A million-to-one chance happens 9 times out of 10.

The Handmaid’s Tale (TV Show), hands down.

The first season was emotional but I’ve gotten through it multiple times as I’ve tried re-watching to get through season 2. I got a little farther the last time I tried, but man, it’s so visceral and constantly beating down the protagonist and everyone around her. That’s the point and it’s great, it’s just so depression-inducing when there’s just no uplifting points. IT does not let up in beating you down with the horribleness. I just can’t keep going when it goes on for so long.

I want to say they’re from the same episode? They were being interviewed about their experience during some event and instead of doing a voiceover that segues into it being acted out they did this creative choice of acting it out and having the one giving a deposition pause to turn to the camera to tell the bit they’re saying in the interview.

I’m not remembering a lot of the details, but this is the type of thing that made me love DS9. The themes were generally the typical Trek fair, but that show had style. They had the balls to film things differently than other Trek shows and make them really interesting. It was so different but still so Star Trek at its core. It made things feel fresh.

That and the way it was set up, being on a space station that didn’t move meant it felt less like a sector/monster of the week. It accomplished a lot of the same by having the new aliens come to them instead of the other way around as is typical, but it felt different I think because they were stationary. It felt more character-focused, and because they were basically hovering just over Bajor it meant there was a whole planet that was able to affect the show consistently as it grew and changed along with the dynamics of the crew/station, while not really being part of the direct scenery.

You might know this already, but the original series in that universe, The Riftwar Saga, Feist wrote about a DnD campaign he played with his friends. I picked up the first one, Magician, and it felt just like a DnD campaign, so I looked it up and sure enough it was exactly that.

I’m making my way through all of the books and haven’t gotten to the Krondor books, so I don’t know how different they are as I could clearly see his growth as a writer in just the first series. I’m currently reading through the Daughter of the Empire series that he co-wrote with another author and I’m really enjoying it.

While it is suggesting it was common at the time, it doesn’t outright state they’re talking about that time. At earlier points in history it certainly was acceptable, but we probably don’t have pictures of it to go in textbooks. This reeks of them having a general point to make and having a picture that almost fits that point. I’ve made more tenuous connections for college papers before.

Also, while it’s not as drastic, I was doing some looking into family history recently and I found some ancestors who got married around that time. The marriage certificate listed the wife as 17 and the husband as 21… but the math didn’t add up when I found their birth certificates and on the marriage certificate she was aged up from 15 and he was aged down from 22. It was in a small farming community and at that point in time and place schooling was largely abandoned during harvest and as soon as kids were old enough to help out on the farm full time they would just stop with school. And for women, helping out on the farm meant taking care of the house and raising kids generally. Time at school was a waste for them so they just got right to the adult stuff immediately.

I remember reading an article years ago about a village that put out an absurd amount of Olympic long distance runners. The article noted that the village was on a high plateau and far from other places. The extreme difference in height led to better lung capacity and the normalcy of having to travel by foot long distances just raised a bunch of people who conditioned their bodies from birth to be adept at long distance running. None of it resulted in any major changes in population physiology as it’s just training your body to deal with environmental conditions after birth and doesn’t cause the mutations in the genome that would mark evolutionary changes.

I mean, obviously there are some physical differences between races. They look different, some have more prevalence of certain diseases or conditions, but races are entirely a social construct. Scaled out, the differences in races aren’t more severe than the differences in variability in smaller groups within a race, or even a family. It’s like, yeah, uncle Steve’s side of the family all have kinda pointy ears because he passed that on to his kids but his brother didn’t pass that gene on but they’re still family. Zoom out and view all humans not as different races but one giant group and uncle Steve’s branch all just have darker skin or straighter hair, but they’re still clearly part of the human family.

To maybe build on this a little, as someone who grew up in a household with a parent with anger issues who would take their own frustrations out on the family, it definitely helps as something to avoid, but I’ve found that my inward reactions have gotten better as well once I realized that anger being my immediate reaction was due to growing up in an environment where that was normalized. Even if at the time it could be frightening and I knew even then that it was bad, the human brain is funny and children are impressionable.

I was in my 30s before I came to terms with the fact that my anger issues, however well controlled the outbursts were and no matter how much I avoided letting other people know it was happening, they were still there and I was still following in the steps of my father emotionally. And recognizing that it’s not how everyone feels and it’s not just “how my brain works,” but conditioning, and conditioning that can be broken. Similarly, I would remove myself and reflect, but I’d start to focus less on me and my reactions and force more empathy by thinking about the person or thing or situation and what led to me being upset. Eventually it got to the point where now my immediate reaction is to rationalize the situation before I emotionally respond. If I think through it and I feel I should actually still be upset, then I can confront it, but in calmer and more rational state, confident that I’m probably justified.

It still happens sometimes. Mostly it’s the normal irritability that everyone feels when they’re stressed or tired. And sometimes that old habit comes back and I react a little more hotly than I should for no reason. I have cats that, like your dogs, even if the anger is not directed anywhere near them, they get scared. Seeing that pulls me out real quick and I’ll calm down if only just to calm them, then give then scritches and pats to let them know it’s okay and they’re safe. So I’d probably say that even just having them around has given me a little accountability to help as well and made it easier to avoid. Say I’m having one of those days where I’m just clumsy and uncoordinated and keep dropping or breaking things. I get real close, but my reaction will immediately be to think about making sure they don’t get upset. I think it helps over-wright that anger conditioning with conditioning myself to focus on something else.

So the conclusion I’ve come to, literally just now while typing all this since I haven’t given it a ton of active thought before, is that the conditioning to that reaction has to be broken, and that’s usually easier by replacing it so you don’t even go to anger, but to something else every time. As every therapist I’ve ever been to says, you also can’t feel shame or upset with yourself for the anger. It’s a thing that you want to work on and the bet way to fix it is to dispassionately view it and work on it. Beating yourself up will only make it worse.

Ooh! I’ve actually got something for this! It takes some work and consistency, but it’s pretty fool-proof eventually.

You got to play with them right before bed.

And I don’t mean just a little waving the wand around and watch them jump at it a bit. Give them a workout. My two cats, one’s pretty chill and her energy level isn’t too high. The other guy though, he’s basically a dog. Always wants to play, and play a lot. This worked wonders for him.

Anyway, so you find a toy they really like, and figure out the kind of play that gets them engaged. Some like to hunt, some like to chase. But whatever it is, you got to get them moving, and keep it up until they’re panting like a dog. It’s perfectly healthy, cats just don’t often get that much of a workout so we don’t see it. So you do that, and they’ll rest for 5-10 minutes, then want to go again. Do that over and over until they don’t get back up begging for more after 10 minutes. They’ll be exhausted. Then do your nightly routine and go to bed.

This won’t work overnight as their routines will get them up and running soon. But you do that every night for a couple weeks and they’ll start to sync up to your schedule.

Couple other things that make it easier:

1. When they try to wake you up in the morning and get your attention, don’t get out of bed. Don’t give them attention. You’re trying to get their sleep schedule to match yours so you have to let them know that you’re not available until a certain time.

2. Having your own routine of going to sleep at the same time every night. Cats are really good at knowing about what time it is and they need consistency. I’m in bed by 9:30 every night, play-time starts at 8:30 every night. If you vary it up they’re never going to know when to sleep.

3)Feeding times. I know a lot of people just leave food out in a bowl, but that’s not healthy for most cats (And honestly, for the healthiest, at least wet food is best). You want to figure out how much they should be eating every day and measure out just that much divided by meals. Most are fine with twice a day, since cat’s would naturally eat at dusk and dawn, so just before you leave for work (assuming typical 9-5 schedule) and right before bed. I work from home so I do 3 meals a day, and that helps to wake them up mid day so they’ll need more sleep at night.

3b) This can vary a lot, but typically a wild cat’s routine would be to hunt, eat, groom, then sleep. So you organize play-time with eating, you play them tired (simulate hunting), feed them, They groom themselves while you get ready for bed, then you both sleep. My cats are weird though, they don’t play before eating. Not into it. But right after they eat they get excited to chase each other around a bit and play, so we do it then.

It did take my energetic boy longer than 2 weeks (closer to a month), but his energy levels even after a year old were through the roof and abnormal. I think it’s the breed. But now when it gets close to play time he waits next to the toy closet anticipating it. Then I play with them, then they chase each other around for about 10 minutes, but then they’re tired so we all go to bed and he sleeps next to me in bed every night instead of running around.

Where’s your data that, “all else being equal, office-based work IS better”? I mean, I don’t have data that says otherwise, but I know the company I work for as well as higher-ups at other companies I’ve talked to noticed right out the gate that productivity went up when they went work from home. The same work needs to be done, and it gets done. If it doesn’t, fire them. I have trouble seeing how the location the worker is in matters, all things being equal.

You’ve got some good points there, but it feels a little naive of nuance in parts.

Like, if these are natural rights, presumably this still counted before humans banded together to form the first societies. Before, even, we were small roving migratory groups that only just managed to climb out of the trees. humans, as they were, are basically animals at that point, right? I mean, we’re still animals, but you know what I mean. So we still have those rights? What makes us different than the other animals (or even other ape descendants) that we see as food? As a species, we were evolved to eat meat, which requires killing something else that presumably has these same rights that we have to violate to enforce our own right to life. Or did natural rights come later, when we were “better” and “more advanced” than the animals we hunted? Does that mean we get these rights when we reach a certain point in self-awareness?

It’s tough to argue with the base arguments you present, and I don’t disagree with them… but they can be argued against. Like your slavery argument. It goes against these natural rights that we have always had, yet we started taking our first steps toward stopping it, like, 600 years ago? Slavery predates writing. As far as we know, mankind was enslaving other people as far as we can track, and definitely hundreds, if not thousands of years before. So were they not aware of these natural rights or just didn’t care?

It sounds like you’re saying these are natural rights that everyone has because it feels right to you dues to the society you grew up in that appreciated these rights. They have to come from somewhere to be natural but only really count for some living things and not others.

Personally, I don’t believe in natural rights. We’re animals that grew opposable thumbs and learned to make tools. Human rights come about only because we live together in societies. In a way that sounds contradictory, we formed groups and gained rights among those other humans, and in the same instant traded some of those away for that group to function. Rights have to come from somewhere. Without groups agreeing on what those rights are, then the decider of rights is whoever is strongest. Might makes right started to decline only because we got into groups large enough to defend against outside forces, and even then it was only within the group in which those rights existed. Rights themselves are part of the social contract we all participate in when we exist in society and universal human rights is a relatively recent advancement, and we definitely haven’t come to a consensus as to what they all definitely are. But if society breaks down, those rights definitely disappear overnight. But I’ve always been the kind of person who needs reasons to believe a thing and have sound reasons to believe it.

I’m with you on right to life, and bodily autonomy are things that all humans should have. I think we just differ in their origin and universality.

So who decides what rights are natural ones and which ones need a government to enforce? And what are the natural rights? Not just that you believe it to be so, but why? And what you use to make that decision.

Forgive me, but I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on natural rights and their protections, limits, and origins. I’ve been reading a lot of philosophy on it and it’s extremely interesting. I’m genuinely curious how people come to these conclusions and I love hearing different viewpoints.

So where do these rights come from, if not the laws? I wonder if you may be taking free speech as a right as a given because of the time you grew up in. You speak of it as an absolute, but where does that belief come from? You say “rights” as if they’re something enshrined in our souls by a god, but like, how do you know that? Where does this information come from?

This is purely a philosophical question. I’m on the free speech wagon here. But realistically, Who gets to decide what’s actually an inalienable right that everyone has vs. rights that are encoded in laws?

That might be due to our heavy government surveillance system. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that a militia was arrested before they could carry out their plan to kidnap the governor of Michigan. The year before that a Coast Guard lieutenant was arrested before he could kill journalists and Democrat politicians. There was that nutjob who took a hammer to Pelosi’s husband’s head (Didn’t even catch that one in time!) There’s tons of attempts to assassinate presidents. Kinda feels pretty par for the course.

But the original point, I think, was that it’s kinda weird for someone to say it’s not surprising for it to happen in Mexico, as if it’s some third world country run like New York in Escape from New York while pretending it doesn’t happen in the US frequently. The US is just a bigger police state so they catch most of them before anyone dies. The FBI has plants in militias and groups like them all over the country specifically to catch this kind of thing. Most governments just can’t afford that kind of manpower. The US is not special or really that much safer, and comments normalizing this kind of thing for Mexico is why anyone even made that argument. It’s definitely shitty, and probably racist to think that it’s reasonable, when it’s in Mexico, people say "Eh it happens.”

I can’t imagine them using V again. Geralt was a character in his own right that had character traits that were handed over to you to play with. The world was built for Geralt to be in. V was built as a blank slate character to insert yourself into. There’s no reason to keep them. I’m pretty sure they only gave the character a name so everyone else in the game could have voice lines for everything and refer to the character by name. It was an attempt to make it a smoother experience, but really, V was a faceless avatar for the player no different to the Fallout games. But because they did the thing with the name it’s seamless and everyone sees V as a character, but they’re all seeing them as a different character based on how they played. It was pretty clever and I’m sure they’ll do it again.

In the Witcher 3 they had a thing where if you’d played the previous game on the same system and the game file was still there you could allow it to read that file and use decisions you made there to inform the new game. Now, I never got around to finishing Cyberpunk and don’t know what the different endings are, so I don’t know how much of a difference it would be, but if they’ve done that before they could do something similar here. Like, the world and story are the same, but any reference to the past includes the choice you made. And if you don’t have a save file, they just pick the one the developers like most probably.

I’ve had this Excel workbook open for an hour now and my boss is asking why I’m just staring at it. But thank you?

There are brands that make biodegradeable bags.

Tiny bit of lemon fixes that pretty well.

I mean, the thumbs help hold stuff, sure, but it’s our large pre-frontal cortex that really comes in clutch. That and our penchant for violence. There’s evidence to show that the Neanderthals were possibly more advanced than us before they “died out,” but also less violent and selfish. It’s those traits that led us to kill them or cut off their access to resources while we took them all.

We are still animals. Any biologist will tell you that, but that’s not a negative thing, it’s just a facts. It’s like saying we’re mammals. It really comes down to how you define “better.” and “successful.” Obviously, we are making those determinations from our point of view, so we tend to define them with the things only we do. But if we’re defining successful by technological advancement or the ability to do advanced math, or even versatility in abilities, we’re at least top 3. But those orangutans are pretty nifty with their use of twigs sometimes, so don’t count them out.

remained mindful of the naivety of all people, including themselves,… to prevent allowing hubris to allow poor decisions.

Not to spoil a 60 year old book, but didn’t they have a plan to genetically engineer a literal savior to mankind with hundreds of years of selective breeding? A little like the pot telling the kettle it’s too sure of itself.