Before Skyrim changed Alduin lore, Alduin was Akatosh. The Time Dragon Akatosh ate the world at the end of each era/“kalpa”, with the world being reformed and reshaped. More about the natural cycles of the world and history. (Time is kind of a big thing in the series - the Dragon Breaks at the end of Daggerfall - time breaks in such a way that multiple contradictory things happen simultaneously. It is kinda cool that the most fascinating part of lore is a ass pull to make every ending of Daggerfall canon and not have to pick one)

Skyrim separated Akatosh and Alduin (and there are some in game books justifying this change in theology.) Akatosh is still good god, Alduin is now some sort of independent entity that is just purely evil.

It would have been much more interesting if Alduin was still Akatosh. If the point of the game were you saying - no, I don’t want the world to end even if it is “supposed to” - there could have been some interesting actual plot to break up the dungeon fetch quests. There could have been some tower lore even, that would have been fun.

It reminds me of the flattening of Mehrunes Dagon in Oblivion. Like yeah, he’s part of the House of Troubles and not great but I think he’d actually promise something of value to the Mythic Dawn? Also, maybe not fuck them over for lols? He wasn’t just The Devil with the serial numbers filed off.

Like, Morrowind and Daggerfall’s villains all had motivations that made sense. Dagoth Ur is responding to imperialism by trying to create an ethnostate under his direct rule, Daggerfall doesn’t even really have straight “villains” necessarily. Heck, even in Redguard the main antagonist is a Governor for the empire that is trying to shut down a gang of pirates. Jagar Tharn in Arena is just an evil wizard that wants to impersonate the Emperor.

I hope TES 6 never comes out. Skyrim was a disappointment anyway, I don’t think my heart could take it if they made another story about a big bad wanting to destroy the world for no reason at all.

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What scares me is that I’ve tried to hook multiple “geekier” teenagers on Linux, and they aren’t interested. Even the math-y ones don’t know the difference between an operating system and a browser. My main computer is Arch with xmonad and it disturbs and confuses them.

We have a lost generation when it comes to computers. Lots of the little geeks that would have been playing around in the registry or learning powershell 15 years ago are so stuck in walled gardens that they don’t even know there’s a world outside of them.

People meme about “q!” but it is super helpful to have that extra step, because sometimes your fingers are moving faster than your brain is. That quick switch back-n-forth vim - gcc - ./a.out loop and my probably ADHD mean that vim saying, “hey, remember you haven’t saved this yet” is a godsend.

You are right about the best part about vim - you can work as fast you type.

These cost the same ($1-$2, depending on store and when you buy them). The yellow cheese could be said to be presented as equivalent in value to the three slices of pepperoni.

I’ve had friendships end over basically that statement.

The series is pleasant to read. It’s no different than reading a Tom Clancy or John Grisham or Colleen Hoover novel, just targeted at a younger audience. The fandom culture around it was fun - especially for those of us who essentially “grew up” with Harry by being roughly the same age as him at each release.

Not every novel needs to be Pale Fire or JR.

I rank them 3>2>4>1>5>7(w/out epilogue)>6>7

I think the ending of the first book was planned, just clumsily executed. It’s a mystery novel - she places all of these red herrings/misdirection. The reveal that Snape was actually saying a counter course with the flying bludger incident is “cute” and goes with the muddled messages and themes she has around that character.

She knew where she wanted to get to, it’s just one of the more “Idiot Ball” driven plots of the series (along with the fifth book). Harry does stupid impulsive shit because that’s his character, and the world just has to react to it. Harry logic isn’t normal people logic, so by the end of the story we’ve kinda lost track of the plot.

It’s no Earthsea but it’s serviceable paperback detective fiction for children.

Stories don’t have to have “hard” magic systems to be good. I’m a big fan of the magical realism popular in Latin American fiction - where the magic is ambiguous and never quite explained at all.

The problem is the way that Rowling uses magic.

Rowling was clearly writing mystery novels, while lifting a lot of ideas for her setting from like The Worst Witch series. She uses magic spells like a Checkhov’s gun kind of thing, usually establishing whatever magical principle will save the day earlier in the novel. With a relatively self contained story, it works really well. Prisoner of Azkaban is one of her stronger books - the way that she sets up the mystery with the time turner as well as the stuff with Sirius Black, etc - because it’s very “clean” in this way. She introduces a bunch of new elements to her world, but they are all tied around supporting her story. This is good writing.

The problem is that Harry Potter books don’t work as an overarching story. It is abundantly clear that the Horcruxes and Deathly Hallows were not planned from the beginning. Rowling got to the last two books, realized that she needed to write some kind of ending, and then completely drove her plot off the rails.

You could say because she didn’t have an established magic system, it made it easier to drive off the rails, but really, it’s more that she’s competent at writing stand alone mystery novels (which really, that’s what books 1-4 are and they’re the best in the series for it) and not larger narratives. She doesn’t know how to convey the scope of a war, she doesn’t know how to tie together an Epic fantasy.

I prefer vim, but vi is nice too. (I miss Vimperator for Firefox)

It’s just so fast when you get it down. It works well with a cli-only work flow. Why use mouse when type very fast?

There’s immense pleasure and honor in writing C the way our ancestors did.

I see a lot of teenagers falling for the “I’m a Gazan and need help getting out.” accounts too.

It was fun, but vim ultimately made more sense and is what I used for note taking most of the time now.

At one point in college I decided to make myself take notes in ed for a semester for the lulz

As someone who likes sex and to some degree exhibitionism:

Any amount of sex liking/photos of yourself online will bar you from certain jobs. I have a rather traumatic history of sex work - even the fact that I did it to survive is something that tars me. Doing things consensually and willingly is even worse.

The trade off for some is going to be financial. If having videos of yourself online could potentially ruin any change of a normal life - there needs to be something that secures some safety in return.

Being promiscuous is considered a character flaw. If you are frequently willing - the times where you are not have zero chance of being tried fairly in the court of public opinion.

The Madonna/whore complex fucks everyone over. Having lots of sex is fun, we’ve just come up with this dickish social rule system where enjoying receptive sex is a strongly ingrained societal “no no.”

Also - not just when something breaks? Like, you want to change the color of something, an icon, the default response to a key bind or behavior…. There are so many times when I’m forced to use commercial software and there’s some inane extra thing that is messing up my work flow, and there’s no way to change it.

My Arch machine has only the things I want on it. I don’t have to dig into registry keys to disable Cortana or whatever. When I’m running on poverty hardware, dwm/xmonad are bare enough DEs that I can internet browsers smooth and fast.

Linux will let you do whatever you want as long as you are smart/determined to spend hours googling.

His family couldn’t care for him, and in the United States, there is no mental health care for the indigent. A horrific, pointless and tragic death, the same as suffered by many schizophrenics. He was a talented and capable man, and he probably would still be alive if we didn’t live in a failing society.

Reddit currently has an active and massive beastiality sub. They don’t allow real images, but they have comment threads with discussion and advice. Just as with r/jailbait, people post fishing for the real stuff.

But it isn’t Linux.

I work for a charter school, which means I have no sick leave. I also tutor, and don’t get paid if I don’t tutor. I’ve been working usually 8 am to 9 pm for about the past three months.

I also live in the only state that’s counties are 100% red. Part of the reason that I work so much is that there are no legal protections for my employment, housing, or even just discrimination in divorce court ❤️ I’m hopelessly in debt and genuinely terrified for my life, because I do a lot of work with children in rural areas and a cop could very easily rape and murder a transgender man with no consequences out there.

I do deeply care about what is happening in Palestine and Ukraine; my vote in a state which doesn’t recognize me as a human being doesn’t usually matter anyway.

Fun story - in high school, I did a lot of volunteering for a city council run in my city. The person running was a lesbian - she wasn’t out publicly - but it was pretty important to me after a kid at my high school killed himself after a horrific city council meeting over a pride month proclamation. We worked our asses off, the opponent barely campaigned and was fucking unhinged.

The day before the election, he sent out an illegal flyer. It said something like “sex, lies, and we wish we had a videotape!” They outed her the day before, and she lost.

I’ve knocked a lot of doors in my life. I can tell you confidently that my vote will never matter in Oklahoma, just like my personhood doesn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t perform my civic duty, but I’m working on some of those earlier levels of Maslow’s needs right now.

What about what I wrote made that come across as a choice? I haven’t had time to clean the puke that’s been festering in my bathroom for weeks. I don’t have time to do the dishes. I work and work and work, and it is killing me. I would have loved to have had the time to stand in line and vote, if just for the break.