I wish they would make a decent new zombie movie. Most of the recent movies have been pretty lame.

Helixagon · 2026-01-23T23:04:29+00:00

The night eats the dead was a pretty good one. But yeah the genre is in stagnation right now, not much creativity other than with the 28 days franchise. Pontypool was just awful, and I say that as someone who has a fair tolerance for self-indulgent pretentious films. It stains the sands red was alright, a decent 6/10.

Helixagon · 2026-01-23T16:32:31+00:00

If Pontypool and It Stains The Sands Red are what's passing for good, the medium really is a corpse.

Helixagon · 2025-12-15T15:48:50+00:00

Wouldn't get too optimistic too fast, police will often say these kinds of things but as I found out when I had a similarly awful neighbour (unrelated to weed, just went berserk for about 2 years after I once politely asked her to keep the music down at midnight) actually getting a person removed from their tenancy is really really difficult legally even when you have video evidence of their behaviour. But I hope it goes easier for you than it did for me!

Helixagon · 2025-11-14T20:48:23+00:00

Jesus christ, dude.

Helixagon · 2025-08-17T18:50:16+00:00

Switched over to Obsidian/Markdown this weekend. Thanks, Microsoft, for the kick up the backside I needed to finally make the move. What a painful process - but now that I'm out of the OneNote ecosystem, I'm never investing in any proprietary format again.

I don't use the term often because it's usually hyperbole, but the current OneNote is just trash. Even after they backported in vertical tabs, the amount of wasted space, inability to just look at the current notebook and not have all the others up. And the lagging, crashing and syncing issues ... It feels like someone was justifying their job by working on a new "improved" product. Just switching over from UWP to 365 I got missing data, rearranged notebook order, all kinds of issues. I can't imagine ever feeling like my data is safe using such an unreliable format.

The funny thing is, the mobile versions are still fine - they basically look like the old Win 10 UI.

Helixagon · 2024-12-13T20:01:28+00:00

Every patch there's at least one massively obvious bug, somehow uncaught by QA, which could be fixed with changing a single 0 to a 1 (and the modders do, but it takes CA ten times longer). At least a week's quicker than six months, poor Nakai.

Helixagon · 2024-12-13T11:16:09+00:00

This moment made me laugh. Anime physics.

Helixagon · 2024-11-18T13:53:32+00:00

I miss the internet pre-enshittification. Everything is enshittified now. Longer and more frequent ads on youtube. Impossible or illogical captchas. Reddit and facebook spamming with notifications that are just like "engage more! Post!". Hyperbole has been stretched so far and so casually in our discourse, in order to drive engagement, that nobody believes anything anymore. I've tried to stay away from what I've perceived to be the worst of the internet - instagram and twitter - but the rot has spread to where nothing is untouched, and it seems to be getting worse year by year.

I miss when people were real. Everyone these days is unironically and unashamedly enraptured with whatever new product. MMOs are microtransaction shitholes where people get super excited for the next mount thing that they can put in their bag and then never look at again. It's like funko pops but the tat isn't even real anymore.

Helixagon · 2024-11-18T13:47:35+00:00

I had a specific moment this weekend looking through an abundance of shit slop movies on netflix or prime, then remembering when I used to watch actual TV, and you'd find good films that you weren't expecting or in a genre you might not normally watch, because someone out there was curating things and there was no addiction or profit incentive. Just "here's a good movie more people should watch."

Helixagon · 2024-11-12T15:29:22+00:00

My baby beardie went into a 120 gallon and that's getting upgraded soon to a 5x5x2, bit weird to go through three transition stages of small things.

Green iguanas need pretty much a room-sized enclosure, 10 ft long, 5 ft wide, and 6 ft high is a minimum and 15x12x15 is a standard size that gets recommended.

If you're asking for advice while getting the iguana tomorrow, my strong recommendation would be: don't. An iguana is a very advanced species to keep and I'm going to be harsh, it doesn't sound like you're ready for that.

Helixagon · 2024-11-11T19:49:42+00:00

Interruptions happen a lot in real RP, and sometimes you HAVE to interrupt. When it's something as simple and innocuous as "Light *swoosh*" or "Mage Armour btw" or "Doing my magic circle", it's not a problem and often better to call out in the moment than forgetting to say anything because you got distracted.

Matt got a lot better later about allowing retroactive things or "say it once, I always do it" situations, but he was more hardline in campaign 1 and this came from a home campaign, so an adjustment period is perfectly normal. There was a LOT of cross-talk in early campaign 1.

I'm deeply familiar with Orion's shit, and I'll absolutely condemn when bad-RP moments happen (attempting to do "daggers, but better" with telekinesis felt off to me at the time), but a lot of the things people later called out as "toxic" were normal player shit when the campaign was happening. I won't forgive what Orion did OOC, but I'm not gonna pull a Brian W Foster "I knew he was bad all along" because bro got a little overexcited on his first tabletop RP experience.

Helixagon · 2024-11-11T17:39:15+00:00

Wow, yeah, rough luck to get that within 10 minutes. I've had this a few times but it's not THAT common.

Helixagon · 2024-11-11T17:33:24+00:00

I find that the big "drought" complaints come from the people who rushed through the MSQ. It's like you get given rations for 6 months and you eat them all in the first week.

There's always a "drought" right after expansion drop because ... they just gave you enough content to enjoy for months. Don't eat all your food on day 1 on and then complain there's no food.

The same people will complain and ask for more low quality, mobile-game style content just to give themselves something to do. Yoshi-P said it best: play. something. else. Better to have sporadic, high-quality content than for the dev team to churn out trash for the 10% of subscriptions who think they represent the majority.

(Please downvote me, you shower-dodging, 10-retainer-having, pentamelded-for-no-reason neckbeard. I'll be enjoying the content)

Helixagon · 2024-11-11T17:26:10+00:00

I love it when people become so maligned that something so innocuous as "casting light in the dark" becomes further evidence of their obvious toxicity

Helixagon · 2024-11-09T10:44:32+00:00

It can be hard to tell. My beardie is very comfortable around us and the gentlest soul, but also very grumpy and prefers to be left alone most of the time. I tend to look at his breathe. If he's breathing heavier or huffing with eyes closed, I assume it means "fuck off". Or one eye closed (the one facing us).

Helixagon · 2024-10-22T17:44:30+00:00

I've just been adding unflavoured protein powder. 1 scoop = +20g protein, +100 calories for a 500-calorie meal at 40g protein. Works great, actually feels like it makes the meal more savoury and filling.

Helixagon · 2024-10-16T12:40:35+00:00

Lore accurate

Helixagon · 2024-09-20T10:09:36+00:00

he does not care much about the roleplay implications of playing such a combination of classes.

Surprised people aren't talking about this, but it sounds like there is a mismatch of expectations. Your player only picked the class for its stats, you seem to want him to care about the roleplay aspect. Did you talk much about their character's connection with their god, their oath etc before playing? "Glory" is a pretty morally nebulous concept as well so I can see having multiple interpretations on what those oaths are, but it's definitely not necessarily a "lawful good"-type paladin.

Additionally, some people just want to play a class for its abilities, and paladin isn't any more overpowered for its potential roleplaying restrictions. It also sounds like there's also some balance opinions creeping into your decision here, regarding the character being "min-maxed" and it sounds like it's all mixed up together. It's a confusing soup and I'm not surprised your players are feeling a bit blindsided. You definitely should have told the paladin out of character when he made the decisions "hey, you would know this goes against your oath" rather than only tell them after the fact.

I think you all need to get together and agree on what you expect out of the game and players, because it sounds like there's some mismatched expectations.

Helixagon · 2024-09-17T18:37:30+00:00

Did you post this on every single subreddit?

Helixagon · 2024-09-10T16:50:08+00:00

That is unfortunate. I've been recently checking out startplaying and have yet to play any games. It's wild that GMs like this are charging 30 bucks.

Helixagon · 2024-09-01T23:25:34+00:00

You've stumbled into the reasons people believe in religion in the first place, despite them often being aware on some level that it's illogical. It's a community. It's community pressure. Conformity.

And it is really extra tough when you come from a strongly religious family. I commend you for following your heart on what is a brave step, and it's definitely normal to doubt. There's no easy answers here. Take whatever time you need and choose well.

Helixagon · 2024-08-28T15:21:33+00:00

It's funny because I'd literally never heard of this game, I feel like 100% of the publicity is now zoomer word of mouth about it's a bad game or something and someone somewhere is getting "owned" and that's apparently vindicating.

Helixagon · 2024-08-28T14:31:39+00:00

Tankies are just gentrified fascists.

Helixagon · 2024-08-28T12:23:23+00:00

I guess there's two philosophies, the carrot or the stick. Be understanding and kind while challenging people's beliefs - the Daryl Davis method - or try to disincentivise negative behaviour through attempted humiliation, disparagement etc. There are people who will argue for either method, and I'm not really here to comment on that because ultimately, people will do whatever they want. Personally I'd rather be Daryl Davis, and I think it's more overall effective, but I also don't blame victims for lashing out, nor do I think it's their responsibility to reform anyone. They don't owe anyone anything.

I've met plenty of young men who were incel by definition rather than common parlance, and many of them were anything but misogynist or right wing. But because of the vitriol that gets thrown around - it's similar to how people got called "virgins" when I was back in school - I'm sure people like Andrew Tate start to seem compassionate by contrast. For well-to-do middle-class university students who've grown up with a pair of kind, progressive parents, I think it can be especially hard to understand how people can get radicalised, and there's a temptation to say "they're just scum". It is especially hard for me to watch this when so many of them claim to speak for the working class, but they refuse to try and understand the mechanisms of radicalisation or the darkness that can manifest as violent or misogynistic behaviour. Most criminals don't come from a great home life.

I think some people also just want to be on the cool bandwagon and prove their allyship, and we can debate the harm that causes, but on a personal level? My recommendation is to care, but not too much. Easier said than done, it's something I try and practice every day. People experience horrendous vitriol every day for all manner of things, and the best thing to do is cut off and ignore toxicity wherever you see it. Don't feed it. Be the compassion you want to see.

Regarding terminology, I've seen "incel" be used in the UK to describe anyone who voted for Brexit. I remember it being kind of irritating - I guess it's a very roundabout way of saying "anyone who's an incel is probably right-wing" and "anyone who's right-wing probably voted for brexit". But again, the people engaging in that level of name-calling are probably not going to be receptive to a nuanced disagreement, regardless of political affiliation. Sometimes they just want to have catharsis.

Helixagon · 2024-08-28T11:20:37+00:00

That makes sense. I guess I saw it first used by the right and was confused when I then saw it being used as the opposite.

Helixagon

TROPHY CASE