Lots of good info already, so I'll just leave a look to a good podcast episode on pig butchering scams.

https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/141/

When the initial allegations came out I was shocked. A week later I was having breakfast with a good friend of mine and his wife. The wife worked in the comic book industry and we'd talked about Gaiman before. I brought up the allegations and she told me that no one who rubbed elbowed with his circle were shocked. Apparently he already had something of a reputation.

I'm one of those people. I haven't played in years. I may never have played again. I only found out because my daughter is now at an age where she asked if we could play together. I received no notice from Microsoft and I don't do social media so it was a complete surprise to me when I couldn't log in, then find out through their support that I had lost access to something I had legally paid for.

Buried a little in the article, this was a bit more than just "... breaks cut"

and had the car seen by a mechanic who, according to the report, found “that the driver-side front impact/airbag sensor had also been removed but noted that the remaining wires had been spliced together, completing the circuit in a manner that prevented the vehicle from detecting or logging the missing component, while also preventing the vehicle from activating its safety protocols, alerting the driver, or engaging limp mode.” The police report also indicates that fingerprints had been found on Berulis’ car. According to the police report, the case is now “inactive,” “due to the lack of any specific suspect information,” though the police’s intelligence unit was notified.

I asked a buddy that works at Amazon about the outage and he pointed me to this article.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/

I know quite a few people who currently work there and pretty much all of them are trying to leave.

While I don't disagree, this person was also quite clearly mentally ill.

Now who is it that keeps cutting support for... Oh right...

One of my favorite managers once told me while I was struggling with a severe case of imposter syndrome "if you're faking it well enough that others can't tell, you might not be faking it as much as you think."

To give you a slightly more serious answer, there's a trope in America of the girl friend's dad doing something to "subtly intimidate" the boy friend by casually cleaning a gun or having one within sight the first time they meet. The implication of course is supposed to be something along the lines of "I've got this and if you try anything funny with my daughter, I'll use it on you"

It's dumb but I've also known more than a few people who have experienced this first hand.

Isaac Asimov in 1980:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Hol up, DS is now old enough to be considered retro‽

Why does my back hurt so much? Unrelated I'm sure.

I saw someone with the classic John f Kennedy quote "those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable" on a sign that was taped to a classic wooden bat. Probably my favor sign I've seen yet.

IIRC that was on the set of one of the Hobbit movies.

The Lord of the Rings was shot mostly using practical effects.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonya_Harding

Specifically, see the section titled "Assault of Nancy Kerrigan and legal proceedings"

It was a pretty huge deal at the time, but has since faded.

The one I'm familiar with is "Domain Specific Language"

"Oh but it's not going to effect them at all because you see, they're using absentee ballots which are a totally different and completely secure thing."

Actual talking point I've seen floating around already.

For anyone else that needs the reminder, the one on the right is Euler's formula.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_formula

My dude, as a random Internet stranger, let me just say that the world needs more people like yourself. Thank you for being you and contributing to the world what you do.

Fuck it, just to be a little bit contarian, how much of a selection bias do you think might actually be present in the assumption "...then why don't the rich ascend to this purer existence in a trailer park? Why is it always the poors?"

For sure we hear about the people that get rich and only want to get richer and fuck over everyone that gets in their way, but personally now that I think about it, I actually do know a few people that got lucky, made a bit, and thought "fuck it, I'm done. I'm going to go farm and smoke weed" or some similar equivalent. You'd never hear about those kind of people unless you directly know them. How many trust fund kids are out there just chilling and enjoying life without trying to exploit everyone around them?

My Dad had a saying I always really liked.

"You don't have to be a Christian to be a good person and you don't have to be a good person to call yourself a Christian."

It was pointed out to me once that the engine room scenes were filmed in a brewery and now I can't unsee it.