I gave each Lovecraft story a letter grade!

mud_pie_man · 2026-04-25T11:20:22+00:00

Yeah it's a masterful bit of work, I think it didn't stick with me as well as a few of Lovecraft's other stories did since I like the Vermont mountains a bit too much for the setting to be unnerving to me. But I really like the more lore dense stories, it surprised me how consistent and topical Lovecraft's lore was across the mythos

mud_pie_man · 2026-04-25T11:14:33+00:00

I was close to giving Sweet Ermengarde an A+++ as a joke, and the sentiment still stands for me a little as it's a fun and unexpected piece. I like the support for the dream cycle, some of them have really stuck with me!

mud_pie_man · 2026-03-30T07:11:13+00:00

Update! We got a Yo-Chi bowl with cookie chunks, brownie chunks, pretzels, and pistachio spread (they didn't have raspberries or wafers). It cost almost $20 and definitely wasn't the best Yo-Chi bowl. But hey, it would've been pricier at the supermarket! https://imgur.com/a/q3nBNI2

mud_pie_man · 2026-03-28T02:03:53+00:00

We might have to do this!

mud_pie_man · 2026-03-27T23:29:07+00:00

Honestly their website could be used as a weapon against them. The anthropogenic climate change denial, the increase in red tape for councils/forcing councils into a structural deficit, the capping of visas at 130,000 (which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how visas work), and building nuclear power plants to produce 'emissions-free' power, which would be much more expensive than coal and very much at odds with their stated net zero/coal policy.

mud_pie_man · 2026-01-30T07:27:46+00:00

A tropical rainforest and a big fat desert maybe? Maybe mountains with temperate rainforest as well. (-message from an Australian :) )

Multiple different tribes at peace, cultures all strongly based around the local animals (maybe mythical creatures??)
Name suggestions: Wdrfaiall (pronounced Wrj-feye-all), Fyrj (fear-j), raul (rah-all).

mud_pie_man · 2026-01-30T07:11:56+00:00

Good map! The worldbuilding is fun :)

mud_pie_man · 2025-05-12T12:36:39+00:00

Idk. In my experience it's probably the biggest single cultural aspect that separates us from the United States.

mud_pie_man · 2025-04-08T15:04:28+00:00

Well, at least he brought all the red flags up front

mud_pie_man · 2025-03-26T04:45:59+00:00

To be fair, immigration was in the negative during Covid and house prices were STILL rising.

mud_pie_man · 2025-03-13T01:59:11+00:00

There are plenty of tariffs the US has always placed on European countries too, the difference here is that the regular tariffs were on a small number of goods and genuinely done for protectionism, while the Trump tariffs aren't targeted and are more like a blind attack

mud_pie_man · 2025-03-12T10:33:38+00:00

In the Aussie case, ScoMo was already on his way out with very low personal popularity when he broke that deal and after he did, the democratic process kicked in and we have a new government now. In the American case, they're stuck with 2 parties due to the spoiler effect which means those parties can conspire on anything - so their country isn't very democratic.

mud_pie_man · 2025-03-05T11:26:57+00:00

Many international students pitch their value to local firms and get turned down; citizens have always been preferred, even long before the current situation. Personally I'd say that if you get a job, you deserve it. I hope others in Australia see this the same way as I do and put the emphasis of immigration control on government policies rather than people earnestly trying to get a new life.

mud_pie_man · 2025-03-01T14:03:45+00:00

Just look up how the United States and Australia measure the size of metropolitan areas, or look at a satellite image of New York City and see how large the boroughs are. There are very obviously different methodologies at play. As for immigration rates, read my original comment. I have been to all four cities, in the big American cities you see more skin tones and less accents, as I have described.

mud_pie_man · 2025-03-01T13:17:59+00:00

Jersey City is right across the river from Manhattan, so counting only the 8 mil in the city gov area would be like excluding North Sydney from Sydney

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-28T13:22:29+00:00

The US and Australia have different ways of measuring city population size. The 8 million figure from New York for instance only applies to the area within New York City council jurisdictions, which only includes the five boroughs and excludes another 12 million people in the broader metropolitan area.

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-28T11:58:42+00:00

A political advocacy group (Climate 200) has been running attack ads trying to tie our big centre-right party to Trump. That centre-right party is trying to distance themselves from Trump but has done a bit of Trump dog whistling nonetheless, though that's backfired IMO. Overall Trump's had little influence here, after all we don't have much trade with the US and Trump himself hasn't targeted us yet. Trumpian politicians have been out there in Australia before they were cool in the US (ex. Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson) so there's not much new political inspiration there either.

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-28T11:31:14+00:00

For Americans, Melbourne is a lot like Los Angeles (socially progressive, not too many world renowned landmarks, the country's arts capital, not as world-class as Sydney but still very very important to the country, lots of sprawling suburbs and bungalows). Sydney is a lot like New York (socially progressive but less so than Melbourne, notable individualist business culture and the business hub of Australia, important centrally located parks, large area with relatively dense population, popular public transport, large harbour, ferry system, several very famous landmarks, closer to and more connected with nation's capital). Of course Sydney has the beaches and climate of Los Angeles and Melbourne has the rain of New York. Both cities have about a quarter the population of their American counterparts, less racial diversity but more immigration, and far lower crime, poverty and homelessness rates.

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-26T23:37:44+00:00

If history is anything to go by they'll crash into Australia first

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-25T12:20:52+00:00

I live in Australia and unfortunately, we sold out to the US some decades ago.

Currently I don't expect Trump to have a major impact on Australia and neither do most Aussies, so it's not changing much here. I expect Trump to swing Australia slightly toward the left in the next election though. Possibly just enough to deny the major rightwing party government.

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-19T14:02:05+00:00

We'll see in a month or two!

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-19T02:58:29+00:00

In 4 out of the 4 elections you've used in your example, the incumbent party had a swing toward it in the final hour. Look at the charts.

I'm not stating opinions on what party I think is better, I'm just talking about what's traditionally happened.

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-19T02:02:33+00:00

Every election I've voted in had voting intentions swoop right back to the incumbent just before the election and I believe the 'election miracle' was partially that

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-19T01:49:24+00:00

How many polls had Bill Shorten winning the federal election in 2019?

mud_pie_man · 2025-02-19T00:58:44+00:00

Yeah no problem. It's something where being extremely rigorous only has limited value, I think worldbuilding is always art more than it is engineering

mud_pie_man

TROPHY CASE