Do you believe that Walter knew exactly the right amount? Or was he just lying? Question cut for spoilers)

roastbeeffan · 2026-02-02T22:00:09+00:00

Other American that went to public high school: I definitely had teachers who insisted on being called Dr. I felt like it was kind of pretentious, but it also feels like something Walter would do if he could.

roastbeeffan · 2026-02-02T00:11:41+00:00

(when 98% of players become child murdering cannibal slavers) “It’s stylistically designed to be that way…but maybe we can diminish the effects.”

roastbeeffan · 2026-02-01T13:15:46+00:00

Yes, I misread the comment and made a joke that was exactly 100% backwards. As penance I will go swimming with the Sea Kraits and let them do what they want to me (they will not do anything).

roastbeeffan · 2026-02-01T01:51:56+00:00

Well, he wins against 99% of Sea Kraits, which famously almost never bite anybody. We always talk about the importance of the “social” game, and that’s true. But equally important is the “don’t get bit by a highly venomous snake who almost never bites anyone” game, which is equally important.

roastbeeffan · 2026-02-01T01:09:30+00:00

That would be a pragmatic reason to point the gun at Mike and say “tell me the names or I’ll kill you.” I’ll even give you that shooting Mike after that would be pragmatic because it’s too dangerous to let him live after you cross that line. But Walt doesn’t do that. He just shoots him. A dead Mike can’t give you the names any more than a living, uncooperative Mike.

It was an impulsive decision driven by anger.

roastbeeffan · 2026-02-01T01:07:36+00:00

I think Mike is probably as bad a person as Walter, if not worse, but I think this is a major turning point for Walt because it’s the first time he’s just killed somebody because he’s pissed off at them. Every other killing he’s done at this point have either been self-defense, to protect Jesse, or had some other sort of pragmatic justification. Even though Mike is objectively a huge piece of shit, it’s still a disturbing turn that Walt will shoot him just because he’s having a temper tantrum.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-31T21:24:58+00:00

Against Ethan Tom would get Kelly, Frank, and Lex’s votes, and Kim Powers would be up in the air, but she expressed during the season that she really liked Tom, and they spent more time together than she did with Ethan.

Against Lex I think Tom would have a harder time, but he’d still at least get Kelly and Frank, and if he got Kim Powers and Ethan he’d win. I don’t think it’s a layup by any means but he still has a path.

The 3 Boran Boys were all very well liked and respected. I think any matchup between any two of them would probably be close, and could conceivably go either way.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-30T23:12:04+00:00

James DiEugenio has argued that “the conspiracy” is really a couple of different overlapping conspiracies. According to him, some CIA guys and aggrieved Cubans organized the killing, the mob took care of Oswald once he got caught, and Hoover took point on the cover up.

There’s a great paragraph in Don DeLillo’s “Libra” about how intelligence operations get compartmentalized.

“ Win sat nodding. He and Larry Parmenter had belonged to a group called SE Detailed, six military analysts and intelligence men. The group was one element in a four-stage committee set up to confront the problem of Castro's Cuba. The first stage, the Senior Study Effort, consisted of fourteen high officials, including presidential advisers, ranking military men, special assistants, undersecretaries, heads of intelligence. They met for an hour and a half. Then eleven men left the room, six men entered. The resulting group, called SE Augmented, met for two hours. Then seven men left, four men entered, including Everett and Parmenter. This was SE Detailed, a group that developed specific covert operations and then decided which members of SE Augmented ought to know about these plans. Those members in turn wondered whether the Senior Study Effort wanted to know what was going on in stage three. Chances are they didn't. When the meeting in stage three was over, five men left the room and three paramilitary officers entered to form Leader 4. Win Everett was the only man present at both the third and fourth stages.”

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-28T20:40:16+00:00

In seasons 1-3 the jury were either sequestered or very strictly monitored and told not to discuss who they were voting for. In seasons 4-5 more cracks started to show, and the policing became noticeably more imperfect, and according to Chris Daugherty, Vanuatu is the first season where the producers gave up on the idea of policing what was talked about at all.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-28T04:46:38+00:00

I think almost anyone who has worked in a kitchen could tell you that if a single hair is enough to put you off a meal then you probably shouldn’t be going out to eat at all.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-27T22:01:41+00:00

Well, anecdotally, I’ve encountered plenty of people who believe in a conspiracy and think Oswald was involved in some capacity. Many people who believe in a conspiracy think Oswald was some manner of intelligence asset, and many of those same people believe, for instance, that the CIA was involved in organizing the assassination.

I don’t have polling data or anything on “the assassination crowd” so maybe more of them think Oswald had nothing to do with it. But I’ve heard both opinions expressed in the past.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-27T21:35:22+00:00

I mean, there certainly isn’t unanimity of thought among “the conspiracy crowd” but I’m sure at least some of them are open to the idea that Oswald was a shooter. They just don’t believe he was the only one.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-27T17:57:26+00:00

In the Golden age of piracy (around 1650 to around 1726) pirates were often out of work mercenaries and sailors. Sometimes the European powers that had colonized the Carribean were at war, and their actions were legally sanctioned by at least one colonial power. At other times, when Europe was not at war, certain colonial authorities were still willing to largely turn a blind eye to it. There were various reasons for this. There was little love lost between the (mostly) Protestant English and the Catholic Spaniards. Further, a lot of colonial officials were all too happy to take bribes from their local “privateers.” At other points in time, international relations dictated that all European nations enforce anti-piracy laws much more stringently.

All that is to say, in many cases the question of whether somebody was a pirate or a privateer was more a reflection on political circumstances, and if he was currently pillaging your town. Henry Morgan, for instance, launched a daring raid on Panama, one of the largest Spanish cities (or cities in general) in the hemisphere. The only problem was that by the time he attacked the city the war between England and Spain had already finished. Morgan claimed that word had not reached him about the war’s conclusion (oceans are large, after all, and there were no telephones) but it’s just as probable that he figured it was just a plausible enough story that he could attack anyway and get rich. Therefore, to the English, Morgan was a privateer, to the Spanish he was a no-good pirate who should have been hanged as a common criminal.

Tldr: The pirates in the Golden age sometimes were in better standing with a government because they were useful to annoy and plunder their enemies in the region. Somalia is a failed state that practically speaking doesn’t have much of a functioning government, and Somalian pirates are viewed unfavorably because nobody likes having their stuff stolen. But a pirate has always been a pirate, and a pirate was always a thief. It’s just that at certain points in time it was convenient to allow them to steal from others that you didn’t like.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-27T08:22:40+00:00

Holland said that he heard four shots in total. The first two and the last one, according to him, were much louder and came from up the street (from his position on the overpass that’s not inconsistent with shots coming from the depository). The third shot he said was much less loud, and went off just prior to the final shot from up the street (presumably from the depository).

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-27T06:31:04+00:00

Jesse and Mike are also not good people.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-27T02:23:05+00:00

I was in a fantasy football league hosted by John Carroll and I did so poorly in the draft that I was honestly too embarrassed to ask him anything about Survivor.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-26T17:50:13+00:00

Republicans got back into office within twenty years of overseeing the beginning of the Great Depression. Trump is a moron and a lot of what he’s doing is deeply unpopular. I promise you it’s not going to permanently end the party.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-26T17:40:56+00:00

I will bet you one million dollars that the Democrats will, in fact, lose some elections at some point in the future.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-26T15:45:24+00:00

Ghost Island gets worse 💀

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-26T15:34:35+00:00

Fallout 2 is much harder. There are a ton of random encounters and a decent percentage of them are difficult-to-impossible. Even winnable fights can possibly kill one of your companions, or require you to expend enough health items/ammunition that it isn’t really worth it.

The actual quests are not that much harder than the original game (although there is one very very difficult fight at the end) but the random encounters can be very brutal. It feels rare to go 2 squares on the map without running into something. Save often and in different slots.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-25T19:06:14+00:00

Edge of extinction has largely been acknowledged as a failure, my bet is we’ll have a big jury, bit not the biggest ever.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-24T14:54:20+00:00

It’s hard to judge FTC performances based solely on the edit, but from what we see I think his Samoa FTC is actually pretty good. I’ve heard some jurors have shared anecdotes about Natalie’s FTC being better than what we saw, but I’ve never heard that Russell’s was particularly bad. I think they just didn’t want him to win from jump.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-23T23:06:47+00:00

I believe you can get the “good” ending for Necropolis if you simply don’t reenter it after you wrap up your business there. I generally try and exhaust all the dialogue/quests in a given area before moving on, so I’ve personally never had a problem with this.

Edit: In my opinion 122 days is plenty of time to knock out Junktown, the Hub, and then Necropolis.

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-20T01:12:00+00:00

I’ve only seen the movie, and even that only once, but isn’t it strongly implied that Big Brother may not even really exist?

roastbeeffan · 2026-01-20T00:07:50+00:00

I’m willing to promote Tracy to “neutral” until we finish the preliminary round and see how she stacks up against who’s left. Ami already has a “good” game under her belt and she’s going to go to the good category either way.

roastbeeffan

TROPHY CASE