Haha, holy shit. Somehow I had never connected that Piratesoftware was Maldavius. Yeah, that explains so, so very much of this entire SKG debacle.

Like, what kind of dictator are we talking here? Is this a Lord Vetinari benevolent dictator, or your typical generic slimeball autocrat?

Personally, I’d like to think that if they did become the latter, they’d be so far different from the person I love that I would break from them. Thoughtfulness, intelligence, and consideration aren’t usually things I see associated with dictators, you know? But people have an incredible capacity to isolate and put on different masks between their personal and professional lives…

In fairness, Microsoft certainly has tried to get the next closest thing with Bedrock. The hosting of server backends through their architecture via “realms” allows them to lock you out of a whole lot, and I still see people getting randomly banned because of their profanity filter.

But yes, if Realms shut down right now, there would always be Java (and even privately hosted Bedrock servers).

I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don’t play on a schedule that works for me. It’s really frustrating.

I think it was the cost.

It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena’s schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up… or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.

I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a “rocket launcher” with a little radio thing in the “rocket” to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.

From what I understand, it’s less about chasing a market than wanting to be perceived as correcting the previously highly male-dominated writing scene.

Subjectively, a little informal discussion among writer & fan groups to me suggests that men who read fantasy tend to slowly but steadily acquire new materials, often from word-of-mouth among dedicated communities; women, by contrast, tend to latch on to a particular breakout series or author, with awareness often propagated by social media such as “Booktok”. This means that while both groups purchase in similar volumes, a book whose audience favors women can experience surges of popularity which make for prominent best-sellers over limited timeframes.

Admittedly, though, this is informal - so take that with a grain of salt.

The last few times this was brought up for discussion, one thing that many people mentioned - including quite a few who had interacted with publishers - was that publishers were strongly selecting for female authors. Some of this may have been in an effort to correct for lack of female presence in what was perceived as a male-dominated genre, some may have been trying to find the next wildly successful Rowling / Suzanne Collins / Sarah Maas / etc.

Several expressed that it was actually difficult to get a response as a male fantasy author, so this well-intentioned drive may have resulted now in some over correction bringing us to our current place.

I admit it’s not my favorite, but I do still love that it’s actually distinctive and has a specific “vibe”. You look at it and you know exactly when it’s from and what it’s about.

I can’t think of any ‘style’ in the last 20 years that has that.

I’m not actually surprised. Water and gas meters have to work perfectly, for years on end, without leaking or jamming, through rain, ice, and blistering heat. They feel like the kind of invisible infrastructure that we almost never think about, yet is actually some fairly robust engineering with a lot of R&D behind it.

Art deco for sure, possibly turn-of-the-century industrial as well.

Seriously look at this steam engine. It looks like it belongs in a massive cathedral or something.

So, if the meter has one of those old displays with all the little dials, it has some kind of a sensor that reads that and transmits it? Convoluted, but probably much reduces the price compared to retrofitting the actual meter itself.

Well, I mean I guess after a long day or working really hard it can get a little achey and-

But my lower back will randomly act up, sometimes it gets so bad that I about black out from the pain.

No. Holy shit, no. Not normal at all. Go see a doctor ASAP. If you’re ever in debilitating pain for no obvious reason, that is a colossal flashing “go see a doctor now” sign.

Ehhh, I don’t see how that proves intention. Neither Fuji TV nor ADV films meant for their slapdash dubbing effort to become a cornerstone of anime comedy; in fact, that both ADV and the voice actors hired by ADV were individually given free reign pretty clearly shows lack of intent.

Ghost Stories

This one is an unintentional classic. My D&D group still has “Run, she’s a ghost and a bitch!” as a catchphrase for nasty monster encounters.

I don’t know if it was that short term, but I’ve always been rather concerned with the sharp degree of hostility and even outright hatred that seems to be tacitly accepted or encouraged.

Bought a “gaming laptop” (needed it at the time. Not the best call in retrospect). Bought an extended warranty for 5 years, at it was fairly expensive.

Mere days after the manufacturer warranty ran out, one of the keyboard keys stopped working. I sent it in for repairs. They estimated 2 weeks, including shipping both ways.

Weeks later, they finally claimed they couldn’t find replacement parts (for a laptop less than 1 year old?) and refunded me the entire cost of the laptop. The warranty itself cost roughly ~20% of the laptop cost, so I figure I effectively “leased” a laptop for a year instead of buying it.

Hey, they also sent me back the HDD, which went on to serve for another few years in the desktop I built with the returned funds.

I cannot express enough how true this is. The key animators in a lot of Anime studios are overworked, but there are also “grunt farms” which handle the heavy work of filling in the animations. Even US (and really, everyone else) studios farm out a lot of work to these houses, who take the barebones stuff the main staff have assembled and turn it into a polished product.

(Engineering)

According to movies:

1. We spend our entire workdays in the lab.

2. Whenever anything is turned on, there’s a loud whirring and a big shower of sparks. Computer screens with big flashing “WARNING!” signs are optional.

3. Something is inevitably spinning on the lab bench. It’s unclear if it does anything.

4. Fixing a major problem is solved when someone has an “Ah-hah!” brainstorm moment, wires up something on the spot, and it magically works perfectly.

5. Assembling a new thingymajig involves lots of power tools and pieces which fit together seamlessly. If they don’t fit, they can be made to fit with some elbow grease and definitely won’t fail horribly the first time you turn them on.

6. Labs are festooned in such random pieces of hazardous equipment as high-voltage power lines, random chemicals, blowtorches, and radioactive materials.

In reality, we spend a lot of our days at our desks, the equipment is surprisingly quiet (and that which isn’t, you stay well away from while it is operating), and spinny stuff largely went away in the 1980s. Assembling a new thing is 30 minutes of grumbling, 3 hours of pulling your hair out, and day(s) of waiting for a new part because someone screwed up tolerances or signal polarity. The most dangerous thing in the lab is stuff sloppily left laying on the floor, which I have tripped over and nearly cracked my skull before.

In fairness, #4 happens sometimes. It’s extremely rare, but occasionally you do get those moments where you figure out what the bug in the system is and can rectify it in an hour or two. Most of the time, a fast fix for one problem causes another.

The only problem with reading the Manga is that after you finish it, the film seems so simplistic and flat in comparison. The Manga has so much greater nuance, tragedy, and depth to it.

This. I don’t understand why murdering your alt-self is “necessary”. Wouldn’t you actually want to preserve your alternate-self at all costs, to ensure you can continue to make return trips?

The real issue here is that - if your home reality works by the same rules - once you leave it, you can never return home ever, because no alternate version of yourself exists in the one you originated from after you leave it.

Before you say “hey, that sounds awesome, this place sucks!”, consider that finding a better reality is not guaranteed.