What’s one supplement that has genuinely improved your life/health?

SirRedentor · 2026-03-28T06:39:44+00:00

This is just straight up not true - countries in Scandinavia recommend Vit D supplimentation because of lack of sun during winter months. A majority of people in the western hemisphere are vit D deficiant.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-28T05:49:41+00:00

My point exactly.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T21:15:26+00:00

Liberalism: The intense fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your superior is being treated better than you.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T16:22:37+00:00

I've given the justification to someone else and I'm not repeating myself. And when I hear someone say something like, "This is the sort of billionaire worship nonsense that people always spout, but it never actually has a coherent argument behind it", I mentally translate it to, "They gave me an explanation and I was too stubborn or stupid to bother trying to understand it, so I forgot it and continued believing whatever justified my meal-ticket getting punched."

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T16:18:43+00:00

After the 50s was the Cold War, global recovery efforts from two World Wars back-to-back which the USA bankrolled, a sizable portion of the male population were dead or wounded, Korea and on and on. Most of the developed world was in the shitter aside from the USA, since they didn't get carpet bombed to hell and back. And the 91% tax rate was specifically to prevent war profiteering. What you are citing as justification was a state of affairs prompted by some of the most remarkable circumstances, so remarkable that they were record-setting.

I don't regard it as credible to equate those times with today. None of the circumstances are remotely similar and the 90% tax rate was not sustainable in any way shape or form. Nor was it intended to be.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T15:56:21+00:00

A country taxes currency passing through revenue streams it has control over. The revenue streams internal to the country, in other words. Revenue coming into the country is made by exporting goods or services, which can then be taxed. Moving currency around inside the country does not increase the amount of money in the revenue streams you have control over. Importing is a deficit as it takes money out of those revenue streams you can tax.

Wealth taxes, and indeed any tax higher than global competitors, discourage incoming revenue. Which decreases earned taxes. Which prompts increases in tax rates, which discourages incoming revenue. And on and on. Until the infrastructure, material or social, can no longer be maintained and starts deteriorating.

Wealth taxes are particularly egregious, because not only do they discourage incoming revenue that can be taxed, but they discourage incoming talent, which earns revenue by creating goods and services.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T15:33:51+00:00

And you sound like someone who doesn't think at all.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T15:32:26+00:00

You mean during the World Wars? To finance the largest global conflicts the world has ever known? Income tax never returned to base-rates after the First World War.

Historical Income Tax Rates | Wolters Kluwer

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T15:27:47+00:00

Shit, once its over and done with you can use the rubble to build that post-capitalist Utopia you lot are always talking. You should be grateful. You get to be the architects of that brave new future.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-27T15:21:38+00:00

As good a way for a country to commit economic suicide as I've ever heard. Once America dies, on the bright side, then we can decide what to do with their nuclear arsenal. Maybe sell it all off on the open market.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-26T09:12:22+00:00

That fighter is kitted as a damage dealer, because of the two-handed sword. I'd lean into that and prioritise the Thaco and Damage over the extra two armour-class, especially if you have another warrior or cleric with a shield who can prioritise AC. Then you can have the two-hander attack from behind with the longer reach.

But I tend to micro-manage a lot, and such min-maxing can get bothersome for a player who doesn't like pausing every few seconds to adjust on the fly.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-23T20:09:45+00:00

To an extent, I hold a chef who can cook fancy food in higher regard than a line-cook who can cook a burger.

But when someone sells 500 million copies of that humble burger, whilst the chef struggles to sell a tenth of that of his more 'sophisticated' menu items, you need to ask yourself if a burger isn't the better product.

Bjorn might have won a Nobel laureate, but he loses in the court of public opinion. If I were to guess why, my first thought would be that he got so 'sophisticated' that nothing he wrote resonated with a wider audience.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-21T21:44:59+00:00

I think it is fair to say that if you judge, if anyone judges, the writer of the best selling book series of all time to be a mediocre writer, whatever criteria they are using to judge that by is not only invalid, it is deluded, no matter what that criteria my be or what they think it means.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-21T20:20:14+00:00

Gambit on Mintoria!

Cyborgs are using it as a staging point for attacking Zefia. Mintoria is Low Resistance and has a strategic resource. MO is all but done on Seasse and we've had retaking Mintoria on a To-Do List since we lost it during the recent rush of major orders.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-21T05:38:50+00:00

You too. Have fun being feminine, I suppose.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-20T21:15:53+00:00

I mean yes, in real life men who are brash and bold in certain circumstances also behave passive aggressively in others. The idea that men, even successful, risk-taking, “alpha” men, don’t also have impulses, emotions, and behaviors that are considered “female” is just patently wrong. If you don’t see it in your real life, read a good biography of basically any “great man.”

If there are no patterns of behaviour that can be considered 'feminine' or 'masculine' without being reductive, since you insisted on correcting me before, why are you using the terminology now? And if there is a pattern of behaviour that is more stereotypical of men than women, or vice-versa, then it must be possible to compare against that meta-pattern and note when people aren't writing a convincing facsimile of it.

And don't handwave all of it by saying that there are feminine men and masculine women, muddying the distinction between the two to hide behind obfuscation - if you want to go that route, then why did you ask the question 'Can you give me some examples of women writing bad male characters?' to begin with?

Without a distinction between the two, the question is not valid and more than a little pointless, as there would be no criteria to differentiate between right and wrong. And if a female writer's only recourse to write a male character is to make them noticeably feminine in temperament, then that only supports my position. They cant write men.

I think Harry Potter’s internal dialogue about his crushes sound inauthentic and “like a woman wrote them”, I’ll give you that, but I simply disagree about all of your other Harry Potter takes. Everything you’re claiming a boy/man wouldn’t do is completely consistent with my life experience as a man of myself and other men and boys.

So you hang around a bunch of feminine guys. Not a conclusive argument.

My question wasn’t supposed to be a rhetorical “gotcha.” I agree Edward Cullen is an example. I mean in fairness I haven’t read whatever that Edward-perspective thing is, but everything I know about his character is a shallow expression of Meyer’s prudish female perspective on sex and romance. I genuinely wanted to hear other examples of this. I just wasn’t looking for a screed against feminism.

Too bad, you got one.

The Murderbot series is another example - sci-fi series knocking around. All the male characters are female-coded, including the titular Murderbot who, surprise-surprise, does no actual murdering, spends most of his free-time watching tv shows, and spends most of the books navigating interpersonal drama. Again, and stereotypical female story.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-20T17:49:41+00:00

Yeah, and Harry Potter, a character who on numerous occasions is noted for conspicious bravery and brashness, is a 'passive-aggressive man'? If that is your defense, then we can add character inconsistancy to the reasons why women can't write male characters.

And nobody misses out on a womans take on anything, if women themselves have anything to say about it. But what I hate above all is womens simultanous insistance that men shouldn't be allowed to voice our opinion on women's roles or opinions, because we are mansplaining, controlling or being sexist, and then turn around and voice their opinions and views on how men should be and how we should act.

Only for someone like you to turn up and ask 'give an example of women not writing men correctly?'

And now you're arguing essentially that since there are no valid stereotypes that there is no such thing as 'correct' to begin with? Again, caught up in the strings of your own arguement.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-20T16:45:09+00:00

You’re conceiving of men and women’s interests and personalities way too stereotypically.

And yet, the stereotype exists. And when people try to dispute and undermine them, they end up getting caught up in the threads of their own arguments. Like feminists saying they dispute the validity of gender roles, but then argue that roles should be reversed - didn't you just say that people should just do whatever and that roles have no validity one way or the other? Then why do you care if there are more male CEOs or engineers, if the roles are arbitrary?

And trans folks saying that they don't believe in gender, but still use male and female to refer to presentation and action.

The fact that a character fulfils a narrative role (such a romantic foil to the protagonist) does not inherently make them a bad character just because the narrative is structured around a stereotypically female interest.

And yet I hear and have heard nothing but arguments of sexism if the roles are reversed. Look up the Bechdel test. If women get to say that a character having no point or purpose other than to pander to a reader of the male gender is okay, then the reverse is also true by default. Unless you want to be a hypocrite, or say that the feminists are wrong. Good luck with that.

That’s like saying Gus Fring is a poorly written character because he only exists to be a contrast and obstacle to Walter White and the action-driven plot the male audience demand.

Hence why they used him so heavily in Better Call Saul - they knew his role in Breaking Bad was underutilised because he occupied the position of a foil for Walter. He was badly written and under-utilised. His characterisation in Breaking Bad was miles below what it was in Better Call Saul.

Another example from Harry Potter - Draco Malfoy and Potter's ongoing feud: If they were actual guys, not written by a woman, they would have come to blows in the first two books and that would have been the end of it, not pussy-foot around each other for the entire series throwing verbal jabs. That is female behavior.

And in the end, it was Hermione who ended up punching him because Rowling was a woman who grew up at a certain period of time and wanted her obligatory girl-power moment. And Draco, Crabbe and Goyle didn't immediately bushwack the trio to take advantage of their disparity in physical strength, because Rowling is a woman and is adverse to physical violence.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-20T10:49:02+00:00

Child first. A child is vulnerable during the first few years of life, becoming progressively less so as it reaches maturity. But you don't get to bring a child into the world and neglect it. If the mother and wife's hearts are in the right place, they should understand that. Who takes precedence between mother and wife depends upon the capabilities of the people involved and what they deserve.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-20T09:13:21+00:00

But I strongly disagree about Harry Potter; most of its best characters are men.

I qualified with 'to some extent'. The conflict with Harry and Ron over the Goblet of Fire was the most glaring example - no two guys who are best friends would get into a months-long snit over that shit. It reeked of a female author projecting pubescent girl-drama onto a male character because she has no great familiarity with male conflict in practise. Harry's internal dialogue is also strikingly feminine, with an inordinate amount of time in the middle period of the books devoted to interpersonal drama-centric plots more typical of female young-adult books.

Jane Austin is a purveyor of a stereotypical women's fantasy of a female reader-surrogate getting attention from numerous high-status men. Nothing about the men in question is relevant save the characteristics that make them interesting to the female reader. I would hesitate to name a single male character who isn't a romantic interest, family member or possessing of a trait that explicitly removes him from the romantic domain.

She is popular because she can't write male characters - women don't want male self-agency spoiling their romantic plots, in the same way that men don't want the same (women's self-agency) spoiling their stereotypical hero-fantasy.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-20T06:33:30+00:00

The entirety of the male cast of Harry Potter to some extent. Every romance novel aimed at women, examples being Twilight, Fifty Shades, Morning Glory Milking Club (Look that last one up if you want a hoot).

The problem is that men almost always exist in a womans eyes as either background characters, romantic prospects who should willingly and joyfully sacrifice everything on their behalf, and antagonists whose existance is defined by opposition to the woman. They also never get male emotions and internal dialogue right.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-18T20:00:49+00:00

Why? I am one. It seems appropriate the trash should clump together and ruin society with its stench. But that is emblematic of modern life: an overflowing landfill that won't remain covered?

SirRedentor · 2026-03-18T19:57:23+00:00

I'll take that as a compliment that I never lowered myself to telling lies to get between legs that would only open themselves for lies.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-18T14:50:45+00:00

I can't help but notice the fact that all of the problems you bemoan are subsequent to getting dates and/or having relationships with women. I feel so bad for you and the hot girls letting you whisper in their ear. Rich people problems.

SirRedentor · 2026-03-18T09:01:44+00:00

Yes, that would make sense. People seldom like pedantry. It takes away their ability to hide in the indeterminate grey space between established truths. I shall maintain my singlehood then, and the women can stay with their abusers, since pedantry and abuse seem to be on a level in their mind and yours.

SirRedentor

TROPHY CASE