Gargleblaster

Pomelo. Like grapefruit without the mess.

A commercial passenger plane should not be the subject of government research.

The resulting aircraft/technology can be sold to commercial aviation and/or be used for military purposes

That is what companies like Boeing and Lockheed are for.

NASA has no business making airplanes for rich passengers.

We need bullet trains, not more passenger jets.

I could say job-related things or my hobbies, but Ima go with Google-fu. Maybe just search engine fu.

I know way too many ‘first page people’ when it comes to results. No fuckin’ way. Learn how to dig. Do not take no for an answer from a search engine without trying a range of strategies to find what you’re looking for.

OK, I’m lying. This is part of my job. I teach academic research, and I hear these people with two sources tell me there aren’t enough sources for them to do a research paper on a given topic or that all these peer-reviewed journal articles say the same thing.

But it does extend into non-academic life. I was out of town, my older brother needed a U-Haul, drove 40 minutes to a place he knew, but there was a U-Haul less than 10 minutes away that he couldn’t find.

I’m surrounded by this.

A druidic forest spirit.

Maybe he’s a demi-god whose back story we don’t know enough about.

Gandalf seems pretty human to start with, but then we find out that he’s a superhuman/demigod. That whole circle of wizards seems superhuman.

What was Sauron?

I think CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll had a better approach of just being like “Look, anything we want can show up as part of the story.”

Tolkien had to create all of these taxonomies, bloodlines, and typing, which is why we’re talking about this.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is certainly the latest and most prominent example, but Elden Ring, both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The Witcher 3. The Last of Us Part 1 and 2. No cash shops, substantive DLC, if there is any.

And what do all those games have in common?

They’re solo games.

It’s PvP and MMOs where you can purchase an advantage, show off your bling, or purchase expansions to get a head start on the competition. That is where the microtransaction infestation occurs.

No pronouns!

Pronoun make Gargleblaster angry!

Drink book

Business directories

People who die while driving are almost all die by accident.

People who get shot are far more likely to be killed intentionally.

That’s probably true.

But you have to spend at least a little time with someone to judge their behavior.

The problem is that people are pre-judged based on their race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or lack thereof, nation of origin, first language, and a boatload of other things purely based on these factors without any personal contact or observation of their behavior.

Hence the word prejudice.

Likewise, people take the misbehavior of one or a small group and and apply it to everyone with the same characteristic.

Hence prejudice and stereotyping.

Quality of life for the capitalist eastern seaboard. I believe that’s what you meant to say.

Anybody who uses democracy in the same sentence as China is a plant.

In the US, we colloquially ‘go to college’. College refers to higher education in general.

Then, in more academic terms, A university is a larger place of higher ed made up of schools and colleges. You also have liberal arts colleges that do not have these colleges/schools. We also have two-year community colleges that may be more similar to vocational schools or FE colleges in the UK.

Then we get to the level of fun: Boston College is actually a university. :-)

Source: I lived overseas and told people I attended _____ College, which caused them to cross-examine me about whether I have a 4-year degree because in their country people go to university/uni and college is something else. Different places, different terminology.

Guild Wars 1

Having a character of one main class and a secondary class that could be switched at any time between any of the 9 classes.

8-slot skillbar with one heroic skill that could only come from your main class.

400+ total skills in the game.

Plenty of room for you to make your own homebrew builds, and some classic builds that were outside the box:

The assassin that used a staff (assacaster), the ranger that used necro skills to touch people to death (touch ranger), and the 55 monk, which had almost no hp but so much healing it was hard to kill.

It will always be my MMORPG because of the character design.