The Gaming Den

Wholly shit.

I thought they fixed this, and thankfully it's not adding to my costs, but my health insurance is still covering an extra person. Their name, according to the plan, is Ryleigh.

Hey, Cthulhu needs insurance, too. He's got narcolepsy that needs to be treated.

Haru???

Ryleigh -> R'lyeh

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming"

Ancient History wrote:Ryleigh -> R'lyeh

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming"

So, Ryleigh is the friend who lets deadbeat Cthulhu sleep on his couch..

hyzmarca wrote:

Ancient History wrote:Ryleigh -> R'lyeh

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming"

So, Ryleigh is the friend who lets deadbeat Cthulhu sleep on his couch..

R'lyeh is the city/island where Cthulhu sleeps/is bound.

Now I can't tell if what virgil said was real or not. How does that happen?!

It's real. I don't know how it happened, and neither does HR. This person has my wife's last name too.

Same last name. We had a next door neighbor with the same last name, and she ended up on my student loans and all sorts of crazy places. She wasn't even going to school. It's like someone thought, "Oh. Same last name. They must be related. I'll just change her address to this other Danielson over here."

We got some mail for her last week that was a response to an application. She moved out of the apartment complex and all the way across the state two years before we moved out of town, so there's no way she knows our new address. Yet we still got the company's reply.

I had been 'arguing' off-and-on with this guy online - a real libertarian douchenozzle. I then find out his name isn't a coincidence, he actually is the author of the Dresden Files. Thanks internet, for tarnishing the image (previously near blank) of the author of one of my more enjoyed book series.

Could be lyin bout bein Jimmy B. But everyone is stupid about something. Usually lots of somethings.

I have a boss who is very intelligent about a lot of things but is tragically retarded on all issues political. Fox News could have a wire directly into his brain from all evidence I've seen. It is all I can do to bite my tongue rather than call him out on literally anything he has an opinion on about politically (including science which has become politicized like climate change).

Smart people think stupid things all the time, they just defend their stupid opinions more eloquently and more aggressively.

Also smarter people are much better at and aggressive in rationalization, making them much more stubborn about their dumb ideas.

Plus, most people believe at least one Terrible Thing and a whole lot of Stupid Shit because we are not rational, nuanced observers. We're people with our own prejudices and ego defenses, trying to present ourselves as a brand. If this JB is really spewing shit everywhere, being a Libertarian (or much more likely, being right) is deeply tied to some part of his ego identity.

On consideration, I don't care if Jim Butcher is a libertarian as long as it doesn't obviously come out in his writing. Sword of Truth, Dark Materials, Dragonlance, Left Behind, one might notice something those all have in common: They're preachy, and they suck. An author can use their ideology to inform their ideas of right and wrong and good and evil, but when they start trying to make their stuff ideological, or the ideology is inherently odious*, quality goes downhill in a hurry.


*NB4 "libertarianism is inherently odious'. Like, okay, I'm okay with some of the base ideas of libertarianism in theory. It's when someone adds them up and starts saying the Free Market Will Correct Everything And Enrich Everyone as if they'd never played a game of Monopoly before, up to and including suggesting privatized police and fire departments, that's when I start rubbing my forehead. Libertarians would have a point if people were angels. People are not angels and sometimes have to be forced to a certain minimum standard of human decency for society to function.

I can actually see a libertarian bent in Dresden Files, but it's an undertone, not a political screed. So I give him a pass.

At least I don't have to sit through him talking about how Obama wants to kill Christians and intentionally ruin America.

I do wonder occasionally what Terrible Thing I believe. Most often that rumination takes the flavor of, "What are my grandchildren going to be embarrassed by me talking about in a public restaurant?" For my wife's grandparents it's racism. For her parents it is homophobia (though I did notice a huge uptick in racist chatter among her parent's generation this Thanksgiving when we visited).

Anywho, I wonder if I'll be a bigot about trigger words, or parents modifying their children, I dunno. I probably won't see it coming.

Then again, on my mom's side I was never embarrassed by her parents or my parents. I guess cuz they're Methodists- Diet Christians who put a priority emphasis on helping other people.

I hate to be a downer, but it's entirely plausible that 2016 is the most progressive policy discource will ever be at any point in your life and that the debates of tomorrow will be about Jim Crow, abortion, and gay marriage.

It's difficult to predict how designer babies are going to be perceived. It's obviously a class-based issue, because access to that shit is not going to be equal. It's obviously a matter of personal freedom, because when to have and not have a child is your choice (except when it's not, because conservatives). I'm going to predict that the identity politics commentators end up hating it, mainstream commentators realize they're white and wealthy and offer the occasional vague mention that it is "problematic" while not giving a shit, and rightwing commentators talk about how it's destroying America while secretly taking advantage of it.

Public approval won't make trigger words any less fucking stupid, as triggers are completely arbitrary and include shit like "seeing a man holding his husband's hand in public and shedding a tear about the erosion of christian values," but I would not be surprised if trigger words managed to at least hit a strong consensus among the sorts of liberals we'd otherwise identify with. Or it's possible that the upcoming radical shift in our overton window will erase the majority of identity politics from existence. Not a lot of point arguing about whether or not it's appropriate to discuss "rape" when we're back to arguing about whether or not it's rape if it's your wife.

If we start growing slabs of beef and pork in factory biolabs instead of cutting them outta animate creatures, vegetarianism and animal rights might be due for a huge uptick in Moral Necessity because a whole bunch of people will find out that they can hold another progressive position without feeling personally inconvenienced by it. I can see myself catching some shit from my grandkids about it.

The last I heard vat grown meat was more like vat grown muscle tumors and didn't taste very good, but I'm sure they'll get it right if they keep working on it.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:The last I heard vat grown meat was more like vat grown muscle tumors and didn't taste very good, but I'm sure they'll get it right if they keep working on it.

From what I read the texture was decent but that there isn't the natural fat marbling we've grown to love so. That's troublesome considering I'm the kind of person that gets grumpy if someone spends money on filet mignon instead of ribeye.

So I found out that I failed my wildlife rehabilitation exam on Christmas Eve. It's not the end of the world (I can retake it at some point in the future) but it is a shitty end to a shit year, and finding it out on a holiday adds insult to injury.

There's a bunch of technical challenges to getting vat-grown meat that is appropriately meat-tasting, and there's also of even more formidable challenges in doing so in a fashion that makes economic sense.

I mean, it is unlikely that someone will ever make vat-grown meat that matches the flavor of truly high-end meat products. It's much more likely that someone will grow something in a vat that tastes functionally the same as the low-grade chicken they put into nuggets that go through a fryer. The trick is finding a way to do that is cheaper than actual chickens. That's hard because it means fighting against the accumulated science of centuries of selective breeding and several decades of well-financed genetic engineering and a massive agribusiness lobby that hoovers up the subsidies as efficiently as the animals it produces eat their feed.

The best target may be ground beef, since cattle have the worst feed ratio to meat produced of meat animals, the highest water requirement, and are therefore the most expensive. I'd expect vat-grown meatballs and burger patties to go mainstream long before vat-grown steak.

So . . over the christmas time i had my first real meeting with dementia.
There is this aunt of mine with whom i have had little to no contact for about 1.5 years or so by now, because she is basically the religious nutjobs part of the family. But at least she was an intelligent and strong willed person.
I had heard about her deteriorating state of mind after her father, my grandpa, had died a few years ago. But i did not think it would be that bad.
It was honestly scary to see this once strong woman reduced to a nervous scared and confused empty shell of a person. I packed my things and went home, because i wasn't feeling well in the first place. I just could not deal with that. Something in my mind just told me to get out of there x.x

virgil wrote:I had been 'arguing' off-and-on with this guy online - a real libertarian douchenozzle. I then find out his name isn't a coincidence, he actually is the author of the Dresden Files. Thanks internet, for tarnishing the image (previously near blank) of the author of one of my more enjoyed book series.

How have you read the series without noticing the man's ethics/politics? It was a major plot point in the book before last!

So, for the second time now, I didn't realize a prescription had been given with no authorized refills until I was out and went to get a refill.

The first time, it was just hrt hormones, so it wasn't a big deal.

This time it's my antidepressant.

And my counselor has left the provider I go through.

So the pharmacy is waiting for a refill authorization and there's no one to give it. I called the doctor and they switched the authorization over to my primary, but I still had to wait for them to actually get authorization. Meanwhile, I ran out two days ago, and I'm already feeling isolated, unwanted and stabby.

A friend who deals with this shit as well suggested I try to get an emergency allotment, so I showered, held my depressive ass together enough to get shaved and dressed and down to the pharmacy.



They can't do an emergency allotment because I changed doctors.

Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff...

They called the office, got whatever they needed sent electronically, so I'm just waiting now.

Where I can't self-medicate with nicotine. Goddamnit.