This is an extremely specific situation in a game, but…

In World of Warcraft, back in the day, there was a dungeon in Outland, I believe it was Helfire Citadel. It wasn’t particularly hard, but if you died, you were screwed. The way dungeon deaths worked was your spirit would spawn in a graveyard out in the regular world, and you would have to run your spirit ass back to the dungeon entrance to respawn. But finding the entrance to Helfire Citadel was so difficult I told the group if they don’t rez me, they’d have to just kick me, because I’d never make it back in. It was awful.

Well, I’m in America, so…

I guess I’d prep the natives to help put up a proper fight. Find a way to teach them that white people (like myself) carry diseases and to stay away and keep them away. If they land on your shores, drive them back. Never let them get a foothold. I’d try to convince them that I was a demon that got away from the other demons to warn of our coming.

I’d do my best to make it so nobody remembered the name Christopher Columbus except as the idiot that died because he thought the world was much smaller than it is and never returned from his voyage.

Y’all are crazy. Grown adults going on about silly ponies.

The real G.O.A.T. (and I don’t mean Grogar) is Pinkie Pie. She’s fun, chill, suprisingly powerful, and got real backstory depth.

Your entire rant should be required reading for kids entering high school in the age of social media.

Huh, that comic and the responses makes me realize how much people can’t notice their own blind spots, including within the comic itself.

Like in this section with people saying it’s exaggerated or nobody actually talks like that (because they don’t ever perceive it in real life and it seems to ridiculous to be real), and the comic referenced in your link where she says if men were responded to that way, because she apparently can’t see that it is how men are responded to for many of those things, because she’s so used to seeing women as the victims of that stuff perpetrated by mostly men (which is reasonable! What situations would she see the opposite?). What’s telling, though, is the way one side pegs her as a misandrist for it and shit on her work and herself for it, and the other side pegs those for being misogynist for taking issue with her (though, in fairness, some are and will hate on anything by a woman discussing problems for women).

Basically, I feel like this is two groups yelling past each other and being upset about the same issue: gender-based mistreatment. But another key thing is… well, the guys who happen across her comics should recognize that it’s a comic equivalent of TwoXChromosomes from Reddit: it’s by a woman, largely for women, and you should either skip it or read it for a glimpse of a perception you normally don’t experience, not something to argue over. And the women, just like with 2X, should take this stuff with a grain of salt (especially when someone presumes to know what men’s experiences are). Stuff is exaggerated to pinpoint an issue, but you shouldn’t let it poison your view of the world (or men).

Basically, I feel like there’s value in comics like PizzaCake’s, but the heavy commenting should be expected, not hated on. The most value people can get from it would be hearing other perspectives without insulting them for having a different one than your own. Except the actual misogynists (and misandists), they can fuck off, but I think it’s worth giving the benefit of the doubt to start.

I am convinced that vegans today will be like we look at abolitionists like Alexander Hamilton back during the 18th century. People will be horrified that we treated animals so abysmally for convenience, and some will say it was a normal and accepted practice, and people didn’t realize how horrible it was, and others will point to the vegans of today.

Thoughts like those make me a little more understanding of people like George Washington. He recognized it was bad, tried to mitigate it, but still perpetuated the practice. Just like I switched to Impossible Beef and chicken, do my best to buy local family eggs, but buy cheese and milk and ice cream from big name companies like Tillamook and Ben & Jerry’s.

90s Dominos was trash. Even Dominos recognized old Dominos was trash.

Thank you for this. It seems more in keeping with the original idea of the US, a federation of states.

Can you give some examples of how that works? Like, who pays for roads, who handles environmental regulations (or are there any), who establishes education standards (or are there any), etc. I’m not trying to argue, it just seems like on the internet people referring to “state authoritarianism” and “central government tyranny” ranges from “adults can’t be transgender” to “I have to pay taxes and the government won’t let me own slaves.”

I have had a number of conversations with relatively reasonable conservatives, where I’ve brought up the dangers of so many jobs moving toward automation with no additional job creation. And steering the conversation carefully, I got them to at least consider the idea of UBI funded by taxing any and all automation. I also got them (with the “everybody should have to work, people shouldn’t get life handed to them for free” mentality) to agree that the rise in automation should mean people working less hours each, so everyone still has jobs (basically, UBI and changing “full time” to 25 or 30 hours, where people get overtime past that… creating more jobs while peoples needs are still covered).

It’s amazing, sometimes, how starting with some similar premises (people should have to work, which I mostly agree with) and shared threat (automation taking jobs) can lead to some more open minds for things that they would otherwise be adamantly against.

When you multiply the productivity of every practitioner of a trade, they can lower their prices.

I’m sorry, but that’s some hilarious Ayn Rand thinking. Prices didn’t go down in grocery stores that added self-checkout, they just made more profit. Companies these days are perfectly comfortable keeping the price the same (or raising them) and just cutting their overhead.

Don’t get me wrong, if there are things they could get more profit by selling more, then they likely would. But I think those items are few and far between. Everything else they just make more money with less workers.

I had understood it to be even worse:

The sacrifices at the temple were expected to be pretty much perfect, and had to be found acceptable by the temple priests. So the merchants would get “pre-blessed” sacrifices that they would sell at exorbitant prices to the pilgrims, who would have the sacrifices they brought deemed “inadequate” by the priests.

So if you brought an animal sacrifice, you’d still have to buy another (costly) animal. If you brought money, you’d be forced to exchange it at a significant loss.

The whole thing was an obvious scam, and Jesus was killed over it (and the rest of his message). I don’t believe he was God Incarnate, but I’m still a big fan of Jesus the man.

I’m pretty confident that all would have gone about the same way in this era.

Damon? Do you mean Dicaprio?

This reminds me of an anecdote talking about language differences between the US armed services:

If you told a Marine to secure a building, they would kick the door in and take control of the building.

If you told a soldier in the Army to secure a building, they would set up a fence around it and establish a sentry.

If you told a Navy sailor to secure a building, they’d turn off all the lights and close and lock the door on their way out.

If you told an Airforce airman to secure a building, they would write up a purchasing contract.

When you are talking large income to larger income, that makes total sense, but are there limits for access to things like child tax credits where if you go over you are no longer eligible, causing significant increase (I just looked, and it’s at $200k single of $400k jointly, so unless you have A LOT of children, I suppose there wouldn’t be a huge effect)? Similar to people on government assistance who go from getting full assistance to getting nothing at a certain income level?

Man, I do enjoy taking the wind out of the sails of presumptuous people knee-jerking a response without knowing any specifics.

I spent most of my career flying in relatively dangerous conditions in helicopters (or on small boats, before I went into aviation) in order to save people from drowning in the ocean or freezing in the woods. I’ve had two coworkers who’ve crashed (in separate incidences), one of which was at the door sending a dewatering pump to a sinking boat. I specifically joined the service I did because, as I told the recruiter, I can choose to join, but I can’t choose where I’m sent after, and I’m still responsible for my actions because I chose to join in the first place. There’s nothing morally ambiguous about saving somebody whose boat is sinking.

Now, don’t get me wrong, having more and more of our people being sent to “defend the border” definitely falls in the realm of “not what I signed up for,” but I haven’t personally been forced into that, and am extremely unlikely to.

So I may have dealt with some brown kids whose lives were threatened, but certainly haven’t found any that were a threat themselves (except to themselves… boaters tend to be their own worst enemies).

I remember that time well. Mine are 5 and 10, so I’m moving out of the more intensive child-rearing time. When I retire, they should both be at or near the “too busy for Dad” time, so other than giving rides, my days should be free and clear. I’m really looking forward to it.

Good luck with the little ones!

I retire (military) in 4 years, and my countdown feels like this, but more specific. I just had to re-enlist, and I was asking if I had to do full years, or if I could do 4.3 to line up with the anniversary of my enlistment (to retire THE DAY I am technically able to).

Not that I don’t enjoy my job, because I do, but I’m excited to be able to do whatever I want with my time and let my wife be the primary support for us for awhile.

If you set one end up in an air-tight room with an airlock, it would be just like a door from a mars station.

For safety’s sake, it might be better to put that on a space station, though. Better to wreck Mars than equalize Earth and Mars.

So it’ll be just like the bag full of Maximum Heal potions when the credits roll, except I imagine you could pass it on to someone with a message not to wait for the perfect moment.