Read Octavia Butler’s parable of the sower and parable of the talents. They’re written in the 90s but they’re basically about now. There’s even a measles outbreak.

Things can get really bad, but there are also a lot of good people.

Unless he’s going to be removed from power, this information is thin comfort.

Conservatism is “outgroups to bind, in groups to protect”. It’s pretty bad.

My hypothesis is that a lot of people are emotionally invested in DND, and if you say bad things about it then it feels like you’re saying bad things about them. Saying it didn’t happen or it was the players fault let’s them still feel good about DND.

We’re all susceptible to this.

For some reason DND fans seem less likely to just go “yeah it’s kind of garbage but I like it”

Ah, yeah. During combat there’s the related “if you can’t decide what you’re doing in a minute, you dodge and we go to the next person” rule you can bring out.

There’s a wide range between tpk and something interesting happening.

Like, the players are dicking around and can’t decide how to ask the bartender if they can have access to the secret occult library in the basement. Just really spinning their wheels and being total PCs. Fine. Timer runs out. Their rival shows up, doesn’t acknowledge them, says something quietly to the bartender and is being lead to the basement.

I often do “I am starting a timer. When it goes off, something interesting will happen”

If the players are still fucking around, then the fire bears show up (or whatever).

I played a MUD once that had characters age. When you got older, it affected some of your stats. You wanted your cleric to be older because that benefitted wisdom and mana, but fighter types wanted to be young for the health bonuses.

There were equipment that modified effective age, and you could remort at max level to reset it. It was kind of cool, aside from the first time I was like “why is my HP Regen so low? Ooh my cleric is like 120 years old”

Republicans are an existential threat, but somehow we have to make nice and pretend like they’re reasonable people who just have some polite disagreements.

You don’t seem to understand how things or people work, so I don’t think engaging with you further will be fruitful.

It’s not you. Google has been getting worse.

https://www.404media.co/google-search-really-has-gotten-worse-researchers-find/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/google-search-is-losing-the-fight-with-seo-spam-study-says/

I haven’t had to deal with much of that. I don’t know why your experiences were much worse.

Maybe NYC tends to have better built apartments? I’ve only lived here for any length of time. And I haven’t been in fancy exclusively apartments.

You may have bad luck. You may also have lower tolerance. Sometimes I hear my neighbor coming or going, but it’s unremarkable. It’s not loud or disupritve. But If I absolutely hated any reminder that other people exist, it would be a problem.

I’ve lived in NYC for ~15 years, in apartments, and I almost never hear neighbors. Nor have any of my friends complained about loud neighbors often. Problems with neighbors and noise is not an inherent property of apartments.

Street performers aren’t the same as people watching videos on their phone.

I hope I live to see musk face consequences. Preferably ruinous consequences that don’t take down a bunch of bystanders

Strike in multiple senses of the word

I’m afraid to ask but what?

Pretty much every Republican idea is bad. The party should be dissolved, its members and donors disenfranchised, and their crimes prosecuted.

They are bad people, either through malice or incompetence, it doesn’t matter.

Stochastic terrorism will probably eventually lead to one of these justices being murdered. I won’t be happy about further destabilization, but these conservatives are doing a lot of harm. I won’t mourn their passing, even if it’s explosive.