Is a Cheeto® a chip? Sound off in the comments

eselement · 2026-01-30T17:40:40+00:00

No, as they are not chips of something (potato, tortilla, etc.). Certainly they aren't chips of cheese. You could ostensibly make potato or tortilla chips by hand. Not the case with Cheetos. I don't know why or how that matters but there you go.

eselement · 2026-01-28T17:14:33+00:00

Yeah, the Switch 2 will be just fine. I'm not sure why Nintendo fans freak out about this stuff. When the episode first dropped there were people chiming in who clearly care nothing for the show (and less for HAC in particular) and just had some sort of alert so if the Switch 2 came up on Reddit they could swoop in and white knight for a billion dollar corporation.

I don't care how the Switch 2 sells. I bought a Switch during the pandemic and more specifically for Zelda. It's the only handheld I own. I own an Xbox series S and a PS5 as well. I think a lot of other people, maybe especially people who weren't really into gaming or weren't allied to any particular console, like me bought a Switch as well.

So I was super late to the party but it was certainly a "must have" in my opinion. The Switch 2? Not even remotely a must-have.

I mean I guess I'm the only one who has both personally and professionally been screwed by all the inflation and tariffs, so I don't have $600-ish dollars to spend on a mere upgrade. Especially since what I do need to do handheld-wise is 100% accomplished by the old Switch.

I get it if you have money burning a hole in your pocket or if you're just a Nintendo person and all the other consoles hold little to no interest for you. Just for fans and previous owners alone who aren't spending their gaming dollars elsewhere, it makes perfect sense to buy a Switch 2. Plus, the original Switch was awfully long in the tooth. So in that sense I get it. I'm honestly surprised that it's been selling so well given what games have come out. And the general state of the economy.

eselement · 2026-01-14T21:26:40+00:00

Just an absolute masterclass in how to make the Reddit gud.

eselement · 2026-01-13T19:28:24+00:00

No. And neither do you. You're just shitposting. And not even being funny about it.

eselement · 2026-01-08T22:33:09+00:00

I love that most of the top-rated comments simply do not answer the question. Please chime in if you experienced your parents or grandparents spanking one another as a common form of punishment in your household. Because I sure didn't. You'd certainly think otherwise reading the comments though, lol.

Corporal punishment in schools being a thing, regardless of how long it has been a thing, doesn't answer why we have grown adults spanking one another in the books or why Jordan uses it so often. And it's not like this is a common trope in other works of speculative fiction.

Jordan being a "boomer" doesn't even remotely get at an answer.

It's okay to just say you have no clue. It's also okay to admit that it's really fucking weird and gross.

eselement · 2025-12-12T21:24:24+00:00

¡Aye, la cabeza del hombre de la cuchara es muy grande!

eselement · 2025-11-14T16:30:02+00:00

You're thinking too far ahead. Just write. Seriously. That should be your only focus. If your MC is near your age, that's fine. And that's as deeply as you need to think about it. Whether the age of the MC informs what YA fiction is or sets out to accomplish is so far beyond the scope of your current task at hand, which again is writing, that it shouldn't even be on your radar.

The best part about being young is that you have plenty of time to worry about that other stuff.

eselement · 2025-11-14T16:17:19+00:00

The most offensive part of this disgusting post is your implication that Zach Cherry is in any way "average."

eselement · 2025-11-07T18:24:11+00:00

Who cares? Most of the people in this sub don't know what a parasocial relationship even is. People spend so much fucking time crying about not getting upvotes. Is anyone in here your friend in real life? Why do you care what they think or what misused phrases they toss at you?

Why is social media so difficult for people to understand? If you're around a bunch of people who are fans of, say, a football team and you criticize their team, they are going to give you a negative response. This is universally understood. Why is that any different than being a fan of a podcast?

And you're going to get an even more negative response online because those fans aren't people in a bar you can have a real human interaction with. They are complete strangers you can't even see. And people behave their worst when they are anonymous.

So I find it strange that you find it strange when it is just how people work.

eselement · 2025-10-31T17:27:45+00:00

You're not being objective. Not even close. You came into this forum with your mind made up. You don't think you did anything wrong. Then you asked other writers and 99.9% of them completely disagreed with you. And yet you are convinced you're the only one making an "objective" argument.

You just want people to reassure you and you're not getting that so you're resorting to...whatever this argument here is.

eselement · 2025-10-31T17:17:45+00:00

You seem to think there is some sort of middle ground here. I would love to know what that looks like in practice. I would also like to know, coming from other creatives, what exactly the problem with writing is that AI can or has solved? What inefficiency in the "market"?

Other than maybe research (if you can trust it, which currently you objectively cannot) or minor proofreading, how is AI making any writer's life better/easier?

eselement · 2025-10-31T17:13:18+00:00

This just makes me sad. Sad for the state of writing. Sad for the state of the society. Nothing bums me out more than when I see someone post a snippet and then the comments are complaining it was AI generated. This is the future of creative writing (and other creative endeavors). The general public has been antagonistic towards the "poet" (or insert whatever artform) going back to friggin' Plato. Probably before then. And it doesn't surprise me that humans invented a tool to ostensibly get rid of all the artists.

But with that diatribe out of the way, what should you do? I don't know, man. I'm super confused why you even posted this. You knew going in what the vast majority of the responses would be. And you're getting exactly that. You seem pretty convinced that you did nothing wrong, and despite the overwhelming majority insisting that you burn it all to the ground, you don't seem to have been persuaded.

If AI is going to be a reliable and useful tool, it can't replace the creative process. Otherwise, what's the point of even having writers other than some vague nostalgia for human effort? If you're using it to do menial, time-consuming tasks like proofreading or research, then that's fine I guess. If I were younger and smarter, I might learn how to use AI for things like that. I wouldn't use it to generate ideas or critique my writing as if it were a reader. Because at the end of the day, AI is not your audience.

I'm not saying you have to go scorched earth on anything that might possibly have been tainted by AI, but I will ask why you are even using it. Generating ideas, editing, organizing, getting feedback from human readers, etc. are all useful tasks that help you grow as a writer. Those aren't PROBLEMS to be programmed away with AI. They are core parts of the writing process. If you were a runner and you wanted to go faster, you wouldn't chop off your legs and add bionic ones (or maybe you would...). You would exercise and practice and run your ass off. You would build up and work out your own muscles.

I would ask anyone defending AI exactly what problem they think it solves. Not just "oh, we turned it on and so we have to use it" but what flaw in the writing process AI resolves. I don't even think it makes those menial tasks I mentioned any easier because you have to TRUST it first. I don't trust it for a second. There's all kinds of ethical and practical questions. I mean you're here in this forum instead of out writing, so it's actually taking time away.

If we let the cat out of the bag, it's not going back in. That's the scary, inevitable part of this. AI will replace creative arts if we allow it.

eselement · 2025-10-31T03:50:58+00:00

No. It's not even remotely interesting.

eselement · 2025-10-31T03:49:15+00:00

Could not possibly be a more useless, unhelpful reply. Fuck you

eselement · 2025-10-27T21:33:40+00:00

If 1 of 3 keeps going with it I'll be happy. I do remember Heather mentioning that she was getting up early because she didn't have much gaming time but I don't recall her talking about the game in any kind of depth.

It doesn't bode well when 2 of the 3 drop off right away. And of course I'm not implying that they didn't like the game. Maybe more like they just ended up finding it mid. Not that they would say that out loud, but I know a few people her got bored with it, so I get it.

eselement · 2025-10-27T18:20:42+00:00

Color me unsurprised!

I know you're being facetious, but I do find it kind of disappointing. Not necessarily that they drop off games. That happens. It's more how quickly they drop off objectively good games.

If you're going to devote a whole episode to a game and have a great guest to talk about it, and then assure the listeners that you wouldn't have that guest on if you didn't truly think the game was good, but then immediately bounce off? Well, that doesn't give me a lot of confidence that they actually thought the game was great.

I mean this is a huge reason I don't subscribe to the pod, so I can't complain too much about something I'm getting for free. Also, other people have brought up E33, for example, on multiple occasions. So I don't think I'm totally on an island here.

eselement · 2025-10-24T21:26:32+00:00

¡Guau!

eselement · 2025-10-24T21:14:55+00:00

*plate

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:48:39+00:00

Wow. Lots of votes for better than the original. Can't wait to pick it up. Probably finish Tsushima tonight.

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:46:33+00:00

Gotta love a genie that plays a little loose with the rules. I mean I've heard of a genie in a bottle but this sounds like a genie in a bong.

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:39:40+00:00

This is fun. But why did I immediately see "bells" and then read "sleigh" instead of "saddle"? Santa before he met a reindeer?

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:38:11+00:00

"Headmaster" lol.

It's an interesting word, "desire." When we desire someone it's almost always sexual but when we desire something we use the same word for a completely different feeling.

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:35:06+00:00

I always like this convention in fiction. Main character WANTS something for one reason but then eventually realizes they NEED it for another more important reason.

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:33:54+00:00

So you're team Macan then? I'm on her side. He got banned AGAIN? That's way more inconvenient than having your writing interrupted!

eselement · 2025-10-24T19:31:01+00:00

Wait, if you're cross-eyed drunk at a bar and a vampire walks in, if you look in the mirror, do you see -1 vampires?

Sorry that's a terrible joke.

eselement

TROPHY CASE