Bartimaeus

There are a few things you're supposed to be able to eat at this stage...applesauce, soft overripe bananas, warm milk, jello, yogurt...but I have a condition called reactive hypoglycemia that means I really can't eat sugars unless I can balance it out with solid protein. Essentially, the more sugar you eat, the more your blood sugar decreases due to having overactive insulin that corrects too hard for it - ergo, fasting is actually better for me than trying to eat most of the stuff they recommend that you eat after removing your wisdom teeth, though it does mean I'm feeling a bit woozy and don't have a lot of energy right now. As a child, I used to show all the normal symptoms of low blood sugar, so adults would keep trying to make me eat more carbs/sugar, e.g. a cookie, and I'd argue and refuse to eat anything of the sort due to having learned the hard way that it just makes me worse. They'd get really mad at me, but lo and behold, I learn that it's a real thing as an adult. Nope, to fix low my blood sugar, I have to...not eat any sugar and instead eat eggs, beans, or meat. Even stuff like milk and peanut butter has too much sugar compared to their protein for it to balance out for me (also, I became strongly lactose-intolerant out of the blue last year anyways). I'll be better off once my gums stop bleeding and swelling and I can have something like soft scrambled eggs or refried beans. Thanks for the well wishes - I haven't been too bothered by the pain yet, day 3 tomorrow, just taking an ibuprofen and tylenol here and there so far. Honestly, I have way worse chronic pain from my busted-ass neck, which has bothered me more - especially as I'm supposed to keep my head elevated while sleeping, which as someone who mostly sleeps on their chest, is not something I really do very much.

I'm a couple of years past the suggested/recommended age range myself, mainly because they've never bothered me and I'd never had a dentist tell me I should get them pulled until recently. I'm unsure if that played into why the roots were deeper than normal. The bottom ones in particular were pushing my teeth together a little too tight, which would make cavities likely in the future...at some point. Better now than later, my dentist said. Despite them having to cut up my gums and sew them back together, the bleeding is close to stopping and the pain really isn't too bad yet, so it'll just be a matter of dealing with the swelling and avoiding dry socket/infections, I think. And being hungry for the rest of this week, since I'm not supposed to eat anything.

I got my wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. My dentist and the surgeon thought they would be simple pulls because they'd all surfaced fully and without any major impacting, but they ended up having to cut into my gums and drill them apart because they had gnarly deep roots and refused to be pulled. 20-30m procedure turned into 3x that. Fun. The worst part so far was the anxiety leading up to it (I decided I'd be IV sedated...and that was almost certainly the right choice), but we'll see over the next few days.

Steam announced ending support for Windows 7 (and Windows 8, extra characters here because "8" and ")" right next to each automatically turns into an emoticon I can't disable) on March 28th of 2023, effective January 1st of 2024. 12 days before that announcement, Steam's own hardware survey said that 1.58% of users were on Windows 7 and .36% on Windows 8 - by early December, it had dropped to a combined 0.96%. Microsoft dropped non-security support for Windows 7 in January of 2015, extended support in 2020, and paid-only enterprise support in January of 2023. Right now, Windows 10 is still at 33.74% on Steam...in other words, you can expect a few more years at the very least. The big issue with ending support for Windows 10 is that there's literal hundreds of millions of devices out that that can't easily upgrade to Windows 11, so I think there's a good chance Windows 10 will be supported by most stuff, including Steam, for just as long as Windows 7 was. It will take time for people to upgrade their PCs to even be able to install Windows 11, especially given current PC tech prices.

I probably went a bit farther than you, as I use Windows 10 LTSC (a special cut-down Enterprise-ish version of Windows 10 more meant for critical infrastructure systems that has many annoying features disabled by default - it never receives feature updates with the last release of it being 21H2, but you can still receive security updates, and unlike the consumer versions, support will last until 2032!!!), which doesn't come with any of the stuff that Windows10Debloater aims on removing/disabling in the first place. I also use Shutup10 and Winaero Tweaker which unbury and coalesce a number of hidden settings to better disable crap (including ads and telemetry) but also for reverting a number of basic functionalities that I missed from Windows 7, and I use simplewall, a firewall that kinda overlays Windows Firewall while allowing you way better and direct control of your firewall settings, which also allows you to further lobotomize Windows from connecting to Microsoft in any manner unless you give it your explicit approval. This setup has been serving me well for a number of years, though I did need to manually upgrade to the last version of LTSC that they released for Windows 10 a couple of years back when a game didn't work because my Windows feature version was too out of date...but that's fine, I prefer manually doing it over Windows just bulldozing me with its automatic feature updates. As long as I'm the one deciding to do it at the time and place of my desire, that works for me. Windows LTSC (for either 10 or 11) is not available to license to the general public, i.e. you cannot buy it. You can obtain official installation .isos from the Internet Archive rather easily though (among many other sources), and literally any version of Windows 10 or 11 takes about 60 seconds to permanently license with just a simple PowerShell script that you can find rather easily on a well-maintained GitHub project that's been around for many years now. And if I'm remembering correctly, the LTSC installers of at least 10 do not even try to force you to immediately register with an online account like the consumer versions of Windows do, so how about that? Look into some of the software I mentioned above - if it weren't for the fact that I have to deal with it at work, I'd have completely forgotten some of the worst Windows garbage like OneDrive even exists for the past 10 years.

The irony of something like the first two Baldur's Gate games is that they were obviously a product of many, many compromises that the developers probably would've rather not have made if they didn't have to...but some of those compromises were the exact thing that I now realize I want out of a video game. Textual density and voice-acting is just exactly one such thing: the ability to be selective about what is voice-acted versus what is not, making it so that text is generally tight but you can have longer passages when the situation calls for it...and you didn't make the player constantly listen to or make the decision to skip past voice-acting because it's taking way too long when it's really not that good or for anything very important, but contrarily you can have entire conversations voice-acted if it is actually an important story moment or particularly silly or for any other reason you'd like...and it's not like the Baldur's Gate games did any of this perfectly either, there was a lot of room for improvement in many areas that didn't mean either going full book mode OR making every last bit of dialogue voice-acted. I don't want games that are endlessly text-dense (unless it's actually REALLY well-written or intriguing, but the rate of games successfully sinking their claws into you so much that you genuinely want to explore every last nook and cranny, listen to every last character dialogue, go through the full lore descriptions of each item just for the joy of the writing is really low), but I don't want games to be total basic garbage, either. There's a balance to be struck with these things, and it seems like a lot of games really struggle to find that balance and meaningfully carve out their identities within it.

For me, it's a matter of mental energy and choosing when I want to engage with something. Notifications, updates, ads...but also new videos from people I like, if a webcomic I'm following updates, game launchers/wrappers telling me a friend is playing a game or whatever, et cetera. I generally want as little as possible that's not actually important imposing itself on me, and stuff that is always online has a way of doing just that...constantly, every day, and while some people are fine with that, maybe even thrive on being constantly connected to everything, I find too much stimuli or too much asking something from me to be an unnecessary drain of my energy. My Windows 10 format is "disconnected": all the built-in ads are disabled, Windows does not push any notifications to me, it does not even automatically update, nothing about it ever changes unless I personally effect that change. I can to tell it to update, which I do every once in a while...and that's the key thing: when I tell it to. I'm prepared for it when I decide to do that and I want pretty much everything else to be the same: if I choose to open up YouTube, I do so with the knowledge (perhaps even desire!) that there might be new videos from the people I'm subscribed to...the same for checking my email, the same for how I pretty much always have my phone set on silence except for a very few people, the same for when I choose to visit the Obsidian forums. I have a need for controlling when I choose to engage with stuff, and I utterly loathe it when that control is taken away from me. I accept not having that control when it comes to family, pets, and some close friends, but not a lot else...certainly not my operating system or any of my devices: thus, I want most everything to be disconnected and manual activation only, and the whole always online paradigm and everything wanting to be connected to you and have all these different avenues of annoying you in some way is really anathema to that.

I've heard from a few people whose opinions I mildly trust that it's good to great, but I've also heard from a few other people whose opinions I trust at least a little more that it's pretty bad. I can only assume it's one of those things where if it clicks, it clicks, and if it doesn't, into the trash it goes.

I came across this lady that plays some of the weirdest, most random old garbage a few weeks back, and I've been slowly going through her YouTube videos. She has this...um, interesting icon for her YouTube/Twitch avatar, which I'd been wondering about ever since I saw it. Today, I discovered what it was from... It's possibly the best character creator of all time (timestamped): This video was from eleven months ago. I admire that she's kept it for so long.

...Is that a Matilda "Get Sticky With Mickey" reference? If so, you've earned my utmost respect.

I'm very glad to hear that, though personally I don't like to be slathered from head to toe in honey, but that might just be a me problem.

Dear Obsidian Moderation Team, Are you okay? Love, Bartimaeus

I can't help but laugh every time I see or hear the term "warfighter". Language is completely arbitrary, I know, but somehow that one in particular seems too absurd for me.

...Wait a second, they took the ancient fused uniques from Diablo 2 and made it into an actual mechanic now? Supposedly, Mephisto had a bugged drop table in the initial release of Lord of Destruction that limited how many uniques could drop at the same time, but it was coded badly and it made it so that in the extremely unlikely event of too many uniques dropping, you'd get the base item of one but the properties of another, hence the monstrosities above. Wizardspike Gauntlets in particular were duped to all hell and back, but there were a few others. I say "supposedly" because there's no video of this ever actually happening despite the fact that someone could go (dis)prove it if they really wanted to, those old versions of the games still exist and it's not at all difficult to change the drop mechanics to force only uniques to drop - it could just as well be that they were hacked items. Though unlike all the hacked items that were mass-removed from everyone's characters like twenty years ago never to return, fused uniques still exist on the official D2 servers, so maybe there's something to it after all.

I would assume that it depends on the brand/business/product. For ABC/Disney, it's probably safe to say that they would have more left-wing people in their camp than right-wing, so yes, I would imagine they would've been much better off just quietly ignoring all of this. There are enough other significant voices out there saying so much worse about Charlie Kirk than the nothingness that Kimmel did (his comment didn't even really directly concern Charlie Kirk but rather the shooter), this shouldn't have even been on anyone's radar, especially given the kind of audience Kimmel has in the first place. Foolishness all around on the decision-makers at ABC/Disney, though I do understand that the threats between FCC and Sinclair/Nexar were probably persuasive in the moment. ABC/Disney will still have to sort that nasty business out.

More and more, I think corporations are learning the hard way that doing anything to draw political attention to yourself in this polarized climate is pretty much always the wrong thing to do - you do something to score points and you get the other side angry at you, then you walk it back and now both sides are angry at you. You could've just done nothing and sat quietly in your corner, blissfully happy that nobody was thinking of you being political in any meaningful way.

If you continue to read BruceVC posts of your own free volition, you are mad indeed. Well, maybe I should check to see what he said myself... Oh wait, I can't! And I think to myself...what a wonderful world. Well, except for all the other stupid, disingenuous ****s out there, but it is what it is.

It's basically impossible. Susan Collins will be vulnerable in Maine and Thom Thillis is retiring in North Carolina: those two are the best pick-up opportunities for Democrats. After that, it gets a lot more dicey, with seats in Ohio, Texas, Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Florida being the most likely to flip. I say "most likely to flip" but of course, none of them are actually likely to flip. In contrast, Democrats will be defending competitive seats in both Georgia and Michigan, and somewhat competitive seats in Minnesota and New Hampshire. There's a long time between now and the election, though: if the economy explodes even more between now and then, Democrats may have a hurricane storming behind them...or perhaps we might not have elections at all. I don't think anyone can really predict what will happen to the Republican Party once Trump goes...especially not knowing exactly where the party will be before he goes. Like other cults of personality, he's the linchpin that holds it all together, and history has numerous examples of both implosions and of someone successfully being able to fill the void...and while I don't see any obvious candidates for who could do it, the opportunity will certainly present itself.

It's, as of yet, unclear whether he was actually far-right, or far-left, or completely politically unaffiliated because actually 30-40% of the adult U.S. population doesn't bother to vote or be politically affiliated in the first place. But there's clearly already enough to debunk all this "violent leftist death cult environment/upbringing" nonsense, which from what I've seen from other people's posts in here, BruceVC can shove straight back up his nasty ass. You wouldn't catch me reading or responding to a BruceVC post, but it's difficult not to see everyone else doing so.

Transcription of what was found on the bullets, read out-loud by the Governor of Utah: https://streamable.com/i02zub "Notices bulges, OWO, what's this?" <- the one that killed Charlie Kirk "If you read this, you are gay lmao" <- unfired "Hey fascist! Catch! Up Right Down Down Down" <- unfired “O bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao" <- unfired A ****ing 4chan edgelord, which, as everyone knows, is definitely an extremist left-wing environment and most definitely not a breeding ground for nazis and other brands of right-wing scum And only arrested by Trump's gutted and incompetent FBI because his own father turned him in... It's so beautiful, guys. Truly wonderful.

So not a white guy in his 60s (turned out to be a false arrest), but a young white college drop-out in his early 20s, lives in Utah, father is a veteran, sheriff, and Mormon preacher. Dressed up as Trump for Halloween 8 years ago. Definitely sounds like a guy that was raised in a radical left-wing environment.

People shouldn't die for their beliefs. But I also think people's automatic response to schoolchildren getting murdered on the regular ideally shouldn't be saying absolutely psychotic **** like i t ' s s o m e t h i n g w e ' r e j u s t g o i n g t o h a v e t o a c c e p t b e c a u s e f r e e a c c e s s t o g u n s f o r a l l a l w a y s n o m a t t e r w h a t. . . especially if it's not actually your friends or family that are the ones being sacrificed by and for this mad, sick country. Like, talk about being hoisted by your own petard in a nasty fit of cosmic vengeance. The only country where this happens, and we've tried almost nothing to prevent it, and the little we have tried has been stupid and misguided, and it's all only going to get worse - especially as people are increasingly impoverished, isolated, radicalized, and deranged. Increasingly, I think the U.S. might well be facing something its own version of Ireland's The Troubles over the next decade or two... It's not going to be pretty.

As someone who had an active Democratic lawmaker in my state get assassinated (and with a nearly successful attempt on another) earlier this year with barely a media peep while I now have to hear right-wing conspiracy theories from brain-impaired troglodytes in real life about how the shooter was actually under orders from Governor Tim Walz because he'd been appointed to some 60-member work/labor recommendations board back in 2011... ... ...I'm guessing this will be a little more of a stir-up than those assassinations.

Charlie Kirk assassinated by some white guy in his 60s while giving a speech at Utah Valley University. Boy, our country sure is in an interesting place right now, isn't it? Utah just passed a "open carry at colleges is legal" law earlier this year, too... "Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment" Hey, as long as it's not you or your kids, I guess so, right? Well...one of those rare cases where some right wing piece of **** got the chance to actually practice what he preached, so good on him.

It all sounds pretty on-brand. Maybe #3 is a little extreme, but that's just some additional gamification of already existing issues underlining the series, really.