Opossums are one of those creatures that remind you just how much of evolution is driven by the rule of “good enough.” Sure, they could have evolved to have more wrinkles on their brains, or the ability to cross the road without getting crushed, or to not look like an old scrub brush that’s way past its replacement date, but they didn’t need to, because the way they are is good enough!

This is the way.

Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.

And no air conditioning! Even in the summer!

“'This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,

when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit

of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our

disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as

if we were villains on necessity; fools by

heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and

treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards,

liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of

planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,

by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion

of whore-master man, to lay his goatish

disposition to the charge of a star! My

father compounded with my mother under the

Dragon’s Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa

Major, so that it follows I am rough and

lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am,

had the maidenliest star in the firmament

twinkled on my bastardizing.”

—EDMUND, KING LEAR, ACT I SCENE 2

Early versions of magic carpets kept arriving with charred piles of ash instead of passengers until they figured that one out.

If my understanding of brightly-colored bugs is correct, then that mouth is ultra fucking poisonous to eat.

It’s easier to make friends with hermit crab watchers than it is to make your friends into hermit crab watchers.

Cab anyone attest to how these things taste? And is it possible to get one outside of Hawaii?

My crackpot theory is that aliens showed up, told the Egyptians at lasergun-point to build them pyramids, but then didn’t give them any help at all. The Egyptians had to work out all the trigonometry and engineering entirely for themselves, while those lazy fucking aliens hung back and contributed absolutely nothing. Fuck those goddamn lazy space aliens.

I like the ability to adjust playback speed. I listen to everything at 1.1 and it just feels like everyone tightened up their delivery a little bit and took out dead air. There was one podcast where the subject was interesting but the delivery was agonizingly slow, so I turned it all the way up to 1.5.

I’ve been playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon virtually every day for years, through I don’t know how many updates. I’m far from convinced that every run is winnable, but there are some patterns that I’ve observed.

Mage and Huntress seem to be my best classes. The Mage’s staff means that you are guaranteed to have something that’s worth upgrading. The Huntress’ bow and her special abilities like growing grass by walking can make for some truly interesting gameplay changes, whereas I feel like most of the other classes’ abilities are more about moderate improvements to quality of life.

A Ring of Haste is probably my favorite ring to find, since being able to kite monsters is a great path to victory. Tenacity, Elements, and Strength are boring. Wealth can be good if it comes upgraded, but I wouldn’t put scrolls into it. Evasion always seems to turn on me sooner or later. Energy and Arcana can improve quality of life but are otherwise pretty mid.

A Wand of Regrowth is almost always a path to victory, especially if it comes upgraded, doubly so if you become a Warden, and triply so if you can combine it with the Sandals of Regrowth.

A Wand of Blast Wave is incredibly useful when used to knock enemies off ledges or into traps, saving yourself the trouble of killing them.

Other wands are a super mixed bag, depending on what you can manage to do with them, but I’ll say that some of my most fun and successful runs are putting a Wand of Corruption into my Mage’s Staff and becoming a Corruption Battlemage. You whack an enemy, Amok him on his friends, then corrupt them, then rinse and repeat until you win.

I’ve already mentioned the Sandals, which I’d say are incredibly useful if you’ve got a Wand of Regrowth or a Blooming enchanted weapon, but are otherwise hard to keep getting enough fresh grass to make worthwhile. I think the Ethereal Chains and Hourglass are my favorite and most useful artifacts. Horn of Plenty is okay but not great, unless you can combine it with being filled by the Battlemage’s energy generating ability. Other artifacts are mid, but I’ll make a special mention of the Unstable Spellbook which seems to screw me as often as it helps and yet I can’t deny that I have a great time with the mayhem it adds to my run. The Alchemist’s Toolkit is terrible; I hope a future patch significantly alters or replaces it, because honestly why bother using it at all?

I think my favorite runs are Corruption Battlemage or a Sniper with a nicely upgraded Boomerang; I always get a lot of fun out of using the boomerangs.

There’s no end to the conversation but that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s far and away the most played game on my phone… possibly my most played game ever, measured by eternal hours. The publisher is an absolute treasure and he deserves all the praise and success in the world.

Do you want Cenobites? Because that’s how you get Cenobites.

Not sure if I merit being called an audiophile, but…

Huge collection of mp3s ripped from CDs. Stored locally, currently using a Unihertz Jelly Star as a glorified digital audio player, running BlackPlayer EX, which I like for it being a good mix of minimalist and giving me freedom to customize as much as I feel I need. When I’m using headphones, I want my ears uncovered so I use Shokz bone conduction headphones.

Nice

I’m wondering if I could obtain some kind of old/used android phone, remove all the apps so the home screen is completely empty, transfer via USB or ssh/scp the MP3 files (and metadata + cover art), then have some kind of music player app which would be the only app on the phone/device.

This is exactly what I did. I used an older Moto and uninstalled or disabled everything I didn’t want and only used BlackPlayer EX. It also has halfway decent external speakers so I can just play music directly off the device if I want to. The only thing that doesn’t thrill me is that it’s a full sized phone, which can be a bit awkwardly large at times. It’s been working great, but when the time comes for another device, I might go with one of the little Unihertz models.

There’s RiffTrax. They’re pretty much the only way I can stand to re-watch the Star Wars prequels at this point.

Let Bartlett be Bartlett!

I’ll have it explain complicated topics using familiar frameworks. As an example, I had it run through various superheroes and villains and match them up with appropriate philosophers. This conversation was how I settled on the idea that Lex Luthor has a lot more in common with Ayn Rand than Friedrich Nietzsche.