@eye8urcake said in MU Things I Love:
In addition, making it doubly cool is the fact that this happened less than twenty-four hours after I finally managed to see through and peel a manipulative emotional vampire barnacle that I also met in a mu* off my ass for the final time, so... net gain.
Stoooory!
No, it's people who are themselves low/middle class, struggling, and who are protesting against those same benefits as some sort of communist/socialist agenda. That is just genuinely crazy - folks opposing their own self-interest on behalf of billionaires.
It's not really that crazy when you consider the fact that many of those people are only just barely making enough paycheck to paycheck to afford the things they need, if they're managing to afford it. Many of them are deeply in debt.
Every dollar out of that check hurts. It's felt viscerally, especially when it pays for a program that most state governments have put up serious hurdles to actually qualifying for. So they're paying money they can't afford for something they can't actually use.
They aren't acting against their self-interest. They're very much acting in favor of it. Although we assume the existence of the program is a long-term benefit for them, that is hardly guaranteed.
Saw my first boerboel today.
I want one. I want one a lot.
Not me, or the dog I saw, but including a photo for reference:
I need one of these dogs in my life. It's me-sized.
@silverfox said in RL Anger:
Having a doctor who knows how to code shit into the system is so important too.
The other issue is that there are several different systems, all of them proprietary and using their own code.
This would go so much smoother if we could just get rid of proprietary coding and records systems and just have a standard.
@faraday said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
Just once I would like to be able to make a grilled cheese sandwich on the first try.
Inevitably it takes forever to heat up, so I get bored and distracted, and then ZOMG EXPONENTIAL HEAT RISE = charred bread. Sigh.
Invest in an electric skillet. No, seriously. They are your friend. Completely controlled heat rise with lights that tell you when it's ready.
Yus.
I can do 1 or 3 as a preference, but I don't mind 2 as long as there isn't too much of a difference. Sometimes you find a good theme, or a good main picture, but the model in question just doesn't have a lot of them. I've had a couple characters now that have used multiple PBs.
I think that I would personally challenge the premise that this is some kind of problem.
That said -- people do things when they are aware there are things to do that interest them in a time when they are available.
So maybe just ask people what sounds fun to do, and gather a group?
You are not silver! I feel so betrayed!
But the cats are adorable so you are forgiven.
(Kidding. In case it wasn't clear.) 
@sunny they're like the derpiest cross between puppy and deer, they're all legs.
What breed are they? It's probably in the thread somewhere but I'm too lazy to excavate.
@silverfox said in Crafting Thread Part ?:
It isn't cats but look at what my older sister made me!!
I can't wait for the sun to go around the other side so I can see it back-lit directly.
Want one!
@aria said in Buying Shit:
Except you will.
Because you're welcome.
It looks like ET. 
Why does it look like ET?
So like -- where do we order a copy of this coloring book? It looks bonkers fun. <.< >.>
@crawfish said in RL things I love:
liquid pain
...wut? O_O
@aria said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
It is an utterly thankless job where you receive very little praise, if any, when you do an amazing job but man, do you hear it when you screw up. And also, your job is super critical to the basic functioning of the highest levels of management, but most people are going to talk to you like it's a miracle you can do more than schedule a meeting and order catering.
I've gotten this a few times as a paralegal. There are attorneys who understand what I do, and how important it is to the functioning of whatever firm or agency I'm working for at the time.
And then there are those assholes who think that I'm there because I'm obligated to be there, and they could totally do it without me if needed so it's fine if they are completely terrible.
The team I work for right now has been 99.97% great with one uncomfortable encounter with a supervisor that didn't understand how much my responsibilities have ballooned as a result of the pandemic, so I'll take it.
ETA:
I have not found a bow setup that I like. They're great for upper body work in a dynamic range but I also do a lot of squats and military presses and such and by the time I figure out a bow setup that works for all of that it takes up just as much space and ends up being more expensive.
@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
It makes me unreasonably content to have the means to exercise again in my garage.
It's not about being strong; I don't play sports during the pandemic. It's not about looking good; I barely go out during the pandemic. It's not even about being healthy, or not entirely.
I've realized I need the incentive to look after myself properly though and without goals and structure I cannot do this. Or, rather, I haven't; in the last year and a half I've taken terrible care of myself. I ate badly, dressed the bare minimum needed to sit in front of a web camera for meetings every morning, and I didn't have a reason to care.
For whatever reason having some iron to lift up and put down again works for me. It gives me a reason to look after the rest of my life. And it makes me feel good about it in ways I didn't realize I was missing until they came back.
I have most of a home gym, really, and I used the hell out of it during the pandemic. To the point where I am soon going to need new weight plates.
Which now cost an absolutely insane amount of money, wtf. I remember when I could get a set of 2 25lb olympic plates for like 39.99, and now it's like, 99.99 for one.
What the hell.
@il-volpe said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
These fuckwits who claim superior understanding of economics and yet also insist that certain jobs are designed for high school students.
The ones who absolutely would exploit child labor for zero wages if they could?
Nephandi = Mage that worships demonic cthulhu type dudes.
Marauder = Mage that is so crazy their insanity protects them from Paradox so they can do some off-the-wall magic and you can't.
Pure Ones = old platonic ideals / primordial gods from which all things in the universe descend as a fragmented copy.
First Cabal / Council of Nine - The mythical progenitors of the nine most commonly accepted magical traditions.
I thiiiiiink that might be the only stuff outside of the core book?
Kay Lahusen, who helped get homosexuality de-listed as a mental illness.
@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@derp Well, yes, but even then, when a classical Greek elite talks about "saving" the hoi-paloi from their own bad decisions, a lot of the time what they mean is "the year their harvest failed I was gracious enough to offer them a ruinous loan, they accepted rather than starving out of their own free will, and now apparently I'm not even allowed to enslave them on their own lands to collect on the debt. What's happening to this polis, I ask you."
...no, not really.
I mean, we could get into the entire Republic but here's a pretty good summary:
The demagogue gains power by democratic means, claiming to be a champion of ‘the people’ and making wild promises; in particular he offers intoxicating quantities of the neat spirit of independence. Anyone who opposes the demagogue is labelled an ‘enemy of the people’ and exiled or killed. Such tactics naturally create genuine enemies, and the demagogue quickly acquires a large bodyguard, and eventually a private army. External conflicts are also stirred up to keep the people in need of a strong leader. It is also in the demagogue’s interests to keep his supporters poor as well as fearful, and when they start to rebel, protesting that this is not why they voted him in, he attacks them too and the full-blooded tyrant is born.
@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
The flaws in democracy have been apparent since the first one was thought up. Plato wrote about it. Aristotle wrote about it. Extensively. It always, always leads to power creep and oppressive tactics. It's just inherent in the nature of the system.
Bearing in mind that part of the problem Aristotle and Plato had with democracy was that the "natural slaves" of the world got uppity rather than gratefully submitting to their betters, of course.
I mean, yeah, there was definitely classism in the, well... classical world.
But even putting that aside, assuming no theories of the blood and born rulership, you still have the problems of demagoguery and the resultant tyrannies as people demand protection from their own decisions.
@kestrel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Anarchism is when power is equally distributed through direct democracy, and the protection of all individual rights that don't impose upon other people's individual rights.
And this is the issue that I have with this definition; that and up there, which I have bolded, is joining two things in fundamental opposition. Democracy, or really any sort of governance, is still a means by which you restrain the actions and situations of others. It always has been. It always will be. There is absolutely no exercise of power over another that does not, in some way, constrain them, and thus violates their individual rights to self-determination.
The flaws in democracy have been apparent since the first one was thought up. Plato wrote about it. Aristotle wrote about it. Extensively. It always, always leads to power creep and oppressive tactics. It's just inherent in the nature of the system.
The definition above sounds wonderful on paper, but is fundamentally contradictory in actual practice.
