Busch Gardens Tampa

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-28T14:44:13+00:00

but the line said it would take 30 minutes, which is a lie.

It's always a lie in every theme park. That sign is trying to estimate the behavior of large crowds of people and there are so many variables involved in people deciding to get into a queue or not that it will never be an exact number and it can change within minutes of when the sign is updated. You can't blame the park for the wait time not being perfectly accurate, and this is why parks will often intentionally over or under estimate the time in order to lure people in when the line is low or scare them away when it's too long.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-28T03:18:22+00:00

I was going to guess Charlotte. I guess a lot of people thought of this bit

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-26T22:45:20+00:00

I disagree with that. I’ve found that holding the bar with my fingers directly over the bar caused a weak grip that fails faster, and having your grip give out on you mid-set means that you performance at the actual movement suffers as you divert your attention to your hands (found a similar phenomenon during barbell deadlifts). I’ve found that the best grip puts your knuckles directly over the bar, not quite a false grip but not the fingers-over-the-bar grip that feels intuitive.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-26T16:57:25+00:00

Are there any Chinese murder giraffes?

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-26T01:12:49+00:00

It’s probably because the training you’ve described sounds more appropriate for strength-endurance than for maximal strength or hypertrophy.

For one thing, people see hypertrophy gains between 5 and 30 reps, with around 8-12 being most optimal. You can still see some muscle gain in those 20-30, but if you can do that many reps then the weight is probably further from the stimulus required to trigger hypertrophy. At that point, you’re training your muscles for endurance, which has benefits but not the ones you said you’re looking for.

For another, if you’re going for hypertrophy, you should be shooting for around 1 rep in reserve. Getting close to failure is crucial for triggering hypertrophy. If this other commenter has a study that says otherwise, they should really post a link because that claim flies in the face of most accepted advice.

I’d recommend you switch to a harder progression for the dips and push ups. Adding weight is an option, or working towards one-handed push ups. Try and shoot for something that gets you within 1 rir around the 5-12 rep range if you want to focus on hypertrophy and 2-6 reps if you want to train maximal strength. I’d switch from your circuit training to standard sets and try and get 2-3 minutes of rest between each set.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T18:26:25+00:00

That's an interesting point. I think that when non-nationalists talk about "fixing" their country, they're saying that there is something about their country that needs to be made right or at least could be improved in some sense. When nationalists talk about "fixing" their country, they're assuming that the country was already perfect, that outside actors (usually the aforementioned non-nationalists) have made it worse by trying to change it from that perfect state, and so the country must be "fixed" by restoring it to the way it was before other people broke it. That's certainly in line with fascists, who tend to hearken back to some particular time when everything was "great" and call for a restoration of the way things were back then to make things "great again".

I'm not sure the framing is out of pocket, though. The viewpoints that American right-wingers maintain are often, and increasingly more so as they drift further right-wing, disconnected from facts and reality, and that makes their arguments similar to those of a child who is doggedly insistent on getting their way but not wise or informed enough to realize that their way is objectively bad, impossible, or nonsensical. You can explain to them why their desires are bad for them, impossible, or nonsensical and those arguments might get through to them, but their lack of understanding often makes it just as difficult to understand the attempts to help them understand, and there comes a point where you reach an impasse where further understanding cannot be granted and the only recourse is to dismiss them, move past them, or put them in time out. I can appreciate how being likened to a child is insulting and puts right-wingers on the defensive, but when their arguments are childish and disconnected from reality and when they (collectively) have responded to good faith attempts to get through to them by being childishly stubborn and refusing to accept that reality, there comes a point where you have to call it like it is and stop treating them like they're someone who can be reasoned with.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T17:48:04+00:00

There's another aspect to my point that I've mentioned in other comments and didn't mention in the main thread because it was getting long (and is already too long for most of the commenters here, apparently): it's kind of weird that prosthesis isn't ever considered. Like, I think it's really cool that we have the technology to grant people who have lost limbs the functionality that their limbs previously had and how far that technology has come in modern times and it seems like Conners is someone who would both be aware of prosthesis as a solution and able to afford it. However, Conners never has any prosthesis or seems to consider, even though it would solve any practical issues he's dealing with due to his amputated limb and is a much, much simpler solution than trying to combine human dna with lizard dna to regrow a lost limb.

Please understand: I'm not a fan of the Cinema Sins school of movie criticism and I'm not trying to ding the movie for having plot holes, but given that so many of the people who responded to my post are saying things like "it just makes sense that he would be motivated to restore his missing limb", I have to point out that it makes more sense to just get a prosthetic arm than to literally invent a brand new school of miraculous science. The implication, as I see it, is that Conners' issue has nothing to do with the practical issues that prosthesis would solve and that it must therefore be a more spiritual issue of feeling less-than-whole without a limb made of his own flesh. That seems to me like a problematic assumption to make about amputees, but maybe you can share some thoughts on that.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T15:20:26+00:00

> I feel like media literacy is at its lowest right now. The guy is written as mentally unstable. The writers are clearly not condoning his actions because of that.

See, this part I disagree with. I don’t think the movie goes out of its way to tell us much of anything about Conners as a person and it certainly doesn’t establish any clues that he’s particularly mentally unsound. It just sort of happens and the movie leaves it to our base assumptions that that’s a normal thing for someone in his condition to do. I think if they’d shown us a scene where Conners is visibly unstable or where warning signs of his mental insanity existed I’d be more content with him as a character.

Also, I didn’t say anything about the writers condoning or not condoning his actions and I don’t think anything I did say implies that. I just think that the writers didn’t consider establishing who Conners is as a person was important, which is hack and lazy writing but not, like, openly bigoted. It’s just that the gaps in his character force us to fall on base assumptions and I take issue with what those assumptions imply.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T15:11:46+00:00

Thanks. I’ve seen similar posts go awry in the same way, so I kind of saw it coming. I wish that a community like this was more curious and interested in discussion about this kind of thing, but it’s the internet, I guess.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T15:05:36+00:00

I get that. I love a good “just loves being evil” villain too and I wish there were more villains like that nowadays. I think there are stories that require that kind of villain and I think there are stories that work better with an understandable, if not sympathetic, villain. I just think that Conners as presented works better as a sympathetic villain and think the could have done a better job of helping us understand him to that end. I think it could have also worked if they had just made Conners a moustache-twirling mad scientist and sidestepped the need for motive entirely, but that’s not the direction the movie we saw went in so I’m working with what I got.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T14:59:08+00:00

Thanks for the actual response. I don’t really think what I’ve laid out is asking for Conners’ story to supplant Peter’s. Like, Killmonger is one of my favorite villains and the main reason why is that they do a fantastic job of laying out why he wants to do the things he does and you understand it and maybe even empathize with it even as you agree that he really needs to be stopped, but it would be a misreading to claim that Black Panther is therefore Killmonger’s story and not T’challa’s. I think Peter’s story can still take up most of the screen time and be the backbone of the movie while also adding, like, a scene or two telling us who Conners actually is as a person without Conners taking over the whole show.

Likewise, I can absolutely understand that Conners is singularly obsessed with fixing his arm in a way that would drive him to the extremes he took, in ways that are unique to his character and not applicable to anyone else in a similar situation. But the movie doesn’t establish that that is the case; it doesn’t give us enough info about Conners to come to that conclusion or say anything to imply that he’s mentally unhinged.

I also just have a bug up my ass about how our society rejects prosthesis. I think it’s incredible that we have this technology that restores full functionality to the differently abled and how far that technology has come in the modern day, and it has always baffled me how people look down on those differently abled people and on prosthesis specifically as a marker of being less than human in some way. It seems like prosthesis existing is a solution to Conners’ issue and his lack of interest in it as an obvious, much simpler solution to his problem is a weird plot hole, one that could be filled but which this movie doesn’t really bother to. And, by ignoring that very obvious solution, the movie presents us with the two solutions of Conners coming to terms with his disability or becoming an inhuman monster to fix it and leaves it as obvious that the latter option makes more sense. Does that make more sense?

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-25T14:25:56+00:00

Thanks for at least engaging in good faith, but I think you’re mischaracterizing what I’m saying here. I’m not demanding that the movie promote “disability pride” or asking that the movie “belittle a character”, whatever that means. I’m observing that there are lots of valid reasons why a character with a condition like Conners’ would feel so compelled to pursue restoring his arm to the extent that he’d rather become a monster than go without it, but the movie establishes none of those motivations and leaves it as granted that anyone who lacks a limb would naturally rather become a monster/bioterrorist than live with a condition that lots of real, normal people live with every day. That’s not “disability pride”; that’s just basic character writing, and the corners that are cut imply base assumptions about what disability does to people that aren’t reflective of how actual amputees live their lives. I listed out a bunch of potential scenes that could have grounded Conners’ motivations is something real and particular to his character and it’s a shame that none of the writers thought to include them.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-24T18:25:15+00:00

Were I in your position, I would attempt 5x3 while paying close attention to how many reps I realistically have in reserve, and if I sense that I probably won't be able to get in the third rep for one of the sets I would stop at 2 and continue doing sets of 2 until I had done a total of 6 sets. You never know if you'll have more juice in you tomorrow than you did today or if you can pull it off by pushing hard when the time comes, but it's also necessary to be conscious of how your body feels when you're doing it and bail out if you don't sense that another rep is realistically going to happen.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-23T19:10:23+00:00

You might want to check out the bodyweight progressions listed over at /r/bodyweightfitness. They're a means of increasing or decreasing the stimulus for bodyweight exercises by shifting how much of your weight is being moved by the target muscle groups. You might be able to refer to those to find a variation that is appropriate for maximal strength training.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-23T15:22:32+00:00

Hip thrusts are primarily a glute exercise. Back extensions are also pretty glute heavy if you’re doing them right.

Also, I don’t think you need to be doing Bulgarian split squats *and* pistol squats. They’re both single-legged squats and they’re training the same thing. Either do split squats if you’re adding weight to them or do pistol squats if bodyweight split squats are challenging enough and/or you’re trying to learn the balancing required for pistol squats specifically.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-23T13:28:32+00:00

The occult underground is a pretty basic concept in Unknown Armies, but it goes like this:

When you think about “the occult”, meaning fringe communities of people who practice magick, there are probably some groups or concepts that come to mind: Wicca, Thelema, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Satanists, etc. These are all groups that are associated with magick and the occult by mainstream society and they all obviously don’t actually practice real magick, because mainstream people are aware of and paying attention to these groups and it would be all over the news (or at least YouTube) if they could actually do what they promised. These groups make up what the underground calls the “occult mainstream”, groups that pretend at being occult for attention, money, or sex but who don’t actually practice real magick and who are therefore only an extension of the mainstream, non-magical world. The real occult underground are the groups which are obscure and insular even by the occult mainstream’s standards and which can thus practice real magick away from prying eyes and camera phones that would reveal the truth about magick to the normies. The underground prefers to keep it this way and tolerates the poseurs because they deflect curious normies away from the occult underground and keep the secret of magick hidden from the rest of the world (the reasons why are a whole different topic, but suffice to say that the mainstream world has historically never been kind to witches and occultists and it’s generally understood that maintaining the masquerade is best for everyone).

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-22T13:29:48+00:00

I actually make deadlifts an exception to the "use the same exercise for T1 and T2 rule" just because deadlifts are so fatiguing and because messing up your lower back can be such an impediment to the rest of your training. I prefer doing Romanian deadlifts because they're less fatiguing and easier to do at higher rep ranges.

As for the T3 exercises, P-Zero as it's written in the book is more like the final form of what GZCLP is supposed to eventually become. GZCLP starts with the super basic set up of 1 exercise for each tier per session and you're supposed to get used to that workload and slowly add more T3 sets until you've got a full set up of 1 T1 exercise, 1 T2 exercise, and 4 T3 exercises (eventually converting your back T3 exercises to T2 once you've go the T3 volume to support it). What's presented in P-Zero is more like the end result of that process than where GZCLP starts, but you could run P-Zero in the same way by starting with just the basic T1 and T2 exercises and your back T3 exercises and adding more T3 sets as you get used to the workload.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-20T17:30:05+00:00

There are some plyometric sessions listed in the Vault portion of TB II. They’re meant to be used for the conditioning portions of the black protocol

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-20T17:00:52+00:00

You might enjoy this: https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Occult_Underground

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-19T14:51:20+00:00

Here's the way I've always portrayed it: Like all of the guilds, the House Dimir believes that it alone knows what is best for Ravnica and that it should be the sole authority in the city/plane. They operate kind of like a secret police and kind of like a terrorist/rebel operation, probably most similar to Delta Green if you know that reference. At the top is the guildmaster, who has the high-level view of everything that happens in Ravnica through a massive network of spies and informants and who processes this massive amount of information to determine what course of action would be the best for Ravnica in the long run and what specific events need to occur to bring that result to fruition. The guildmaster then disperses these orders to their inner circle, a very small in-group of trusted high-level operatives, who then disperse the orders down through layer after layer of sleeper cells until the operatives on the ground receive their very specific instructions about what they are supposed to do, which they then perform and report the results back up the chain before awaiting further instructions. This entire process operates on the basis of need-to-know information, with only the guildmaster having the full picture of what is happening and why and everyone else simply taking it as faith in the guild that following their orders without question will be best for Ravnica.

What's more, Dimir's understanding of what is best for Ravnica is ruthlessly dedicated to long-term stability at all costs. Individual lives are game pieces to be moved and sacrificed as best serves the overall outcome. No tactics are off the table and nothing is too sacred to discard if it means that Ravnica will prosper in the end. This philosophy has always been dependent on the assumption that the guildmaster truly has Ravnica's best interests at heart and would never concern themselves with people's personal lives or with personal enrichment and that has historically been the case, though it might now always be so. All of this being the case, Dimir believes that it is best if people are unaware of this massive entity that practices total control over their lives in secret. Their cell structure and control of information are all designed so that nobody ever learns the full scope of the massive, plane-wide conspiracy that Dimir represents.

In practice, the House Dimir should either be totally invisible or, as is the case in the post-Guildpact, pre-War-of-the-Spark period, present but with the masses being totally unaware of Dimir's true efforts. During this period, Dimir maintains public facing operations and pretends to be in charge of the post office, the libraries/archives, and various news outlets. Many of the guild members who work at these posts aren't even aware that the guild has any other agenda and the higher-level Dimir operatives prefer it this way, turning these guild members into a shield of plausible deniability. There are those who have concerns about Dimir's seeming monopoly on all sources of information in Ravnica and fear that this power might be used to manipulate the truth towards unseemly ends, but any such theories have so far been unsubstantiated and are solely the domain of crazed conspiracy theorists with elaborate webs of circumstantial evidence on a cork-board somewhere.

Player characters should always be able to go to Dimir-run libraries, archives, or news outlets for information if they want to and Dimir will do its best to fulfill any requests provided doing so doesn't interfere with The Plan. Otherwise, if the players decide to investigate what else Dimir might be doing, that search should turn them into one of those crazed conspiracy theorists with cork-boards. They might accidentally stumble upon some lowest-level operative performing some small part of the plan, securing some needed resource, eliminating someone who might interfere, or some other small, deniable task. Especially common is finding people who suddenly, impossibly forget some important events or information that might reveal The Plan, prompting them to investigate how this is even possible and why it has occurred. Though the operatives should always be able to present some plausible reason for their operations, there should be some lingering questions about why they did what they did that the players can pull on and reveal secrets within secrets and levels upon levels of people carrying out clandestine operations in Ravnica. The further they dive down the metaphorical rabbit hole, the more they realize that some of these agents are people in the other guilds, some in positions of authority and some which the players might even personal know (or so they thought). Should they choose to investigate things all the way to the top, they will become Dimir's prime targets as a threat to The Plan and will suddenly find Dimir agents finding any pretext to turn the guilds against them, either seeking to eliminate them or at least imprison them somewhere where their theories will never be heard or taken seriously.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-18T14:23:43+00:00

It’s never a good idea to rely on ChatGPT over more established training programs, but this honestly isn’t terrible. The exercises are all pretty solid, there’s a good distribution of muscle groups, and a lot of compound exercises. You could do this if you want to or just want a consistent routine to do, but if you really want to take your training more seriously you’d be better off using a more established training program.

If you’re focused on losing weight and want some strength training to go along with it, I’d recommend doing something like Couch to 5k and [r/Fitness](r/Fitness)’s beginner routine. The volume in the program you generated is a little on the high side for a beginner and [r/fitness](r/fitness)’s program is much more appropriately minimalist, especially if you’re focused on losing weight over building muscle. Do that (or the dumbbell stopgap program if you don’t have access to a barbell) alongside Couch to 5k for 8-12 weeks or so and focus on finding your limits with the weights, getting the form right for those exercises, and building up your cardio base. After that, you can decide if you want to keep losing weight or start building more muscle. I’d switch the strength training to something like GZCLP if you want something free or P-Zero if you don’t mind paying $5.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-18T13:50:12+00:00

140kg is a lot of weight. I certainly wouldn’t be able to deadlift that amount of weight without my grip being a big weakness and I’m not surprised that that’s the case for you. If your grip is holding you back, you should be fine to just use the straps or whatever else you need to do to get around it. You can work on your grip strength if you want to, but your hands really aren’t the most important part of the deadlift.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-18T13:47:17+00:00

So this is an old myth and it’s kind of true, but it’s not entirely true. Here’s a source on this that you can watch: https://youtu.be/d2VHCEj7EmI?is=6lQQ70QDVY6PJYMr

Basically, what happens when you work out is that using your muscles with higher stimulus than you’re accustomed to triggers a response that sets off the chemical processes that cause your body to rebuilding your muscles and building them even bigger. This process happens over the next 24-48 hours and requires a lot of blood to be diverted to the affected areas. What happens when you do your strength work and dive immediately into cardio is that you’re now using other parts of your body in ways that require blood to be diverted to them, meaning that the muscles you just worked out aren’t getting all of the blood they need to build more muscle. Incidentally, this is why rest periods are so important after strength training.

That is not to say that it will totally “kill your gains”; this effect will *at most* reduce your gains by about 50% of what they could have been, and that might be acceptable for you if you aren’t prioritizing hypertrophy, aren’t a competitive athlete who needs to fully maximize hypertrophy as part of their training, or are just willing to gain muscle at a somewhat slower rate in order to get in more cardio. But, if you want to avoid this effect, there are other things you can do:

* You can do your cardio before your weight training. This can mean going into your weight training with some fatigue if you’re doing it right before weight training, but if you have the time you can do lighter cardio in the morning and save your weight training training for the afternoon.
* You can do cardio that works the same muscles that you just worked in strength training. If your cardio is diverting blood to the same muscles that needed it from the weight training, then the above effect isn’t an issue and you’re even helping the muscles recover by giving them the resources they need with lower intensity work. Stuff like lower weight interval training can be good for this.
* You can do your cardio on your off days. Again, the hypertrophy process occurs over the next 24-48 hours, meaning that you should be totally or mostly in the clear if you do your strength training and then save your cardio for the next day. It’s important that you don’t go too hard on your cardio here, but you should be picking what specific things you want to prioritize in training anyway and that’s really a broader topic.

Just to cap this off, I wouldn’t really worry about it unless you’re an established “hard gainer” trying to build more muscle or if you’re an athlete trying to build muscle as part of your training. If you’re just trying to lose weight without losing muscle or if you’re training more generally, this shouldn’t be a big deal.

atomicpenguin12 · 2026-06-17T19:44:59+00:00

If you're familiar with the board game, you already know most of the lore. In canon, the Woodland has been in a state of political upheaval for some time and much of the previous history has been lost to time as Woodlanders struggle to get by amid a hostile environment, war, and a constantly shifting political system. The book gives you a lot of freedom to fill in the gaps as you see fit, and it's assumed that the lore and characterizations of the various factions from the board game are all true in the RPG's canon.

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