Go purge those filthy xenos!

It’s weirdly beautiful in a melancholy way. I imagine most intelligent species are at least somewhat social, and they have an intrinsic desire to seek fellowship with others. I also imagine most would possess curiosity in order to seek out something other than themselves. So there’s this chorus of unheard voices calling up into the void “is anyone there? We’re over here. Hello? Anyone?”

And sometimes I look up into the sky and wonder if I’m looking at some distant soul who’s also looking back at me, wondering the same thing

go fight them and ruin their world (cause that’s what we do and love).

We are space orcs

I don’t believe aliens have been to earth so there’s nothing to cover up. I’m personally pessimistic that we’ll ever encounter alien life, intelligent or not. The universe is so vast and the time scale so deep that there’s certainly something else out there but the odds of us running into one another are next to impossible.

But I like to think that somewhere out there there’s another species just as alone as we are, howling into the void. And I wonder what would happen if we did finally meet, if they found us after groping around in the darkness for who knows how long and rather than attacking us or lecturing us they just rejoiced that they weren’t alone anymore.And we’d ask them about the vast galaxy-spanning metacivilization of countless other sophonts that most sci-fi seems to take for granted and they’d shrug and say “Nope it’s just you and us, lonely together.”

Several years ago there was a strike somewhere in our neighborhood, close enough to damage several electronics in my house, mostly via the network. I lost my router, and the built-in ethernet port on my PC.

When I was in high school a friend and I were waiting outside the school when it started raining. Lightning struck the field across the street. I wanted to look around the area to see if I could find some fulgurite (sand that gets fused into glass by lightning) but never got a chance to.

I have several antennas in my backyard (amateur radio) and have to disconnect my radios whenever lightning gets close. I can tell when a storm is in the area through the radio even when the weather around me is clear. I really should get a lightning detector.

On a related note, some government entity in the US (I believe it’s either NOAA or the NWS) keeps a public database of lighting deaths.

Warhammer 401(k), as in you have to cash in your retirement fund to pay for the hobby.

I’m the kind of guy who devours lore through YT videos and fan wikis without ever touching the actual franchise, and I’ve been doing that with 40K for years before I thought about buying a model. When I looked at the prices I decided I’d rather eat food.

“I’m a person and I have personal space!” --me if this ever happens.

There is no remuneration amongst the stars.

What do you mean “playlist”? I’ll listen to a single song over and over again all day if it checks the right boxes.

Some examples from the past few months. It’s mostly video game music, and I may or may not have heard of or even be interested in the game it’s from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzwV5085Vvo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLsX9WUdYnU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOWmtohjQMw

I think there’s a bit in some Mark Twain novel (can’t remember which one) about how people will gladly pay to ride in a carriage but wouldn’t want to be a carriage driver since pay comes with expectations.

As someone who only knows anything about cave diving from having binged mrballin videos in the summer of 2022, I salute your bravery.

The ability to write clear documentation is an invaluable skill. So many open source projects have terrible docs. The docs are probably written by the devs themselves, who perhaps don’t realize that end users won’t have the intimate knowledge of the thing they’re documenting as they do, so they leave a lot unsaid that should really be explicit.

In IT, at least in networking, systems quickly become black boxes even to the person that designed it, and good docs are just as useful to the person writing them.

Constructed Languages. Not for nothing did JRR Tolkien call it a secret vice. It’s such a lonely hobby. You can enjoy the work of a chef or an artist or a musician even if you yourself aren’t a chef or an artist or a musician, but nobody’s going to complement the elegance of your conlang’s noun inflection system.

It’s bitterly ironic that the whole point of a language is to communicate, but the vast majority of conlangs will never be uttered by anyone other than their creators, and rather badly even then.

I don’t want to get paid for my hobbies because they wouldn’t be hobbies anymore, but it would be nice to get more than just a smile and nod from people outside the hobby now and then.

Since it seems people are sharing the fruits of their labor as well, here’s my most complete conlang: https://www.frathwiki.com/Commonthroat

My personal opinion: FB is bad not just because of who owns it or how it’s operated. The very concept is harmful. I grew up in the 90s before the web existed. All the stupid stuff I did and said stays where it belongs, haunting my memories when I lie a wake at 3 AM. Now along comes social media. You over share your life, and it’s all associated with your real name and real face and real phone number. It’s all out there, forever, for everyone to see. No thanks.

I’m out of mana!

not sure what your grandfather has to do with it, but OK. COL will only continue to skyrocket the next couple of decades.

The cost of living is exactly why I brought up my grandfather.

We (millennials and younger) were sold a bill of goods by our baby boomer parents.

“Go to college,” they said, “and you’ll get a good job that will put a roof over your head and food on the table.” We looked at them, with their bachelor’s degrees and owned houses and car-filled garages and hope for the future, and we believed them because everything we experienced during the halcyon days of the 90s reinforced that idea. But just as we were getting ready to graduate, the great recession hit, pulling the rug out from under us.

Do I blame them? No. They said that because it worked for them and they honestly thought it would work for us. But that doesn’t make me feel any less bitter.

I feel like adding a positive experience to contrast the more negative comments (including my own). The summer I graduated high school was perhaps one of the best times in my life. I really, truly felt that I had my whole life ahead of me.

I spent all of June training with my first guide dog. The clearest memory I have of realizing I was finally an adult was when we were flying home after training. I was sitting at the gate, my new dog lying quietly under my chair, my feet resting slightly forward into the walkway to accommodate her, my head filled with future plans and possibilities. I thought about how I would provide a loving home for this carefully bred, meticulously vetted, and rigorously trained canine that this organization had entrusted me with. I imagined our first semester of college together. I hadn’t gotten into my first choice school or major but that was OK; I had a backup plan and was looking forward to it. A kid ran past me, pulling me out of my thoughts, then I heard his mother say “Watch out for that man’s foot.” That’s it. I was a “man” not a “boy” or a “kid” or a “child”. The world saw me as an adult. The future may not have turned out how I thought, but in that moment, I was exactly who I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, exactly where I was supposed to be, and man it felt good.

One of my many “I guess I’m a grown man now” moments was when I got legitimately excited to buy a ladder.

When I was little, I thought I would grow out of playing video games, as in I have a very specific memory of sitting in my 1st grade math class and just making that observation to myself. I was a 90s kid surrounded by baby boomer adults who largely were not gamers, so I just assumed one day I’d grow out of it.

On the positive side, I learned that you don’t have to give up your imagination when you grow up. I came up with elaborate make-believe worlds as kids are wont to do, and merely started adding lore and continuity and documentation when I got older. You don’t need to be writing a sci-fi novel or DMing a homebrew D&D campaign to do it, either. I worldbuild for the mere joy of pretending, or to dignify it with Tolkien’s words sub-creation.

1. I have a disability that prevents me from driving and makes it difficult to find employment without strong inside connections or outside of a few very specific niches.
2. I live in a very large, pedestrian-hostile city.
3. While my grandfather, who lacked a college education, could afford to buy a house and feed a stay-at-home wife and 8 children, I, who have no dependents and have two college degrees, cannot afford an apartment in a location that fits my needs.