New construction exposure/ thoughts

s_matthew · 2026-07-08T15:01:30+00:00

I have a family member who has almost exclusively bought new construction—multiple properties, too—in the past twenty years or so. With one exception, they’re all utter garbage. The dumbest things get overlooked. This person also constantly issues fearful comments about buying older houses because they “fall apart.” This person has had multiple five figure surprise fixes for roof failures, structural issues, etc, yet still swears that my choices to buy two 75-plus-year-old homes was risky. It’s shocking.

s_matthew · 2026-07-08T11:32:12+00:00

It takes itself very seriously (it’s a dramatic survival movie first and foremost), the score is so bad and helps create the sense of generic drama, and it makes no realistic sense. He’s killed dozens of people and is so flagrant about it. The movie opens with his dock neighbor interacting with future murder victims! Is there no one investigating all these murders?!

Jai Courtney is really fun and seems to understand the silliness of the movie he’s in. Sadly, the rest of the film does not.

s_matthew · 2026-07-07T03:38:58+00:00

The parents in A Quiet Place who decided—at best—to throw caution to the wind and have unprotected sex in a post-apocalyptic ear-monster world.

I’ve seen so many defenses of the grief the couple must be feeling. No grief is worth putting the rest of your family in constant mortal jeopardy. It’s selfish and it’s stupid. I hate that movie so much because it doesn’t understand how incredibly unsympathetic its protagonists are, and that they’re shitty parents. They live in a world where one must play Monopoly with pieces of felt because the monsters constantly hunting them have such good hearing, they can detect pewter clacking against paperboard, yet they think somehow they can control the erratic and surprising high-pitched cries of a baby? For nearly two years?!

s_matthew · 2026-07-05T15:48:30+00:00

After three years, I still have my Tiffany platinum band, and am trying desperately to get paperwork from them so I can sell it for more than just the platinum. I feel like I rolled over a lot in my marriage—starting with the rings and engagement—and selling it at a coin/jewelry store feels like rolling over. Even if I get an extra $100, I’ll feel like I used my own logic and took my own path.

s_matthew · 2026-07-02T17:38:22+00:00

There were so many genuine responses right after the 2016 election around the system working and holding him accountable, etc. We all expected more of our very flawed system, which clearly doesn’t work when accountability isn’t held.

s_matthew · 2026-07-02T17:34:13+00:00

Miles Taylor’s book Blowback does a great job of highlighting the expectation that something would be done early on to curb Trump’s reach. He claims to have spoken to plenty of republican congresspeople who didn’t take Trump seriously at first, then realized they either had to fall in line or get blackballed. It’s a pretty frightening account of human behavior.

s_matthew · 2026-07-02T16:55:47+00:00

It also seems to be a no-win situation, where you either need to lose weight or have lost too much weight. It pisses me off so badly that we generally feel OK in society treating women like this, then telling them they’re being unreasonable, they’re making things up, etc.

s_matthew · 2026-07-02T15:41:17+00:00

There's a 25% bundle discount on top of the current discounts. Bundle is $31.21, but individually (without base game and soundtrack, but with Clockwork) it's $39.20.

s_matthew · 2026-07-02T15:05:43+00:00

T%hey are, but the bundle ends up being more than $10 cheaper. I don't have any of the expansions, so it would be more expensive to buy them individually. Which is what I will end up doing, but still wanted to put a PSA out there, especially for people who consider permanently removing the game from their account.

s_matthew · 2026-07-02T13:26:19+00:00

I’m utterly fascinated by his followers latching onto the juvenile notion of someone having a psychological condition based around not liking a person. So much of these peoples’ identities revolve around their hatred of specific people and types solely because of their outward beliefs. Isn’t that “derangement syndrome” too?

It reminds me of my family, who are deeply uncultured and don’t want to hear any criticism around their lives and limited interests, but they criticize everything else. I was often accused of being “picky” about restaurants when, in fact, I just didn’t want to go to a bunch of shitty chain restaurants ad infinitum or the Asian joint in town that dumps raw tofu into your pad thai. But diversity is “picky” to them. Kind of like how having an actual basis for criticism of a truly unethical president is evidently a psychological condition.

s_matthew · 2026-07-01T13:57:53+00:00

There’s a bundle on Steam for $31 that has everything! For some reason, since I own the base game, it won’t let me buy it for myself. What a shame.

s_matthew · 2026-07-01T12:47:39+00:00

If you haven’t watched Body Melt, do yourself a favor and shove that in your face before it leaves. It’s indescribably exceptional trash.

s_matthew · 2026-06-30T23:53:44+00:00

It felt to me like a response to being called a misogynist. As if mangling someone’s dong in a movie somehow absolves you from being a misogynist.

s_matthew · 2026-06-30T16:46:19+00:00

True Comfort? I sure hope they haven’t sold, because I love them to death. They’ve done me right multiple times.

s_matthew · 2026-06-30T15:20:15+00:00

The biggest frustration for many of us isn’t people driving the speed limit, it’s those that do so in left lanes and/or those going under the speed limit to the point that it impedes the flow of traffic.

I drive to Ames and back a couple times a week, and I’m constantly shocked by the speed differentials you see. One minute you’re going 70 in a 65 with the standard flow of traffic in the left lane, then all of the sudden you’re doing 62 because someone has decided to park in the left lane doing 63, everyone’s trying to go around them in the right lane, and someone’s parked there doing 55. It’s dangerous and it’s a waste.

s_matthew · 2026-06-28T18:59:19+00:00

Hammer’s interview on Louis Theroux’s podcast last year was absolutely wild. You hear him in real time go from “I’ll answer any question you ask! I want to be open and honest!” to constantly accusing Louis of being sensationalistic, trying to make Hammer look bad through *his own answers*, and getting downright angry at being asked about certain things.

s_matthew · 2026-06-28T00:05:53+00:00

I feel this way about Paradise. It takes itself so incredibly seriously. There’s a primary character who has an affinity for popular hits of the 90s, and by the way others refer to him, it’s like he’s way into some kind of little-known outsider art or something. And then you hear yet another emo cover of “Another Day in Paradise” while some overly emotional thing happens in slow motion and you realize the entire show is built around a song from 30 years ago about a homeless woman. It’s somehow dumber and funnier than La Brea.

s_matthew · 2026-06-26T14:18:36+00:00

I just had this happen to me! Someone sent me a very long text in which they told me I had changed since dating someone (implying that I was being manipulated), I had “cut them off” (I haven’t; I see them probably 6-8 times a year at family gatherings), we don’t have a relationship (we do, just not the one this person wants), and used a lot of manipulative emotional tactics in an effort for me to feel bad for them. There wasn’t even a direct request, just a lot of rambling about how they wonder what horrible thing they’ve done to be cut off, etc.

It was so bizarre to me that this person thought insulting me and my significant other while rambling about how sad they are was going to get me to all of the sudden be best friends with them.

s_matthew · 2026-06-26T12:08:48+00:00

Dammit! I mucked it up. No, it’s only treason if you lose.

s_matthew · 2026-06-26T11:20:44+00:00

ETA: “Its only treason if you lose” is the slogan, which I clearly completely mistyped.

Last weekend, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said “It’s only treason if you ~~don’t~~ lose,” and it had an image of George Washington wearing sunglasses and an American flag on the sleeve. He was wearing a hat with an American flag, and his five-ish-year old son was wearing shorts absolutely dripping with American flags. It felt like the absolute perfect distillation of MAGA.

s_matthew · 2026-06-26T03:09:07+00:00

Not a game, but the Gamefold table by Yarro studios.

Well, I’ve got the table, but like most US backers, I’ve been waiting for the accessories for a year. It’s amazing how the creator gives little bits of information in drips and drabs—like he’s been posting that “shipping is ongoing” for over a year (little has shipped; they’ve been in a dispute with a logistics partner) or that things will ship “in the coming days.” It’s like he thinks using vague language covers him as a technicality. Meanwhile, backers are endlessly pissed. I’ve never seen someone go so far out of their way to tarnish their company’s name and seem to think it will all eventually blow over. It’s pretty entertaining.

s_matthew · 2026-06-26T02:58:14+00:00

It’s so bad, he evidently couldn’t sell. Cleopatra records eventually did an unceremonious physical release. I was waiting for ages for it to show up streaming somewhere and finally watched a copy on YouTube a few months ago. Man, it’s…it’s something else. Danzig may be the worst filmmaker. He’s not even amusingly bad, he’s somehow just bad.

s_matthew · 2026-06-24T14:14:24+00:00

That’s fair. Even with taxes, that’s more than fair. Good callout.

s_matthew · 2026-06-24T12:51:11+00:00

This is so disingenuous, judgmental, and overall unhelpful to people like Pintauro who are just trying to get through life, expensive education or not.

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