I felt the same way (spoilers for whoever hasn’t read it). The protagonist just kept encountering significant people where it seems like there’s going to be a struggle to overcome, leading to character development and newfound maturity, but no. He just moves on to another scene instead and they’re not seen again. It was just annoying.

The teacher that feels he’s not living up to his potential? The private school friends that he hangs out with but often finds frustrating? The childhood friend who he shares unexplored romantic tension with? The nuns whose meals he pays for despite having dwindling funds? The prostitute he just wants to have a conversation with? Her pimp, who attacks him? The potentially rapist family friend? For pretty much all of them a relevant conflict is initiated just for him to leave it unresolved, probably after labeling them a phony.

The only exception is his sister, who he sees like two or three times. And then the final conflict at the end is like: “Hey sorry for taking your birthday money so I could keep wandering around these past couple of days instead of talking to our rich parents.” “That’s ok, I forgive you. You’re my brother and I love you. But I worry about you sometimes.” “Yeah anyway, I’m bitter about the world so I kinda want to disappear into the wilderness.” “Please don’t do that.” “Ok I won’t.”

The TvTropes links are mostly right though? It matches the third variation of Earth All Along. The linked examples match what OP is describing except not being restricted to Fantasy.

The entitlement comes from the idea that these are basic features that should be available to them for free, in addition to everything else included in the free service. They are the sort of things casual users may not even be aware of. If they don’t think the extra stuff is worth the price, they can just not buy them. But thinking they are overvalued is not the same thing as thinking they should be free.

If you think the standard experience is adequate then why resort to piracy?

Because I use these a lot and want something better than the standard service when it’s an option. If you wanted to sell a car for $5000 and someone offered you $10,000, would you say no because $5000 was adequate?

Because you don’t think they are important, as if the important features to you are universal?

I guess “importance” is relative, so I’ll clarify; they do little to contribute to the main function of the apps. Youtube is a video platform, so it should allow you to watch hosted videos. Discord is a voice and text messaging app, so you should be able to send messages and join calls. They are robust enough that you can do many other things with them too, but these secondary offerings are sometimes more limited if you don’t pay. The people that do choose to pay supplement the cost of offering the basic services to those that don’t.

First time I’ve seen someone else mention it. Definitely an underrated show with a lot of wild ideas.

Maybe this is a hot take, but this post is very entitled. Custom server emojis and using a video platform for audio only while your phone is sleeping as basic features? You can be annoyed that these are the features they chose to be premium or you can be annoyed by how much premium costs, but you are hardly missing out on the standard experience without them. Frankly, there are better choices to complain about being premium, but compared to the past the amount of stuff we can get from the internet for free at great convenience is incredible.

Also, piracy is easy. If you use the platform a lot and don’t want to pay you can often get a premium or better experience with a bit of time invested for some setup. I use xManager for Spotify and ReVanced for Youtube. Both give me an ad-free experience for free and are more customizable than the legit application. ReVanced especially allows me to get rid of a lot of the UI I don’t use, change input actions, skip sponsor/intro/afk segments, and a lot more. There might be something for Tiktok too now but I haven’t looked.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but getting a compromise from a debate is not a primary goal. For competitions, the goal is usually to demonstrate and practice debate skills and the topic and positions matter less. For more serious debates, it is meant to be a way to expose people to the strengths of your position’s arguments and expose the weaknesses of your opponent’s. It’s valuable as an opportunity to persuade an audience of people who haven’t been firmly entrenched in either position, or who may have only been exposed to one side’s arguments in earnest.

The framework does presume both viewpoints are valid, since both sides are expected to believe in their position, be rational, and be reasonably well-informed. An invalid perspective would not be argued by someone meeting these criteria. It does not presume equality as that would be preemptively judging the quality of the argument. Either the debate platform or the other debater would presumably not agree to a debate with someone who cannot be expected to meet these criteria.

I am not a lawyer, but consumer protections should generally kick in when an issue is actually evaluated in a court. If you are being charged for things you believe to be unfair, you would need to refuse to pay, then see them in action after the business escalates it. Often, a predatory business will give up when it knows it doesn’t have a case. But it’s pretty hard to work on behalf of a citizen if they ultimately are convinced that they do have an obligation to pay after all.

I agree with the other commenter on the first issue. If you have been paying the amount you were charged, and then hit with surprise retroactive charges, you would have a serious case in small claims. I expect a judge would favor you if it’s as described. $1000 for late fees is exorbitant, especially when the glitch was from their software and not rectified quickly. Unless you’re leaving out relevant details that explains the situation better.

For the second issue, needlessly cumbersome cancellation processes are considered dark patterns and may be illegal in some cases. These cases are being enforced more recently, even against large companies like Amazon. For your pest control case though, if you face pushback when cancelling it’s pretty simple to tell them you won’t be using their services and will refuse to pay. If you already paid, you may be able to issue a chargeback after explaining the situation to your bank. Seeing as how you would be being charged for services not done, I don’t see how the business could contest that after being informed of the cancellation. You would still be on the hook for a (reasonable) cancellation fee, as lost business from a cancelled reservation does represent real damages.

We are a country with a litigious history and we have recognized considerable rights for consumers. Just because you feel powerless doesn’t mean you are.

There is very little flicking, certainly less than Overwatch. Time to kill being much higher, longer sightlines, more predictable movement and third person means it really isn’t twitchy. Shooting most characters’ guns probably feels closer to Orisa’s or Sombra’s than anyone else.

I’ve felt the same way about Overwatch as you, and I’m enjoying Deadlock much more lately. I would give it a shot.

Of course, and any job will expect some degree of training anyway. But there’s only so much that can be tested for before hiring someone. A degree is just a reference from the university that you meet their standards of mastery at whatever major at whatever level. Some jobs expect you to have one just like some expect you to have references from individuals, but others will have other tests for qualification which may even just be an interview conversation. Apprenticeships are pretty similar; each is an individual or group staking their reputation on vouching for your competency. Even a GED or high school diploma is a reference, just from an organization or a public institution.

In the gameplay showcase, they said “every age can be played on its own, or woven together into a full campaign”. So I expect you will be able to set up a game with one age and no turn limit. If not, that will be the very first mod.

It seems bizarre to me that the only user I have seen actually trying to provide constructive criticism for the bot so far in this thread is the one that already likes it. Especially when others instead advocate for things like the mods taking a political stance to endorse and using mod powers to reinforce it.

I like the bot. It’s valuable to have context for the organization pushing a story. I agree that others are reading too much from the orgs they like being labeled as biased. It’s assumed a news source will have some bias, and trying to avoid acknowledging that is dangerous. The takeaway is simply to be wary of any narrative being pushed (intentionally or not) by framing or omission, and get news from a variety of sources when possible. Instead, people tend to think identifying bias is advocating that the article should be disregarded, which is untrue.

To your suggestion, I do think adding more sources for reliability and bias judgements is a good idea. It would give more credibility if multiple respected independent organizations come to the same conclusion. More insight into their methodology in the comment itself could also be nice. The downside of adding these is that it would make the comment even longer when people have already complained about its size.

Other than that, I have seen people dislike using the American political center as a basis for alignment, but I have yet to see a good alternative. I expect a significant plurality of users are from the US, and US politics are globally relevant, so it seems to be a natural choice.

Nearly every critic I have seen so far just thinks it should be removed entirely because they find it annoying. I would say even if it isn’t considered useful for the majority of users, the amount of value it provides people who do use it justifies whatever minor annoyance it is to others. Anyone who gets really tired of collapsing the comment or scrolling past it can block it in seconds.

Thank you to the mod who created this thread. Even if it’s good to gather feedback, it’s obviously not easy to get bombarded with negative comments. I’m impressed with the patience you have shown in this thread.

There doesn’t seem to be a pattern for whatever name politicians become known by colloquially, except last name is most common. Hillary makes sense to distinguish her from Bill, but I remember people generally using her first and last. Kamala is usually Kamala, but you see Harris too. Trump is Trump, but you’ll see people use his first name at times (like r/TheDonald). Biden is still referred to as Joe occasionally. Bernie was much more common than Sanders. For supreme court justices, it’s usually last name or first and last. I’ve never seen anyone refer to AOC as just Alexandria. Obama is Obama, but I’ve seen Barack in really informal contexts. Nancy Pelosi is first and last. Elizabeth Warren is either first and last or just last.

I’ve only been at two jobs that offered an FSA but both had resources explaining clearly that it is use it or lose it. And my personal risk aversion is why I chose an HSA instead. But it seems like a good idea for people to be able to save money by saying “This isn’t really income, since I am confident it’s only going to a demonstratable health expense. So don’t tax me on it.” It’s like a business expense can be tax deductible, and you are in the business of living. But then you don’t get to take home extra money for being under budget. When used correctly, it’s a tool to drive down living expenses and is more efficient for lower incomes since it uses a flat max annual deduction.

I don’t want to victim blame people that lose money by overcommitting, but it’s not like this is in fine print. You can get short articles that explain it in simple terms just by googling “fsa” before committing thousands of dollars to something. If you don’t have much idea what your minimum spending on healthcare will be, just keep it as income for full freedom or use a different tax-advantaged option. It’s just meant to be an option for people with good awareness of budgetting to save some money.

No, the opposite really. If you are delivering things alone to strangers, it makes sense to arm yourself. You are putting yourself in vulnerable position frequently and can’t expect others to be unarmed. Otherwise you’d be the loser in the prisoner’s dilemma a society of guns creates. Things might be different if guns weren’t widespread, but that genie’s out of the bottle.

I don’t own a gun, but I might if I didn’t feel safe in my day-to-day life.

My brother had a gun pulled on him while delivering a pizza. I don’t blame delivery people for arming themselves with the unfamiliar situations they have to put themselves in regularly. So long as the strangers they interact with may be armed it’s just an arms race.

Also, in this specific situation where someone comes up behind you and gets in your face something like a knife would be just as deadly.

Piracy leaves creators worse off when it deprives them of a sale, as in you would have paid for something but instead just pirated it because not paying was an option. So I pirate stuff I think is worth my time, but not my money. I then consider it victimless. Maybe that movie is interesting enough to watch but not enough to rent/buy, so I would pirate it. I’m now at a point where money isn’t as scarce as it used to be, so the prices of entertainment seem reasonable and I am much more willing to pay.

There are a couple of exceptions to the above. I pirated almost every textbook I could since the fact that a student requires one specific product puts the customer in an exploitable position that allows the seller to charge unreasonable amounts (and used books have none of their proceeds go back to the creator anyway). Also, there is no issue with pirating content no longer being sold, since the creators aren’t being deprived of anything. This is mostly relevant for me with old video games on emulators.

I wouldn’t stress over it. Employers look for someone in an umbrella of majors, because every school is going to have its own names and standards for their class templates. If I saw someone list community development as a major, I would think it would overlap a great deal with urban development, with maybe a bit more focus into civil engineering or sustainability. You’ll want to explain how your background is relevant to a position in the interview anyway. I wouldn’t expect it to get you eliminated before then.

Also, it’s a cool opportunity to stand out with how it differs from a more traditional major. People like hearing how you chose to include something that you felt was lacking from the default path because you thought it was important. Choosing to specialize demonstrates thoughtfulness, passion, and mastery. You’ll be fine.

The Downpayment Toward Equity Act (currently still in Congress, but already budgeted for) is meant to address the generational wealth gap you described, so there is hope. It would give a $25,000 grant to first-generation first-time home buyers.

I don’t think anyone should be ashamed of getting help from parents for buying a home. As you said, it is essentially an advance on one’s inheritance. Nepotism is favoritism for something intended to be merit-based.

It’s hard to choose “one piece” of knowledge, so I would try to persuade whoever is writing the book to include the time traveler’s cheat sheet. https://i.imgur.com/O6vSrvq.jpg

I didn’t make it, but includes a lot of information that didn’t have an intuitive path to discovery, but a lot of practical benefits for humanity. If I were to add to it I would try to include at least descriptions of a few other things:

• batteries
• engines
• simple computers (although this may be more involved than the earlier parts combined, so perhaps just simple logic gate diagrams)
• genes
• a guttenberg press
• lenscrafting
• a world map
• calculus
• special and general relativity (also complicated certainly, but could be useful later)
• and basically as many physics equations as I can think of

Deterence is not a great strategy for preventing crime. Criminals don’t actually do much cost benefit analysis before committing a crime; they will consider the chances they have of getting caught, but not the severity of the punishment. Rehabilitation programs are worth considering over punitive justice so long as they are more effective at preventing recidivism, which is certainly an interest for a state.