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So, the good news is that the Tidus precon I bought is really fun to play and that it is actually really good out of the box. The bad news is that it is really, really good out of the box. A 50% winrate is definitionally average ... in 1v1. My paper group is 3-4 people per game. And even in the games that I lost, I always had a strong presence. It is performing as well as my custom Ephara deck, which has been a consistent menace at low power tables.

Why is this bad news? While it is fun to win, I can't really justify buying upgrades for a deck that is winning this much already. And there are a lot of really sweet upgrades for Tidus. Some cards that I have wanted to play in a Bant keyword counters commander deck for years, but which have not actually had a good commander until Tidus came out.

Honestly, it is nice to win this much in my paper group, because I am not having even remotely as much success in my digital pod, though to be fair that one is 5 players, with three of them being as experienced as me.

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I have now sadly realized that I like Minecraft's old (alpha or pre beta 1.8) world gen better. That, and the textures. I've only played a little Minecraft over the last couple years, but something always felt off to me. Exploration was not as fun, and everything looked pretty samey, and the grass looked too dull. I started playing at the end of alpha, and watched a lot of Minecraft on Youtube back then, so this earlier look and vibe of Minecraft is what I have unconsciously been expecting of newer Minecraft, which is just very different by now.

Even before then, I have often been disappointed with newer updates (except for the cave update). They often add new useless stuff in, and when a new thing they add could be a natural extension of an existing mechanic, they instead make it different for the sake of being different, which just irks me. I often get the impression that modders have a better understanding of the core of what it means for something to be minecraftian.

I'm tempted to add some mods and resource packs that make the game more 'golden age' like. I could just play alpha or beta 1.7.3, but there are a lot of great features and quality of life improvements in modern Minecraft that I would like to keep.

And add some classic mods. The Aether mod is up to date, and a new Thaumcraft mod has been announced. I want to experience sense of wonder again in Minecraft.

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i normally have issues with first person narration unless it's very well written. both tress of the emerald sea and yumi and the nightmare painter are told at least partially in first person, but neither of them annoy me. this is because brandon sanderson does something very clever with the narration: they're both in-universe stories being told by the narrator to an unknown audience, and the narrator is a sarcastic little shit with a very idiosyncratic way of talking who has existed for decades in the real world. this makes the narration completely insufferable, but on purpose (rather than being bad writing), and therefore brilliant.

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I will never make fun of artists for starting with a kink and working backwards to invent an OC who would have that kink because I have on multiple occasions started with a stupid dice trick and worked backwards to invent the tabletop RPG that uses it, and the second one is, if anything, the less respectable of the two.

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This whole thing about scanning your face to prove tour age is making me remember, in 2018 while out in paris we got our wallet stolen during a particularly busy night at a lesbian bar. It was very late and with no money to buy metro tickets we were effectively stranded, but some people helped us and we ended up staying the night at a really sweet older man's place. His face was deeply scarred and he was missing an eye. We chatted on our way and he told me about his life, probably to help calm me down. He explained he had been stuck in a house fire 20 years ago and had had multiple rounds of facial reconstruction and a skin graft, but there's only so much surgery can do so he just learned to live with it. I remember he said he liked the queer bars because they're the only place people don't really stare at him.

At some point I took out my phone, and at the time I was using face unlock. This prompted him to tell me all the ways this technology doesn't work on him. How his phone selfie camera doesn't focus right because it's not a detecting a face. How he had to update his ID the old fashioned way, because the website kept rejecting his photos. And how it was becoming more and more common, and how it was making his life way harder.

This was 7 years ago, and now whenever I see this sort of technology I think of how that guy can't use it. And how house fires are pretty common, and how anything from being born this way to a skin condition to heavy tattooing can probably cause the same issue. Can these people get age verified ? Will they just lose access to all social media, which are increasingly necessary in society, if this becomes the norm ? These are people who are already driven out of public spaces due to how they look, and they're getting pushed out online too all in the interest of companies wanting more money.

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stubbed my toe while reading elantris,,,,,,,

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Women's deodorant is like "oh I smell like lavender, rose, and hint of vanilla" and men be like "COMMUTATIVE DIAGRAMS AND THE AXIOM OF CHOICE"

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google claims their AI has solved some conjecture

if my job ends up being "advanced AI prompter", i'm gonna be pissed beyond human comprehension

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leraying my hirsch rn

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i love you YYYY-MM-DD you're the only date format where sorting yous numerically also sorts yous by date <3

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someone at work initiated a readme for a project as ".readme". why would you hide the readme

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every chapter of this spin off is a gift

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Kikuri being Bocchi's mentor character is so smart actually. Because they're SO similar when Kikuri is sober. On a surface level they couldn't be more different, but whenever we see a young or sober Kikuri.... she's basically just Bocchi.

Kikuri sees her younger self in Bocchi, and wants to help her. Bocchi meanwhile sees an older version of herself who is popular and celebrated, but flawed enough to be relatable, and sees her as a viable role model. At the same time, Kikuri is very much a Ghost of Christmas Future for how Bocchi may end up if she doesn't find a healthy way to overcome her insecurities, and that reality check keeps her away from unhealthy coping mechanisms. They're both deeply dysfunctional people, but they kinda bring out the best in one another.

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Huh. Hang on a second. I always liked this panel for giving us the fact Kikuri was a quiet kid, but Kikuri being into "local history" as a high schooler also says a lot about her character, actually. It makes a lot of sense. She's got a lot of "ancient Japan" aesthetics going on, really. She plays her bass like a samisen. She wears those old-timey sandals. She named her bass "Shuten-doji", which is the name of an oni in Japanese mythology, known for drinking sake. Her drink of choice is even named "Onikoro", based on the brand "Onikoroshi", which means "oni killer", in reference to the same legend. As a performer she's totally styled herself around ancient Japan and Japanese mythology. She's a history buff.

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I can assure you I had extremely normal feelings seeing Shima perform a video game stealth move on Kikuri and then manhandling her.

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Recently started reading Bocchi the Rock's spin-off about Kikuri and I really like it. Honestly, I kind of like it a bit more than the original.

I just feel really bad for her. That is not a sustainable lifestyle, and if she were real I would I hope that she can eventually get help. The only thing she has going for her is her musical skill and of course her impeccable fashion sense. One piece with jacket? Geta? Peak drip, as the youth say. Tumblr is crazy for the woman for a reason.