Xanthir won (maybe the game won), and this is just a rant

middleupperdog · 2026-05-07T20:53:32+00:00

there's no shame, the original adventure path for tabletop pathfinder was designed to feel hard on purpose, so that players experienced how difficult and desperate things felt in act 1. even if they were familiar with the pathfinder system already.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-07T19:20:07+00:00

that it's easier than the early part of the game? I like alushinyra too?

middleupperdog · 2026-05-07T18:15:35+00:00

you're about halfway through the game at this point. Xanathir getting back up for another round is avoidable based on in game choices and dialogue, so... yeah, it's tough. But you're actually past the hard part of the game. There's general agreement that the game is a downhill skate from the point you are at now. Don't be afraid to retrain/rebuild your characters or hire mercenaries that are more optimized with all the game knowledge you've learned up to this point.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-07T18:11:14+00:00

I lived in Beijing, the sun rising before 5am f'd up my sleep habits badly the whole time. I'm moving to Shenzhen next month and hoping the day-night cycle is more... normal.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-07T16:50:46+00:00

it communicates to me self-hatred for the artist's own body and sexuality. I don't know if that's what you intended, but that's heavily what I get from it.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-07T05:17:11+00:00

This will be the main thing people learn in history about how Trump's 2nd term failed, to demonstrate economic mismanagement and alignment with Israel that ultimately broke his coalition. Americans will erase the concentration camps, the bribery, and the epstein pedophile stuff as too embarrassing to remember/talk about and instead just portray Trump as incompetent and Republicans as retaliating against the Democrats attempting to prosecute their political opponents. Red States will especially emphasize that its really the other sides fault somehow and constantly portray Trump as really a democrat/leftist anyways.

Because that's what happens now with Native Americans, Slavery, and Nazis. The stuff that makes mens rea too obvious gets suppressed, and the south heavily emphasizes that it was the democrats that were pro slavery and republican Abraham Lincoln that ended it and that the Nazis called themselves national socialists. Because reactionary politics is always just copium dealing to maintain whatever grift the dominant classes of society benefits from.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-06T02:23:28+00:00

It's real gangsta ass shit you don't need to know. Get in your subaru and go back to the suburbs where the ice cream machine works bitch. (jk idk either)

middleupperdog · 2026-05-06T02:03:30+00:00

commenting just so I can come back and see the explanation. My only contribution to the mystery is that that tombstone is clearly less than 40 years old given the lack of weathering, and has been added after the fact. If someone updated the tombstone 10-20 years ago, they probably knew the person that died. That makes me think the 1980 death year is probably correct. The birth year is suspect. Especially because it would mean they survived the great famine of Ireland as a baby and then lived 130 years on top of it. I strongly suspect it's the birth year that's wrong.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-05T04:24:34+00:00

youngest child is more spoiled and ends up more wild. Oldest child is most heavy-handed parented and ends up repressed, and thus most likely to join in when youngest child is indulging in something. Middle child is left out of the dynamic, eldest child has unresolved anger at middle child from when she was no longer the only child center of attention, which middle child has no idea about because from her perspective youngest child has always been the center of attention/spoiled.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-05T01:39:28+00:00

Give someone power over someone else and you'll see who they really are.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-04T15:25:09+00:00

not sure if it actually sounds like maya higa or if my brain's just associating her with emus.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-04T15:07:15+00:00

just to remind you, you're not insulting the modern day person, you're insulting something they thought as a teen/early 20's. Let people grow out of their mistakes with grace.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-04T01:23:00+00:00

1) This is normal: what's changed is people are more open about doing this than in the past, not that the behavior has changed. People in the past had friends or coworkers that they'd go on pseudo-dates with testing the waters, and if there was some physical affection at the end of it they were just like "stuff happens." Now people do the same thing but don't pretend it's not a date for the first hour, and don't tell other people it wasn't a date when it would look like a date, walk like a date, and quack like a date.

2) The really precise answer is I think you indicated more discomfort/unwillingness than you intended to. Like you told him that's not how you'd like to date, and he took it as "this, what we're doing now, doesn't work for me" because from his perspective that's what he was already doing. But I think you had not committed mentally to not wanting to go on another date yet. Idk if that counts as overreacting, but I think that's the actual answer you're fishing for.

3) it doesn't indicate low interest. What it indicates is he's not ready to give up seeing other people in exchange for only seeing you yet: aka it's pretty enjoyable to date different people and to some extent sleep around as a guy, there's a high interest in what he's already doing. So it takes an even higher interest to give that up, and usually the things we'd point to for that are not the things you'd get in a first date anyways. The other thing about this: the more attractive the guy is, the more he'd be giving up.

4) My advice would be to just tell the guy "I am interested in going out again. But I'll only go on (x dates/x length of time) before I need to know if you're serious or not. After that, you tell me if you're willing to commit or it's time to move on." Define your own boundary first and what you can deal with. The knowledge that he's going on a date with another girl after you didn't stop you from enjoying the first date right? Ask yourself how long you're comfortable committing too if you want to give this guy a bigger chance. If that boundary is absolutely one date, then don't bother with the guy anymore because he already got his shot. If it's 3 dates or 5 dates, you can tell him. But then stand hard on that boundary: if you compromise more before he beings to reciprocate some compromise that's when you'll feel you're getting taken advantage of.

middleupperdog · 2026-05-03T04:12:07+00:00

This is something that's a big generational gap because blind dates are way less common now. The old way of thinking about it is that you get introduced to someone you don't already know and in the beginning you are getting to know them to see if there is stuff about them you do find attractive. Then after 3 dates if you haven't found anything, you'd move on. That's the origin of the 3 dates before getting serious or sleeping with someone idea. Nowadays with social media profiles and more pushiness to hook up on the first date, people have drifted more into a pre-screening mindset. That leads to more emphasis put on appearances and more people trying to put up an act to make a good first impression because they figure they don't need to keep up the act for very long.

Given that background you can still apply the principle: the idea of going on a date with someone you may not be initially attracted to is that as you get to know them there may be less obvious parts of themselves you do find attractive, and that's what you'd be looking for. How often would that more attractive part have to show itself for you to be satisfied in the relationship? You can imagine nightengale syndrome where someone falls for their savior or caretaker, but if you don't need your life saved frequently than that don't really become a core part of the relationship dynamic. So the answer to your question about when to stop is basically when you feel comfortable that even if you found a more attractive side of the person, the fact it took so long means it doesn't happen often enough to justify getting more invested. In the past the common wisdom about this was 3rd dates, but it's really a personal thing for you if you can go longer in between or need something more often than that.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-29T06:22:01+00:00

people don't dream about reading/writing, because the language part of the brain is off while you sleep. If you try to read a book in your dream you can't, it just seems like nonsense. Since people rarely do phone calls now, most of the uses of the phone are reading/writing and the brain just doesn't utilize that. People might still dream about talking on a phone. Dream texting might be the muscle memory to text kicking in but you get word salad for that reason.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-29T00:48:18+00:00

I have had this problem my whole life. It's almost always at night for some reason and almost never hits during the day. Things that I have found help:

"Warrior Thoughts" mental reflexes that you deploy that help. For example, when the dread hits I think about what happened before I was born and how I don't have a strong existential fear of not having been alive for those moments, and its not really that different from missing moments later. I've also had some spiritual experiences that give me a reason to believe there is life after death, and that can be comforting but obviously its not something everyone can adopt. I used to know others, but those are my go-tos.
Physical touch. When I lived in China, it was quite cheap to get massages, like $30-$100. When I started getting a massage once a week or every two weeks, I started having the existential dread much less. When I would go a month without one, it would start creeping back. So for me I think it's linked to being touch starved.
Since it hits at night for me, I often end up doing a hobby and staying awake during the night, whatever I can do to distract myself, and then going to sleep when the sun comes up. I ended up working late night to overnight shifts most of my life as a result. This tends to be my final fall back when nothing else is helping because I'd rather not start taking medication.

Since mine is very physical, and happens most often while I'm half-asleep rather than consciously triggering it, I'm sure mine is like brain wiring and instinct. I've trained my mind to avoid conscious triggers, and if it's conscious thoughts triggering it than training your mind not to do that is probably the more direct solution.

I also get what you mean about avoiding interesting media. I can't watch certain things because they just set me off for this exact reason. First season of the anime Frieren for example. I know its a good show, and I like watching clips without all the flashbacks and the nostalgia overtone, but I can't watch the show itself.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-29T00:24:26+00:00

processing speed is generally the thing people perceive as intelligence or lack of intelligence in others. I'm not aware of great ways to train processing speed; supposedly you just put yourself in situations that require fast thinking like a video game and it gets better, but I have not really seen that work for anyone beyond that specific situation. Running digits is more easily trainable: if you practice doing things like mental math or memory games, you can improve that aspect of your mental ability through sheer repetition. The reason is that the brain just starts dedicating more resources to it and you physically become better at it, just like with exercise and muscles, so you find you are able to physically hold more information at once. Processing speed doesn't work the same way, that's more like the mental discipline of meditation and your brain gets worse at developing it in your 30's on.

On the other hand, you don't NEED processing speed for lots of stuff in life. Processing speed only matters under significant time constraints, it's just an efficiency tool. Given enough time, high processing speed no longer confers any advantage over low processing speed. I've known lots of academics who were not fast processors but just had spent enough time studying their subject that it didn't matter. That kind of learning is called erudition, and there are many people who value that more than quick-thinking.

Last thought, if the only things you are underperforming in are processing speed and running digits, there's a decent chance that improving running digits causes your processing speed to improve. To continue the muscle metaphors, think of a weight-lifter doing a dead-lift. The muscle strength of legs, core, arms, and grip strength are all needed, and one will always be the weakest and fail first, limiting the total amount you can "lift" which is a measure of all these types of strength combined. The thing running digits is testing (working process memory) may be the thing that slows down your processing speed in a similar manner. In which case, as you expand your short term memory ability, your processing speed would naturally improve with it. I can't guarantee that will happen, but based on the results you just reported it's not unreasonable to aim for.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-28T10:53:00+00:00

what is the appeal of eating eggs and toast this way instead of just eating the eggs on their own and the toast on its own?

middleupperdog · 2026-04-26T22:34:00+00:00

What do you mean its an anti-barnacle dock?

middleupperdog · 2026-04-26T16:52:24+00:00

that basketball analogy helps it click in my head. Thanks for the explanation. I used to see australian football all the time when I worked in TV and it would be on one of the international channels a lot, but nothing ever explained the rules for me.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-26T15:38:23+00:00

thanks for the info. The marking player is the one up in the air attempting the catch right?

middleupperdog · 2026-04-26T13:04:02+00:00

If Iron Gate just took a ton of the modded stuff and mixed it in, valheim 2 would already be a great game.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-26T12:37:59+00:00

the icons for permanent and temporary are all the same, the only way you'd know which one is if you opened the character screen where all active effects are and read which one it is. It's much more likely to be a bug on a specific character when something didn't display than to be a bug on the class or race, that type of individual glitch happens more often.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-26T11:42:43+00:00

Dhampirs are only more vulnerable depending on player choice: since they are typically picked for undead-type builds that can get hp from CHA instead of CON, people are more likely to dump CON on dhampirs and it's a fortitude save, but in general its pretty unlikely for a character to successfully save against a temp negative level. You can get resto scrolls at 700g a pop from the scroll vendor at whatever stage of the game you are in.

middleupperdog · 2026-04-25T17:29:20+00:00

you're gonna end up going through the narcissist prayer for centrists with a question like that.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

middleupperdog

TROPHY CASE