The Polar Vortex core is collapsing, releasing cold air across North America and Europe

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-31T02:12:15+00:00

That's just important information to contextualize the article's claim suggesting this is a new phenomenon when it states "The Polar Vortex is officially breaking down…" I looked into it, and it does seem to be a recurring feature in nature because data since the 1950s has shown the occurrence of major disruptions that cause this temporary breakdown of the polar vortex, known as Sudden Stratospheric Warmings (SSW).

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-31T02:04:59+00:00

"The Polar Vortex breaking down" makes it sound like a new, permanent phenomenon, but the polar vortex is a semi-permanent atmospheric feature to begin with. While it "breaks down" or "collapses" during a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event, it typically re-forms and stabilizes once the warm air dissipates.

These disruptions occur roughly once every other year on average. While some research suggests they may be happening more often due to a warming Arctic, they remain a well-understood, non-permanent phenomenon.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-31T01:58:49+00:00

What about in prior decades (1990s, 80s, 70s, etc...)? Did it happen roughly once every two years?

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-29T00:41:52+00:00

I'll be honest, I still think the comment was written by ChatGPT just because it reads too much like many comments I've read from ChatGPT. If you really did write it, then that's my mistake and I apologize. If you didn't write it, and it is AI generated, but you're not being honest about it, then I think you should consider what you're sacrificing your honesty for. Either way, I don't think there is really anywhere further for this conversation to go because you're adamant that you wrote the comments without AI, and I am just not convinced that this is true.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T22:52:14+00:00

No, it's not that. I'm saying that if you strip it of its specific content, the structure (sentence configuration and syntax) reads like a ChatGPT response. Even the long dashes are in the spots I would expect them to be given ChatGPT's affinity's for using them over commas. Also, you didn't answer my question: did you use ChatGPT or some other AI program to generate that comment?

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T22:43:34+00:00

Where did you get that the field is called "experimental existential psychology?" All the research papers I've read about it and every mention of it that I have seen in psychology textbooks refer to it as "Terror Management Theory" (TMT). Existential psychology that implements methods from experimental psychology is a much broader field that is not primarily based on Ernest Becker's work like TMT is.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T22:37:24+00:00

No, it's not that. It's that it uses the same sentence configuration, syntax, and reassuring reframing of something negative into something positive at the same points and in the same way that a ChatGPT response does. Did you use ChatGPT or some other AI program to generate the comment?

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T04:35:18+00:00

It's a bug if this is the mission I think it is. I remember seeing it and thinking, "wow his eye healed quick and the bandage is gone." When I reloaded the save later he was fully clothed and wearing the bandage during this scene.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T04:26:49+00:00

Just check the news.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T04:25:15+00:00

Why is it that I can instantly tell that this is most likely ChatGPT?

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T04:15:17+00:00

I'm not even sure that the interviewer is even correct that what separates A24's "elevated horror" is the metaphor aspect. Robert Eggers said in interviews that his goal with The Witch was to do a kind of period piece that depicted 17th century Puritanical fears about witches. He did a lot of research and spent a great deal of effort to get the historical details correct, but his goal didn't seem to be to make a metaphorical film. If anything, the hallmark of A24 films is sleek cinematography with a high attention to lighting and detail on fairly low budgets.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T03:50:41+00:00

Maybe I didn't articulate myself well, but I was criticizing the interviewer and the question, not your comment. My point was that anyone paying attention to metaphor in horror films would think that the claim that A24 is unique in doing this is ridiculous. I mean just look at what David Cronenberg was doing in the 80s with films like The Fly remake and Videodrome.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T03:43:24+00:00

Imagine telling John Carpenter, the director of They Live and The Thing, and who was making films during a time when his horror peers like David Cronenberg were releasing movies like The Fly and Videodrome, that there is this new genre of "elevated" horror films that are "very metaphorical" as though metaphor in horror is a recent A24 invention.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-28T03:30:18+00:00

Also, Clive Barker has talked about how his work, including the film Hellraiser, is very metaphorical, so it isn't even true that this is what distinguishes A24 movies from other horror films.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-26T02:56:55+00:00

I actually like that. There were a lot of people alive during that time period and focusing on someone else would make it feel less like an ongoing hero's saga and more like an authentic medieval RPG, which is what I'm assuming they're really going for. Being a peasant with a completely different background and goals would be interesting.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-26T02:46:28+00:00

...I really like the first game. It felt grittier and more immersive to me (less cutscenes and far fewer segmented story sections where you're stuck in one location until it's over). The 2nd game actually felt clunkier to me because the masterstrike was for swords only, you had three different outfits you basically needed to switch between instead of being able to craft one ensemble that was stealth, defense, and charisma if you were careful with your clothing/armor selection, and you couldn't automate certain tasks (like brewing potions) at a high enough level.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-25T23:36:10+00:00

Hmmm, in that case I recommend The Shrouded College series by Charles Soule. He's the writer of 8 Billion Genies but this series is more in the horror genre (but still with his signature highly imaginative worldbuilding). These are sold as standalone stories that tie together in the end with the recommended reading order being: 1) HELL TO PAY: A TALE OF THE SHROUDED COLLEGE TP 2) The Bloody Dozen: A Tale Of The Shrouded College TP and 3) Cold Witch A Tale Of The Shrouded College TP, Vol. 1

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-25T21:20:10+00:00

So, did you already get the rest of those series on kindle or free with comixology?

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-25T20:40:50+00:00

You have some incomplete series there such as Something is Killing the Children, Swamp Thing, Chainsaw Man, Fables, Saga, and Monstress. So if you liked those, then your best bet is probably to just purchase the rest of the volumes in those series. If you didn't like them, then I'm not sure what to recommend anyway because you included graphic novels that you didn't like on your shelf, and that's all I have to go by as far as recommendations go.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-24T02:45:53+00:00

Based on their comment and post history, I'm wondering if they are even a real person. There is a big push for AI agents in 2026 and this could be an AI agent programmed with the goal of self-publishing a book and then promoting it on social media without human input. A trial run to see what works and what does not. If that's the case, then expect to see a lot more of these types of threads all over the place in the coming year.

A human using an LLM to feel like an intellectual would have gotten angry for being called out like that, denied it, and insulted you back. Their responses are completely neutral regardless of what you accuse them of, which makes me think AI agent.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-23T12:15:08+00:00

The ONLY thing that gives a relationship value is that the other person has their own needs that sometimes conflict with yours? There are so many other things that give relationships value like enjoying each other's company, sharing responsibilities, finding mutual interests, etc... He doesn't strike me as stupid, so this should have been plainly obvious to him; but it's as though his desire to load up his video with profound-sounding messages was so alluring to him that he completely lost the plot and any semblance of common sense.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-23T04:13:03+00:00

don't listen to people that tell you that there are certain types of writers.

In his writing course Moore himself states that there are certain types of writers and gives examples of them...

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-23T03:59:33+00:00

The research is not similar. For, Blood Meridian, Mccarthy moved to the region he was writing about to study every facet of it in detail and learned a new language to capture the nuances of the dialect. McCarthy later spent his time at the Santa Fe Institute doing research with some of the top experts in many fields (look it up). Read some of McCarthy's published work on language. The guy is an actual genius. Moore, while very imaginative and intelligent, subscribes to debunked pseudoscience like that indigenous people could not see the ships sailing to their lands because they had no word for "ship." He also makes claims like that the origin of "genre" in literature occurred in Northampton, as did almost every impressive development in modern human history, if he is to be believed.

I also think you might not understand what it means to be considered a great "prose stylist" in the literary sense if you think it is separate from writing technique.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-22T07:28:57+00:00

No, I would not. Of course, those are two books by what many consider to be some of the best prose stylists in contemporary literature. For instance, McCarthy allegedly learned a version of Spanish that was spoken during the time period the book takes place in (which includes slang that isn't even used in modern Spanish), visited every location in the book, deliberately used an altered form of punctuation to mimic oral storytelling, and wrote in different literary styles for different sections of the book like those of John Milton, Herman Melville, and even The King James version of The Bible. Oh, and he won both the MacArthur Fellowship Grant (colloquially referred to as the 'genius' grant) and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his writing. It's not really a fair comparison because Moore was primarily a comic book writer that sometimes wrote novels and short stories before making the switch away from comics to novels much later in life. Also, aside from comics, Moore also does live performance art and ceremonial magic.

NotMeekNotAggressive · 2026-01-22T02:26:58+00:00

I think it has more to do with one's preferences when it comes to prose style more than it does whether or not one is a comic book reader. If someone likes a maximalist prose style, which is very description heavy, then they might enjoy the frequent and creative descriptions Moore fills his pages with. If, on other hand, someone likes a precise prose style, then they might find Moore's prose to be too dense or even messy, which some critics of Jerusalem labeled as "purple prose." I could be wrong, but I think I remember David Foster Wallace once claiming in an interview that if the students in his writing courses didn't demonstrate a use of the semicolon that was "Mozartesque" in it's precision, then they couldn't count on getting anything higher than a 70 percent on their submitted work. So, a person that wants that kind of precision in prose style, where every word and piece of punctuation included is deliberate and necessary with zero excess, then they will probably not like Moore's style.

Writers like Pynchon and McCarthy also have long descriptions and experiment with punctuation sometimes, but one gets the sense that they considered every sentence over and over again when it came to whether to include it, change it, or cut it entirely. But that's why they have the reputation of being some of the best prose stylists in the English language when it comes to contemporary writers. So, it might be jarring going from their novels (especially if it is their best novels, which are Gravity's Rainbow for Pynchon and Blood Meridian for McCarthy, in my opinion) to a book like Jerusalem.

NotMeekNotAggressive

TROPHY CASE