I think there’s also a pair:

• Takes the setting and theme very seriously. Reads the lore. Knows the details. Can tell you why the Lancea Sanctum and Invictus are traditionally allies
• Absolutely does not take the setting and theme seriously. Wants to play Barney the Dinosaur in your game of Vampire, and Punisher in your game about running a bakery.

I’m old and tired and generally am super tired of “wacky” ideas like the second one there. I feel like I’ve come full circle. As a youth, I thought like “let’s play vampires and struggle with humanity was cool!” . Then there was a bit where i wanted to flip it- “let’s play vampires but like go to theme parks and don’t do anything sad or deep!”. Now I’m back around to wanting to just play the theme as intended.

This is especially true if it comes up after session 0. Like, if you want to do a D&D game about running a BBQ shop, fine. Let’s do it. Let’s kill, cook, and sell some weird monster parts. But please don’t derail the whole game on session 3 when you insist on going back to town to cook the monster meat when it was clearly a random encounter and everyone else wants to continue the dungeon dive pitched in session 0.

One of the reasons I despair D&D is the most popular RPG. It’s almost all combat, and not even great combat at that.

saying he’s treated like a nazi so might as well say he’s a nazi.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-You-made-me-become-a-Nazi is kind of timeless

Where is “here” out of curiosity?

I’ve read that most of the lead from leaded gasoline is still in the environment, where it does cause harm. It it’s in the soil, and that can get into people through a variety of means.

It’s just myopic emotions. “Does this feel good for me right now?” If it’s actually good, if it’s good long term, if it contradicts a past stance - none of that matters.

Zohran ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohran_Mamdani ) seems like a much better candidate. NYC has too more information voters and regressives than I like, sadly.

I think this is another problem where having an absolutely shitty police institution takes options off the table.

Like we could try to have speed limits and enforce it, but I’m very confident the NYPD would just use it to bother black people.

Anyway. A speed limit is probably better than a total ban imo, even if enforcement is going to be a problem. Just posting the limit will make some people behave.

I recently reinstalled BL3 for a bit and I think I spent more time downloading it (like 100gb for unknown reasons) than I did playing it.

The pacing is bad. Too much walking around or listening to people talk, not enough doing stuff.

The itemization is kind of bad. Like yeah there’s millions of guns but most of them are trash, and looking through a dozen to compare [damage, clip size, reload speed, etc] in that fucking awful UI is tedious.

The gameplay is kind of bad. Most things don’t really react to being shot. It’s just shield and HP sponges.

They haven’t really changed much since like the first game launched in like 2009. That’s like 15 years. Still basically the same game.

It’ll probably sell a bunch of copies because of the brand, and a lot of people are low information, but I don’t think it’ll be good.

I don’t have any real disagreement, but I think the problem is capitalism. The abuses in sex work are more visceral, but capitalism will create horrors for a few pennies.

There’s a great band Priests that I believe are pretty lefty

i’m reminded of something mlk jr wrote, on a related topic:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;

That’s a lot of people - they just want things to be quiet and easy for them, and if there’s injustice for others they’ll just have to live with it.

Ars doesn’t let me say what I think should happen to all these DOGE traitors anymore, but man they are the fucking worst in every sense.

“not the onion” is exactly right - this would be too on the nose if it was satire

I said similar on another article like this, but I worry the kind of people who need to know this won’t read it. They’ll just dismiss it because “cnn is woke” or “they just don’t like trump” (which reminds me of the “missing missing reasons” post about estranged parents, incidentally)

But maybe a few fence sitters or accidentally-low-information types will read this and realize trump is not the way to go.

On the one hand, yes. But also, it’s mostly capitalism.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with “I’m starting a frisbee club for fun. We’re going to meet saturdays in the park. I’m going to put up some flyers and tell my friends about it”.

But at some point that can mutate into “i put a 30 second unskippable ad for FrisbeeFranchise on youtube, and a giant billboard over the subway stop that implies if you don’t play frisbee you’ll never be happy”. That’s bad.

I think targeted ads should be illegal as a first step. I don’t think anyone except the worst sort of advertisers would go to bat for those. Old fashioned static ads where they put an ad for bike stuff by the bike lane in town is annoying, but somehow we’ve invented things so much worse than that.

Another reason I feel good about buying albums.

I worry a lot of people won’t learn until the leopard is eating their face, and maybe not even then.

I wonder what kind of pizza he prefers. It would be funny if chicago pizza caused a schism in the church.

Adams is a giant turd. He’s terrible and I hope Zohran ousts him in the next mayoral election.