I am surprised by all the ADHD responses. I have ADHD and being able to see all the tabs I’m not using makes me anxious. I have to close them. If I really need them, I move them to a separate window and pretend it’s not there.

I wish I could recommend the character creator for Phantasy Star Online 2, because in theory it’s great, with the ability to mix and match clothing layers, recolor clothing, fine tune your body proportions, select from various customizable faces, etc. Most importantly, you can attach accessories to your character however you like and adjust their scaling and rotation in ways that let you repurpose them. For example, for a while I was using a head ornament, scaled down, rotated, and clipped into my face, as a pair of fangs, and it looked pretty convincing!

I can’t actually recommend it though because the process of actually collecting outfits and accessories is FOMO gacha hell. (Gacha items purchased with “AC,” the real-money only currency, can also be bought secondhand from other players, but you’ll pay an arm and a leg for them, and you can’t trade items bought with “SG” which is the premium currency that can also be earned in game.)

I guess it’s not exactly the same, because it sort of is related, but I always get tripped up on “ancillary” because it is a totally inoffensive English word… except that the Latin word ancilla means “slave girl.”

This image would be funnier without the caption, I think.

Does Gemini edit images? If it does my guess would be that at some point someone asked Gemini to obscure the identities of the original posters instead of doing it themselves (see: they have the same profile pic but different handles, and the reply has the wrong handle in the “replying to” section). I bet this is also why the color is all fucked up.

Edit: The original explanation I had here was that a laser burns pits in the CD material but that was wrong, apparently only pressed discs use physical pits in the material. The laser used in a home CD burner changes the color of a photosensitive dye on a recordable CD. So I think actually “burning” is due to a misunderstanding (which I had until I just looked it up) of how a home CD writer works.

I use Youtube a lot. If I see a video from a creator I don’t know, or from one I don’t care that much about, and the thumbnail sets off my clickbait alarms, I just open the three dots menu and click “Don’t recommend channel.” I don’t think it’s a big problem, but it does annoy me and this significantly reduces the amount that I have to put up with it.

Sometimes if a thumbnail is borderline I’ll open it in a new tab so I can entertain it for a few minutes and see if they pay off. If they don’t, they get "don’t recommend"ed.

I’ve also done this for creators who put the “like and subscribe” ask before I’ve actually seen the content they’re asking me to subscribe to, if I’m in a particularly petty mood.

The machine seems to be called “Cashnado Alert” so I think you’re onto something about the touch screen mechanics.

Also Superman almost always goes out of his way to make sure that nobody dies just because he’s fighting a giant robot. I don’t think these are good characters for this joke.

I learned up through 12 x 12 in 2nd grade. Some of them were easier than others. I remember drilling with my grandfather for hours to memorize the ones I was having trouble with. The incentive was that if I learned them, he’d buy me a GameBoy game I wanted. I did in fact get the game when I managed to master multiplication—it was Mole Mania, a sokoban-style puzzle game with the gimmick that there is an underground layer you can move through that also has its own obstacles.

He absolutely would have sold your data if there were any buyers for it. Microsoft was still a terrible company in the Clippy era, there just were fewer opportunities to be terrible in this particular way at the time.

You can only invite the vampire in if you’re inside the house. If the judge signed the warrant while inside the house for some reason, the vampire could enter. But in the usual case where they were anywhere else, it wouldn’t count.

I suspect that for people who spend a large amount of time in the house, the quality of “inside-ness” rubs off on them: you can probably text your vampire friend the location of your spare key and ask them to check on your cat, even if you’re not there. But someone who has never been inside can’t reasonably offer an “invitation.”

Tried to go to an event at my favorite bar last week and it was sold out, so I can’t confirm the issue.

I love learning new rules. It’s honestly almost as much fun to me as actually playing the game.

I feel like I first saw this pic before AI image generation was any good, so it might just be good old fashioned Photoshop.

Took this one just now. It’s hard to get Xena to look at the camera!

Nah man, the older I get the less I trust adults. They let me be one and I’m the biggest fuckup I’ve ever met!

OP already accounted for social situations where you would expect to meet people, though, and his parents seem to think that he should be approaching people in other situations—like in a store, or on the street. I’d be very cautious about that.

Inspire allies to perform better or push their limits, bolster them against mental damage and heal mental damage they’ve sustained, raise the morale of a group (especially if that group shares my religion). Bonuses to public speaking, negotiation, religious knowledge, etc.

If I belong to a more fire-and-brimstone type religion, perhaps I can intimidate sinners, make my allies more effective against heretics, etc.

Yes, I think we should abolish the police and dismantle the army. That’s, like, the whole point. They’re responsible for most of the violence!