The Illuminati rock band?

Some crabs’ wings just take longer to sprout, it’s actually pretty normal and totally cool.

To be pedantic, they’re pretty different. Fish are neutrally buoyant, they stay “aloft” due to a similar density to the medium they travel in and swimming is merely a means of propulsion. Birds are more dense than the medium they travel in, and only stay aloft by active interaction with their medium. If a bird stops flying, it plummets; if a fish stops swimming, it continues to float mid-medium.

I generally have more than 16 hours of energy in the day, so I actually did this for a while in college when I worked at a 24 hour job:

Monday: 2am - 10pm - morning shift and midday classes

Tuesday: 6am - 2am - morning shift and afternoon classes

Wednesday: 10am - 6am -midday classes and evening shift

ThursEve: 2pm - 10am - afternoon classes and overnight shift

FriNight: 6pm - 2pm - partying, morning shift, and errands

SaturSun: 10pm - 6pm - partying and miscellaneous

Usually I had to fudge it a little bit to fit my exact class/work schedule, but it was honestly kinda dope. Less time struggling to fall asleep, 8 extra hours in the week, plenty of energy to party all night. If I could finagle my work schedule like that again, I’d probably go back to it.

His son actually further developed the experimental dance therapy into the practice of mental karate.

NOWAI

Probably worrying less about pointless bullshit. Stress ages you faster

Buckminster Fuller didn’t like to use “up” or “down”, preferring “in” (towards the center of gravity) and “out” (away from the center of gravity). “Downstairs” becomes “instairs”, “upstairs” becomes “outstairs”. A tad pedantic for casual conversations on Earth, but highlights the central issue.

Even Henry Ford figured it out, a century ago.

I think it’s a complex problem. A lot of these “buzzwords” are actually quite semantically rich, if used correctly. “Synergy” refers to the principle of mutually advantageous reinforcement between factors, like the “three sisters” technique in agriculture. “Paradigm” is a concise word to denote an established, standard framework or perspective.

They are technical jargon, when used correctly. Used responsibly, they can convey a great deal of information with high semantic density. The problem arises when they’re transformed into buzzwords, layered in confusing or abstract ways.

Ah, yeah if you don’t like info dumps then never mind. It’s basically a novel in game form.

Not what I said. Dropping out of a game because it’s too bleak reinforces the game’s theme of people dropping out of reality because it’s too bleak.

Like I said, it’s not for everyone. But you quit before the threads start to come together. If you don’t care about those threads, that’s your choice. You said you’re interested in exploring the themes the game centers around, and if that’s true you really should give it a real shot and give the game the time to tell its story. But the negativity and pacing are an aspect of that storytelling. People are supposed to be assholes, it’s supposed to feel a bit like a slog, it’s supposed to feel bleak. They aren’t telling the story badly, you’re just not interested in the story.

Sure, but again that’s the point. I can get why someone might not have the patience for it, but you can’t really change the front-loaded negativity or pacing without sacrificing the whole message. It’s a crucial aspect of the storytelling.

Honestly, people who give up on it kinda validate the themes. You and your dozen friends didn’t persevere, like many of the characters. Giving up is one response to bleakness. That’s not a value judgement, like I said it isn’t for everyone, but it is kinda poignant that by checking-out you demonstrate exactly what it’s saying, to some degree.

And if you keep playing you learn the tragic reasons why Cuno is such a little shit and, I won’t post spoilers, but depending on your choices you can help him become way less of a little shit. It’s roughly the same for most of the asshole characters: they’re assholes at first, you find out why they’re assholes and develop a lot of sympathy for them, and sometimes you facilitate their redemption.

The characters are supposed to be flawed, they’re supposed to be unlikeable. The game is about exploring what it is that made them unlikeable: how much of it is forces beyond their control, how much of it is their own stubbornness and maladaptive reactions, how much of it is just trauma.

It’s kind of a necessary aspect. You can’t really effectively explore what persistent failure does to a town without feeling like you’re trudging through a story full of assholes. If the characters weren’t so abrasive and broken, it wouldn’t really be the same kind of thing.

The main theme of the game basically centers around failure. How it manifests, how people react to it, how it affects them in the long run. Bitterness, apathy, delusion. Most of the characters are some kind of fuckup (except Kim, my beloved). Some of them are failures because they’re fucked up, some of them are fucked up because they failed again and again, but either way it’s an exploration of what that does to a person, what that does to a people, what that does to a town.

Some people just disassociate, some people give up and abandon their values to go with the flow, some people fight back impotently against forces they’ll never overcome. Above all, I think it’s basically about perseverance, one way or another, in the face of failure.

It’s very raw, very bleak, very human. It’s easy to feel vindicated when you strive and succeed, when you’re a virtuous hero, but who among us is just a virtuous hero? It’s much more complex and real to fail over and over and still get back on that horse, because what else can you do? The characters are supposed to be flawed, they’re supposed to be unlikeable. The game is about exploring what it is that made them unlikeable: how much of it is forces beyond their control, how much of it is their own stubbornness and maladaptive reactions, how much of it is just trauma.

If you don’t like exploring those ideas, you probably won’t like the game.

The Apollo missions were staged, that’s 100% a fact.

Jokes aside, yeah Soviets are the answer. If there was the slightest inkling that we faked it, they wouldn’t have come out to congratulate us.

Publication order is probably fine, though it takes a few books for him to settle into his general story structure. It’s not the only way, and unless you’re going to sprint through them in relatively quick succession it’s probably not the best way, as you may get lost in some of the focused character development.

This is a bit of an open question. Most of the books center around one or another subgroup of characters (City Watch, the wizards, the witches, Death, etc.), although there’s some overlap. The way I’ve been going through seems to be roughly the agreed upon “best” way: choose one of these sub-groups and read all the books that center around them in order, then move on to another.

Those sub-series are relatively self-contained, so I think you get more from exploring a theme from beginning to end than jumping from theme to theme. There are several tie-ins, but I don’t think they’re substantial enough to agonize over missing context.

Personally, I’d either start with Guards! Guards! or Going Postal, as they’re the beginnings of the more grounded sub-series and give you a good foundation of the world in general, and Ankh-Morpork in particular. But as long as you’re not skipping ahead in a sub-series, you should be fine.

I only had one real relationship before my wife, and I was the one broken up with.

I was devastated, and just generally sad for probably a month or so. After a while, I started to realize that my life with her would have been pretty bad. She was shallow, judgemental, not particularly bright, kinda bad in bed. I would’ve stayed with her out of loyalty though.

It gave me the push to improve myself and get out there more, and I became much happier than I was when we were together. I’ve been with my wife for 13 years now, and she’s amazing.