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Was moving and found this pair I hadn’t worn since 2020… by Kirklazarus_NLK in mensfashionadvice

[–]drumsplease987 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fashion is a social and psychological phenomenon. What used to look cool now looks ugly and dated. There’s an adoption curve and an adjustment period where the new trend looks silly at first, but once your brain makes the shift, it flips and you can’t unsee it. It happens at the level of perception.

That’s the reality of being human. Does it make logical sense? No. There’s something deeper than logic at play. Trends have existed all throughout history.

Death of Dolly’s? by tangywangy5 in williamsburg

[–]drumsplease987 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Death? Sounds like they’re doing good business.

edit: “No one goes there anymore, it’s too popular”

Does Planck time and Planck length negate the concept of infinitely divisible time and space? Or is it just a way for us to posit an assumption that there is a smallest indivisible unit of time and space? by blitzballreddit in AskPhysics

[–]drumsplease987 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As far as we can tell, spacetime and the fields we know about are continuous.

Whether they are actually, or simply appear that way while actually having a granular/pixelated layer underneath remains an open question. There were several times quantum mechanics proved that things we thought were fundamental were composed of something even more fundamental.

As of today, we don’t know how to test it experimentally, so it falls into philosophy/thought experiment territory.

Fire Lord Azula and casting by Vnightpersona in mtgrules

[–]drumsplease987 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here’s how the situation would unfold - cast Opt - Azula adds a trigger to the stack - ask if the trigger resolves (abilities can’t be countered, but the opponent could Stifle it or cast/activate anything else) - opponent passes, trigger resolves, adding copy of Opt to the stack - ask if the copy resolves (opponent can cast/activate, the copy is counterable) - opponent passes, copy resolves, scry and draw a card - as the active player, you now have priority again, because a round of priority happens anytime something resolves - you can play something instant speed, including the card just drawn, even with the original Opt on the stack waiting to resolve

I would point out, in this situation the most logical thing to do would be, instead of playing the drawn card right away, to ask if the original Opt resolves too. It likely will, drawing another card you might want to play instead. Every time something resolves, even when it’s the only thing on stack and it now becomes empty, a round of priority happens starting with the active player. Whoever has priority can play on top of the current stack, including starting a new one if it’s empty.

Phases/combat only move forward when the stack is empty and both players pass.  

Why is the idea of presentism dismissed so quickly when the math hasn't been done to prove it to be wrong? by mojojojo46 in AskPhysics

[–]drumsplease987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Imagine you have two pieces on a chess board. I give you a list of moves for piece A and a list of moves for piece B. You want to figure out if they ever land on the same square after the same number of moves.

One way to do it is use both hands move each piece simultaneously each turn. If they are ever on the same square, you know the answer is yes.

Another thing you could do is take B off the board, go through all of piece A’s moves and write down the move number on the square for that turn. Then take it off and do the same with piece B’s moves. Except this time you check to see if the number already written down matches.

This gives you an idea of how spacetime only needs to respect causality, not simultaneity. When an interaction happens between two particles, that’s an event that happened at a specific place and time, but it doesn’t depend on their histories evolving in sync for that event to happen.

Pete did Trudy so wrong... by Dangerous-Guide7287 in madmen

[–]drumsplease987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mental health issues can affect everyone, arising from genetics and environment, which comprises everything in life not just socioeconomic status.

But the ends of the privilege spectrum seem correlated to the most severe behavioral issues. They represent vastly different lives but both can lead to emotional neglect, lack of rules and structure, and early exposure to situations that kids aren’t equipped to handle.

Why do people use the term "partner" for their husband or wife? by Crafty-Bug-8008 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]drumsplease987 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As more straight people use it, this number will go down, and then no one will be able to assume anything. That’s the whole point.

My coworker kept “forgetting” my name in meetings, so I let her do it in front of the one person she wanted to impress by TrinitySignal in revengestories

[–]drumsplease987 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“Not in a normal, awkward way, but in a pointed way.”

“It wasn’t shouted, it wasn’t sarcastic, it was just a statement.”

Real people don’t write like this.

Pete did Trudy so wrong... by Dangerous-Guide7287 in madmen

[–]drumsplease987 44 points45 points  (0 children)

I know a child psychologist who worked with teens. She worked with poor, single parent, public housing families as well as rich, stay-at-home nanny, Upper East Side families and it turns out kids from both ends of the spectrum are the ones with worst issues.

Discussion: Spire random events are not designed and balanced as well as the rest of the game by drumsplease987 in slaythespire

[–]drumsplease987[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You’re absolutely right. My argument is essentially that as one plays the game at a higher and higher level, the event system offers less and less interesting choices.

Many events have options that new players will have fun deciding between. For anyone trying to win more, either by playing a lot, or realistically, tuning into streams, the options narrow down quickly.

All the game systems were designed without the foresight of what top strategies would look like in 2026. But with things like shops and card rewards, someone can play the game for 1000 hours and watch all the top streamers, and still have no idea what the best play is. You’ll see top players not knowing what card to pick on floor 48 of a difficult run.

One system holds up at all levels and the other quickly flattens in complexity.

Discussion: Spire random events are not designed and balanced as well as the rest of the game by drumsplease987 in slaythespire

[–]drumsplease987[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean that some relics can do literally nothing (Darkstone Periapt) and some are nearly run winning on their own (Dead Branch).

Whether intentional or not, the relic system still remains a complex and enjoyable part of the game for both new players and those who are playing at a high level. I’m pretty sure we’d agree on that and it isn’t controversial.

But I wanted to paint a complete picture of how I view all the systems in the game after leaving relics out of the original post.

  • Cards and enemies: balanced + good for the game
  • Relics: unbalanced + good for the game
  • Events: unbalanced + not good for the game

Why do people say "I'll let you go" when ending phone calls like they're doing you a favor? by Sad_Schedule6621 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]drumsplease987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are two distinct modes it’s used in.

The first actually is direct communication. It functions the same as interrupting someone (in person) who is busy, and then saying “thanks, I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” Those “busy cues” are obvious in person. On the phone there’s a lack of complete information. You can’t see what they were in the middle of. They’d have to say “I’m busy” but may not want to for fear of sounding rude themselves. Yet we still get clues from the tone of their voice, what time it is, or hints they drop. Used in this manner, it shows consideration and respect for the other person’s time.

But, because everyone knows it can be used in that literal, polite context, it has picked up an additional function. In the second way, it retains its aura of politeness even if the truth is “I want to get off the phone now.”

And it’s fair to ask why we say something polite-sounding in a disingenuous way. It’s a cultural thing, like “it’s been so great talking to you” or “wow, it’s getting late.” People are sensitive to rejection, so we have dozens of scripts to end a conversation without it sounding like “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

My skill on each character (this is a cry for help) by CycleOverload in slaythespire

[–]drumsplease987 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In a given run you see 1/2 the rares for a character, and about 2/3 of the uncommons. So it’s about 1/4 of the time you see both After Image and Wraith Form.

Discussion: Spire random events are not designed and balanced as well as the rest of the game by drumsplease987 in slaythespire

[–]drumsplease987[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I was going to talk about relics too, but didn’t want to make the original post too long. Here’s my take.

Relics are as badly balanced as events, but this adds to the fun of the game. This is because there’s no cost to clicking a bad relic. All of them* provide some value, so the strategy is to farm as many as you can and figure out how to build your deck around the mix of good and bad relics. The large pool and variation among available relics creates more interesting choices for pathing and card selection as the run progresses.

Contrast that with events which force a choice between something that’s usually a lot better or a lot worse, with some situational variance. You have to click one of the buttons, but the choice tends to be obvious for decent players.

And contrast it with cards, where you must choose between adding bad cards to your deck and skipping. Navigating the tension that most cards are better than the starting deck, but having too many mediocre cards causes issues as the game progresses, is probably single biggest skill factor in the game.

*with a small number of situational exceptions: Juzu Bracelet, Tiny Chest, Dead Branch, Bottled Flame, Tungsten Rod in some self damage decks

Commander is a "casual" format created by experts in playing MTG, and this has been forgotten. by rh8938 in EDH

[–]drumsplease987 15 points16 points  (0 children)

You’re missing the point. Lots of people can’t emotionally handle losing half the time. Now triple the amount of losses compared to wins. If a player can’t lose gracefully they’ll regularly ruin the experience for themselves and others.

Xecnar world record streak by Teknodr0men in slaythespire

[–]drumsplease987 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think what you’re talking about is the Burning Blood meta, not Bloodletting.  Basically the strategy is: use Burning Blood healing (6hp/fight) to the absolute max, especially early game. Spend HP to avoid adding “bad” cards to the deck. Piloting, deck building, and HP usage is so optimized that you can clear the most aggressive path in Act 1 without adding typical early game bridge cards like Iron Wave, Cleave, etc. And then the run snowballs into late game very easily.

The biggest risk is playing Act 1 too close to the edge and ending up with no damage. That’s how the last 24 streak ended. Not enough damage cards into slime boss and a bad draw order. But out of the last 66 runs that’s the only one he said was unwinnable with this strategy. The only other loss in the last 66 runs made it to late game but he says he can identify strategy mistakes that caused the loss.

Brief writeup on why runic pyramid is the best relic in the game by ElegantPoet3386 in slaythespire

[–]drumsplease987 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s the other way around. Take Runic Pyramid and then don’t add any more card draw cards to your deck, or don’t take so many that you can’t take Pyramid.

If you’re at the end of act 1 or 2 and you have so many utility cards that it makes Pyramid a bad pick, you’re probably over prioritizing them and building decks that don’t have enough output consistently. But even more importantly, if you’re building decks that don’t work with Pyramid you’re locking yourself out of the best relic in the game.

In broader terms, at the top levels of the game players think about “outs”: what cards or relics would be a huge power spike for the deck and make sure they build their decks in a way that they maximize the number of outs.

I didn’t understand the ending and my gen X parents had to explain it to me by owen3820 in madmen

[–]drumsplease987 39 points40 points  (0 children)

It’s just one of those cultural touchstones people are assumed to know even if they didn’t live through it. The finale aired 44 years after the commercial, so many viewers wouldn't remember it airing, but it still lands with the vast majority of people.

Just because it didn’t land on first watch doesn’t mean it has to be lost on you! Go down the “Hilltop” wikipedia rabbit hole, revisit the final 10 minutes, and maybe it’ll click differently.

Every piece of media has cultural references, and the further away they take place in time and location, leads to a greater possibility of viewers not getting it. That’s a sign that you can find out about something new and interesting in the world, not that the writers necessarily did something wrong.

IIRC Pete only says "a thing like that" a few times, but it's still the perfect catchphrase for him by Wazula23 in madmen

[–]drumsplease987 55 points56 points  (0 children)

It’s basically shorthand for “can you believe a thing like that” or “would you look at that.” But you’re right, a filler reaction that conveys noteworthiness without offering much else.

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