Everyone is an opportunist. Be very selective with the opportunities you give to other people.

Can’t make it to the game. Henry Cavill showed up and slept with my wife. I can’t decide if I’m offended or turned on.

I have officially run out of hands to put my face in.

I have the luxury of being quite a bit older than many of the people I play with. I plagiarize like a mofo from stuff they don’t even know ever existed. They think I’m a god. :)

With the price of everything going through the roof, it just doesn’t make any sense for my wife and I to go out for dinner unless it’s for a (very) special occasion. A reasonably decent pizza (ie, not from a chain restaurant) in my town can easily set you back $50-$70 for a single, two-topping pizza - not counting drinks. We’ve both agreed that it’s far more responsible, healthier AND tastier for us to cook at home. There’s really no downside other than time and effort.

The Mullvad browser is a good choice. It’s built on the TOR browser, which is built on firefox. As for extensions, they are a privacy liability and most privacy-conscious browsers warn you not to use them.

Originality is a myth. Everyone is just putting their own personal spin on something that others have already done. Embrace this, or go mad. :)

She would never date someone who would use AI to write a love letter to her in the first place.

If that thought was even a possibility in her mind, she wouldn’t be with me in the first place. :D

That’s an ad hominem argument, I’m afraid. The player isn’t responsible for running the game - at least not in the same capacity. The GM is the one who either selects the adventure to run or writes it themselves. The players (at least not in any game that I’ve ever participated in over the last 30+ years) do not. As the one who is doing all of the legwork in creating, hosting and running the game to maximize the enjoyment of the group, overlooking a few terrible dice rolls here and there isn’t going to make me lose any sleep. In fact, in just about every TTRPG rulebook you will find an entry that states, in one form or another, that the GM is the final arbiter of the rules - up to and including overriding them as they see fit. Do things differently at your table, if you like. You don’t have to agree with me, either. Different strokes and all that.

Explain this concept to me, my friend.

I believe you’re blowing the idea of the fudged roll out of proportion, friend. No one is suggesting doing this on a continual basis - ie, fudging every single dice roll in the game. As a GM, my first responsibility is to ensure (as much as possible) that my players have a good time. I don’t get my rocks off watching my players die or have anxiety attacks at the table (though there are plenty of GMs who do). If the roleplaying would be best served by me overlooking a shitty dice roll from time to time, I have absolutely no qualms with that. At all. Of course, if my players make idiotic decisions and ignore every subtle warning I can throw at them to NOT do what they’re doing, then I let the dice fall how they will.

Hiring Cafe’s stated goal is to make AI-assisted job searching, so…yeah, no thanks.

There’s always Craigslist, depending on the kind of work you’re looking for.

If these aren’t immediately used for memes, I will be very disappointed in you, internet.

Thing is, I’m not seeing a lot of alternatives out there - at least not ones that are cost effective, privacy-conscious and user friendly. I’d be very grateful if someone could prove me wrong.

That’s the ideal, but certainly not the norm - at least not in my experience.

I’ve often dreamed of going fully analog - no internet, no mobile phone, etc. But then I realized that if anyone ever found out or noticed this, I’d instantly be suspected of being a criminal on the run.

Corporate shitspeak: the traditional fallback for the utterly useless.

I have gone through so many changes in beliefs over the course of my life - which makes sense, because life is just one big experiment after another. Turning my back on the religion that I grew up with has played a huge role in my journey of self-discovery. Since then, I’ve done my best to try to figure out what resonates with me, what gives me comfort and what actually serves me in a positive way. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been a painful struggle at times, but the rewards are priceless.

To be honest, this is why I immediately disable integrated voice chat for any games that have it and use a third-party voice chat app with end to end encryption for chatting (like Signal).