solitaire

solitaire , 12 days ago

Do people really expect it to be anything other than just more GTA? The bar doesn't seem to be set that high.

solitaire , 30 days ago

lmao that's cool as hell

solitaire , 1 month ago

What are your thoughts on polyamory?

If they are polyamorous, it's a no. If they have been polyamorous before but say they're looking for a monogamous relationship this time, also no. If they use the term "ethical non-monogamy" in a positive way, even if they claim they're monogamous, straight in the fucking bin.

solitaire , 1 month ago

It's not that it's CGI that really bothered me, it's that it's not good CGI. I got the same feeling watching the trailer as I did the Hobbit.

solitaire , 2 months ago

It used to be the way we played ADnD

Far from everyone, the game was born out of war gaming so maps and minatures have always been big in the community. I personally see theater of the mind more often these days than when I started.

solitaire , 2 months ago

It has it's roots in actual letter writing, as in "I hope this letter finds you well".

solitaire , 2 months ago

To be fair, I'm certain that someone has written it with that as the intended meaning. It seems like the kind of passive aggressive thing some mannered British aristocrat would do.

solitaire , 2 months ago

Imagine a time before instant communications, where you have no idea how life has treated the recipient since you last saw them and it might take months for your letter to arrive. It is a sincere hope that they are well and that tradgedy has not befallen them.

It would be neurotic and unreasonable if your last update on their life was only days or even hours before, but in the days of letters hope is really all you had. It's just honest.

solitaire , 2 months ago

I have used a check. I'm more likely to be able to get a mortgage and buy a house than to be accepted for a rental again, though I'll likely die before paying it off. I still keep a fair amount of actual cash at home "just in case".

Will be interested to hear your guesses.

solitaire , 2 months ago

There is an often reposted study that shows people who are worse at video games are more likely to harass women. Though these are some issues with the study and it's scope, this more or less matches my experience. However, this is usually transformed via a game of telephone into suggesting higher skilled players are less misogynistic.

I have played at the top level of multiple games over different genres and it is incredibly misogynistic up there. The key difference is most of the nerds up there are less likely express it so obviously and publicly. In a lot of cases this is purely about self-preservation, teams in competitive games will be collectively penalized so there is a degree of self-policing (nobody wants to have their team disqualified with all that money on the line) and in PvE games there is usually a great deal of time (and lets be real, often money) invested in an account people don't want to lose.

It's gotten a lot better since the "tits or gtfo" and "there are no women on the internet" days, but the last time I was in these circles was only during COVID and it was still wildly misogynistic behind closed doors.

solitaire , 2 months ago

I can't remember the last time I got a spam email honestly. I changed my address like 5+ years ago and it just stopped and never resumed. It's not the email provider filtering them either, the only thing it catches are legitimate but automated messages.

solitaire , 2 months ago

Starship Troopers is Heinlein not Dick, and it's fascist nonsense. Verhoeven was right to throw the book in the bin after two chapters and the movie rules.

solitaire , 2 months ago

Never felt it in the first place, weekends always used to be stressful as a kid and it took a long time for them not to turn me into an anxious mess.

solitaire , 3 months ago

As a non-American who didn't grow up with imperial, I still prefer it for fantasy. Metric sounds too modern and scientific. Also I feel like I have more room to fudge distances because it already sounds imprecise.

Would be a fun bit to make the players uses metric in a magitech world though.

solitaire , 3 months ago

From the way you've described your mental health problems, I've had similar friends who have found stable, loving relationships. So there's hope, though I know that can be the most infuriating thing to hear.

solitaire , 3 months ago

I literally never have. Same prepaid thing for like 15-20 years. The terms have changed a fair bit over the years but I still only dump the bare minimum for long/no-expiry from the same provider. Averaged out it's only a few dollars a month.

It has some data now but I still just Wi-Fi hop in the rare situations I need internet.

solitaire , 3 months ago

My life personally is better now than it was 15 years ago. I have some nostalgia for the late 00's, and if current me could go back I could build something better than I have now - just working not "lol I just memorize lottery numbers" or whatever - but back then I was fucking miserable. Abusive living situation, deeply mentally ill, broke and not yet equipped to deal with it all.

solitaire , 3 months ago

Your pick reminds me I really should get into some naval fiction. I used to love it on the screen (Hornblower, Master and Commander, etc), I'm a big fan of it's sci-fi equivalents, I was into sailing as a kid and I am a total sucker for command drama stuff. Frankly, I'm shocked I've never read any naval fiction as far as I can remember.

solitaire , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

$200,000 for a 1 Bed 1 Bath with an hour and a half commute to the city. It's a unit, so probably has a bunch of other fees attached for upkeep but they aren't listed. Area is far away from necessary services, highly car dependent and notoriously crime ridden. The unit is run down and requires renovations.

Double that for a 2 Bed 1 Bath in a similar area.

solitaire , 4 months ago

My favourite bit on drow related lore is from 2E. Non-drow followers of Eilistraee would do black face and travel the world as part of an effort to show drow could be peaceful. There is something hilarious to me about how well intentioned the author seems to be but completely oblivious to what it looks like.

solitaire , 4 months ago

One, that's the kind of thin you get from it being cheap and way past the point you're supposed to throw it out. Perfection.

solitaire , 4 months ago

This is just not relatable at all for me. Is this an American thing?

solitaire , 4 months ago

Can an object be on both sides of the portal at once? Like if I ran a cable from the inside to the outside. I'm trying to work out how to handle water and sewage, because like everyone else I've concluded this is obviously a living space.

solitaire , 4 months ago

Do you have any idea what you might be interested in? Genres, topics, non-fiction/fiction, etc.

solitaire , 4 months ago

You might want to try The Expanse series of books. They're very straight forward but still are engaging with interesting ideas and they've certainly got volume. The language is simple, in a practical and modern kind of way, without feeling dumbed down. It doesn't use any of the structures that can make a book challenging to follow.

solitaire , 4 months ago

I've never done it in my own home, but I had a coworker I'd text with even though his desk was an arms length away from mine. Mostly because it could be hard to tell when either of us was on or about to make a call.

solitaire , 4 months ago

It's a little petty, but I constantly feel stupidest about my hearing. Cranked my music too loud and didn't wear ear protection ever when I was younger. The tinnitus gets so bad sometimes it makes me suicidal.

solitaire , 4 months ago

I was going to post the same thing.

I lied, I cheated, I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning thing of all, I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would.

Just... god damn it hits hard. Also Sisko's change in tone turning the final "I can live with it" into a question.

solitaire , 4 months ago

The Inner Light was what finally got me into Star Trek.

It's not like I had never seen an episode, in fact I'd seen lots, but it was comfortable background noise I'd change the channel too as yet another repeat I had no context for aired. Always somehow a filler episode or the second part of a multi-episode arc. I'd written off Trek as pleasantly mediocre and wholly dependent on technobabble despite otherwise being an extremely keen sci-fi fan.

Luckily, on some long forgotten forum, someone described an episode which sounded nothing like the Trek I had seen. As you said, the emotional weight got me good.

solitaire , 4 months ago

Most people could cheap out on tools and they'd still last. The average person just doesn't use the ones they own very often or work them particularly hard. Really, you're going to know if your usage will require higher quality tools and it's not the average techbro posting on /r/buyitforlife.

Backpacks are similar. If you're just using one lightly loaded for an urban commute there is nothing wrong with cheaping out. Spending more is really for people who are wearing them hard and filling them to capacity.

solitaire , 4 months ago

I was bullied a little, but frankly kids are not nearly as horrible as people say. The adults were far worse.

When I hit high school I may has well have sent up a flare to all the pathetic little fascists who became a teacher not to teach, but because it was the only meager bit of power they could grab. I came from a different city, my uniform was all off-brand, I didn't have any money, my fees weren't being paid on time, I didn't have all the books, I spoke differently, and my commute was long and prone to delays. I was an easy target, and it would only get worse as the clothes began to wear and my stationary began to dwindle without replacements.

I'd get pulled out of class randomly, not by my teacher but by someone else on staff who had taken on some admin work. They'd look me over trying to find something to punish me for. I got done once because the hem of my shirt wasn't thick enough. No, that wasn't specified in the dress code.

I once spent months being locked alone in a detention room and not allowed to attend classes.

The longer this went on for the more things there were to find. My grades obviously went down, as did my attendance. I had been an A student in gifted classes at the beginning.

I knew about a dozen people who were constantly being harassed this way. More than half of them dropped out of school.

Also one of my regular harassers was fired a few years after I left for being a pedophile.

solitaire , 4 months ago

I'm not sure why you think this is any good or would require anyone to rebalance an encounter at level 16. The charmed condition is just:

• A charmed creature can't attack the charmer or target the charmer with harmful abilities or magical effects.
• The charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature.

Like okay, a single humanoid in an encounter has to attack a different party member for two turns worth of actions?

Hypnotic Gaze is such an awkward way of achieving this as well. You've invested two levels in a class with little synergy with your main for an incapacitate that only works with 5 feet of you. Your DC for this is going to be terrible as it's INT based not CHA based. You'd be better off just taking Hypnotic Pattern as a spell.

solitaire , 4 months ago

This is very much a build that can take down major threats single-handedly, and is designed to function as such.

I think you're going to be shocked when you take it out of the white room lmao

solitaire , 4 months ago

That's a really abnormal reaction. You sure everything is alright?

solitaire , 4 months ago

I went to the doctor because I was having panic attacks. I already knew I had an anxiety disorder, I have since I was a kid, so I assumed I was only going to resume treatment. The doctor just started me back on some meds like usual, but sent me off for some blood tests out of routine.

I don't want to get specific but, as it turns out, there was a lot more going on. I'd been feeling sick for a long time. It seems ridiculous looking back just how sick I let myself become but never even considered seeing a doctor about it. I had a thousand excuses for why it might be happening but not a big deal, and a thousand more lying to myself that it was normal and I wasn't sick at all.

I spent the next two years with medical appointments at least twice a week and referred to various specialists. My inner elbow looks like a junkie's from all the tests. I am still not close to where I used to be, but I'm feeling a lot better these days.

solitaire , 5 months ago

came here to point that out as well lol

solitaire , 5 months ago

Kind of an easy question for me.

I've studied Italian before and while I dropped it pretty early, of the language classes I took I found it pretty comfortable to learn. If I wanted to become fluent I feel confident I could. I've actually been debating whether to take it or a French course as a hobby lately.

With Chinese I've had difficulty even differentiating words or learning basic phrases from friends who speak it. I don't think I could become fluent even if I dedicated myself. Getting it by magic is the only way I'm going to learn it. It's also by far the more useful of the two languages.

solitaire , 5 months ago

I'm reading Erdogan Pizza by John Dolan. It's a collection of real travelogues from an utterly unadventurous, shy nerd who keeps managing to get kicked out of third world countries while being dead broke. I couldn't imagine a greater mismatch between the personality of someone and how they've chosen to live their life. Very amusing.

solitaire , 5 months ago

Yeah, I've seen An Idiot Abroad and quiet enjoyed it. Different vibes though, Karl is incurious and is being pushed into it (which is entertaining in it's own right). John is absolutely doing it of his own volition, though I don't fully understand why, and is deeply curious. There's also a palpable sense of desperation and danger that comes from being someone's life, instead of a well funded work holiday.

solitaire , 5 months ago

I think the Game Boy Color is my favourite. It just fit it's purpose so well. Simple, rugged, compact, reasonably priced and looked great. The cartridge system was perfect for kids.

The original Game Boy just missed the sweet spot and the DS is when they start getting more fragile, more expensive and the game cards were a lot less kid friendly than the cartridges were. They were all good in their own right still but didn't quite hit the mark as well. The non-SP advance was pretty close though.

solitaire , 5 months ago

Already came out months ago, it was terrible.