I genuinely feel different writing here. On Reddit I constantly analyzed the 18 different ways some random person would take my comment badly. Now I just write stuff and people don’t instantly assume I’m an evil moron.

NO U SEEM RAD

I don’t like most of the responses here so I’m offer my own. Love is not found it is built.

My wife and I got married young. I’m 34 and I’ll be celebrating my 9th anniversary in under a week.

Love is where all those things come together. We have the deepest friendship. We’re weird in the same ways and we’ve basically developed our own brand of humor. I can make my wife laugh literally with a look.

Love is also a commitment to never, ever bail. It’s unlike anything else. With friends, you still try to be good company or you wouldn’t tell them the deep thoughts. But my wife and I can share anything. We’re so intertwined that there’s more understanding than judgment. We can say things we don’t like about people, about the world, about ourselves. We can be truly vulnerable.

We didn’t find love, we built it. From 25 to 34 I’m a phenomenally different person, but we’re like two planets oscillating around each other. Our orbit influences the other, and vice versa. We never would have been these people if we weren’t together. With most friends I feel like they may have some influence… But in marriage it’s just undeniable.

It’s a truly unique thing. But I will say I couldn’t understand it until I had it. And I still don’t. Dating for 4 years wasn’t the same as marriage after 1 which wasn’t the same as marriage after 5 and that’s not the same as it is now after almost 9 years. It’s always growing, always deepening, and it’s just insanely personal at a very deep level.

Kinda sounds like you have your own definition of what constitutes an “April Fools joke” and your are assigning negative connotations to it. I don’t think that’s an objective fact.

“April Fools is not [fun for everyone]” is an opinion more than a fact. I don’t think anyone disagrees with your underlying premise that mean spirited “jokes” don’t belong in the workplace, but rather your assertion that it’s a prerequisite for April Fools jokes to be mean spirited.

Also, if we are going to bring the level of scrutiny to all jokes that you are bringing… I don’t think it is even possible to design a “joke” that would pass your test.

I would hope so. I think it would be the right thing to do. But I don’t think Democrats would see all the “instant landslide wins” that are talked about. I don’t think they can accurately predict how that will go. I just don’t buy that the average non-voter is definitely voting Democrat.

But again - we should push for it because I think it’s the right thing to do, not because I think it’s good strategy.

I don’t think this is clear cut anymore. Low information voters broke very hard for Trump. Democrats have work to do to win back the average voter, but the adage of “we win when people turn out” broke in this last election.

Democrats need to get off their ass and offer something better. The fact that Trump won so handily should be a damn wake up call that they are out of touch. Republicans message sucks ass, but it still beat the hell out of Democrats. The party leadership needs an overhaul because they are floundering and trotting out these old adages excuses how piss poor they’ve done leading the party.

Deadpool is to The Avengers as Austin Powers is to James Bond.

“don’t care if its fake or not”

Boy this sounds familiar. It’s exactly the same mentality that made people stick with Trump.

This kind of nonsense erodes the valid criticism. How many times do people say “Look at the idiot Trump supporters, they’re all hung up on something that didn’t even happen.” Or how people make fun of the AI generated shirtless Trump pictures.

Everyone here is actively participating in that, but you’re changing the rules because you don’t like this guy. All the things you said about them they are now saying about you. And they are right.

I’m not pro-Elon, he sucks. But I want to keep the limited attention that people have laser focused on his actual words and actions, not this dumb shit.

Easy on the click bait text there. Putting words in all caps like that makes people more likely to ignore you

I mean it’s bad for you in the way that salt is bad for you… Too much without anything to balance it is bad, but used correctly it actually has benefits. The fat free diet to me is the same as trying to have a salt free diet… There’s probably more going on there than just that one thing.

He’s been working on that for 4.5 years. 10s of thousands of attempts.

The grind is so real

I asked it who will win the super bowl later today and it said it didn’t know.

That’s the same thing as what you were asking, from a timeline perspective.

Absolutely wild. Wondering if there’s information we don’t know about, because this trade looks pretty one sided.

Worth noting that Steve from Gamers Nexus admitted that he reviewed this video before it went live, meaning that Rossmann and Steve were collaborating, so Rossmann cannot be seen as an objective third party.

Oh, and they’re also starting some sort of project together, I think it’ll be a podcast.

Not that it invalidates the point, but also creates an odd incentive here.

Yeah I’m a bit confused. He’s said they are trying to provide a pretty base level of education… Just enough to get started, but aren’t meant to be crazy deep dives. The labs content is a bit different, but I think it’s pretty easy to tell the difference.

I’ll start with a caveat that I’m a huge FF7 fan.

Remake was cool, but plagued with pacing problems. The biggest issue was they had to make everything sort of from scratch, and so a ton of development time was put into the “fixed costs” of things. The result was a cool, but extremely padded game. It really is maybe 15% of the content of the original, but stretched out.

Rebirth covers SO much more. Like holy shit it is maybe 10x the game that Remake is, and there’s good quality content. There’s the usual side quests, but they are, in fact, side quests. If you don’t want to do the fetch quest things they talk about, you can skip over the vast majority. I didn’t like that critique… If a game has optional content you find boring, it’s hard to knock the game for it.

But the visuals in this game are dazzling. I thought the map was huge and vast, and had so many different environments… And then realized there were 5 or 6 completely unique areas like that. It’s a real marvel to go through the different landscapes.

Story wise, I think they did an excellent job, provided you did play the original. It’s hard to get around that part, but it’s sort of a price of admission for a sequel game. But they cleaned up SOOOO many issues with the original game. Things are explained so much more clearly, that I think people forget how incoherent the original story was. There was a lot of hand waving and completely unexplained sides. This game really brings them all into focus. They added a pretty hefty amount of story as well, and I thought it was for the better.

There are some knocks I agree with… The Cait Sith sections are a bit brutal, but luckily they’re infrequent. The combat is super fun - again I think I disagree with the author on this… There’s so many shortcuts you can set to not have to go through menus. I rarely found myself in the situations they talked about, but to each their own.

The game is not perfect, and not for everyone. But I thought the voice acting and story elements were great. They found a reasonable way to be really goofy and funny at times, while also maintaining a more serious tone when needed.

I massively enjoyed it, and thought it was a great 2nd addition. Like all middle parts of a trilogy, I could completely sour on a lot of them if they don’t bring it home. Part 2 sets up a lot, pays off a small amount, but they’re really setting up for a massive ending. If they execute, both games will be seen as massive achievements, in my eyes. Though I think most of the criticisms of Remake are well warranted.

It’s 2 of 3

Thank you for this. I hate all the caveating you have to do on the internet, but this taught me something I didn’t know and now I’m slightly less of an idiot :)

I hope Christmas went alright for you, and that you can look forward to a good 2025 :)

I’m sorry dude. That all just sucks.

If I can offer a path of thought, it sounds a bit like you’re punishing yourself for being happy. It sounds like you have sort of a duality… You remember Christmas being a happy time with a lot of togetherness and love. And you also remember that it is the time when you heard this devastating news.

You might sit and try to sort that out… Both of those things in your brain at the same time are certain to drive anyone a bit mad.

But you don’t have to punish yourself for being happy sometimes. It really sounds like you have a big case of survivor’s guilt. There are pathways through that grief that may allow you to be happy and also honor the memory of a dear friend.

There’s no “right” answer, just an answer that’s right for you. You might consider talking to someone to help you unwind this ball of thoughts. Perhaps on the other side is something you can do every holiday in honor of your friend to help pay him back by paying it forward. While he’s not here, maybe you could do something extra to spread Christmas cheer on his behalf. There’s a hole in the world where he used to be - you could potentially help fill that.

It won’t be easy, but I’d encourage you to walk along the path of those thoughts and see if you can find some peace.

I wish you luck, whatever you decide to do.