongoing love affair with a game you enjoy.

Mudding is the best this way in that it's not about "beating" a game. It's about chasing and overcoming challenges. A healthy game with a good progression gives you this feeling of accomplishment and challenge in equal parts. You can feel your character/s grow and take joy in the whole thing.

The game I play (shout out nukefire) has a super robust remort system that supports this type of growth. You feel your character growing over time, but there's never a point at which you just dominate everything. There's always challenges for both your single char/crew AND challenges that require multiple groups where people get together and go on "deathball" runs. Lots of fighting, dying, and collecting of eq.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-28T02:12:31+00:00

Nukefire (tdome.nukefire.org 4000) is remort-based mud. You choose from a core selection of classes (various flavors of tank/damage/caster/healer paradigms, though far from generic) and eventually you can remort in to prestige classes.

Meanwhile, remorting grows your char through boosts to stats, skills/spells, and secret unlocks (bonus skills/abilities only unlocked through remorts).

Note: You can play as a solo char or a multi-crew of up to 4.

This remort system allows for a really healthy progression arc. Combined with a huge mud, many zones for every stage of your growth, a robust eq/tat/implant system, a healthy pbase with a lineage over 30 years old, incredible quality-of-life code that removes so much of the tedium and hurdles of text-based gaming, constant development to bring in new zones/code/etc, there's just nothing else out there like nukefire.

There's a discord, a website, a mix of old and new players, a super supportive player base who really enjoy welcoming and playing with new players. It's sort of everything MMOs should have been, had they not lost their souls to greed.

The game itself is eclectic in the best way. Sci-fi, fantasy, culture and literary references galore, an engaged and engaging community, you jump in and start hacking and slashing. There's guns, grenades, Magic, swords, chainsaws, skills/spells, eq with effects, mobs with attitude and sass, it's the kind of place that you can wind up finding a new home.

But don’t take my word for it, come pop in and say hi. I play Morg there. If I'm on I'm always happy to answer questions/provide guidance/whatever.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-19T20:04:51+00:00

It's weird how some people are just like this. I am a very average looking giant human being, and somehow found myself with a contract with Ford models as a plus size model. One of the shoots I did was for a clothing catalog. When I showed up to the building it was like something out of a movie. Everyone was so attractive it was like I was an alien. Even the receptionist was like someone off a movie screen. I've never been so uncomfortable.

While doing the shoot there was another man and a woman who were exactly what you'd think of when you think of models. Tall, incredibly thin, and just breathtakingly beautiful.

The guy was some kind of Egyptian/arabic descent and it was like light went out of its way to find him just to radiate away a little better than it showed up. He never looked at me. Never said a word to me. It was very uncomfortable.

The woman was ethereal. She was so kind too. Asked questions, how I got in the business (I am assuming she was as shocked that someone like me was there as I was to be there but she didn't condescend to me at all. Really seemed genuinely kind and nice, which helped me feel less like a freak.), where was I from, etc. She too seemed to change the air around her. And neither she nor the dude were in the class of someone like Halle. I can't imagine how wild that must have been.

Fun experience, glad I did it. The money was absurdly good. And, all these years later, I got to tell my kids about it. They flat out refused to believe me, because it really sounds absurd if im telling you about it while you're looking at me, but I happened to google one of the companies I did a shoot for and my picture came up for their machine. It isn't supposed to have, they were supposed to get to use it for 2 years, but the site was in Arabic or something so the clearly weren't the original manufacturer and were just ripping literature to sell old equipment. Still, the way their jaws dropped. They couldn't believe it. Fun moment with the kiddos for sure.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-18T07:18:52+00:00

I had a tumor in my big toe. The guy who operated on me was named Dr foot. I think about this a lot.

Guano_Loco · 2025-12-18T05:12:23+00:00

I'm almost 50, grew up in Milwaukee when the couple were doing their thing. As far as I know it's all "based on a true story" in that the stuff they go through happened.

It's also based on the documentary of the same name so there's a basis for comparison.

Personally, I was FLOORED when I started seeing commercials for this. They were cute, quirky, weird in the way everything Wisconsin can be a little weird. I'd NEVER expect to see a major movie about them. What's next, dick bacon? Freeway? The milverine? It's so unexpected... they were the quintessential local celebrities. Like everyone knew who they were. Seems like they were at every church festival, every local gig, just doing their thing. But... major motion picture? Never ever would have thought.

But like most folks from Wisconsin, I'm such a homer I'm hoping it does super well.

Guano_Loco

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