Name a more provocative piece

I second the opinions for therapy.

I’ve struggled with porn addiction in the past, and I would say I still have to police myself to some degree.

However, after getting some therapy, I’m a lot better about not letting it affect my sex life.

I watch porn, but try to prioritize productive activities that build my relationship. If I watch porn instead of doing that some days, I don’t beat myself up over it. I just observe how it makes me feel, how it makes everyone around me feel (if I take too long getting ready in the morning, for instance).

I cannot stress enough how badly beating yourself up for relapsing keeps you in a negative cycle. It’s really awesome that you’ve identified an area of your life that you’d like to improve, but you don’t get there by focusing on what you don’t like.

Also read into urge surfing! It’s pretty simple. You just wait out your urges. It can be hard to do. But pretty much all urges follow the pattern of increasing in intensity until they reach a peak, then decreasing. So if you can wait through the peak of the urge, it will decrease.

My therapist specialized in addiction therapy, and they also gave me the advice to observe my feelings through every part of the day without judgement. So if you do beat up the bishop one day, try to stave off the shame and just observe. It really helps.

Instead of feeling bad for masturbating, I’ve noticed I get lethargic after I masturbate and that it can affect my perceptions of people depending on the content. This makes me want to forgo the activity much more than negative feelings. I’m aware of the actual consequences, I’m just not giving myself anxiety over it. This allows me to understand where I can fit the activity into the day if I choose to, as well as weigh the actual value and consequences of the action. And if the consequences aren’t worth it after you’ve observed them, you’ll have the knowledge and agency to shut down those urges and break free. Best of luck.

Whereas 38-year-olds that date 17-year-olds are fine, morally.

Yo mama so stupid…

She bought tickets to see XBOX LIVE

Free gravel is so busted compared to the rest. Gravel’s one of those things that you don’t need often, but someone in any town on any given day will need some.

You could undercut every single other gravel business. Even if the competition lowers their prices dramatically, they can’t go lower than their costs. Meanwhile, you have absolutely no costs on material. Gravel monopoly.

I dated a cricket once in San Antonio. Man, those crazy legs kept me up all night.

I know that cat let it go to his head, too

No wait time either. I did it while reading the sentence.

Hawking. No chair.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Assclamation mark

This game singlehandedly destroyed my negative perspective on walking simulators. Legit must-play for everyone. Lewis’ scene still makes me tear up.

The most sensual description of aircraft manufacturing I have ever read

Imagine if someone came into the bar you frequent and said this about you.

The regulars like Spot are what keep them in business.

Good. May they learn to never preorder.

I would chill tf out

Pilotwings 64 - Rocket Pack

I could not even describe this song when I first heard it as a kid. As an adult, I realize this is the funkiest shit ever.

What I’m saying is it doesn’t matter what some other adaptation has done, they need to focus on representing ME in a way that preserves its themes and story, what anyone else has done be damned.

As for Fallout, the acting was great, but no, I don’t think the writers respect the source material. They respect the feel of the source material, for sure. I love the way most of it’s shot, and I really love how the vaults are shown to be much more massive. Leaning into the cultish aspect of the Brotherhood of Steel was an awesome move and I think totally fits the path of their organization.

But, as I said in my last comment, there were a few key points about the Fallout world that they changed without much reason other than to give a new story a familiar setting. And I think that’s just inherently disrespectful in a world where large swaths of land haven’t been touched by the franchise.

It’d be just as easy to set it in Texas, or Illinois, or somewhere without a ton of solidified lore. But they set the show in a location with >135 years of post-war history and post-war development, that was under control of a nation so large it was manufacturing concrete and colonizing new lands. Then they kinda… just said their capital got nuked and they disappeared and the 12 survivors are communist now???

Also worth noting that East Coast Fallout and West Coast Fallout are very different thematically, with East Coast focusing on rebuilding and West Coast focusing on humanity repeating the same mistakes that led to the Great War (War Never Changes…).

The show wears Fallout’s skin, for sure. There’s also many dialogue exchanges that feel like nods to how the world works in-game, and I love that. But that doesn’t make it a great adaptation, because the Bethesda Fallout games also look like Fallout. And they really shirk exploring the franchise themes in favor of making a zany wasteland to explore.

I’m no hater of those East Coast games, I love Fallout 3 and I’ve put a lot of time into Fallout 4. But they do really feel like a totally separate take on the same world. With the show, the lens of that take is applied to the world of the original franchise and they definitely misrepresented how realistically ideology works in this world.

All that said, they left enough open-ended for me to want to watch Season 2. But I really hope they delve more into the actual ideologies at play. Because Fallout is not about a wasteland, it’s about people, what we believe, and how we repeat our mistakes. They’re already halfway there with how the main characters interact, I’m just hoping they apply that writing to the factions.

Longer rant over. Can you tell I’m into Fallout? 😅

I hope they draw inspiration from the Mass Effect games.

Not to be negative, but save for Last of Us Season 1, none of those series are great adaptations.

Fallout had some great dialogue that was very reminiscent of the games at points, but the lore decisions they made were questionable at best. Ghoulification was changed to be less mysterious and more like the process of mutation; the Sino-American war was simplified from a resource war into Capitalism vs Communism; and the NCR, an imperialist nation and I believe the largest in that area, has been all but destroyed by one nuke to their capital. Also all of the survivors of the NCR are communist, for a reason I’m sure.

Maybe I just needed to rant about the Fallout show. Either way, I sincerely hope they get some huge Mass Effect fans on the team for this one that care about the story the games present above all else.

I’m really tired of this attitude that Hollywood has toward adaptations, where they all want to make it their own. You adapt the story to the best of your ability, and the decisions you must make to adapt to a new medium make it your own. Not rewriting what has come previously.

Mini rant over

I mean, she’s shown deporting people the whole episode - ICE raids a performance of Dora the Explorer Live.

But the entire credit sequence is her walking into a pet shop and shooting every dog in there.

This new season of South Park seems to be less about roasting authority and more about reaching out to the masses enabling that authority.

In the newest episode, Clyde has a podcast where he spews racism, sexism, and homophobia. Which he explains to Mr. Mackey as an easy way to pay the bills. Mackey gets fired, and joins ICE to do the same. The conclusion they come to after they get invited to Mar-A-Lago is that they need to get out of that shit, and it wasn’t a good idea in the first place.

Insults and satire are really just trimmings to South Park’s very direct messaging.