NielsBohron

Not OP, but mine was really pretty manageable. 2 days of sitting in an easy chair and icing my balls, 2 days of “walking is fine, but avoid any sudden movements,” and a week of “it’s a little sore, but it doesn’t really hurt.” After that, it was about 2-3 weeks where I didn’t really notice it unless I moved the wrong way too suddenly (whereupon I’d get a quick twinge, but nothing too bad).

Really a pretty small cost for the benefits. I don’t really like painkillers, but I do recommend some THC gummies for the first week and a fresh series to binge

I’m inclined to agree with you, but Valve doesn’t often miss

Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not overreact here. There are only a few cases where wishing that upon a person is acceptable, and I’m not sure this qualifies as a war crime.

I have tons of playlists and saved music on spotify; how is Tidal at importing data from other services? It’s not really a deal breaker, but I’m really picky about my music (so I don’t really care about “radio” features or curated playlists), so it’d be a real pain in the ass to start from scratch.

It’s sad to see the sequel get abandoned like this.

Especially when KSP has had such an active and vibrant community for a decade

And a small but significant private liberal arts college (Westmont)

I do go without. The only time I ever play online is playing PvE games with my good IRL friends that live in different countries and states now, and that’s maybe twice a month.

No randoms, no tantrums when we make noob mistakes, no toxicity. When my friends aren’t around, I play single player games or play with bots instead of people. I highly recommend it.

That’s some survivorship bias shit right here. I can’t tell you how many shitty, buggy games I played in the days of early console and PC gaming. Even games that were revolutionary and objectively good games sometimes had game-breaking bugs, but often it was harder to find them without the internet.

Plus, don’t you remember expansion packs? That was the original form of DLC.

Even though weed is legal in Canada the legal stuff is the worst and most expensive.

Give it time. I’m far from a connoisseur, as these days I mostly just partake in edibles 1-2 times per week, but California has some pretty sweet weed prices, at least compared to my college/grad-school days. I saw an ad on a billboard just yesterday for 10 USD Eighths at a pretty reputable shop in my town, and I think I usually pay 35 USD for a pack of 10 2-dose THC:CBD gummies (compared to 40 USD for an eighth of mediocre bud in the early 2000’s).

As people get less paranoid about enforcement and local governments ease up on restrictions, the price should come down and the quality should go up (although this probably depends a lot on local government, so who knows, really)

I wish this was true for me, but I only have one record shop within 45-minute drive of my house (and their prices and selection are far from competitive), so I wind up buying pretty much all my records online through Discogs. Frequently, the new represses are just flat-out cheaper than the vintage vinyl, especially for a lot of the more esoteric albums I buy. For instance, even though they’re not really hard to find, for Black Sabbath’s first four albums I paid just as much for mediocre, water-damaged copies of Sabbath and Volume 4 as I did for brand-new represses of Paranoid and Master of Reality. If you actually buy your vinyl to listen to, buying used online can be a pretty big gamble as far as quality, so for the same price, I frequently wind up consciously choosing the new vinyl over the used copy.

Even though I do frequently manage to package one or two cheap used albums with each new album purchased to take advantage of that sweet “media mail” shipping, it’s not even close to a 10:1 used:new ratio.

Edit: I suppose now that I think about it, I’m starting from a pretty decent used vinyl collection from my days in the early 2000’s as a hipster music snob before used vinyl got nearly so expensive, so my collection overall has much more used vinyl than my current buying habits would indicate (I probably have 200 albums, of which 30-40 were purchased new in the past 3-4 years)

What the fuck kind of snakes do you have living around you?

Interesting, thanks for the info

No problem! Obviously, I like talking about this stuff. And if you’re interested, I’d also recommend reading the whole book. It’s pretty fascinating, although in his reminiscing and pontificating, Asimov does get a little “get off my lawn” for my taste at times.

great name! I found a first edition of his in a basement bookstore in Switzerland as a teen. Totally random, I know.

Thanks! And it’s not too random, I’d say; we’re in a sci-fi forum talking about historical sci-fi writers, many of whom were also trained as scientists, after all.

In his memoir I, Asimov, Isaac Asimov wrote chapters about his contemporaries and apparently Heinlein was notorious for changing his political convictions based on who he was married to/sleeping with at the time. Hence, free-love hippie in Stranger in a Strange World and boot-licking war-hawk in Starship Troopers.

I think there are some editions of the second book done by Ken Liu, aren’t there? I haven’t read it yet, but I got a copy from a used book shop, and remember thinking that it was the same translator. At least, I thought I thought it was…now I’ve gotta go home and check

It’s a common problem with lots of classic sci-fi authors. Heinlein, Asimov, Philip K Dick, Larry Niven etc. are all terrible at writing believable dialogue and compelling characters. There are some exceptions, but most of their characters are cardboard cutouts so they have a way to move along a story or give exposition about the ideas.

The Expanse did a pretty good job with characterization (in the books), and Kim Stanley Robinson is decent (but is still pretty “hit or miss,” IMHO), but in general, the weakest part of sci-fi writing is almost universally characterization and dialogue.

If he wasn’t alone what would shooting him accomplish? You still haven’t actually presented a compelling reason he needed to be kept under a gun.

Once Bushnell was on fire and had stopped moving toward the gate/fence, you are correct, he didn’t need to be kept under a gun. However, if he had started to move in a threatening way or if he had been working with a larger group, having the guns drawn could have saved crucial seconds if someone else began to act in a threatening way. The security forces simply didn’t know what the fuck was happening, and in that situation, it is better to have the guns drawn and to be ready for the worst case scenario.

I think it’s understandable that people untrained for a situation like this would fall back on the default, I know I wouldn’t know what to do, but calling that “reasonable” as if it really makes sense in hindsight is a stretch.

That’s fair. I can get behind calling it “understandable” instead of “reasonable”

Considering the security forces had no idea whether he was working alone or what was happening, they obviously didn’t think they could rely on the metal fence.

Look, I’m all for a free Palestine and I agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I also think that voluntary membership in any American or Israeli law enforcement makes them complicit in the heinous acts perpetrated by American cops and the IDF, respectively. I don’t know you, but I’d guess that you and I agree a lot more than we disagree on these issues. I’m just saying, from the PoV of the security forces at the Israeli embassy, this was a potential threat to the embassy and their job is literally to prevent threats from harming the embassy. Without any further information to go on, their decision to draw guns first and get the extinguisher second is reasonable.

Stop him before he got any closer to the embassy. Obviously a gun won’t stop him from commiting suicide, but it could easily be the difference between one person dying and a much larger act of terrorism

The restriction in the law is against “intoxicating liquor, cannabis, or any drug”.

You’re right that in WA state, the laws regarding DUI tickets are specific to “intoxicating liquor, cannabis, or any drug.” That varies state-to-state, though.

In Washington state, the driver in this case could still be charged with negligent driving in the second degree, which includes any impairment. She shouldn’t be charged with a DUI, but she is still guilty of Negligent Driving 2 (which is a non-criminal offense), and I still think that if she’s driving in a way that is consistent with being intoxicated, it’s reasonable to be treated her as though she was intoxicated while they wait for more information. When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

I see what you mean now. I did read the article, but I was talking about during the events leading up to her incarceration.