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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

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  • Minecraft. You think that there’s no way to play Minecraft “wrong”, right up until you accidentally fall into the 4-block wide valley that I’ve cut through the entire map or walk into the liminal space that I’ve mined out just above bedrock. Fuck cutesy cottages and Minecraft in minecraft- let’s just build superstructures that disappear beyond the draw distance of the map. Fuck creative mode- let’s do it while we’re facing down mobs day and night. Fuck explosives- do that shit with a pick like a goddamn man. You haven’t really seen confused rage until your child discovers hundreds of unexplained and unexplainable brutalist towers extending into the distance like the gravestones of alien gods when they thought you were building a farm over the next hill.



  • Hell: An eternity of the skin-peelingist, ball crushingst torture you can imagine. Eyeball needles. The works. Because everyone has a creative psychological hell that’s worse than actual torture-hell, but to those people I say- have you tried torture-hell? Humans can rationalize anything, but it’s hard to rationalize a good ball crushing.

    Heaven: The abandoned residential belt around Birmingham, Alabama on a hot Saturday afternoon. Immediately following two months of torture-hell.





  • There is zero reason for the wizarding world to have social classes. Allow me to explain.

    Although food can’t be created with magic, any graduate of Hogwarts can cast the Herbivicus Charm (I think it’s called) or the Greenhouse Charm to grow plants in moments. There’s also a spell that produces fresh, clean water. They have spells that make the insides of things larger than the outside. Spells that clean dishes. Spells that levitate objects and automatically perform rote tasks.

    Every wizard or witch is maybe a month or two of moderate work (at the absolute outside) away from having a private pocket kingdom with crops, furniture, fireplace, teleport pad, beds, clothing, swimming pool, pets, cattle, enchanted kitchen, self cleaning floors, and fucking golf course if they want it.

    If they can’t create, craft, grow, or summon something, they can buy it with money taken from an entire world of gullible muggles. Sure, dollars and yen are worthless in Diagon Alley, but you can still buy food and an enormous range of physical comforts with it. And if you absolutely have to spend money in a magical store- muggles still have gold. Even at the extortionate exchange rates that I assume the goblins would charge, the process of turning essentially free cash (in exchange for magic tricks or conjured trinkets) into gold and then into goblin coin is basically nothing but profit. A lot of it.

    Which brings me back to social stratification. Why are the Malfoys considered a powerful family? Why do people differ to government functionaries and Dumbledore? Why do witches and wizards run businesses or work at all? Social hierarchy is a result of power imbalances, and other than direct, physical force, there are no power imbalances in the wizarding world. They can take your job, but who cares? You don’t actually need one. They can take your home, but who cares? You can make another in a few weeks (and this time the hot tub will go on the balcony instead of in the backyard).

    A wizard does not need anything from society or from other wizards.




  • I’ll tell you the strategy that worked for me last time (quit for ~2 years), and that I’m using this time.

    • Switch to a vape. Lung capacity increases immediately, and you get rid of the bad smell. If you haven’t vaped, give yourself some time to get used to the different habit (no cigarette packing ritual anymore etc)
    • Buy a 0 nicotine vape or two, or find a local place you can get them easily. This is your “inside” vape.
    • Buy a refillable vape and get nicotine liquid roughly equivalent to the full-nic vape you switched to from cigarettes. This is your “outside” vape.
    • Start restricting the locations you use the full-nic vape. I work from home, so I don’t vape full-nic at my desk, I walk outside to do it. You want to break the absent-minded vaping+work or vaping+tv habit.
    • Step your nicotine intake down over as long a period as you like, but don’t ever step it back up. First time I quit, I did it over about a year. That’s a little extreme. You could probably do it over a few months.
    • Once you’re on 0 nic all the time, either stay with that, or gradually wean yourself off the habit as well. This is much easier without the chemical addiction.

    Good luck.