Most have disabled that now. I have only found one pump around here that I can still mute. I used to put tape over the speakers to muffle it, but most play out of the screen like a phone now.

Hatchet was such a powerful book when I was a kid. I bet it still holds up, so maybe I should reread it soon.

Put it in VR and it reminds me of the Community episode:

“Jesus wept!”

Any mod recommendations for a 5 year old? He’s got a laptop with Debian on it and I’d like to set him up with MineTest, but I’m not sure he can handle the full MineClonia experience.

Making your own meaning is Existentialism talk! Embrace the lack of meaning!

Most importantly, since there are infinite other options in-between that are just as likely as God existing, some can have negative reward values if you choose “worship God anyway”. It is just as likely that there is a vengeful Anti-God that will torture you for eternity if you worship the Abrahamic God, which would completely negate the rewards from the original wager.

This is what I’ve seen too. Directors come back from a conference and suddenly we’re learning a newer but objectively worse system. Obviously the grunts using the systems aren’t consulted, but are expected to be team players through this educational experience.

trans people are after their children to convert them

I think this is a very big part of it. When I was a teenager and our state legalized gay marriage my dad said it was great. He was all for their freedom to do as they pleased behind closed doors. But as soon as he thought I, his son, might be gay he was terrified. Suddenly he would change the channel if an effeminate man walked on. He’d leave Maxim magazines everywhere. He’d mock anybody “acting” gay.

Fearing for your children is incredibly powerful. Best case my dad was scared I would be bullied. More likely I think he was scared people would see him differently and he might be mocked. It’s such an easy lever for politicians to pull when trying to manipulate their voters.

My kid is obsessed with the Mario sets. Unfortunately almost none of them have physical instructions, so you need to use the LEGO Mario app.

Sometimes I will find him going through the instructions on the iPad for sets we don’t even own. He just likes watching it get built and doesn’t know YouTube is a thing yet.

Apparently the calculation includes “Social Vulnerability”, which looks very much like a population map. Which is probably why my city is yellow due to winter weather even though the surrounding counties are blue.

When I was 10 or so my cousins and I put a basketball hoop in the barn loft after all the hay bales were used for the season. My uncle came up the ladder and told us to be careful or we’d “get a bunch of coons in here playing ball.” I didn’t know that word was a slur at the time, so the image of a bunch of raccoons playing basketball was hilarious to me.

When I was in my 20’s I told that story and everyone just grimaced. Someone had to tell me what he had actually meant.

I don’t understand, haven’t these robots existed for almost 20 years? We’ve got a half dozen of these where I work moving pallets of stuff around the warehouse.

It’s usually not scary, it just jolts me up and out of bed, which interrupts my already limited sleep. It’s definitely not great. I’m hoping it’ll calm down as my son gets older, but I won’t hold my breath.

This happens to me almost every night. Usually while coming out of sleep, but sometimes while I’m still trying to fall asleep. It used to only happen when I was stressed about work, but once I had a kid it became very frequent.

I hear/see the door open, hear my son’s door open, see giant spiders on the wall, hear someone rummaging through the fridge, hear my son screaming, etc. If I get up to check it’s always nothing.

I got moved to Nelnet as well and I hate 'em. At least my last provider had a decent website and didn’t constantly get confused about how much I owe.