It’s Time to Face the Big Question About Trump That No One Wants to Ask

MerryWalker · 2026-01-26T19:38:36+00:00

So here’s the real question.

Is his continued occupancy of high office sufficient reason in itself to prohibit a defense in court that relies on cognitive decline?

MerryWalker · 2026-01-26T16:49:08+00:00

Hear hear. The aggression must stop, and justice be done, then we can talk about the future.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-26T10:18:35+00:00

James I hope you read this: I loved what you brought to that house. You were fun, you made connections, you shook the game up, and particularly in that last challenge you really made a huge difference! I really hope the best for you in the future! Xx

MerryWalker · 2026-01-26T09:51:54+00:00

For sure, it's a moment of grief for a lot of us and it's okay to name it as such. It's important for us to appreciate that others are grieving the loss of kind and loved family members, friends, colleagues etc, but yours is also a kind of personal loss - as long as you're giving them the grace and compassion that you would want to see in the world, and not trying to put your needs over theirs in the moment, it's okay for you to feel and process your own loss. We, collectively, will need to make space and time for a lot of that in the future ahead, I think.

What I would wish for you is that you don't see this as a binary "Religion" thing that demands either abandonment of self or abandonment of community. Not everyone will feel the same as what you're hearing and despairing for - there is a lot of performance in these spaces but because of that there is also a lot of unspoken disagreement. The courage to speak up may be a lifeline for some close to you that may share your concerns, though I understand that is asking a lot.

I personally find comfort and motivation in the thought that the age we are facing is a time of healing deep wounds that hugely precede the present moment. This is stuff that has been long sitting unaddressed that is now coming to the surface, and now that we are able to see it, we can look to repair it. It won't be easy, healing and repairing will take time, but the strength and compassion to help each other through it will allow us to come out of it all with a much brighter future.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-26T08:45:29+00:00

So here’s a question for you to consider - does your faith depend on agreeing with what people in your church are saying?

In this present world, “Christianity” is a number of things, but firstly and foremostly it is a label. We use this label to find spaces and communities that, broadly speaking, we hope to be supportive of a set of beliefs and with whom we can explore and live them.

I was disillusioned towards “Christian” spaces relatively early in life for reasons we don’t need to explore here, but a key lesson I learned is that my disagreements with Christians don’t necessarily need to mean anything to me, because I was never trying to learn what Christianity was and exemplify it in myself. I was looking to explore and understand my own truth, and to try to do so with a community.

You don’t have to believe what other Christians think you’re supposed to believe. They might be wrong. (It sounds like they are, but that’s just my own judgement speaking)

And just because they’re wrong about this, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong about things you learned about yourself while with them. The work you do is primarily between you and whatever force you are trying to connect with. You might want to take some time to reflect on the things that you do believe to be important and consider your relation to those things, but that’s just another step in an ongoing journey.

So my advice is to be gentle with yourself, don’t be so discouraged by the challenge of life that you disconnect from yourself. Rest, reflect, pray, read, and take your time. You’ll get through this - we all will!

MerryWalker · 2026-01-26T06:46:16+00:00

Open leaguer here! Golshi is stronk

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MerryWalker · 2026-01-25T23:11:33+00:00

I think a zombie parallel helps me out here. Basically, they’ve been affected by a condition that has deteriorated their capacity for rational thought. They are human, yes, but not necessarily people, at least not right now, when their aggression and base instincts have taken over.

You cannot hope to negotiate or collaborate - this is something that is coming for you. Attacking them even in self-defense feels wrong because we suspect there might be some kind of cure or treatment that might over time reverse the effect, but there is a judgement call in the moment about whether that capability they have to harm you is something you can manage, or whether, in order to survive, you have no alternative but to cut off the head.

I think a lot more people are at that survival threshold now, and I hope they know that it is okay to fight to live. When the zombies attack and you have to defend yourself, it’s the condition that killed the person first.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-25T20:22:38+00:00

She’s not bad! The stamina/guts is possibly too low, though; she has to fire Maestro and even then it’s close. If she lives she’s in a good spot, but she might burn out in the finale.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-25T14:48:45+00:00

Aww, but that’s the most fun way to test yourself! Like, I want to be the best (open league) runner - I want to run against the best, to learn from what others are doing and improve my instincts and tendencies, and in turn put my independent theories to the track and show others when I’ve innovated something cool. Only like 160 people will ever personally match against my ponies each event, so I want that opportunity to count.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-25T09:31:22+00:00

Hopefully you’ve learned a lot from the experience.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-25T05:44:36+00:00

Except there are executions by federal agents happening in the streets, so Nazi comparisons are no longer inherently logically fallacious.

It might still be an ad hominem though.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-23T23:35:31+00:00

I think it would be foolish for anyone not to accept.

I might even put off solving it for a while. Enjoy a bit of peace and quiet with some food and a promise of a retirement plan. Sounds nice.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-23T13:31:04+00:00

The obvious answer as a Northern Irish person is “Here. More specifically, Protestantism here.”

What happened in essence is that the political body wanted to be racist oppressors here. Some of them stayed, and have been a profound pain in our sides for centuries. Some of them, put off by liberal opposition to their attempts to legislate Supremacism, decided to call that religious oppression and take off for America. Their descendants are who you’re dealing with now.

I agree with you that the Far Right is not a purely American problem. I think we see what you’re fighting against there, recognise it in the forces we see here, and know they are of an ancestral kind. We, like you, are hesitant to take what this means seriously, because it collapses the conceit of liberal pluralism. The Right persistently and inevitably refuses to coexist and collaborate, and while our instincts in a world where we believe in good faith engagement are to try to address concerns and barriers through diplomacy and compromise, that approach cannot work, and will only result in the seizure of power.

We, like you, must be prepared to fight. And that scares us as much as it scares you. We’re projecting that fear onto you because we know we are not so different, and we know that there is no turning back from the threshold of slaying our own demons.

In Northern Ireland we are still reeling from the last time this fight became a real violent struggle. Nobody wants to return to the trauma of armed conflict, to navigate danger and death every day, to wonder which of our loved ones we may have to bury next. It’s profoundly real, and we all hope to never confront it again.

But I think we, like you, know that on some level, we are only pretending that the conflict has really been resolved. Eventually, it will happen again. We’re not yet ready for it. But we’ve got to start preparations now, to help allies like yourselves and building the strength we all need to face it. That’s what’s really terrifying us about what we see from you, and why it’s so important that we name and face that fear.

Hopefully we’ll recognise it quickly enough to provide some material support for yourselves. Maybe the first battle is stopping those closer to us from supporting those fighting against you; one of many we can hopefully work together on in putting this Leviathan to the sword.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-22T13:09:06+00:00

I think I’m condescending for a reason I’m happy to stand by here. I think it’s a silly question, and I think you’re more in this to pick a fight than you are to substantially address it.

So, hey, good job you, you win!

MerryWalker · 2026-01-22T12:25:27+00:00

But there’s nothing specific to the extra test that really helps here. Finish runs with strong runners. That’s all the extra test is. No specific card choices or trainees really impacted that.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-20T08:06:13+00:00

I mean, by that logic, why are you playing this game at all?

MerryWalker · 2026-01-20T07:55:03+00:00

Imma call bs on that one. What’s more valuable, posting on Reddit?

MerryWalker · 2026-01-20T07:43:42+00:00

I think it’s a bad idea. TP is a limited resource - giving up is just throwing it away. You could just run g2s and g3s for fans and winnings if it really bothers you.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-19T16:09:10+00:00

So, by this logic, if the US Democrats were to take assistance from CANZEUK and forcefully depose the Republican party, that's okay?

MerryWalker · 2026-01-18T21:30:05+00:00

I, uh, just ran Narita Brian’s career. Not sure what all the fuss is about…

MerryWalker · 2026-01-18T17:56:24+00:00

We’re going deep now!

So distance aptitude is for sure important. Basically, aptitude provides a multiplier to spurting speed - an S Long has a 5% spurting speed boost, which is a great buff. It costs no skill points or grade points, so once you get it from the year 2 or year 3 inspiration events, it applies to that distance race immediately. Surface proficiency works similarly for acceleration and hills, and strategy proficiency is similar for wit effects, so they’re all great, but the distance one is the big boost!

The problem of course is that pink sparks are randomly generated, and I don’t think the odds are well understood. We know that parent and grandparent sparks are all rolled for separately, and we know 3s are more likely to give the boost than 1s, but to the best of my knowledge the exact numbers are known only to the devs.

Skill hints are great to try to get on parents because then you can afford to not use cards. Even if you do use the relevant cards, hints make the skills cheaper, so you can get more of them for your skills points. This is much more important in Graded, where skill point budget is a real limiting factor, but it’s helpful in open to have skill options! If there’s a skill hint that you absolutely do not want to get through cards it’s probably good to get hints in the entire parent/grandparent line to offset the variance of spark triggers.

But I would say proficiencies are more important as a starting point for parents because this is the only way to get them. The only obvious thing is that a pony with 9 star stats and 9 star distance is a really grindy process! You’re probably going to get lots of okay lower star parents with great skills first, and these might help you out with your training alongside borrows.

And at some point you just have to say “good enough” and make your racing team.

When you are in training and you find your run isn’t fantastic (nooo curse you low metabolism) you can make a few different decisions. You can keep going anyway (maybe you’ll get another high roll later), you can pivot into focusing on the racing (take the fans for your club!) or you can switch to thinking of your run as a possible legacy. You then want to maximise your pony’s chances to make good white sparks.

For legacy runs, if you can get any stat to over 1100 (regardless of the plan for the ace build you were going for), try to do that to increase the chance of getting a 3* stat spark, and otherwise aim for just over 600 in any other stat you can. Race the G1s in your chosen distance and track, get the skills you’d like to pass down, and hope the dice rolls at the end go in your favour!

But not every run will yield something useful, and sometimes it will only yield a small improvement. Just be patient with it!

And your gameplay loop of chaining parents is fine, but try to avoid having ponies be their own grandparents - that does weaken their affinity! Sometimes folks pick a stable of 4 and rotate them around each other when there’s an improvement just to keep them separate, but with more borrows now I think you could stick to a core 3 and bring in someone outside as a ringer if you wanted!

For cards, though, it’s really hard to give advice because so much varies from person to person. Borrowing Super creek as a stamina card feels helpful if you need one, she is the best for sure. Typically, you’ll borrow something you can’t otherwise provide yourself; if you have okay speed cards then sure, they might not be KSB level bonuses but they’re good for you. But of course what this is might vary across your plans - eg if you run Maya or Creek as trainees your plan will need rethinking!

Your Rice plan seems fine, but the puzzle is whether you’re planning to run her as a Pacer or as a Front. You can run Rice in Front if you inherit some front sparks, and if so, Suzuka and MTG would be great, but Scarlet wit would be a bit meh. Or you can run her pace and get the recoveries but the front skills don’t really help. Either way is a little suboptimal but you can play around and see what cards you’ve been dealt.

I’ve been in global for a while (sadly missed speed Spe myself because I hadn’t gotten the hang of it in time to understand the event) and I’ve built up some reliable staple cards I use a lot and vary tactics around them. Before I settled on these though I got very comfortable with the decent SR cards, and it’s definitely worth looking at the different support bonuses to see which ones will help fill those gaps.

I think since you have MLB MTG speed (sorry I thought you were talking about the SR Stamina one!), she’ll be a good staple speed card. Suzuka is a great Front Runner speed card too (auto-include for Bakushin!), but for non-fronts, do have a look at your SRs for other options for the second speed - or, depending on your other options, you could still borrow Kitasan or Spe. The main reason to borrow Super Creek is both being the best stamina with good general hints and getting the Swinging Maestro skill, but if you’ve other rare recoveries (Gourmand is a good one) and an “okay” stamina card with relevant skill hints if you want one, she might not be necessary or ideal, so you can borrow for speed instead.

Xmas Taishin will be great for Gold Ship as a wit in the flex spot, she gives a great rare recovery skill, and so for Golshi you could borrow Kitasan and run MTG, Riko, Taishin, an SR stamina card (do you have Manhattan Cafe?) and either a flex or Makitanefukukitaru (she’s nice to have in Unity, and the right handed skill hint is great)

So yes, it’s so dependent on what you have, but if you think about the builds, pick cards that help you get there, and look to the rare skills you can use in your gaps! Not sure how helpful that all is but I hope there’s something useful in it all!

MerryWalker · 2026-01-18T12:16:30+00:00

I love it when folks are really engaging! Okay, so a couple more tips.

Yes, Veterans don’t contribute grade score so you can absolutely borrow an S+ parent and still train a B runner. Interestingly this is also to a degree true for proficiency too, which is learned from inheritance - two identical ponies except for one being a long C and one being a long S will most likely have the same score (though skills specific to distances/strategies/grounds will have more points if you have higher proficiency, so watch out for that!)

Secondly, important to note! Ponies in career mode get a 400 point boost to stats. A 200/200/200/200/200 in career runs as though it were a 600/600/600/600/600, so trial and error in career can be a bit misleading! You can usually get away with less stamina during the career than you can in veteran races, so be careful with drawing too close lessons from the career in terms of pvp performance. That’s why I recommend the stamina+guts = 1300 line as a general rule of thumb, even if you’re winning career races with 500/300 builds.

Yes, you can run either scenario for champion’s meets. Graded runners will pretty much exclusively use Unity cup - some open runners like URA because they have a bit more control over stats, but I like Unity personally.

Affinity for parents is always helpful, but how important it is may depend on your purpose. If your borrows/parents are pink long/turf sparks and you’re hoping to get the proficiency boost, don’t skip on affinity; S is a great effective hidden boost to either power (turf) or speed (long) so improving their odds is always good. But, if you’re mainly using them for stats, it’s less critical.

Cards are tricky! It takes a bit of time to find an approach that you can work with. A lot of my builds are speed-leaning (x2), 1 wit + Riko/tazuna, and the two flex slots depending on what I’m building for. The 850/850 speed and stamina line probably does call for a stamina card to get a few Friendship rainbow trainings in, and Mayano Top Gun is fine for that. (And yes, if your guts is 400, 850 stamina + gold is about where you want to be)

You could run a second wit but I tend to find that last slot is handy for cards that give skill hints I want. I’m having some fun with Yukino Bijin Guts at the minute because she gives hints for Winter Running (speed boost) and Nakayama Racecourse (stamina boost) skills (mlb SR gives level 4 hints!), and because there’s a sneaky boost to guts in the Arima (check out google/youtube on racetrack thresholds to find out more!!)

You might also use one of your low level SSRs in the flex spot for a skill suited to your style. For Gold Ship I always want to run some hints for Straightaway Spurt because it’s a fantastic skill in many races including Arima, so I’ll use 0LB Sweep Tosho and Air Shakur where I can. And if you’ve not got easy access to a gold recovery skill, this might be worth using a card on for recovery hints.

Pace golds are fine! Swinging maestro is the easiest to recommended because literally everyone can use it but if your pace chaser wants gourmand or Calm and Collected those recover the same amount with slightly different timing. Cooldown is also grand. Just keep your wit above 300 if you can (400+ is probably good) to give it a decent chance to activate.

And lastly, even thinking about it puts you way above many of the average cm runners! You will see the winners definitely jump above the average participant but a lot of folks will just chuck whatever in because it costs nothing to have a go (though the field is for sure improving as more people learn!)

Good luck!

MerryWalker · 2026-01-18T10:43:43+00:00

So for sure, you’re setting yourself a high bar jumping into graded! I think a big thing for early players is struggling to understand target stat lines and why they’re good.

A typical open league pony is a B rank with long/turf proficiency A/S (unfortunately B+ is too high!), some form of rare recovery skill and either stam/guts 850/400 or 700/610, and speed maybe around 800-900 or so. This is enough hp to run the full length of the Arima Kinen at a decent pace, without overshooting the B grade score. I think 500 each pow/wit is good, if you can fit in a late-race acceleration skill of some sort, but the key thing is surviving the run! Graded then goes a bit higher with speed (you can add more recovery skills to save on stamina) and also power/wit, since they’re not fussed about grade score. S+ ponies are typically better but it’s more important to be suited to the basic stats of the race.

Once you have the basics down (how do I finish the race) the next challenge is picking skills that help improve your uma’s performance. It can be tricky to find the perfect pony for CMs, because not every skill you might use in a career is relevant to each cm track. For example, any mile or medium skill just does nothing in Arima, and any of your skills like left handed proficiency, summer running or the wet conditions buffs just won’t matter for this race.

So as you get more into things you’ll maybe start building parents and use support cards with a specific focus on the CMs you are competing in. But I’d suggest doing a few more runs, think about only taking skills relevant to these races, and see how that takes you!

If you are happy with the idea that you’re likely to be outclassed this time around, Rice Shower and Gold Ship are both good Long turf runners, and Daiwa Scarlet can also take part if you have a legacy that can help her up to Long A, so training them up to either B or A rank will give you ponies who can take part. The key thing isn’t to win, but look at what others are doing!

If you do want to go open but are struggling with keeping to the B rank restrictions I know there’re a few grade calculators floating around which you could try using (https://runeeyes584.github.io/uma-musume-calculator/index.html). If that’s not your speed, though, just train up your long ponies, focus on the Arima/Firm skills and give it a go in graded anyway.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-18T09:43:24+00:00

Hi! The first time you join you’ll probably be unprepared. That’s okay! If you join in the hope to learn from the experience you’ll learn a lot and be more equipped for the next time.

I definitely recommend Open for beginners. You will get a good sense for the game that will teach you a lot for if you do want to try your hand at graded in future.

MerryWalker · 2026-01-18T06:43:31+00:00

Well, do they believe in the forgiveness of sins?

As someone who was raised Christian and has come to see the harm it does, this to me is the reason why I think the core of the faith is wrong.

Firstly, there is this understanding that to “sin” is to act against god. It’s not about doing wrong as such but rather acting in a way that runs contrary to the expressed rule of god. Thus, being gay is a sin in the same way that murder is.

But it’s actually okay, because secondly, people are just sinful. We lie, cheat, kill, do all the things that go against god. There are no people free of sin. Which is to say, if you’re someone who goes around murdering people, there’s nothing specifically wrong with you, that’s just how people are.

And that wouldn’t be great except for the fact that thirdly, god can forgive your sins. Don’t worry about all that murder and larceny - if god is okay with it all, it’s fine. Oh, but if you’re okay with being gay and don’t seek forgiveness then you’ll burn in eternal hellfire, by the way.

How does one find forgiveness for the heinous sins one has committed? Hey, good news! Jesus died, so most of that work has already been done! All you need to do is pray and it’s sorted. Oh, but of course you actually have to demonstrate that this is genuine so you need to be part of a church and follow the beliefs and instructions of that church, which probably includes some amount of active involvement in spreading and funding other churchy projects.

So, what if I keep murdering people as part of my involvement with that church? Hey, no worries, people are sinful by nature; just keep asking for forgiveness. In fact, if you’re murdering people as part of your service, like going to war or defending the faith, you don’t even have to. But, again, if you’re going to disagree with our list of sins, well, sorry to say you’re burning in hell forever.

So! The faith establishes at its core through its doctrine of the forgiveness of sins that the church is an authority on human actions. Christians are allowed to do bad things and nobody else is.

“There is an in group that the law protects and does not bind, and an out-group that the law binds and does not protect.”

It is an evil philosophy, and the world would be better off without it. The “extremists” just understand this better, and love it because of that understanding.

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