this always gets me very warm in the face >/////<

having friends in dif time zones is just

If your sleep schedule is fucked up enough this can be with friends in your own timezone!

So play like a noob? got it

You’re joking, but it actually is a popular theory in chess that a complete noob potentially can beat a master by confusing them - as the noob doesn’t know what they’re doing the master is unable to recognize which of valid strategies they’re pursuing and cannot deploy proper counterstrategy.

Chessmasters when their opponent doesn’t make one of the five approved optimal opening moves:

#used to do shit like this when we fenced#for real tho a newbie is way more of an issue than a master because WHAT are you doing???

I’m currently a fencing coach for a high school club and my least disciplined fencer routinely beats kids who have been fencing for 5-6 years because he’s just so unpredictable and messy that his opponents have no idea what to do.

I know what a master is doing, I just may not be faster than them. I know I’m faster than a newbie but hey what the fuck is happening?

I have, on rare occasions, won pokemon battles like this. I have no idea what the meta is, and just slap things together that sound cool. It’s fun when you win by taking someone completely off guard because “Who would run that?!” Idk man, the noob that just kicked your ass. I’m not smart enough for all these mind games that go into serious competitive pokemon, but I do know big laser go pew.

The Newbie Flail™ is the most terrifying attack imaginable.

I have never been into fighting games but I had a friend many years ago who would get SO MAD when I’d beat him and his Super Special Combos with good old fashioned button mashing.

I think the most unintentionally pretentious part of me is I genuinely forget that most people do not have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of mythology and folklore. I literally just assume most people know at least the name of every Greek god. My mom and I were watching the Banshees of Inisherin and at the start, she asked "Do you know what a banshee is?" and I was so stunned because it would never occur to me to ask that question because I would never assume the average person doesn't know what a banshee is. The average person knows what a banshee is right. You know what a banshee is right. You know the names of the greek gods right. You know that norse myth where loki fucked the horse right. Right. RIGHT

Actual conversation I had last week:

Coworker 1: - so I've suggested we name the project Charybdis

Me: haha yeah, because [stuff relating to the project and to mythical monsters], and if the sister project goes ahead too we can call it Scylla

Coworker 1: exactly my plan

Coworker 2: what in the actual living fuck are you guys talking about

i love this photo because at first you think that she was going to get married but instead her husband to be left her, or something like that. but actually its quite the opposite. i clicked on the source and it brought me to an article explaining the story behind this photo, and shes not crying, shes hungover. her and her husband went to a football game on their wedding day, and got extremely drunk and partied all night. they took the subway home because they couldn’t drive. so no, its not a sad heartbreaking story, its a crazy joyful one. which in my opinion makes the picture even more amazing.

CAN PEOPLE PLEASE REBLOG THE PIC WITH THIS CAPTION^ AND NOT THE ONE WHERE EVERYONE IS SAD AND ARE LIKE “POOR GIRL GOD BLESS”

poor girls hungover, god bless

THEIR GRANDMOTHERS SET THEM UP FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE~!

#reverse gifts of the magi

its so fun that T comes in little vials and it changes your appearance. its like a magic potion except you dont drink it

why is it always the fancylad boy-king type whos the bottom. maybe his tough loyal knight who uses his body to protect and defend him and lives to serve him wants to get railed

maybe i just like it when masc dudes with scars and calluses and a devotion complex bigger than the moon get topped by troubled prettyboys with hands thatve never worked a day in their life. who said that

Thank you for your work soldier 🫡

A real 3-hit combo of tumblr posts rn

whys this a bulk reblog

3 for 1 deal

9 years ago, a highly anticipated game was cancelled after the release of a teaser demo version. Predicted to be one of the best horror games of all time, the full game never came to fruition. - P.T. Silent Hills ( 2014 )

"it's not queer fiction unless the queerness is explicitly declared in the text according to currently accepted terminology and in a way that meets the approval of the entire audience" I mean follow your heart I guess but I trust myself as a queer person to recognise queer themes

"but doesn't this risk giving the author undue credit for queer representation" I do not care about the author

To all my writers who have a tough time with smut terms and not knowing which ones to use, I have found the holy grail for us.

This reddit user took a poll of 3,500 people and went really in depth with asking their favorite terminology, along with actual pie charts on what the readers preferred to see in their smut.

Here's the direct link to the Google doc with all the info!

I think everyone has both "hard" headcanons (things that are so integral to your understanding of a story that you can't enjoy content that contradicts them), and "soft" headcanons (things that are mutable, where you aren't strongly attached or you're open to alternate interpretations) and if you aren't sure if something is one or the other you can just read a fic where the author disagrees with you and see whether you react with "Huh, that's interesting" or "I have been overcome with a creeping sense of existential wrongness."

My sister was telling me that she and her girlfriend went on a ghost tour for their anniversary, and at one point the tour guide mentioned there was a spooky haunted doll down inside a vent but phone flashlights usually weren't powerful enough to see it, so my sister whipped out the industrial-strength flashlight she carries in her purse at all times and the guide exclaimed "Oh! We should have lesbians on every tour!"

So You Need To Buy A Computer But You Don't Know What Specs Are Good These Days

Hi.

This is literally my job.

Lots of people are buying computers for school right now or are replacing computers as their five-year-old college laptop craps out so here's the standard specs you should be looking for in a (windows) computer purchase in August 2023.

PROCESSOR

You can get away with a Ryzen 5 but an intel i3 should be an absolute last resort. You want at least an intel i5 or a Ryzen 7 processor. The current generation of intel processors is 13, but anything 10 or newer is perfectly fine. DO NOT get a higher performance line with an older generation; a 13th gen i5 is better than an 8th gen i7. (Unfortunately I don't know enough about ryzens to tell you which generation is the earliest you should get, but staying within 3 generations is a good rule of thumb)

RAM

If you don't have at least 8GB RAM on a modern computer it's going to be very, very slow. Ideally you want a computer with at least 16GB, and it's a good idea to get a computer that will let you add or swap RAM down the line (nearly all desktops will let you do this, for laptops you need to check the specs for Memory and see how many slots there are and how many slots are available; laptops with soldered RAM cannot have the memory upgraded - this is common in very slim laptops)

STORAGE

Computers mostly come with SSDs these days; SSDs are faster than HDDs but typically have lower storage for the same price. That being said: SSDs are coming down in price and if you're installing your own drive you can easily upgrade the size for a low cost. Unfortunately that doesn't do anything for you for the initial purchase.

A lot of cheaper laptops will have a 128GB SSD and, because a lot of stuff is stored in the cloud these days, that can be functional. I still recommend getting a bit more storage than that because it's nice if you can store your music and documents and photos on your device instead of on the cloud. You want to be able to access your files even if you don't have internet access.

But don't get a computer with a big HDD instead of getting a computer with a small SSD. The difference in speed is noticeable.

SCREEN (laptop specific)

Personally I find that touchscreens have a negative impact on battery life and are easier to fuck up than standard screens. They are also harder to replace if they get broken. I do not recommend getting a touch screen unless you absolutely have to.

A lot of college students especially tend to look for the biggest laptop screen possible; don't do that. It's a pain in the ass to carry a 17" laptop around campus and with the way that everything is so thin these days it's easier to damage a 17" screen than a 14" screen.

On the other end of that: laptops with 13" screens tend to be very slim devices that are glued shut and impossible to work on or upgrade.

Your best bet (for both functionality and price) is either a 14" or a 15.6" screen. If you absolutely positively need to have a 10-key keyboard on your laptop, get the 15.6". If you need something portable more than you need 10-key, get a 14"

FORM FACTOR (desktop specific)

If you purchase an all-in-one desktop computer I will begin manifesting in your house physically. All-in-ones take away every advantage desktops have in terms of upgradeability and maintenance; they are expensive and difficult to repair and usually not worth the cost of disassembling to upgrade.

There are about four standard sizes of desktop PC: All-in-One (the size of a monitor with no other footprint), Tower (Big! probably at least two feet long in two directions), Small Form Factor Tower (Very moderate - about the size of a large shoebox), and Mini/Micro/Tiny (Small! about the size of a small hardcover book).

If you are concerned about space you are much better off getting a MicroPC and a bracket to put it on your monitor than you are getting an all-in-one. This will be about a million percent easier to work on than an all-in-one and this way if your monitor dies your computer is still functional.

Small form factor towers and towers are the easiest to work on and upgrade; if you need a burly graphics card you need to get a full size tower, but for everything else a small form factor tower will be fine. Most of our business sales are SFF towers and MicroPCs, the only time we get something larger is if we have to put a $700 graphics card in it. SFF towers will accept small graphics cards and can handle upgrades to the power supply; MicroPCs can only have the RAM and SSD upgraded and don't have room for any other components or their own internal power supply.

WARRANTY

Most desktops come with either a 1 or 3 year warranty; either of these is fine and if you want to upgrade a 1 year to a 3 year that is also fine. I've generally found that if something is going to do a warranty failure on desktop it's going to do it the first year, so you don't get a hell of a lot of added mileage out of an extended warranty but it doesn't hurt and sometimes pays off to do a 3-year.

Laptops are a different story. Laptops mostly come with a 1-year warranty and what I recommend everyone does for every laptop that will allow it is to upgrade that to the longest warranty you can get with added drop/damage protection. The most common question our customers have about laptops is if we can replace a screen and the answer is usually "yes, but it's going to be expensive." If you're purchasing a low-end laptop, the parts and labor for replacing a screen can easily cost more than half the price of a new laptop. HOWEVER, the way that most screens get broken is by getting dropped. So if you have a warranty with drop protection, you just send that sucker back to the factory and they fix it for you.

So, if it is at all possible, check if the manufacturer of a laptop you're looking at has a warranty option with drop protection. Then, within 30 days (though ideally on the first day you get it) of owning your laptop, go to the manufacturer site, register your serial number, and upgrade the warranty. If you can't afford a 3-year upgrade at once set a reminder for yourself to annually renew. But get that drop protection, especially if you are a college student or if you've got kids.

And never, ever put pens or pencils on your laptop keyboard. I've seen people ruin thousand dollar, brand-new laptops that they can't afford to fix because they closed the screen on a ten cent pencil. Keep liquids away from them too.

LIFESPAN

There's a reasonable chance that any computer you buy today will still be able to turn on and run a program or two in ten years. That does not mean that it is "functional."

At my office we estimate that the functional lifespan of desktops is 5-7 years and the functional lifespan of laptops is 3-5 years. Laptops get more wear and tear than desktops and desktops are easier to upgrade to keep them running. At 5 years for desktops and 3 years for laptops you should look at upgrading the RAM in the device and possibly consider replacing the SSD with a new (possibly larger) model, because SSDs and HDDs don't last forever.

COST

This means that you should think of your computers as an annual investment rather than as a one-time purchase. It is more worthwhile to pay $700 for a laptop that will work well for five years than it is to pay $300 for a laptop that will be outdated and slow in one year (which is what will happen if you get an 8th gen i3 with 8GB RAM). If you are going to get a $300 laptop try to get specs as close as possible to the minimums I've laid out here.

If you have to compromise on these specs, the one that is least fixable is the processor. If you get a laptop with an i3 processor you aren't going to be able to upgrade it even if you can add more RAM or a bigger SSD. If you have to get lower specs in order to afford the device put your money into the processor and make sure that the computer has available slots for upgrade and that neither the RAM nor the SSD is soldered to the motherboard. (one easy way to check this is to search "[computer model] RAM upgrade" on youtube and see if anyone has made a video showing what the inside of the laptop looks like and how much effort it takes to replace parts)

Computers are expensive right now. This is frustrating, because historically consumer computer prices have been on a downward trend but since 2020 that trend has been all over the place. Desktop computers are quite expensive at the moment (August 2023) and decent laptops are extremely variably priced.

If you are looking for a decent, upgradeable laptop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

If you are looking for a decent, affordable desktop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

If I were going to buy any of these I'd probably get the HP laptop or the Dell Tower. The HP Laptop is actually a really good price for what it is.

Anyway happy computering.

touching grass isn't enough some of y'all need to drive out to the countryside and look at the stars

this post was aimed at the discourse-addled and terminally online, but i'm glad it's reaching an audience of people who are just excited about stargazing in general

Hey. Gentiles. Listen up for a sec.

When September and October are nearing and you’re planning an event: google “Rosh Hashanah *year*” and *Yom Kippur *year*” and then, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t plan your event on those days. In fact, don’t plan any events starting sundown the night before. Those are the three most important days of the Jewish calendar, and, once again, I cannot stress enough how much this little bit of forethought and kindness will make every Jew you know cry tears of joy.

in 2023, the night before Rosh Hashanah is Thursday evening, September 14.

Rosh Hashanah ends Sunday evening, September 17.

calendar date

in 2023, the night before Yom Kippur is Saturday evening, September 23.

Yom Kippur ends Monday evening, September 25.

calendar date

I flew back to my hometown for 1 day. 1 day and there’s a naked man in assless leather chaps evading arrest on a motorcycle. Word on the street is he’s become a hero of the people. “It’s not like he’s hurting anyone” they’re saying. Glad I came back for this

I don’t know if he’s been caught yet but so far he’s been seen in the parking lot behind the weed shop, in an alley behind the community theatre, and down at the skate park

godspeed, naked ass weed skater bike cowboy

Should go without saying but never date a cop and christ never marry one. Rule of thumb if he's legally untouchable he's ethically unfuckable. You don't like that cop, you like buff men in tight clothing. I can show you more of those, better ones. Take my hand.

burned honey knows what’s up

I did not know this about firemen

Yes we need more chaste twee baby gay romances like heartstopper and yes we also need more shows where men fuck raw to express their love for one another like Élite and yes we need more toxic gays having hate sex like Interview with the Vampire and yes we need more incidental gay characters like the dads in cartoons like Owl House.

It's not a competition! It's a hoard and I'm like a gay little Smaug.

the normalization of porn in mainstream media is a weird take to have

Normalization of gay desire and yes, even gay sex, is paramount to gay liberation actually.