I think at around 5 million you no longer need to labor to live. You can put that in safe investments and just coast. That’s maybe not super rich, but it’s definitely above a milestone.

The idea that players all make their characters in isolation and just show up on session 0 with them sounds like such a recipe for disaster. I know it can work sometimes, much like “just grab four things from the fridge and throw them into the soup” can work sometimes. But sometimes you get like gummy bear pizza bites with shrimp and mayo topping.

I think a lot of games that came after D&D figured out solutions to common problems, but D&D insists on staying kind of archaic.

The didn’t listen when the GM talked about Theme and mood and end up with a character who doesn’t fit with the party/canpaign

Hah, for a second I thought this was my own post because I wrote something very similar here. But yes, this is one that bugs me.

Having a minor crisis realizing that 9th grade was far more than seven years ago for me. This is fine.

I don’t think I could name a single youtuber. I use youtube primarily for music videos and somewhat rarely “how the fuck do you do this particular thing?” (usually video games).

Conservatism explained as “there must be out-groups to bind and in-groups to protect” is pretty good, but someone recently said it’s just “what’s good for me and mine right now?”. Similar idea, different angle. I think this explains much.

Conservatives don’t care about hypocrisy because it doesn’t enter into “what’s good for me and mine right now?” Pointing out that they’re being a hypocrite matters as much as someone saying to you “Your sentence wasn’t alphabetical”. It’s just not a thing they care about, just like you typically don’t think about the ordering of your words.

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.

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 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.

I had a job where some people would loudly make plans without inviting the whole group. Not a fan. Job felt like high school sometimes.

I also had a shitty friend group in college that would do the same. Or they’d talk about how awesome the thing they did without you was.

Not in touch with any of them anymore.