When I was like 7-9 I went on a “camping” trip with my football/soccer team.

Really, we were just putting up tents on the field we usually practiced at after some very tame river rafting.

It was the first time I was away from my parents. And I was inconsolable. I cried most of the night. To the point the supervisors offered to call my parents so I could talk to them. (And mobile phoning someone back then was not cheap),

In the end I just cried myself empty.

Because I was asleep so late, I slept into the morning and my “tent mates” pulled down the tent around me while I was sleeping.

So I woke up in drizzling rain, lying in my sleeping bag on a thin plastic sheet with no tent around me. While all my “friends” were in the club house having breakfast.

I did not stay in the soccer club long after that.

I think in this case it works well enough.

Most comedy works by subverting expectations. And sometimes you can shift the burden of establishing these expectations to the audience by offering an unclear and vague statement, that later is revealed to be the punchline to the joke.

There is a certain risk involved because how well the joke works on an individual basis is a question of how imaginative or unimaginative the audience is (depending on how the joke is constructed).

A joke that relies on lack of imagination basically turns the audience into their own straight man. While the joke that relies on imagination banks on you being the straight man to the flights of fancy of your audience.

Where else do you get mortgages?

I mean, technically you can contract a mortgage between any two legally able persons.

But I’d say a mortgage between private individuals is a rare exception.

Usually it is bank/credit unions, or corporations specializing in mortgages as their primary business. But I think you can lump most of those under the umbrella term. At least as far as their employees being able to just approve or deny you for personal reasons.

At my workplace, the made up numbers extend to the WFH ratio.

At first everyone was allowed to work as much from home as they wanted. Until internal agreements had been made.

Then they just set it to 50%. Arbitrarily. Because 50/50 sounds good, right? Can’t go completely wrong with 50/50 after all.

Then it turned out that only my regional headquarters does it. 15/16 regional sections and only mine enforces it fully. Everywhere else it is just an unenforced agreement.

Why? The regional boss thought it would be unfair toward the personnel that needs to work in person. The professional drivers. The cleaners. The clerks at the service counters.

Took them a year to go to 60/40 because they realized you cannot split a 5 day workweek 50/50 without having to implement all kinds of side rules, like alternating 3 and 2 day weeks.

And now it turns out no one gives a crap after all and everyone just does what they want until a teamlead is unhappy with you and looks at your office times to have a reason to admonish you.

Federal government agency, by the way.

Maybe the mortgage application was just not within approval guidelines. It is not like a bank clerk gets to arbitrarily decide by personal sympathy.

Maybe there is another side to this toxic macho “manosphere” you mention.

After all, as a baseline men are by nature predisposed and culturally conditioned to protect and be considerate to women.

Despite all lamentation, Chivalry is not dead for some.

So obviously the sanctity of a woman’s restroom is more highly valued than that of a men’s bathroom. After all, women are more vulnerable and more often targeted in that way.

So the debate tends to skew towards women spaces, as those are more likely to cause public discord if disturbed.

Rarely are men stepping up on the soap crate to defend their own spaces. Because after all, they are strong enough to take any number of “inconveniences” and disadvantages because to admit to struggling with them would be weakness.

I’m not saying it’s fair, or right, or how it should be. But maybe that bias isn’t always driven by hostility. Maybe it’s just that society still places more weight on protecting women, while expecting men to grit their teeth and deal with it. Even when those same men help reinforce that standard among themselves.

It doesn’t make the imbalance okay, and it doesn’t mean the outrage is consistent. But it might explain why all the noise gets focused on trans women. It’s not just transphobia, it’s the scaffolding of gender roles, still quietly deciding who gets defended, and who’s expected to tough it out.

It seems absurd to conceptualize a “chivalrous transphobe”. But we are all more than just one label.

Besides what was already said, I’d like to add that with only a few exceptions (most notably Japan and to a lesser degree the Netherlands, I believe) most constitutional monarchs even pay taxes on their private income.

They usually receive some kind of stipend/grant as a sovereign which is not taxed. But what they gain from “extracurricular” activities is fair game.

And I think it is worth keeping in mind that a lot of the trappings and estate of a monarch would have to be upkept as part of the cultural heritage and national prestige anyway.

So between paying for a museum/cultural heritage site and letting someone who is essentially a paid actor who got the job through their parents live in there, why not.

And you can never underestimate the soft power a well-liked sovereign can have as a symbol and tool of population control. If the personification of your state talks to the people, many listen.

In international relationships, a monarch can be a soft diplomat and fulfill the role of someone who is at a special remove even from other statesmen and can do and say certain things in certain ways.

I would find it hard to make a general judgement here.

The human-analogies some people make are rather unconvincing. I’d think physiologically cats are less diverse than humans are. In both species size translates to weight, force, reach.

There are outliers, but most house cats are still “fit” enough not to suffer massive disadvantages.

So it would be more a matter of size and stature than lifestyle. A Main Coon with their voluminous fur might enjoy a form of natural armor. But the same fur would exist if it was a street cat (bar any diseases).

And they also possess natural weapons that are not related to their grooming and lifestyle (much). If some jerk has their house cats declawed, maybe. But usually claw is claw and tooth is tooth.

What will probably be the most decisive factor, just as it is in humans, is aggression and killer instinct. That is where a street cat might be better conditioned. On the other hand, animals lean heavier on instinct and even the gentlest house cat can become vicious when exposed to the right stimulus.

tl;dr I am not sure

Just reached for the fan remote while seeing this.

I just like to feel the wind in my hair.

uubuwbubhufufubuwbufubub

is also what Wolverine sounds like suffering a stroke.

I want a place that makes tiny burgers

Forget the premium burger places where burgers are held together by whaling harpoons and you need to eat them deconstructed. Instead of one giant undesirable burger give me a plate with 4 regular sized burgers in exciting variations.

Give me a chicken chili burger, a double irish beef patty blue cheese burger, an italian herb lamb patty and as a chaser a smoked bison brisket with bourbon sauce.

All on one plate. I would be happy

4 burgers. 1 plate. 0 regrets.

And if you don’t like one, you have 3 more chances to forgive the cook.

The local library is a disposable commodity; easily replaceable.

Krita works great for my occasional hobby project.

First experiment: pressing women into being scientists.

Success.

Second experiment: pressing scientists into women.

Failure. Called eugenicist, chased by pitchforks.

Curious. Same ingredients, different reaction. Something’s missing… maybe it’s pantsuits.

Why even bother with shouting if you have CHIM, just open the command line and put in tcl and tgm and no-clip out of there.

My idiot butt got a custom pre-built just a couple weeks ago and the cooler pump has one of those screens as well. It is not working and I suspect a plug is set wrongly, but the pump works.

Fixing it would mean ripping apart the pristine cable management and I do not care about lighting as much.

Otherwise I am fully satisfied, but it niggles me a little bit to have paid 20-30 bucks more for a cooler feature that does not work.

Maybe one day when I need to rip up the cable management anyway, I will fix it.

Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate your candor.

I wish you would have actually said anything about the game. I know that you enjoyed it. 45$ worth, at least.

You are blown away and find it breathtaking, but I am not really sure why that is.

Asking people what they like about a piece of media is not “letting internet strangers form your opinion”.

I was asking because I am wondering where the game’s strengths lie and what it does exceptionally well. Because then I could compare that to what I value most in a space game. And could decide if I give the free fly a try or spend my time on any of the other infinity+1 amounts of things to indulge in. (Which is right now emulating Bloodborne and playing Clair Obscure)

Elite Dangerous, X4, EVE or any other high-depth simulators never totally clicked with me. But I have spent considerable hours in Star Sector or the Starpoint Gemini games. Games that make me feel like I am a space cowboy without throwing me infinite possibilities with no reason to pursue any of them. Which is often the feeling No Man’s Sky is giving me.

If I had to sum it up, I’d say I am more interested in Space RPGs than Space Simulators.

Maybe you could have shared what is actually sensational about the game. Which would probably have done more to counter any unfair criticism towards it, than just expounding on how unfounded preconceived opinions about it are. After all you love the game. So let some of that love shine through and carry the day.

I should have chucked the lines about budget and time, because they raised your hackles so much. You are probably used to the game being attacked on that avenue.

Maybe it is top of the pack in the genre; but by how much?

For how absolutely out of any reasonable dimension their budget and development timeframe is, what have they to show for it, that you cannot get from X4 or Elite: Dangerous or any Starship Traders or any similar game? I cannot imagine it doing every single appeal of those games better.

Honest question, as I do not like the super deeply simulated games anyway. I like my space sims at least 30% arcade-y and easy to pick up.