This is the way.

Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.

I’ve been playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon virtually every day for years, through I don’t know how many updates. I’m far from convinced that every run is winnable, but there are some patterns that I’ve observed.

Mage and Huntress seem to be my best classes. The Mage’s staff means that you are guaranteed to have something that’s worth upgrading. The Huntress’ bow and her special abilities like growing grass by walking can make for some truly interesting gameplay changes, whereas I feel like most of the other classes’ abilities are more about moderate improvements to quality of life.

A Ring of Haste is probably my favorite ring to find, since being able to kite monsters is a great path to victory. Tenacity, Elements, and Strength are boring. Wealth can be good if it comes upgraded, but I wouldn’t put scrolls into it. Evasion always seems to turn on me sooner or later. Energy and Arcana can improve quality of life but are otherwise pretty mid.

A Wand of Regrowth is almost always a path to victory, especially if it comes upgraded, doubly so if you become a Warden, and triply so if you can combine it with the Sandals of Regrowth.

A Wand of Blast Wave is incredibly useful when used to knock enemies off ledges or into traps, saving yourself the trouble of killing them.

Other wands are a super mixed bag, depending on what you can manage to do with them, but I’ll say that some of my most fun and successful runs are putting a Wand of Corruption into my Mage’s Staff and becoming a Corruption Battlemage. You whack an enemy, Amok him on his friends, then corrupt them, then rinse and repeat until you win.

I’ve already mentioned the Sandals, which I’d say are incredibly useful if you’ve got a Wand of Regrowth or a Blooming enchanted weapon, but are otherwise hard to keep getting enough fresh grass to make worthwhile. I think the Ethereal Chains and Hourglass are my favorite and most useful artifacts. Horn of Plenty is okay but not great, unless you can combine it with being filled by the Battlemage’s energy generating ability. Other artifacts are mid, but I’ll make a special mention of the Unstable Spellbook which seems to screw me as often as it helps and yet I can’t deny that I have a great time with the mayhem it adds to my run. The Alchemist’s Toolkit is terrible; I hope a future patch significantly alters or replaces it, because honestly why bother using it at all?

I think my favorite runs are Corruption Battlemage or a Sniper with a nicely upgraded Boomerang; I always get a lot of fun out of using the boomerangs.

There’s no end to the conversation but that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s far and away the most played game on my phone… possibly my most played game ever, measured by eternal hours. The publisher is an absolute treasure and he deserves all the praise and success in the world.

Not sure if I merit being called an audiophile, but…

Huge collection of mp3s ripped from CDs. Stored locally, currently using a Unihertz Jelly Star as a glorified digital audio player, running BlackPlayer EX, which I like for it being a good mix of minimalist and giving me freedom to customize as much as I feel I need. When I’m using headphones, I want my ears uncovered so I use Shokz bone conduction headphones.

Let Bartlett be Bartlett!

I’ll have it explain complicated topics using familiar frameworks. As an example, I had it run through various superheroes and villains and match them up with appropriate philosophers. This conversation was how I settled on the idea that Lex Luthor has a lot more in common with Ayn Rand than Friedrich Nietzsche.

And that’s why every carpenter bee horror story starts with “There was a knock at the door…”

Damn, I’ve got to go change the combination on my luggage!

Rubber hot water bottle. It is so nice to have when you’re sick or achy.

The thing is that you kind of have to define “worst” and “film” in order for the answer to make sense.

Like, you’ve got movies like the 2019 Cats where it was a pervasively horrible movie in multiple different ways, but it was absolutely not boring, and I kind of think everyone should see it. See also The Super Mario Brothers Movie with Bob Hoskins, or Star Crash from 1978.

And then you’ve got things that barely qualify as movies. Things like Manos: The Hands of Fate, or Troll 2, or Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, where, yeah, they hired actors and a director said “Action!” but… like…is it really a movie?

There’s different categories for bad movies. There’s “Mainstream Piece of Shit that Should Have Been Better,” there’s “Insane Microbudget Fever Dream,” there’s an axis from Boring to Glorious Trainwreck. All of these complicate the question and merit their own consideration.

All that said… it’s the Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s a totally fucking brutal experience. There is virtually no good reason to ever watch it, except to say that you have, and I don’t necessarily think it’s worth the time. It’s irredeemable.

I went through a few mp3 players and none of them were exactly what I wanted so I bought a Moto G7 Power and only ever use it for playing locally stored music via the BlackPlayer app.

I wanted something with Bluetooth and an aux jack, USB-C charging, and expandable memory. Tried a few different devices and none of them ticked all of the boxes, or else they had other issues that made me send them back. The only issue I have with the G7 is that it’s a full sized phone, when I’d really prefer something smaller. The next time I go through an upgrade cycle, I’ve been looking at one of the little Unihertz models, but that might be another year or more so we’ll see what’s on the market by then.

I feel like car combat just about disappeared as a genre, and I miss it!

Twisted Metal, Vigilante 8, and Carmageddon ALL deserve to be resurrected.

AskScienceFiction

If exists here, but isn’t nearly as active as one would like.

If you’re already at the Tao te Ching, then the Tao of Pooh is a very popular exploration of Taoism using Winnie the Pooh as an exemplar of Taoist principles.

In that vein, there are about a zillion “X and Philosophy” books, where X is a pop culture franchise, e.g. “Star Trek and Philosophy,” “Star Wars and Philosophy,” “Watchmen and Philosophy.” All of these are collections of essays by various authors discussing philosophical subjects through the lens of popular culture. I find that it’s very useful to have a set of characters and plots with which you’re already familiar to use as a vocabulary to talk about heavier philosophical subjects.

I don’t know as I would recommend going directly to the primary texts first off. Some of them can be read on their own merits by someone otherwise unfamiliar with the subject, but many are written in archaic or academic language that can be daunting. A class or book club can help in that regard, but just sitting down and trying to read Aristotle all by yourself may not be the easiest of going.

Dirty Work: Norm MacDonald in his element. An extended sequence of him and his friend staring blankly ahead holding dead fish while a chainsaw massacre unfolds offscreen is amazing.

The Trouble with Harry: Alfred Hitchcock does madcap comedy. The trouble with Harry is that he’s dead, and although no one really minds, everyone thinks it’s their fault. Probably the biggest starring role for a corpse until Weekend at Bernie’s.