There is a very real chance they spent more time on this piece than other artists they were up against spent on theirs. I generate thousands of images a month

.... you've never actually made art, have you? The sort of stuff that you enter into contests takes months to make, from the actual painting to rough sketches to reference gathering, and that's just the basics

Clicking a button a thousand times isn't really comparable

Does guillotine count as a loanword when it's actually named after someone? That's like saying pasteurise is a loanword because Louis Pasteur was French, even though the word is clearly just his name

On one hand yeah they're stupid annoying

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure for like Mormons and JWs where they're sending over like kids barely out of highschool for missionary work in another country that's the entire point. They're not there to convert anyone, they're there to instil a sense of fear into these kids by showing them that everyone who isn't apart of their church hates them even though they're only trying to 'help'. Being rude to them just proves their church's point.

Or: actually the fastest way to get put on their blacklist is to be really genuinely nice (but still firm) to the missionaries because you're proving them wrong about how mean and horrible the outside world is

Oh yeah they do that - I once brought up the cultural aspect of genocide in a discussion about Russification and was instantly told that I only cared about that definition of genocide so that I could accuse China of genociding Uygurs and any attempt to point out that no that has been the definition of genocide for a long time (see - the UN's various declarations) was met with them demanding me I show them the proof that China was really doing that.

...in an argument about the Baltics in the cold war.

Because different genders taste cheese differently obviously duh. Don't want to give them NBs an unfair advantage in the Roquefort round

(Serious answer - I think it's to try and combat entrenched sexism in the sport? There aren't many women in chess and by making a space explicitly for them you hopefully create a safe space that can encourage more women to take up the pursuit. As it's a social perspective thing, AGAB therefore really shouldn't matter because the point is to go "look women!" Not "women are inherently better/worse and so we should segregate on gender")

I personally think like the complete opposite - if there's anything that's a waste, it's a beyond meat burger, because veggie burgers are like, really fucking good. Why on earth would you settle for an inferior pretend product when you can instead have a really good thing that's not pretending to be something else?

Miss me with that fake meat stuff and bring back actual veggie burgers! I got a real nice sweet potato and refried black bean one I've been working on for a while now

A lot of the points here are valid but I personally think it's partly because disabled people aren't "pretty". There's a narrow band of what's sort of socially accepted as a disability and if you're not in that band you're kinda screwed. If it's not visible enough you're faking or overexaggerating or a hypochondriac. If it's too visible it's gross and annoying and 'why are you even out if you need everyone to cater to you?'. And when it comes to issues and accepting them, I feel like most people mainly care about the "normal" people who just happen to be apart of that group. Your Ellen DeGenereses and captain Holts and whatnot. Think about it - whenever you usually see disabilities in media, it's usually the same set of easily identifiable ones and a lot of the time the character in question has something that negates it in a way and if it is something more nonstandard, it seems like it's the butt of the joke a lot of the time. And that doesn't really work for disabilities because of how varied they are and how they often need conflicting things. You can't just fight for the nice socially acceptable ones and call it a day.

Same goes for mental illness - it feels like most people are still working from the same set of sterotypes where you're either a deranged maniac or an inaccurate sterotype like a savant with no social skills or maybe a hyper idealised version of said condition. And it's hard to fight for accommodation when people don't even understand what you're fighting for.

Neil Gaiman is also on mastodon (and it wouldn't surprise me if some of the other authors in his cohort are too) though his main social media for major interactions is still Tumblr (which depending on your opinion of the Good Omens fandom, is either a blessing or a curse)

As an outsider (and someone with this name situation), I'm morbidly curious about what happens when a kid has a name that's the opposite gender as them, either because it's a gender neutral name in their culture, or because their parents just named them like that? Because I have a sneaking suspicion they're suddenly going to be fine with 'unapproved nicknames' when their alternative is calling a boy Vyvian or a girl Terrance

Munchkin is a great game, but it's one you can't play with board game or TTRPG people. You need either alcohol or people who aren't used to/don't worship strict board game rules and who aren't afraid to muck about with stupid shit or pile on other players. The sort of person who's favourite game is CAH or "uh....I dunno chess maybe?', not "here's my six hour dissertation on why Jamestown: now with Wheat is the best"

I think some of them are still still hoping for that sweet payout

I was trying to find a specific beanie baby I had as a kid the other day and all the results were for these pristine in box listings that I don't think anyone's given a second glance in years going for like ten or twenty dollars

...man I just want the dumb jingly elf I had as a kid I don't really care about the tag

Here's a fun one - you know the concept of regular polyhedra/platonic solids right? 3d shapes where every edge, angle, and face is the same? How many of them are there?

Did you guess 48?

There's way more regular solids out there than the bog standard set of DnD dice! Some of them are easy to understand, like the Kepler-poisont solids which basically use a pentagramme in various orientations for the face shape (hey the rules don't say the edges can't intersect!) To uh...This thing. And more! This video is a fun breakdown (both mathematically and mentally) of all of them.

Unfortunately they only add like 4 new potential dice to your collection and all of them are very painful.