Making generalizations about people is a problem when the generalization is false or misleading, or is being used to make a false or misleading argument, which is often the case. If you’re wondering if a given generalization is problematic, odds are the answer is ‘yes’ otherwise you probably wouldn’t think of it as a generalization.
Bill Burr is a surprisingly thoughtful and principled guy with consistently good opinions. He’s a comedian, and he doesn’t have any theory underpinning his worldview, but I bet if you look at why he’s been criticized in the past it’s by liberals who are mad that he’s being critical of liberals. I’m not at all surprised that he lit up Bill Maher on his boomer-ass Israel-Palestine takes.
If you already struggle with some form of mental illness, it’s probably best to assume that you’re being irrational, rather than ascribe any meaning to this particular thing. There is a lot of random stuff that happens, and you could project meaning onto any of it to create a narrative. Unless you have a good reason to believe that a specific person or group is messing with you (not just a vague sense of unease) then it’s very likely that it means nothing.
Good. No shade on Pocket Pair, they’ve obviously done something that resonates, but imo while Palworld suffers a bit from borrowing too heavily from Pokemon, the real issue is that it borrows too much from Ark. I’d like to see a similar concept executed with an updated interface, crafting system, and progression system. Ark is fine for what it is, but it’s ten years old and Palworld didn’t really make any improvements over the basic structure. It makes sense that they built it the way they did, given that their MO is taking existing component parts and putting them together, rather than designing from the ground up, but I’d like to see a dev team take the same concept and be more intentional about it. There’s a lot that could be done to improve quality of life and create an overall smoother experience, even just by implementing current best-in-class features.
This is surprising to read. Ukraine was never going to have enough ammo, weapons, or manpower to win the war, but I never thought the western media would run out of cope.
Looking forward to seeing this very real Russian sonic weapon. It’ll be interesting to see how it works, who designed it, how long it’s existed (which it definitely does). It’s a little worrisome that the Russians were able to keep it a secret so successfully. We don’t even have a theoretical basis for how it works, and yet they’ve managed to not only build it but also deploy it in multiple locations for literally years. Anyways, I hope they eventually find a way to combat this very serious and not at all made up threat.
If things don’t turn around for him, he might have to lower himself to try to get votes from non-Republicans.
One thing I alluded to is that some decks do simply work better against other decks. Value aside, it might be that their deck and the way it works is a natural counter to yours. If you haven’t read much about how the game works, this is an old but still excellent writeup:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/370207/what-i-know-about-magic-gathering
I haven’t played Commander so this may not apply 1:1, but all of this is broadly applicable regardless of the format. Forgive me if you’re already familiar with this stuff, but you said you’re new to things and this is what really helped me get my head around the game when I started playing.
Evergreen headline.
There’s definitely a substantial positive relationship between deck value and performance. Rare cards aren’t valuable merely because they’re rare. They’re valuable because they’re rare and they’re strong, often being either way more efficient than more common cards, or having rare or unique properties. The correlation isn’t 1:1 because a given deck’s win condition is based on the emergent properties of the deck when cards combine, which is why pauper decks can be surprisingly strong, but if the difference is large enough and the deck is constructed halfway competently, it’s going to be much more powerful.
This is a feature, not a bug. MTG’s business model is to sell booster packs. People buy booster packs for the rare cards, either to put them in their own competitive decks, or to sell/trade them for other cards so that they can build competitive decks. If the rare cards weren’t objectively more powerful, there would be no need for them, and it wouldn’t drive the kind of massive premiums for them in the card market.
Obviously you can’t just look at the value of the cards to get the value of the deck as a whole, but $20 vs $120 is a big gap. Deck value doesn’t equal strength, but it’s highly correlated. MTG isn’t pay-to-win, per se, but spending more money on cards will give you better cards, without question. Competitive players spend what they need to spend to build a competitive deck, so at that level it becomes all about skill, and spending way more than your opponent isn’t necessarily an advantage, not to mention that certain types of decks fare better against others. At the level you’re talking about, though, the extra $100 is going to make a massive difference. It would be embarrassing for your friend if he wasn’t beating your $20 deck with his $120 deck.
Getting older and more mature has definitely helped with this. For example, I completely cut out the part where I promise myself I’m going to change the pattern.
The Simpsons’ version of Bill Clinton.
Give us Mario Kart 9, cowards.
That’s the point. The US has effectively unlimited money, or let’s say unlimited liquidity, so their ability to repay is purely based on political issues. That they can’t get their shit together enough politically to avoid their own borrowing costs going up is extremely funny and embarrassing.
The US credit rating has fluctuated since 2011. At one point I think it was as low as A-. Regardless, the idea that it would ever be anything other than AAA is hilarious.
Despite its AA+ credit rating
People do not make fun of the US for having their credit rating downgraded nearly enough. Imagine being the wealthiest country in history with control over the most ubiquitous reserve currency on the planet and the credit rating agencies are like “it’s not that we don’t trust you, but we have standards to maintain.”
Look into design thinking and in particular ideation. There are lots of formal processes, exercises, activities, etc. that are used by individuals and teams in all sorts of contexts specifically for coming up with ideas. The process is usually one of throwing a bunch of things on the table, sorting through them, getting rid of most of them, elaborating on the ones that seem interesting, then following one to completion, or at least to some sort of first draft/prototype/mockup. You then decide whether or not you want to work on the draft further, or decide that it’s a dead end and start from scratch. The thing with “ideas” is that all of them are terrible and only serve to help guide us towards doing something interesting. Creating things is an intensely iterative process, and what you start with is unlikely to look much like what you end up with after a number of iterations.
Ideas are also all derivative. There are no new ideas, just riffs on existing ones. Even most interesting and innovative works have been influenced by past works, or works from different disciplines, or inspired by nature. If you’re looking to make a short comic, start by figuring out what works and artists and styles you like. Try recreating parts of them, or emulating them, or combining elements of them, and see if the results speak to you. That’s one of the few actually useful applications of LLM AI. You can quickly test concepts, maintain some elements and discard others, do mashups, etc. When something grabs you, try to figure out what it is that resonates about it, then try to recreate it with your own spin.
Ultimately, ideas are just prompts for doing work, and having a good idea (to the extent that such a thing even exists) is far less important than being willing to test a number of ideas to find out what will motivate you to spend real time and effort on creating something.
There is no evidence that belief in Santa is harmful to children, nor is telling them the truth. They only believe in Santa for like maybe three years, and they’ll figure it out on their own. The vast majority of kids figure it out by age ~7-8. You can tell them whatever you want, it won’t matter either way.
If you do tell them the truth, or they figure it out on their own, be sure to also tell them that even if they don’t believe, other kids do, and being a Santa-truther will not win them any prizes or make them any friends. It’s a good lesson about living in a society.
I’ve heard WD40 works on some glue residues. Couldn’t hurt to try it.