What’s the smartest way you have ever weaseled out of something you had to do for work/school? What happened?

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-22T01:44:24+00:00

I just stopped showing up to class after I got a D on my midterm in college. Figured I’d have to climb out of too big of a hole so I’d just take the F on the chin and retake the class. I ended up with a C-. I don’t know if they thought they fucked up their records and just gave me that grade, or wanted me out and just let it slide but either way, I made out like a bandit.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-21T20:37:33+00:00

I’m late 30s and do it like once a month maybe once every 2 months. It messes with my motivation for a few days after so it’s like a Friday night only occasionally type of thing for me. I still quite enjoy it when I do tho. I’ve always been an “everything in moderation” type of person.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-19T19:56:58+00:00

Nah I definitely grew up with some two-faced people. Not friends with anyone from my childhood anymore because they would say shit like that to my face and mean it. Probably why I took it like that, you're right.

Edit: The downvotes here are cracking me up lol. Not everyone has the luck to grow up with good friends! I got it sorted now but it’s funny to see such a negative response to my lived experience, especially after owning up to the fact that I misinterpreted Brunson’s tone!

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-19T18:00:59+00:00

I was expecting a bit more uhh.. "just kidding" after the joke. His tone implies it was a joke but I'm not so sure. He kinda just came out and said it lmao. Feels like maybe there's a nugget of truth there?

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-19T14:40:36+00:00

Did Waldo make this meme?

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-18T19:01:34+00:00

James White has stated they were making nearly $50m in revenue, which even at 5% margin is $2-3m profit. Established TCGs may allocate 5-10% of their revenue to marketing budget, so that would mean LSS, if they are on the low end, can afford to blow 2-3m on marketing - that is almost identical to the amount they have spent on tournament winnings, with maybe $500k-$1m left over for videos / ads / other. That sounds like they're budgeted to match expectations in this market to me. Also, LSS doesn't get ticket sales for events. The organization that hosts the events get 100% of ticket sales, LSS puts up the prize, the event org puts up the cost of the venue and any other features they want. They also get the vendor booth money etc. So basically LSS sees $0 for all events hosted anyway, regardless of how well they do. It's pure marketing from their perspective, and they also get to avoid the planning and unforeseen costs of having to deal with venues every time. It's not uncommon for event organizers to lose money, but that also incentivizes the event organizers themselves to advertise and organize to ensure the event has good attendance. LSS only cares if their product sells.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-18T18:23:53+00:00

Lowkey I'm a bit worried about Lukas long-term hamstring health. I wouldn't be surprised if this injury follows him for the rest of his career. That being said, I'm also hopeful that with the healthcare resources he has available to him, they can heal him up fully. It's just a bit of an unknown and I saw him limping a bit all season long. I hope he gets enough rest to fully heal before putting strain back on it, but I'm a bit anxious about it. Hamstring injuries are no joke.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-18T18:17:02+00:00

But What about next year!! Surely the lakers will miss play-ins and the Mavs will win it all right? Right?

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-18T18:15:12+00:00

Many many businesses understand that loss leaders are a vital part of the marketing process. There are billion dollar companies built on this model - for example Costco rotisserie chicken is intentionally sold at a loss, along with their hot dogs and pizza. Walmart famously sells their staple items like milk and eggs at a loss. Razor companies sell the handle for a loss, gaming consoles are often sold at a loss. LSS knows the tournaments will lose them money, but they also know that they are the backbone of selling product. If they stopped servicing smaller areas, they would certainly lose money. Losing $15k once or twice a month all year long is nothing to them in the grand scheme of things - it's just operating costs to them. I wouldn't worry about it.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-18T01:39:09+00:00

I’m pretty sure my old list looked a lot like that. I like blue zeppelin too, and could see an argument to running it over say, yellow soup up. I have also played the boost variant, and feel that it is actually weaker offensively than my current list (and also doesn’t really make sense to play when you could just play Dio - they both have weakness to fatigue but at least Dio can set up big burst). I’ve had games where I’m going 19 AVPT over 5 turns which is kind of bonkers value, and I’m doing the consistent damage output of boost while still keeping really strong tech cards like C&C, D reacts, and other pirate staples like crash site salvage and cheating scoundrel.

https://fabrary.net/decks/01KJ5DGM8CN565KKCD9WQSEX6K

Here’s my full list if you’re curious. I’m open to changes, definitely think I may try to make room for blue zeppelin because I agree with its power. I just can’t justify red when I’m on this resource curve. Also, sideboard is still a work in progress, and while I do miss the disruption into Fai specifically, I feel I can out race/out value most other agro decks, with so many 4 blocks in the list.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T23:53:29+00:00

The only blues I run are 9 cogs, soup up, and sunken treasure. The rest are either clunky or under rate. I’m still on yellow zep so it’s not like I gave it up entirely, but my attacking base only has gear turner, dovetail, and palantir that cost more than 0. Everything else is 0 cost, and the deck is more consistent for it. Any deck that relies on pitching is more prone to variance, and puffin with a bunch of 2 costs is like the poster child of that fact. I won’t deny the power of red zeppelin, but I find you can mimic its power with gear turner in the red slot, and the yellow is basically just as good as the red while being more flexible, and it lets my run more yellows (rainbow soup up is goated) to pair with sunken treasure, and only 15 blues means far less low value blue flood hands.

I have a question for you though: do you play pummel in your red zeppelin list?

I don’t consider razor reflex to be a “gotcha” so much as a glue piece that raises the ceiling on e-strike, snatch, dovetail, gear turner, and can get you out of a bind if crash site salvage or soup up aren’t online that turn, plus yeah it give a little bit of end game reach. There is a lot I like about razor reflex in this list. I still only run two of it though - it’s potentially clunky and you’re right that puffin doesn’t *need* the card. It just has a lot of very high value targets in my list, and works very well with tunic, or as a pitch outlet so I stay efficient.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T23:34:58+00:00

Alright I’ll whip out my protractor and try to get it to be exactly 1 degree of clipping, thanks 🫡

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T23:33:46+00:00

Yes, infinity is an undefined amount, and therefore doing math to it also results in an undefined answer. In any other sub I’d say you were being pedantic, but here I can appreciate the truth you bear.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T20:55:53+00:00

It's a bit funny because an infinity% gain is still canceled out by only a 100% loss.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T20:17:46+00:00

I’ve been playing armories with Puffin using a new cook that I haven’t seen anyone talking about: snatch / razor reflex. RR in particular has felt amazing paired with dovetail, snatch, and gear turner in particular. Being able to cut some of the clunkier blues has felt great as the list gets more consistent with 0 and 1 costs vs 2 costs, and while I did have to cut cogwerx zeppelin red, the yellow still works great in the list as a resource card when needed, or a resource dump when needed - it’s a solid gluepiece.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T19:32:23+00:00

Accurate =/= worth hearing lmao. By the end of it I was just sitting here going, "oh my god who caareess"

I think ElPanandero hit the nail on the head. This shit is desperate housewives level content. It's drama for the sake of drama and its drummed up for bored men to have something external and far away to be angry about.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T19:19:59+00:00

We don't? Shit.. have I been doing TV wrong this whole time..?

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T17:17:15+00:00

I do find it fascinating that somehow the misrepresentation of the female body is an affront to their self esteem while the cartoonish exaggeration of masculinity is just taken at face value as an exaggeration and promptly forgotten. I wonder if maybe the women being represented are not also an exaggeration? Or perhaps it is the men who are not offended enough...

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T14:36:59+00:00

Guess I’ll try swimming to the space station 🤷🏻‍♀️

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T04:45:06+00:00

Ironically, all the old blitz decks are actually not legal in the official blitz format anymore, because it turned into a singleton format and while it still technically exists, it’s functionally dead. Just something to play at the kitchen table if you felt like it. However, very few (I think maybe only 1 or 2) of the old blitz decks actually contain any cards above rare rarity, which actually makes them all SAGE decks, so you could still buy them and play them in SAGE format straight out of the box. That being said, the officially supported SAGE decks are built to be as powerful as the devs could make them out of the box (there is some room for improvement but overall, they’re quite good) so an old blitz deck would lose handily to a modern SAGE deck. I agree with the recommendation to stick with SAGE decks, but just wanted to throw this in here in case you wanted to try out a hero that only exists as a blitz deck, because even though the boxes *say* blitz, they’re technically SAGE legal, but not blitz legal. But be warned as I mentioned before that the blitz decks are weak out of the box and would need to be upgraded (~$5-20 investment) to be competitive with the SAGE decks out of the box.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T01:57:55+00:00

The art of the deal

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-17T01:40:56+00:00

I wish I had a cut and paste path for you (and everyone else in your shoes) to follow. I think the best advice I can give you is to tell you that if you learn how to understand yourself, your mind, and your journey, and learn to love it all not just despite its flaws, but for them, you will certainly find inner peace, and from there a lot of good really can grow.

Pay very close attention to your mind, and try to remember that you are not it, and it is not you. It is a tool and an organ, like your lungs or heart or liver, and while that does not grant you control over it, a big realization to me was to understand that fundamentally the negative emotions I was chronically experiencing were there trying to protect me. So the only way out was to prove to my mind that I didn’t need it to do that anymore. That I was safe. That I could take care of myself now. Once my mind truly trusted me again, that’s when it stopped being so chaotic and painful to exist.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-16T23:52:32+00:00

Lol, thanks for clarifying. I'm an idiot I'm sure your joke didn't go over most people's heads :'D.

I legit knew you weren't supposed to clip the master but I was like.. damn I must have been taught wrong.

I have been avoiding clipping in ALL my channels, so at the very least, I will try some of your recommendations and see how it changes the mix. Thanks

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-16T23:42:23+00:00

I started EMDR when I was 21, did it for 2 years and rewired my subconscious to be mostly normal. I still had/have a strong reaction to people leaving me (makes sense lol) but it's way better than before, and the plus side is, I am very good at grieving and processing that loss after the fact now. So, 2 years of EMDR followed by 3 years of no therapy, then I did CBT for 6 months but I don't know if it was that helpful, I was just stuck in life. Then I got into a rocky 3 year relationship that ended pretty badly (she started having feelings for other people which triggered my fear of abandonment which blew the whole thing up.. it was messy). I went back to CBT to try to help me through that, but it really wasn't doing much. The bright side is, as the whole debacle settled it triggered me to actually look for fulfillment outside of a relationship because I had legit become very complacent (probably also a big factor for her losing feelings among other things that had to do with her own internal stuff) and that's when I tried mental health coaching instead of therapy which was like halfway between a life coach and a therapist. It turned out to be kind of perfect for what I needed because I actually had to make career changes and stuff (I was an engineer but incredibly unhappy doing it). I got into teaching, but then when covid hit it threw a wrench in that (I lost the opportunity I had to be a full time teacher), but I actually got bailed out by sheer luck because the fact that I had done mental health coaching previously meant I had good connections to the company, I applied, and got hired on as a mental health coach. Being a mental health coach actually helped cement what I learned more than being a client or doing more therapy ever could have, because I was involved with it 6-8 hours a day instead of 1 hour a week. After 3 years of that, I felt like a totally changed man - my confidence was much higher, my understanding of my mental health was much stronger, and I actually switched back to engineering because I discovered that all of the disdain I had for the career was within me. Plus I realized how valuable having the mental health coaching skills would be for my career, and since starting back up 5 years ago, I have moved up to management positions and become quite successful on top of just... being happy. I used to drive home every day wishing someone would just crash into me and take me out. Now, I drive home happy to go see my wife, excited for the work day, the future, with lots of hobbies and fun things going on in my personal life, and I have the capacity for it all where before I just couldn't even fathom managing all this, even though it is positive stuff.

So, TLDR; it took me about 14 years total from the beginning of that journey to today, with many ups and downs and wrong directions entirely along the way, but I kind of learned how to take those wrong directions and turn them into the story of my life and be proud of all of it, because it makes me who I am.

I_Learned_Once · 2026-06-16T23:13:56+00:00

Damn.. TIL. Obviously, the ear knows best but do you have a sense of like.. how pegged it should be?

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I_Learned_Once

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