Ha! I want those two in a scene together.

That’s what I love about Rygel. His character arc is increeedibly slow and steady. That fucker stays true to himself, but still grows a bit. Kind of like Londo.

Nice!

Damn, that looks awesome. I’ve got a big rind-on pork belly in the freezer waiting for a good recipe. How’d you prep that?

That’s Dominar Rygel XVI from Farscape (my favorite sci-fi show hands down), which was co-produced by the Jim Henson Company. So yup, a Jim Henson puppet but not a muppet.

I love the hot springs in Ghost of Tsushima.

Synthetic textiles are a major contributor to funky smells in my experience, and I wasn’t aware of it until a few years ago. Sheets especially (microfiber sheets are disgusting, I regret ever using them), but also window shades, couch pillows etc. They can smell nasty, and it’s a kind of lowkey rotting plastic smell. Gross. I’ve switched to as many natural textiles as possible (been on a huge linen kick lately) and my place seems much fresher.

Ahh I see what you’re saying, thanks for the explanation.

Despite how unlikely it is for this to actually happen, it’s at least good to get people used to hearing it out loud. I don’t have any faith that they’ll follow through, but it does strike me as odd that this is being used as a threat against Israel. Like, “Israel, if you don’t stop indiscriminately massacring children then we’ll be forced to symbolically recognize the independence of the people you’re ethnically cleansing.”

The fact that Israel has no desire to see an independent Palestinian state doesn’t mean a toothless and symbolic threat like this will stop their monstrous actions…

Really good question, I’m not sure. The main difference between velour and velvet are their weave and pile, right? I would guess they’re both good for cat scratching since they’re so similar, but I don’t know for sure.

The power of velvet is probably one of the best kept secrets for cat owners. I’m always surprised how few people know about it.

I got a nice new leather couch a few years back, and my cat loooves to claw at leather, so I got a velvet cover and it’s genuinely like magic. He can scratch it all he wants and not do any damage. I think he actually realized it after a few days of trying to tear it up, because he gave up and now just likes to cuddle on it. I check on the leather every so often to make sure he hasn’t pierced the cover, but every time I check I’m amazed that the velvet cover and the leather underneath still look brand new after about three years of daily use.

Tldr velvet is basically claw-proof.

Why is too much solar real? I’ve never understood how too much consumer solar generation can be a bad thing for anyone or anything other than utility companies’ profits. The financial incentives that used to exist meant people generating more power than they needed could make a tidy profit by selling it back to the grid. I can see how that might have been unsustainable in the long term, but that’s irrelevant now that the subsidies have essentially been eliminated.

I have absolutely no sympathy for utility companies, especially here in CA, since all the ones I can think of are felonious companies responsible for countless deaths due to their terrible wildfire mitigation strategies and lack of investment in sustainability.

That’d be cool, Luke Cage is awesome, but I really didn’t like how they ended his show. They kind of wrote him into a corner and then just left him there. I hope he at least makes a cameo.

I happens quite a lot in my experience, and it’s more than an annoyance to me, but I wouldn’t call it a fundamental problem. It does really bother me, especially when the discussion has just started getting good.

I don’t really mind if people delete their own individual comments, but deleting the whole thread while folks are interacting bugs the shit out of me.

Why not? Science and medicine have always been biased in favor of men. Why should women not benefit from them too?

Yup. The creators just made a $1.5 billion deal for streaming rights. I wouldn’t worry about it.

I think it would be valuable to take a step back and look at how you’re thinking about women in general. This isn’t an attack FYI, I’m trying to be constructive because I totally understand your anxiety.

Firstly, lose the word “female.” Forget it. It won’t help you anywhere except biology class, and it’s a big red flag. In your brief question, your framing makes it sound like women are some mystical object that you can “get” with exactly the right words or the right amount of money. But they’re just people, and many of them are probably having similar issues talking to men. If you start to actively think about women as fully formed, independent, thinking, feeling human beings who have many of the same problems as you, and many that are quite different, then you’ll have a much easier time approaching them.

All of that is to say, empathy is critical. If you approach an interaction from a place of empathy—where you’re trying to understand the other person by listening to them and expressing interest—then it’ll slowly start to become natural. I realize that’s all easier said than done, but just thinking about women as complete people who aren’t there for you, but for themselves as individuals, would be a massive first step. Good luck.

That’s totally fair (though I haven’t played any recent Zelda games, so I can’t speak to that). I actually think quite a few recent open world games didn’t need to be open world at all and would have been better if they were more of a single player guided narrative.

One game that did this perfectly IMO was Guardians of the Galaxy. It wasn’t open world, but you could explore each “chapter” or “level” or whatever as much as you wanted and could replay them individually. That made the whole story feel really tight, coherent, and well thought out. I find myself really wanting that format in some of these big beautiful (and yeah, often boring) open world games.

This is pretty disappointing to me. I know it’s kind of an unpopular opinion these days, but I really enjoyed Outlaws. It was just different enough from other Star Wars properties to be novel, but recognizable enough to be convincingly in the Star Wars universe. Sure some characters were a bit flat, missions were repetitive, and it didn’t invent a new revolutionary mechanic or anything, but does every game have to be groundbreaking? I got solid enjoyment out of it, and was looking forward to how they’d continue the story.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should, Francis.

I’m willing to bet it’ll still be unwatchable, but glad you’re having fun old man.

No problem! The @ing does sound confusing, I think I’ll stop doing that.