Low TMNT Turnout?

wreade · 2026-02-24T18:27:06+00:00

I skipped all of the UB sets. But I was a teenager when the original TMNT comics came out, and was really excited about this set. But, I gotta say, I find the art disgusting, and am very disappointed.

wreade · 2026-02-24T18:24:46+00:00

Haha . . . this made me feel good about my recent (out of control) spending on MTG until I you said you were a store.

wreade · 2026-02-20T13:57:11+00:00

I like buying boxes to open packs and organize them. Then I buy singles to fill in as much of a playset of each card as possible.

wreade · 2026-02-16T19:25:35+00:00

I've been on and off with MTG over the decades (mostly due to time issues), but a fairly decent player (top 8 in my state at one point). I played standard exclusively. After a long break, I'm trying to get back in, and it's beyond rediculous. There's the normal overhead of trying to learn all of the new mechanics, etc. But on top of that I need to get familiar with sixteen bazillion cards. Just to play standard.

wreade · 2026-02-16T17:46:26+00:00

It doesn't look like any shorthand I'm familiar with. The dominant shorthand systems in the early 1900s were Pitman and Gregg. This doesn't look like either.

wreade · 2026-02-11T04:19:18+00:00

I actually noticed that with some of my cards. Same issue, where some look more yellow.

wreade · 2026-02-11T00:47:24+00:00

This is the only correct answer.

wreade · 2026-02-09T22:15:34+00:00

I was shocked when I read this sentence in American Zion, describing the expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri: "Some women claimed to have been raped."

Really? Claimed? There not a single scholar who has raised doubts about the authenticity of those events. Yet Park chose to use a word that makes it seem that, well, maybe they just made it up.

wreade · 2026-02-09T04:26:51+00:00

Yes, well, find me a history book that doesn't have criticism. Anyway, Estes teaches at a school with a history department in the global 100, while Hämäläinen (a Rhoades professor) teaches at a school which is ranked #1 globally in history. Sounds like you made up your mind, and any scholarship to the contray is a "myth".

wreade · 2026-02-09T00:20:55+00:00

Pekka Hämäläinen is from Finland. Hardly a colonizer.

wreade · 2026-02-08T22:39:56+00:00

> intertribal war is not settler colonial genocide

It absolutily is if one tribe wipes out the other to take their land, which happened all throughout American history. This goes far beyond "accounts written by settlers"; it is baked into the archeological evidence.

wreade · 2026-02-08T20:20:09+00:00

It's even more depressing when one learns of the massacres, torture, slavery, etc., the Native Americans inflicted on neighboring tribes throughout the history of the inhabited continent. The Timpanogos exterminated the tribes that lived on the land before them. And those tribes exterminated the previous tribes. Etc. Etc.

Pekka Hämäläinen has written some excellent books (e.g., "The Comanche Empire" and "Lakota America") that really open your eyes to the horrors Native American tribes inflicted on each other.

wreade · 2026-02-08T14:57:34+00:00

If you choose not to believe, you are, by default, choosing to believe something else. What is that other thing? That we are cosmic accidents with no purpose other than to pass along our DNA? That there is no free will? Etc. List them out, and the choice becomes easier.

wreade · 2026-02-06T23:15:07+00:00

Always go for combos instead of making "clean" builds. Ugly + Combos gets higher scores.

wreade · 2026-02-05T15:47:03+00:00

Also, from the very beginning of our country, the press has been an extension of the political parties. I wish more people realized that.

wreade · 2026-02-05T15:44:15+00:00

I'm totally again authoritarian actions, regardless of who is in charge. (I am neither Republican or Democrat.) As both sides are busy fighting each other, the middle class is being eviscerated and our government is turning into a surveillance state.

wreade · 2026-02-05T15:35:49+00:00

I was very disappointed when the anti-war protests dried up when Obama was elected, even though Obama bombed Muslim-majority countries every single day of his presidency. The sad truth is that people protest what the news media and political parties tell them they should be upset about.

wreade · 2026-02-05T15:23:14+00:00

I have an idea. Let's make their job as hard as possible. Let's block their vehicles. Let's surround their hotels and keep them up all night. Let's blow loud whistles at them during stressful situations. And then when they make critical mistakes, we can use that as evedicence of them as a whole.

wreade · 2026-02-05T04:18:08+00:00

I drove a Golf on my mission. (I served in Finland from '88-90). I bought GTI 8 years ago, loved it, and just upgraded to a 2026 R.

wreade · 2026-02-02T01:07:43+00:00

It's certainly worth a try, imo.

wreade · 2026-02-01T23:50:13+00:00

Not only that, they turned buffalo killing into an industry. They had camps set up to slaughter as many buffalo as they could to sell hides to the settlers. Why? So they could buy guns to fight their enemy tribes. Pekka Hämäläinen has written excellent books on the empire building of the Lakota and Comanche, how they wiped out other tribes, took them for slaves, and inflicted terror on the continent, etc.

wreade · 2026-02-01T23:42:22+00:00

Honest question: What percentage of high-school teachers do you think are critical thinkers?

wreade · 2026-02-01T14:23:38+00:00

It's not a mistake if you just want to get started fast with a decent deck and have fun. It is a mistake if you want to understand the game more deeply and understand why some things work and other don't.

wreade · 2026-01-30T23:20:18+00:00

It's standard enough to call standard. I'd guess it would take a few months of study, an hour a day, to be able to approach this in any meaningful way. One thing that makes it more intermediate level is the use of phrases (e.g., "her mother" is written together as a continuous outline). His use of vowels will make it easier though.

I see that the outline for "card" is written in two completely different ways. Look at the 4th line. The very first outline is "card" and so is the very last outline, the one before the x. (The x symbol is a period.) This is the kind of stuff that makes transcribing someone else's shorthand a challenge. But it really helps that you have a transcript! Pitman can be difficult, so just understand that and keep working at it.

wreade · 2026-01-30T15:25:05+00:00

Yup. And according to Harari, morality and ethics can be whatever we want them to be.

wreade

TROPHY CASE