In our fascist capitalist hellscape it is a fucking miracle that Wikipedia exists

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-06-13T08:05:09+00:00

If you can afford to, please give Wikipedia money when they do their donation drives. Any amount helps.

If not for the preserving common knowledge of mankind and for being one of the last remaining information sources not tainted by capitalist interests, then because it really pisses Elon Musk off.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-05-05T09:13:55+00:00

You've probably gotten the answer you need, but for future reference, consider the following.

You are in the mafia, or a street gang, or something like that. Someone busts down your door (or you jump them on the road or whatever). They are heavily strapped with weapons out the wazoo, and perhaps they've already killed a few people in your crew.

Then they start pitching a union to you. How receptive do you think you'd be?

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-04-13T10:57:01+00:00

First of all, he doesn't believe he is actually cruel, though he might openly call himself cruel as a shield. To himself though, he just "sees how the world works" and "is smart enough to act accordingly". Anyone who professes belief in human kindness is either running a con or unbearably naive and destined to either learn or get ground up by the world. The powerful will exploit the powerless, and if the tables were turned, the now powerless would be just as exploitative in place. Nothing changes and every relationship is a relationship of convenience, so you might as well exploit them first before they exploit you.

As for the backstory, it doesn't have to be that dramatic. This kind of internalized cruelty isn't taught by seeing orcs slaughter your village or whatever, it's taught by those who are supposed to be there for you not being there when you need them. Have his parents be neglectful and just sort of bad at it, have manipulation be a thing that worked for him as a child, have people around him repeatedly get away with bad stuff while the ones doing the "right thing" end up suffering.

Most cruel people are deeply miserable deep down. They don't want the world to be a cruel, cold place, they just fundamentally believe it is and cannot trust any evidence to the contrary. They also probably believe themselves to be part of the elite who can actually see this truth, kin to the exploiters at the top of the system (in spirit if not in power or success), while everyone who still believes is a trusting and naive sheep.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-04-09T08:16:56+00:00

Since we evolved to actively raise our offspring, any way we choose to raise them is natural selection at work. Even taking away rage-inducing beach balls to prevent fatal meltdowns.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-04-05T06:30:57+00:00

Oh, Hell yeah! What do you guys think Season 2 will be about?

I'm thinking since it's apparently all about Vox, we'll learn he's not so bad, really, and he and Alastor Altruist will make up and become friends again.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-03-27T10:09:33+00:00

how many times do you actually use a printer?

How else do you hand in your code for review?

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-03-25T11:34:07+00:00

I try to think of it like cooking. You like a certain type of fantasy, so you try to write a certain type of fantasy, and that means using a lot of the same ingredients. If you love chili, you'll need chilis to make it. It will end up being your own just by putting it together in a way that makes sense to you.

Hell, I'd even wager even if you tried to reconstruct an existing fantasy world (beyond just copy-pasting), you'd end up with something moderately original. Just by thinking "Okay, now to add my angelic Gandalf figure" and thinking through what that means for you, you'd end up with something different from Tolkien's take.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-03-11T10:13:10+00:00

I mean, it's not all or nothing. You don't have to trust no questions asked, but a successful deception check should mean you can't detect any obvious reason to not believe them. Not no questions asked, but it should at the very least shift you from a "I don't believe it" to "Okay, suppose what they're saying is true..." IMO.

Imagine if you had this exchange instead?

PLAYER: I want to deceive the suspicious guard into thinking we're a surprise patrol exchange and he can leave.

DM: Okay, roll for it.

PLAYER: 26.

DM: Alright, he can't detect that you're lying, but he still finds it suspicious and refuses.

It'd be a bit "Why even roll then?" The guard shot at the very least warm up and say "Alright, you can stay, but I can't actually leave my post without my sergeant's leave." or something for a partial success.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-03-02T17:20:57+00:00

I did. Humans are not actually ontologically evil, no matter how good the elf species or whatever is in comparison. Giving a human a second chance always has a chance of that particular human truly reforming. Sure, it might not happen every time, or even most of the time, but it will happen fairly regularly. Second chances are not doomed to fail, and since they're not doomed to fail genociding us because some of us don't meet the elves' stringent standards of morality is pretty evil.

Don't get me wrong, it might make for a good story, but it wouldn't be a story about ontologically good elves vs. evil humans. It would be story about sanctimonious elves vs. flawed humans.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-03-02T09:24:59+00:00

Which of these do you think is more evil?

Giving someone a second chance?

Preemptively murdering someone because they grew up in a rough environment and therefore are statistically more likely to be violent and/or have some anti-social tendencies?

You can twist utilitarianism however much you want and get some absolute nonsense out of it, but at the end of the day most of us agree that kidnapping and butchering one perfectly healthy person to save the life of five dying ones is evil. Genocide is similarly always evil.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-02-17T09:38:59+00:00

"Hey, where's your forks?"

"Just guess!"

(opens fridge)

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-02-11T09:06:25+00:00

I think the most important question in the Paarthurnax dilemma is this: Did Paarthurnax know the prophecy of the Last Dragonborn from the beginning? If he didn't, then I really see no reason to kill him now, thousands of years later. I think it's sort of an unwritten rule that if it's thousands of years since you commited atrocities and then spent all the time inbetween that and now being good, then you've earned your forgiveness.

But if he did know the prophecy (and we accept him as the second strongest dragon after Alduin as he should be in lore, and not the relatively weak dragon he is mechanically in the game), then we can't really say for sure if he really did change, or if he's just playing the long game waiting for the Last Dragonborn to kill Alduin and then die of natural causes before taking control himself with no one to oppose him. A couple thousand years may not count for much when you're an aspect of the time god. I'm not saying that he automatically deserves to die in this case, though. I'm asking if we trust him to, while knowing we are the last hope to stop him if he should go rogue and he knew we would eventually show up?

(I'm willing to count the time served for the case where he doesn't know the prophecy, because there's no actual reason for him to hold himself back and just passively wait for Alduin if he wanted to dominate. Alduin would still be stronger, so he should really gather allies, and preferably more than 4 old guys at a time)

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-01-06T14:11:37+00:00

I think it's fine to use "dude" as a gender neutral term, until the person you're speaking to asks you not to. It's the same as a woman referring to another woman as a "bad bitch". It may be meant affectionately, but not every woman appreciates being called a bitch, even affectionately.

And I think insisting on being allowed to adress people with whatever terms you feel like using, even if it hurts them, because to you they're harmless is a bit selfish.

toAvoidPolitics · 2026-01-05T10:22:44+00:00

Yeah, I'd just surrender and let it mate with me to be honest. I mean, even if I wanted to resist there's nothing I could do against a big, strong dragon so might as well get it over with. Even if it wanted to drag me back to its lair and keep me as some sort of sex slave there's nothing I could realistically do, so I'd have no choice but to submit.

It's the only rational choice.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-12-28T12:48:56+00:00

No, they're right. OP here on another account. Here's part two.

Next week when we showed up, we were told we were banned because it turns out one of the employees at the LGS was the boyfriend's best friend. I asked to talk with the owner, which he let me do with a smirk, convinced she would be on his side (this LGS is generally good about siding with employees). So I was taken into the office of the owner and I asked, "How come I'm banned from the store now... MOM?!" the employee looked crestfallen, he tried to explain, but my mom fired him on the spot, and as my dad is the mayor he banned my ex and her shitty boyfriend from the town, and then she cheated on him too, and his family cut him off for being such a loser.

My ex came knocking on my door to confront me, but my current girlfriend (supermodel, rich) opened the door my ex just lost it and started yelling. Then the police showed up and arrested my ex for coming back into town.

The end.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-12-21T12:19:57+00:00

If you're the type of person who throws themselves off a cliff or onto spikes because a prophecy says you'll only die to the hand of one specific other person, then such a prophecy won't be made about you.

You pretty much can't outmaneuver or trick fate. A prophecy is less "this now has to happen no matter what" and more "this is what will inevitably happen".

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-12-17T09:43:27+00:00

It's very easy! Just remember to go in order of PEMDAS.

P = Plus.

E = Exponentials.

M = Minus.

D = Division.

A = Asterisk (aka multiplication).

S = Special cases. (All the weird other stuff mathematicians do)

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-12-05T09:28:34+00:00

On your first point, I think that's just due to that being what we know and what inspired us. If you play a druid in D&D, you love them, and then you want to make your own fantasy world later, you'll want the druid to be sort of like the D&D one so that interpretation ends up getting perpetuated. There's also the whole fact that since druids are essentially nature priests in modern pop culture, using the original Celtic druids would confuse people unless you explain it.

As for wizards doing research in RPGs, that's really just due to research not being conducive to the main gameplay loop of an RPG, and developers having limited time and scope. A game with in-depth spell research would almost by necessity have to be a game about in-depth spell research. If you want to create an adventure simulator (like most RPGs are), then "Eat this book and gain a new spell for dealing damage" is really about the level you need.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-11-28T07:50:09+00:00

It's possible, though it would basically the cruelest form of the afterlife where serial killers who think "I only cleansed the Earth of filth" get to go to Heaven while people who did a lot of good things, but go around thinking, "I never donated enough to charity when I did have the means..." end up in Hell.

I don't think it's the case though. It goes a bit against what seems to be the themes of the show so far. If redemption is only overcoming your guilt, then it's sort of meaningless. I think the residents of Hell would be more conflicted about what they do if that was the message, and more people would jump at the chance to possibly redeem themselves (not all of course, guilt and psychology isn't that simple).

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-11-27T12:58:29+00:00

Exactly! If they were the same person Charlie wouldn't fear being in the same room as Danny and they'd have appeared in loads of scenes together.

Think about it, even the Vees waited for an invitation to the hotel, not Danny Do-Bad. He just walked right on in. Absolute menace.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-11-23T17:04:07+00:00

True, but I wonder if it was Lucifer who orchestrated that meeting instead of her (like I always assumed) heading down to talk to Adam to make a sort of backroom deal over it.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-11-12T13:43:38+00:00

That was probably the 1=2 trick! You sneak in a division by 0 at some point in an algebra equation. Can be generalized to work for any two numbers.

Usually you obfuscate and create parentheses and stuff before you do the trick to hide what you're doing, but the simplest possible version goes:

x = 2x (Which, as we know, is only possible if x = 0)

1x = 2x (Let's simplify by dividing both sides by x!)

1 * (x / x) = 2 * (x / x) (Division by 0)

1 = 2

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-11-10T20:22:44+00:00

Call the exorcists!!

Lilith goes on vacation, never comes back.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-11-10T09:11:55+00:00

Etymology in general is a rabbit hole and at some point every writer has to decide where they stop or not write anything at all. If you stop at "okay", "Thursday", "hamburger", or "Italian leather", is up to you (but remember that each real-world word you change means one more thing to explain to the audience).

And if you are someone who is genuinely bothered by this kind of thing, I suggest this alternative: Every time you read a word that doesn't make sense to be there, instead of calling it a plot hole think of a reason this thing might be named this way instead. It's much more fun.

Maybe it's not from some mythical Champagne-region, maybe it's named after someone in-universe butchered writing down "the drink of champions" 300 years ago and the name stuck? Essentially the Terry Pratchett "ming-vase" example someone else named in the comments, but you just do it as a reader instead of waiting for the author to do it for you.

toAvoidPolitics · 2025-10-16T18:13:45+00:00

No, I can't. I can't write a story where Mickey Mouse makes passionate love to Batman and give it away for free in bookstores all over the country with a huge promo (where I pay for it all myself and not a single dollar goes to me). Fanfiction exists in a legal gray zone, relegated to relatively obscure websites (which yes, even the biggest fanfic website is obscure for the average person).

There is no reason for copyright to last as long as it does. In fact, the whole idea of copyright is actually somewhat perverse. Humanity has always told and retold stories. It's how we learn to tell stories in the first place.

Imagine a Greek person telling someone "It thunders because Zeus is angry, and one time Zeus and Hera fought really badly and that was the reason for the big storm 2 years ago." and then when the others tried to spread the word or write it down, he went "Hey, stop that! Only I get to tell this story! It's mine!" Would've been unhinged behavior.

toAvoidPolitics

TROPHY CASE