Infopost | 2021.04.13

fire emblem three houses dlc squad constance yuri hapi and the other guy

Fire Emblem Three Houses post. That is all.
Crimson finale

fire emblem three houses dragon fight edelgard

I finished my Edelgard playthrough. The final battle had an interesting and challenging mechanic, but climaxed in an arduous slog against a *gasp* dragon who could oneshot pretty much anyone. How did my well-considered maddening-difficulty plans fare?

Well, let's start with one prevailing observation: through much of the playthrough, any enemy unit could oneshot most of my squad. This was with xp gain focused on my starting lineup of twelve. The only way to have milked more experience out of the run would have been to bypass motivation-restoring exploration for battles.
fire emblem three houses game over
New game++

Since it is *three* houses, I decided to make a second maddening run with Dimitri. To add some spice, I grabbed the DLC and ran through the okay side arc.

fire emblem three houses choice

The gameplan:
The DLC added a really neat alternative final class for Byleth. Rather than walking around with Enlightened One or being a non-swordsman with Wyvern Lord, a female protagonist can go Dark Flyer and focus on sword and black magic all while floating effortlessly above rooftops.*

*Pure digression, but it'd be an interesting (and maybe bad) gameplay mechanic where flyers couldn't be attacked by non-ranged ground units.
DLC additions

fire emblem three houses jeralt flashback

Completing the DLC campaign is best done before a new playthrough. Completing it provides a few things, including:
fire emblem three houses sauna petra byleth actions
Stats

I reformatted some info from Serene's Forest to be more (in my mind) useful.

Class growth rates

Last time around, I summed all stats and used those as an "all things being equal, what classes are great and what classes suck". I've since realized that HP (for maddening), Luck, and Charm are situational at best; judging a class by speed and dexterity gains is far more important. So I came up with a different metric:

Defense' = Defense + Resistance + (Luck / 2)

Since you have limited control over your attacker, I equally weight defense and resistance, then throw a half-weighted luck value in since it plays a role (and roll XD) in crit resist. There is a case to be made for ingoring defense altogether (maddening) and also for adding speed and dexterity and even HP. Since I'm using Defense' as a stepping stone value for my real metrics, I left it simple.

Physical = Strength + Dexterity + Speed + Defense'

So this is basically a measure of how good a given class is for a physical attack build. It takes the physical attack combat modifiers and sprinkles on a devalued/mixed defensive ability while totally ignoring HP and Charm.

Magical = Magic + Dexterity + Speed + Defense'

Same deal for magic. There's something to be said for a third, combined metric to cover Dark Flyers and Tricksters and the like. But let's take the growth chart and add columns for total stats, physical stats, and magical stats:

Type
Class
HP
Str
Mag
Dex
Spd
Lck
Def
Res
Cha
Tot
D'
Phy
Mgc
Unique
Noble
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
5
0
0
0
Unique
Commoner
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Unique
Dancer
20
-5
0
0
0
0
-5
-5
10
15
-10
-15
-10
Unique
Enlightened One
20
10
10
0
0
0
5
0
5
50
5
15
15
Unique
Armored Lord
20
5
5
0
0
0
5
5
10
50
10
15
15
Unique
High Lord
20
5
0
5
0
0
5
0
10
45
5
15
10
Unique
Wyvern Master
20
10
0
0
5
0
5
0
10
50
5
20
10
Unique
Emperor
30
10
10
0
0
0
5
5
10
70
10
20
20
Unique
Great Lord
30
10
0
10
0
0
5
0
10
65
5
25
15
Unique
Barbarossa
30
15
0
0
10
0
5
0
10
70
5
30
15
Beginner
Myrmidon
10
0
0
0
5
0
0
-5
5
15
-5
0
0
Beginner
Soldier
10
0
0
5
0
0
0
-5
5
15
-5
0
0
Beginner
Fighter
10
5
0
0
0
0
0
-5
5
15
-5
0
-5
Beginner
Monk
5
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
5
15
5
5
5
Intermediate
Lord
20
0
0
10
0
0
0
0
10
40
0
10
10
Intermediate
Mercenary
20
5
0
0
5
0
0
-5
5
30
-5
5
0
Intermediate
Thief
20
0
0
10
10
0
0
0
5
45
0
20
20
Intermediate
Armored Knight
20
0
0
0
-10
0
10
-5
5
20
5
-5
-5
Intermediate
Cavalier
20
5
0
5
-10
0
5
0
5
30
5
5
0
Intermediate
Brigand
30
10
0
0
0
0
0
-5
5
40
-5
5
-5
Intermediate
Archer
5
0
0
10
0
5
0
0
5
25
3
13
13
Intermediate
Brawler
30
0
-10
10
10
0
0
-10
5
35
-10
10
0
Intermediate
Mage
5
-5
10
5
0
0
-5
5
5
20
0
0
15
Intermediate
Dark Mage
5
-5
10
5
0
0
-5
5
0
15
0
0
15
Intermediate
Priest
5
-5
5
5
0
0
-5
10
10
25
5
5
15
Intermediate
Pegasus Knight
15
0
0
0
10
0
0
5
10
40
5
15
15
Advanced
Hero
30
10
0
0
10
0
0
-5
5
50
-5
15
5
Advanced
Swordmaster
25
10
0
0
20
0
0
-5
5
55
-5
25
15
Advanced
Assassin
20
0
0
20
20
0
0
0
0
60
0
40
40
Advanced
Fortress Knight
30
10
0
0
-10
0
15
0
5
50
15
15
5
Advanced
Paladin
30
10
0
5
-10
5
5
5
5
55
13
18
8
Advanced
Wyvern Rider
30
10
-5
0
0
0
5
-5
5
40
0
10
-5
Advanced
Warrior
40
15
-5
0
0
0
0
0
5
55
0
15
-5
Advanced
Sniper
10
5
0
20
0
10
0
0
5
50
5
30
25
Advanced
Grappler
40
10
0
10
10
0
0
0
5
75
0
30
20
Advanced
Warlock
10
0
10
0
0
0
-5
5
5
25
0
0
10
Advanced
Dark Bishop
10
0
10
0
0
0
-5
5
0
20
0
0
10
Advanced
Bishop
10
0
10
0
0
10
-5
5
10
40
5
5
15
Special (DLC)
Trickster
20
0
0
15
20
10
0
5
0
70
10
45
45
Special (DLC)
War Monk/Cleric
40
10
5
10
0
0
0
5
5
75
5
25
20
Special (DLC)
Dark Flier
20
0
0
0
10
0
0
10
10
50
10
20
20
Special (DLC)
Valkyrie
5
0
5
0
-5
5
5
10
10
35
18
13
18
Special (DLC)
Death Knight
30
10
10
0
-5
0
5
5
0
55
10
15
15
Master
Falcon Knight
30
10
0
0
20
0
0
5
10
75
5
35
25
Master
Wyvern Lord
30
15
-5
0
10
0
5
0
5
60
5
30
10
Master
Mortal Savant
20
10
10
0
-10
10
0
0
5
45
5
5
5
Master
Great Knight
30
10
0
0
-10
0
5
-5
5
35
0
0
-10
Master
Bow Knight
10
0
0
0
-5
0
0
0
5
10
0
-5
-5
Master
Dark Knight
10
5
10
0
-5
0
5
10
5
40
15
15
20
Master
Holy Knight
10
0
10
0
-5
10
5
10
10
50
20
15
25
Master
War Master
40
15
0
0
10
0
0
0
5
70
0
25
10
Master
Gremory
10
0
10
10
0
0
0
5
10
45
5
15
25

Neat, but verbose. Should we be happy with this metric, a more useful chart shows classes, proficiencies, and the derived combat values:

Type
Class
Proficient
Proficient
Proficient
Growth
Phys
Mgc
Unique
Noble



5
0
0
Unique
Commoner



0
0
0
Unique
Dancer
Sword
Authority

15
-15
-10
Unique
Enlightened One
Sword
Brawl
Faith
50
15
15
Unique
Armored Lord
Axe
Authority
Armor
50
15
15
Unique
High Lord
Sword
Lance
Authority
45
15
10
Unique
Wyvern Master
Bow
Authority
Flying
50
20
10
Unique
Emperor (Edelgard)
Axe
Authority
Armor
70
20
20
Unique
Great Lord (Dimitri)
Sword
Lance
Authority
65
25
15
Unique
Barbarossa (Claude)
Bow
Authority
Flying
70
30
15
Beginner
Myrmidon
Sword


15
0
0
Beginner
Soldier
Lance


15
0
0
Beginner
Fighter
Axe
Bow
Brawl
15
0
-5
Beginner
Monk
Faith
Reason

15
5
5
Intermediate
Lord
Sword
Lance
Authority
40
10
10
Intermediate
Mercenary
Sword
Axe

30
5
0
Intermediate
Thief
Sword
Bow

45
20
20
Intermediate
Armored Knight
Lance
Axe
Armor
20
-5
-5
Intermediate
Cavalier
Sword
Lance
Riding
30
5
0
Intermediate
Brigand
Axe
Brawl

40
5
-5
Intermediate
Archer
Sword
Bow

25
13
13
Intermediate
Brawler (M)
Axe
Brawl

35
10
0
Intermediate
Mage
Faith
Reason

20
0
15
Intermediate
Dark Mage (M)
Faith
Reason

15
0
15
Intermediate
Priest
Faith
Reason

25
5
15
Intermediate
Pegasus Knight (F)
Sword
Lance
Flying
40
15
15
Advanced
Hero (M)
Sword
Axe

50
15
5
Advanced
Swordmaster
Sword


55
25
15
Advanced
Assassin
Sword
Bow

60
40
40
Advanced
Fortress Knight
Lance
Axe
Armor
50
15
5
Advanced
Paladin
Sword
Lance
Riding
55
18
8
Advanced
Wyvern Rider
Lance
Axe
Flying
40
10
-5
Advanced
Warrior
Axe


55
15
-5
Advanced
Sniper
Bow


50
30
25
Advanced
Grappler (M)
Brawl


75
30
20
Advanced
Warlock
Faith
Reason

25
0
10
Advanced
Dark Bishop (M)
Faith
Reason

20
0
10
Advanced
Bishop
Faith
Reason

40
5
15
Special (DLC)
Trickster
Sword
Faith
Reason
70
45
45
Special (DLC)
War Monk/Cleric
Axe
Brawl
Faith
75
25
20
Special (DLC)
Dark Flier (F)
Sword
Reason
Flying
50
20
20
Special (DLC)
Valkyrie (F)
Faith
Reason
Riding
35
13
18
Special (DLC)
Death Knight
Lance
Reason
Riding
55
15
15
Master
Falcon Knight
Sword
Lance
Flying
75
35
25
Master
Wyvern Lord
Lance
Axe
Flying
60
30
10
Master
Mortal Savant
Sword
Reason

45
5
5
Master
Great Knight
Lance
Axe
Armor
35
0
-10
Master
Bow Knight
Lance
Bow
Riding
10
-5
-5
Master
Dark Knight
Lance
Reason
Riding
40
15
20
Master
Holy Knight
Lance
Faith
Riding
50
15
25
Master
War Master (M)
Axe
Brawl

70
25
10
Master
Gremory (F)
Faith
Reason

45
15
25

Base stats

On to a hyperoptimization. Units qualify for promoted classes at a particular level and, by definition, their stats will be the lowest at that point. It is then advantageous to stop xp gain at that threshold and let the unit qualify for whatever classes they can and thereby harvest the 'free' stat boosts. An example would be a physical attack build that happens to qualify for a magic class, they'll likely be stunted in Mag and Res and thereby harvest the gains for momentarily speccing into that class. A brawler may not use magic very much, but he'll certainly benefit from resistance.

Type
Class
HP
Str
Mag
Dex
Spd
Lck
Def
Res
Cha
Unique
Noble
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Unique
Commoner
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Unique
Dancer
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Unique
Enlightened One
28
17
8
12
14
10
12
10
0
Unique
Armored Lord
38
17
8
12
6
10
17
8
0
Unique
High Lord
30
16
7
11
13
9
13
9
0
Unique
Wyvern Master
30
17
9
13
19
11
14
11
0
Unique
Emperor
38
17
8
12
6
10
17
8
0
Unique
Great Lord
35
17
8
12
14
10
14
10
0
Unique
Barbarossa
35
18
10
14
20
12
15
12
0
Beginner
Myrmidon
20
7
3
6
6
4
5
2
0
Beginner
Soldier
20
8
3
6
6
4
5
2
0
Beginner
Fighter
20
8
3
6
6
4
5
2
0
Beginner
Monk
20
4
8
6
6
4
3
4
0
Intermediate
Lord
25
9
6
10
10
8
6
3
0
Intermediate
Mercenary
25
9
6
10
10
8
6
2
0
Intermediate
Thief
25
9
6
11
11
8
6
2
0
Intermediate
Armored Knight
30
9
6
7
4
8
12
1
0
Intermediate
Cavalier
25
9
6
7
6
8
6
2
0
Intermediate
Brigand
28
10
6
7
7
8
6
2
0
Intermediate
Archer
25
8
6
8
7
8
5
2
0
Intermediate
Brawler
28
9
6
7
8
8
6
1
0
Intermediate
Mage
25
4
10
7
6
8
3
5
0
Intermediate
Dark Mage
25
4
10
7
6
8
3
5
0
Intermediate
Priest
25
4
9
7
6
8
3
5
0
Intermediate
Pegasus Knight
25
8
6
7
8
8
5
4
0
Advanced
Hero
30
17
8
12
14
10
12
8
0
Advanced
Swordmaster
30
17
8
12
14
10
12
8
0
Advanced
Assassin
30
17
8
12
14
10
12
8
0
Advanced
Fortress Knight
35
17
8
12
8
10
17
7
0
Advanced
Paladin
32
17
8
12
14
10
12
8
0
Advanced
Wyvern Rider
30
18
8
12
14
10
12
8
0
Advanced
Warrior
32
19
8
12
14
10
13
8
0
Advanced
Sniper
30
17
8
12
14
10
12
8
0
Advanced
Grappler
32
17
8
12
14
10
14
7
0
Advanced
Warlock
30
8
17
12
14
10
12
15
0
Advanced
Dark Bishop
30
8
17
12
14
10
12
15
0
Advanced
Bishop
30
8
15
12
14
10
12
15
0
Special (DLC)
Trickster
28
14
12
10
14
12
10
10
0
Special (DLC)
War Monk/Cleric
32
17
10
10
10
10
14
11
0
Special (DLC)
Dark Flier
25
8
6
7
8
8
5
4
0
Special (DLC)
Valkyrie
20
5
10
10
9
9
9
13
0
Special (DLC)
Death Knight
32
10
17
14
16
12
13
15
0
Master
Falcon Knight
32
18
10
14
20
12
13
14
0
Master
Wyvern Lord
32
18
10
14
20
12
15
12
0
Master
Mortal Savant
32
17
17
14
16
12
14
12
0
Master
Great Knight
34
18
10
14
10
12
17
10
0
Master
Bow Knight
32
17
10
14
16
12
14
10
0
Master
Dark Knight
32
10
17
14
16
12
13
15
0
Master
Holy Knight
32
8
15
14
16
12
13
16
0
Master
War Master
33
20
10
14
16
12
15
10
0
Master
Gremory
32
8
17
14
16
12
13
16
0
The squad

Character Final class Notes
fire emblem three houses byleth

Byleth
Dark Flyer

Sword
Reason
Flying
Byleth should be pretty formidable as a flyer with movement boosts, her preferred sword abilities, and reason magic.

Transmute plus the light magic avoid skills could be pretty neat. Since New Game+ allows the relearning of skills, I gave her Seal Strength (defender receives Str-6) to help level new units.
fire emblem three houses dimitri

Dimitri
Wyvern Lord

Lance
Axe
Flying
Training Dimitri up on riding gives him Seal Movement which could be helpful - then again, what's movement - 1? He natively has increased avoid at full health, so it makes sense to make him a flyer.
fire emblem three houses ashe

Ashe
Bow Knight

Lance
Bow
Riding
Ashe was a favorite from my last playthrough where he got movement boosts, learned Pass, and could pick locks. With Stride and Impregnable Wall, he could safely get to the far corners of the map even without a buddy casting Warp. Since I wanted to go a different direction and he's somewhat made to be an archer, I decided to take him the Bow Knight route and get that dexterity stat with Bowrange +2.

Ashe is also able to bring Seal Strength to the table in NG+, letting my low level magic units class into physical attack classes temporarily for speed and dexterity bonuses.
fire emblem three houses lysithea

Lysithea
Valkyrie

Faith
Reason
Riding
Having the greatest magic stat growth rate, Lysithea is irreplaceable. Rather than walking around in robes, I'm hoping as a Valkyrie she can use extended movement, Canto, and the bonus magic range to wreck enemies from a safe distance.
fire emblem three houses petra

Petra
Bow Knight

Lance
Bow
Riding
Petra is the Lysithea of dexterity. That made sense. She natively has bonus critical chance to enemies with less-than-half health, which could be very useful if I can remember it. I liked her as a Pegasus Knight and I'm hoping that popping off arrows from horses will work just as well.
fire emblem three houses anna

Anna
Dark Flyer

Sword
Reason
Flying
I wanted to use most of the DLC characters, Anna being the fan favorite among them. She emphasizes luck, which is a weird - possibly pessimistic stat to build around. Since she can gain Pass from riding and has decent dexterity and magic growths, I decided to make her a dark flyer with maxed out avoid. Aside from the normal flyer skills, winning the Heron Cup will give her Sword Avoid, which makes Dark Flyer the right choice.
fire emblem three houses yuri

Yuri
Wyvern Lord

Lance
Axe
Flying
Yuri's personal ability is bonus damage against lone enemies. While this difficulty level isn't great for operations behind enemy lines, making him a flyer was as good a choice as any. He's bad in like all Wyvern Lord skills, so it's gotta be a secret build, right?
fire emblem three houses constance

Constance
Valkyrie

Faith
Reason
Riding
Constance gets offensive buffs outdoors and defensive buffs indoors. Or the opposite. Either way, she's a magic-focused DLC character who seemed to make sense as a Valkyrie.
fire emblem three houses hapi

Hapi
Dark Flyer

Sword
Reason
Flying
Hapi feels a lot like Constance but with the personal ability of having attacks that are always effective against monsters. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but if she can blast a magic shelled dragon with a tome, I'm all for it.
Cyril
fire emblem three houses cyril
Trickster

Sword
Faith
Reason
Cyril made a formidible Wyvern Lord since Aptitude gives him monster stats. As a Trickster, he gets a big bonus to a random stat every round, so maybe that could be really neat.
Shamir
fire emblem three houses shamir
Falcon Knight

Lance
Sword
Flying
Shamir gets a neat stat bonus after killing an enemy. That might help her survive the occasional counterattack, but it could also be good with the dance batallion that Dimitri's plot unlocks.
fire emblem three houses mercedes

Mercedes
???

[Magic]
My #12 slot was kind of a toss up. Since I had leveled Mercedes in my first playthrough, having her get NG+ upgraded faith and reason abilities seemed like a nice thing to have in the early game. That is, physic is a handy spell when the game expects you to just have heal. Also casting high level spells is easy xp.

fire emblem three houses dimitri edelgard



Lulzpost | 2021.04.10

annoying vaccine vaxxine bottles stock photo

Hey, everyone, can we please just agree on the following:



Storypost | 2021.04.08

Stylized Margin Call breakfast scene
Archegos

The WSB v. hedgie class war briefly took a back seat last week as an unrelated institutional investor caused Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to do a Margin Call LARP.

Archegos wasn't a scalp taken by retail investors (as initially rumored), it wasn't even a hedge fund or short seller. It was a family investment firm for a tiger cub that had highly-leveraged long positions in American and Chinese media and tech stocks.

Tide goes in, tide goes out, right? The interesting (though probably not uncommon) story came from how Archegos's brokers handled the situation.

CNBC The night before the Archegos Capital story burst into public view late last month, the fund's biggest prime broker quietly unloaded some of its risky positions to hedge funds... The basket of shares it was selling... was merely the opening salvo of an unprecedented wave of tens of billions of dollars in sales by Morgan Stanley and other investment banks starting the very next day.

Morgan Stanley handed a bunch of hedge funds the bag on their portion of the eleven-figure portfolio. And to their peers:

CNBC Credit Suisse said Tuesday that it took a $4.7 billion hit after unwinding losing Archegos positions; the firm also cut its dividend and halted share buybacks.

As Jeremy Irons's character said, "There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat. I don't cheat."

IwillDecide
/u/IwillDecide
The SEC doing fine work as usual??
nomad80
/u/nomad80
I expect a whopping 100k fine & a stern warning
DanyeelsAnulmint
/u/DanyeelsAnulmint
Very stern
LJ3f3S
/u/LJ3f3S
Beary stern
Nikola -> Lordstown

Nikola One in motion

Many months ago, Hindenburg Research (short seller) posted a hit piece on Nikola. Nikola is basically the Fyre Festival of electric vehicles, complete with Billy McFarland knockoff Trevor Milton. There were all kinds of great tidbits from the story, but the big curtain pull was the "Nikola One in motion" video that was superb weasel-wording of their truck rolling down a hill that appears to be flat ground.

WSB has long been fanboys of Tesla/Elon and, since it's the internet, they like calling bullshit on things. So the Hindenburg piece was well-liked, contrary to the CNBC-propagated idea that WSB is totally against short sellers and just wants to take down hedgies.

Well, history repeats, except this time it's Hindenburg calling out Lordstown Motors - some midwest company making an e-truck with in-wheel motors. History almost repeats, anyway. The defense of Lordstown/RIDE got a lot of upvotes.

Reddit WallStreetBets RIDE astroturf DD

I haven't done any research on RIDE. I did some on NKLA and made money on puts back in the olden days. Regardless of whether Lordstown is legit or a Theranos-level bamboozle, there's some pretty clear astroturfing disguised as DD or, at the very least, extreme fanboyism. In the Nikola days, it was pretty low effort - there was a Nikola sub that occasionally took the bait and ventured into WSB for mockery. Now that WSB is prime time, it looks like companies are throwing legitimate money at "viral marketing" that might just turn into a huge investment boost (see GME's new offering).

Reddit WallStreetBets astroturfer account

The account has two posts. Both about RIDE. "Who do us apes hate even more than shorts?" It's such a sad attempt to "fellow kids" the sub while throwing out garbage like "Never bet against America."

Anonymous
Anonymous
Are we saving the bag boys?
spellbadgrammargood
/u/spellbadgrammargood
its weird how most of the postitive comments are from 2 month old accounts
UnionLibertarian
/u/UnionLibertarian
My account is new but that's just because I too got sucked in to Reddit from all the GME hype.

In the Nikola era, if anyone said, "Never bet against America" the first reply would be, "Sir, this is a casino." The post would be removed, the user would be banned. Zjz must have taken a day off or got himself banned again or something.

There were critical comments, but they were downvoted by probably the same accounts that gave the post a bunch of awards right away. Unfortunately, Reddit is more focused on banning accounts with no-no words and trying to wrap their heads around quotations and sarcasm.
Beyond good and evil lies the memes

brrrrpopop
/u/brrrrpopop
Jim Cramer giggled when Little Foot's mom died in the Land Before Time
gamesketch0
/u/gamesketch0
Cold

Still, the noncommercial accounts are good for DD and laughs. Jim Cramer facts have been one of the highlights of the WSB-Cramer drama.

Reddit WallStreetBets Jim Cramer chewy chewy cocoa Cohen tweet

Yeah. More banter:

WallStreetBets Reddit WSB conversation zjz crowdfunding WallStreetBets Reddit WSB conversation deez nutz WallStreetBets Reddit WSB conversation BennyDR tanker gang
Outlook

AOC on the size of the relief package

Reuters The flows are also raising fears of a pullback from record highs, given valuations are at the highest since the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, with the S&P 500 trading at nearly 22 times forward earnings.

"Goldilocks and melt-up are popular terms this week and we think that can be seen through market valuation," said Emmanuel Cau, head of European equity strategy at Barclays.

It was followed by a massive $40 million bet in the U.S. options market on Thursday that the Cboe Volatility Index - often called Wall Street?s fear gauge - will break above the 25 level and rise towards 40 by mid-July.

More market ATHs, more talk of inflation solving the budget deficit, more extensions on eviction moratoria. Then again, I never bet against America.



Storypost | 2021.04.06

Vaxhole UrbanDictionary

In search of immunity

Hey, I got it. First dose, anyway.

It was a bit of a twisting path, to recap:
San Diego vaccine eligibility guidelines
The county eligibility mandate for pre-April 15 jabs.

Dilemma

Even my company sent a broadcast email highlighting that medical eligibility was self-policed. It was an ethical quandary: do I just fudge it since I grazed eligibility in a handful of different ways? As always, I turned to 4chan for guidance.

anonanon The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return a shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad memeber of society.

The Parable of the Shopping Cart pretty clearly instructed me to not fake my way into a vaccine, even if I'm not one of those Tier 2 plebs. Side note, I think I'm going to start posting my favorite greentexts.

Plot twist

Late March roles around and Jes goes to get an all-clear from her physician. She returned with a signed note that as her caregiver, I should get a vaccine. Almost two months after delivery.

After some more consideration, I decided if I wasn't going to second guess the county thresholds for qualification, I'd remain consistent with a not-particularly-prompt doctor's note.

Actually scheduling the thing was another story. The site linked by the county and everwhere else was something like myturn.org, which typically reported no appointments available. Friends had links to sites like vaccinateca.net and cavaccines.gov that listed vaccine supply at individual superstations and pharmacies. So you could click through to CVS, Walgreens, Vons, Ralphs (individually) and typically be presented with an annoying text chat interface that would query your eligibility criteria. Once you got to the end of the q&a, it'd tell you there are no appointments available at that location, but you could start the chat/data entry process again with a different store selected.

Just some amazing user experience.

And let's remember that my eligibility was not one of the dropdowns, so they'd all tell me to kindly exit their site. My healthcare provider concierge service (honestly the best thing ever) was able to call the county, explain the situation, and get them to say - basically - "just lie on eligibility form" knowing that I had the documentation to bring to the vaccination center.

Jes to the rescue. Or maybe the qualifying criteria she chose put me on a priority list vs the selection I made.

Avenida De La Playa La Jolla pedestrian street covid

Semi-relatedly, Avenida de la Playa is temporarily closed to vehicle traffic and it should absolutely stay that way. Shore Rider was great for a burger and a rice lager.
Site content

Need mo' baby pics on there! Connie
Connie
Chris
Chris
Hmmm, hate to make it look like insta.
Reading your March posts now. I've got NOK too. Bullish again for the hold. =P
I'm skipping the gaming stuff. Too much gaming.
Dunno if NOK will ever leave the 4s.
Hey... you have a new truck... and a kayak?

Connie is now caught up on everything (whew). That's good for her because I'm super interesting and it's good for me because she had a hot tip on NNOX that could have yielded 60% gains in a day. Unfortunately someone else had the hot tip and that 60% all happened in the opening seconds of premarket. So really, all positive reinforcement on this blog thing.
Just for CS


Easter. She didn't like the bunny hat.


Jes has been doing the play gym thing regularly (thanks Kevin and Cheryl!) and I mostly take her on walks where the most interesting thing is leaves. The high-contrast vision/brain development thing feels a bit like neural network training... which I suppose is exactly what it is. So I'm not sure if pushing her around the 'baby nascar' track in the living room while holding up a mirror (that she stares at) is good for cognitive development or sending her to baby bat country.

This is maybe why people have a second child.
Just for CS

PUBG C4 triple kill

There hasn't been a ton of gaming, but when we blast, there's a lot of C4. Got a full (three-man) squad C4 kill in a house outside of Villa, I put a second one around back to catch them escaping but the first was enough.


Then there was the perfect run, i.e. it included Shelter, sick jumps/shenanigans, C4 squad kill, and a dinner:

Three monitor office setup

I also refined my office setup. Monitor stands for multiscreen/multisystem with my main/gaming monitor on a swivel arm to position in cascade mode or front-and-center. I turned the spare nursery shelving into a rack for tower, amp, woofer, stick/throttle, docking station, scanner, and usb accessories. It's a lot cleaner.

Hard drives

Five drives, two OSes.
Fallout, boy

Fallout Boy this is our culture jacket with Facebook home page photoshopped

On the heels of my millennial memepost there's been a flurry of millennialisms smacking me in the face with confirmation bias. Well, let's start with my oldest friends appreciating the informative value of the post:

Connie
Connie
Bwahahaha! Still reading, but hilarious. Dude, remember the ice bucket challenge? And cursive!?! I think it's education wanting to teach less!
Oh and this, "Congrats, gen-y, you had a good run, now go raise generation alpha while paying off your historic levels of debt." Haha... good one.
Oh no. No on the "send it". That's totally climbing terminology.
Oooh oooh. I understand the "yeet".
Sebastian's team says YEET!!! KO
KO
Liam talks to me in acronyms. It's annoying.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, xennials and gen-x simply should not mix with gen-y, it's unnatural:

RobRob Lady keeps staring at her phone instead of watching [The Wire].

I didn't specifically mention dualscreening, but I should tack it on. Then things got creepily on-point from the gaming crew:

kshot
kshot
I do it a lot Unattributed
Unattributed
lol kshot
kshot
Chris
Chris
Fixed:
Also, oof, LOL Unattributed
Unattributed
LOL kshot
kshot
Anyway, this reminds me of what Dumbledore said to Hermione...
Use the force? Unattributed
Unattributed
Haha who knows??? JKR got canceled for being a TERF.
Yeah lol
Cattle
Cattle

Llamapost about lol-as-punctuation, oof, a Simpsons reply from the gen-xer that was - of all things - Abe Simpson. Either the dudes are trolling me or the social commentary is very real.
Other clouds to shout at

Toyota 2000GT photoshopped background

... There's even a setting to tell ios "Yeah, no I actually meant it. I want [live photo] off. You fucking prick." Rob
Rob
I already had it set. OS doesn't care.
This is the same sort of shit that keeps me buying Nikon over Canon. When the human says do it you fucking do it you silicon piece of trash.
Chris
Chris
Car companies should roll with the chip shortage and make analog models.

They keep bringing back these classic roadsters and selling them as $200k one-offs. Just give me a production 2000GT without six-zone climate control and lane assist. Fuel injection is just fine as long as you leave off traction control.

Terrible real estate window photoshop

The Lipmorelos crew was looking at VRBOs for Friendsgiving '21 and I got slapped in the face with a very niche pet peeve that has come up before with investment property searches. The really, really bad photoshop jobs to put a blue sky into images... how have we not done better as a society?

If it wasn't obvious, I decided to tie this in to the car bit above. Anyway, more on Friendsgiving:

Hey, a couple of its guys are going to California. Zac got into gambling again and he's going to rehab. We want to show him some support before he goes in. Sants
Sants
Zac
Zac
Rehab is the name of the pool party that we will be at in Vegas.
So it's not a total lie.



Listpost | 2021.04.01

1990s Abe Simpson
Foreward

This post is about millennials. It's an exploration of the things that make gen-y unique, both the good and the bad. Mathematically speaking, I'm a millennial, so I'm entitled to meme about them - uh, us.

The oomer spectrum meme

Mathematically speaking (but with a higher degree of precision), I'm a "yoomer" or, more formally, an xennial - the intergenerational group characterized by an analog childhood and digital adulthood. Our mentors are gen-x, our subordinates are gen-y, so I'm able to make scientific observations about why each generation sucks. In this case we're just discussing millennials. There won't be one about gen-x because they're all pretty awesome and have to constantly put up with millennial nonsense.

Generations of the 20th and 21st century

So in the spirit of April 1, social science, lists, and humor, I thought I'm enumerate some of the best and worst millennialisms before their cultural dominance is supplanted by the zoomers. Congrats, gen-y, you had a good run, now go raise generation alpha while paying off your historic levels of debt.
Reader beware... err, don't @ me

Millennial are killing everything

I should make two up-front observations about millennials:
  1. They have a victimization complex
  2. They hate generalizations
Regarding #1, I'll point out that I have some complementary things to say and also some of my best friends are proper millennials. Regarding #2, remember that generalizations are simply statistical observations. Every person chooses their own path, and being born in the US between 1980 and 2000 doesn't mean you have to contextualize everything in Harry Potter terms.

Reddit comment about Harry Potter

On the subject of list mechanics, since these items have been ranked in an extremely scientific way, there are both callbacks and calls forward. So if it looks like a topic we haven't discussed or perhaps an autocorrect fail, be patient. E.g. "autocorrect fail" is itself a forward reference to bottom ten item number four. Hilarious, I know.
Top 7 Millennialisms

7. The end of cursive

Everyone should learn cursive

This was probably a decision made by gen-x teachers and administrators, but millennials get the credit for proving that society wouldn't collapse if we stopped connecting our letters. I'm genuinely curious how you guys came up with signatures if you never learned how many humps a cursive 'm' has (it's seven, by the way).

But since y'all managed to sign your student loan documents I guess things have panned out.

6. The _________ challenge

Annoying tide pod challenge

So this one is a double-edged sword. Sure, these 'challenges' get old real quick and they're centered around getting meaningless social media views. But at its core, a challenge is a meme combined with a feat of strength and sometimes a YOLO. These are character-building, risk-taking, and sometimes funny. It's like walking around a party with 151 teaching people to blow fireballs, except that spectators are safe at home rather than crippled from the anxiety of seeing fire.

I won't watch your challenge, but if someone messages me a really funny or amazing one, I might watch that.

5. Verbal irony

Verbal irony

My generation had a knife full of spoons when all you need is a metaphor, or however that stupid song went. Since then, the primary meaning of irony has moved from a difficult-to-grasp logical concept to what is called 'verbal irony', or sarcasm.

I hated this once, after all there are figuratively dozens of synonyms for sarcasm. But verbal irony has grown on me. For one, I found that the Brits seem to use it a lot, so maybe it's been a longstanding thing over millennials left their bubble to make it a thing over here. Second, while 'irony' seems to just be a cheap way to evade the negative connotation of 'sarcasm', the derived term 'unironically' is especially useful:

I unironically like watching crossfitters video themselves running up a hill with paddleboat anchors velcroed to their wrists. I don't need reinforcement for my life choices, but I don't mind it either.

'Unironically' is a great way to clarify your lack of sarcasm while expressing condemnation.

4. YOLO

Storming Area 51 Naruto runner

Yes, "You Only Live Once" has been accurately described as "carpe diem for idiots". But you know what? I think it has a place and I'll tell you why.

You have to italicize carpe diem because it's Latin. Clearly, that last sentence reads just fine in normal font, but a lot of Latin doesn't.

A priori.

I bet you read that and first thought I was talking about a thing. I wasn't, I was saying beforehand, but fancier.

And don't even get me started on cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Yes, you in fact need to italicize Latin for the sanity of the reader. And sometimes to avoid a chat with internet HR. Now some things are known primarily by their Latin, like ad hoc and tu quoque. A priori is a bit more borderline since it has easy substitutes. But using Latin to make a point as basic and understandable as YOLO? As the millennials say, cringe.

Are you not convinced by a typographical argument?

YOLO is also catchier, an acronym, and easy to yell as you're doing the wasabe enema challenge or whatever.

So, good for you, millennials, I unironically applaud YOLO.

3. Sending it

Full send Reddit motorcycle comment

"Send it" is YOLO after YOLO became old, but before YOLO became nostalgic. Where YOLO has been employed to justify wearing mismatched socks or literal nudity, sends are considerably more physical, dangerous, and entertaining. Also while YOLO is a word of encouragement, instructing someone to send it is more of a dare and - as I understand it - provides legal indemnification from any consequences.

Thank you for this expression, millennials, never stop sending it.

2. Memes and the new lexicon (the good)

Teen internet slang memes

Millennials did not invent the meme and they rode the coattails of its emergence, but they put the most work into The Meta and deserve credit.

My (sub)generation couldn't do much better than 'duh', 'everything sucks', and 'what...ever' in our youth. As we got older we giggled at 'donkey punch' and 'minivan'. In the workplace, we let the actual boomers convince us to start verbing nouns. None of these were particularly clever and none aged well. While the millennial lexicon is somewhat hit and miss (see other list), next to us they look positively Shakespearian.

While beaten to death at the time of this writing, the simple mention of the name 'Karen' tells you exactly what you're dealing with - or, what you manager will have to deal with. I've already praised the delightful mantras 'ironically', 'YOLO', 'send it'.

Red is sus? Red is always sus. F in the chat, boys. Dicks out for Harambe. Gen-y'ers can juggle a thick catalogue of cultural references while not abandoning film and literature. For example, millennials upcycled a classic phrase to describe their comedic financial struggles with 'yeet the rich'.

What's more, my generation's pager code and AIM shorthand didn't go the way of Morse code, Latin, and cursive. Nay, gen-y took our limited shorthand dictionary and expanded it to include now-common expressions such as smh (shake my head), ikr (I know, right), rn (right now), and tbqhf (to be quite honest, fam).

1. They are the least tolerant of intolerance

Who is canceled

I needed to round the list out at seven so I asked Jes for something unironically good about millennials. Her immediate response became my #1, so that probably says something about how bias these lists are.

Here's another roundabout explanation that's kind of like my Latin/italicization one but maybe better.

If you've read the boomer classic Ender's Game, you know that while Ender is studying up on battle simulations, his siblings fight an ideological battle on the homefront. They're so effective at political discourse they become major political figures simply by owning others with facts and logic (in the real sense not the stupid Ben Shapiro sense). In our reality, the internet eventually provided the infrastructure for a similar scenario, but thanks to laws such as Poe's, Godwin's, and Cohen's, it really hasn't worked out quite as dystopically-well as it did in the book. (This idea certainly isn't unique to that novel, but Orson Scott Card was the perfect choice for this.)

Enter "going viral" and the individually-pathetic-but-collectively-impressive millennial consumer class. Thanks to the technology and the economics, we've almost reached a world of cyber-populism where anyone can become an influencer of opinions based on their message rather than their identity. And when something trends, the world changes. Temporarily, at least, things don't trend for very long and millennials have attention spans of goldfish.

So while the message isn't always good and there's a lot of noise, crowdsourced morality has shined through and comprehensively condemned anything-phobia.

Of course, it's not all K-Pop fans drowning out white nationalist hashtags, this phenomenon also briefly destroyed capitalism. Yikes.
Bottom 7 Millennialisms

7. LOL is not punctuation

Using lol as punctuation

The easy fix is to tell your phone to autocorrect 'lol' to '.'

6. Influencers

Influencer Logan Paul meme

The internet provides a level playing field where anyone can be a celebrity if they have a funny cat or can make rad Fortnite skins. But where there's celebrities, there's wannabe celebrities.

And they are unbearable. I think. I really have done a good job of insulating myself from that nonsense.

Millennials, please tell me you realize how stupid the idea of a tiktok hype house is. Gen-z, you get a pass since you're too young to realize.

5. Memes and the new lexicon (the bad)

Facebook NEXT

The new parlance isn't all good. We've already talked about how gen-y needs to contextualize everything as a Harry Potter reference. It's like what we do with The Simpsons except, you know, The Simpsons was superb social commentary and not a formulaic magic story written for children.

Chris
Chris
Cattle, you gotta use trigger warnings, kshot might kobe that hardware into the wall.
Oof Anonymous
Anonymous
YeEeEeeT AnonymousTwo
AnonymousTwo
Pain Anonymous
Anonymous

Oof? Yikes? Ayooop? These words don't mean anything. Yeet gets a pass.

Virgin millennial Chad boomer meme

As you can see from my charts above, baby boomers, or 'boomers', are postwar births from 1946-1964. At least, that was the definition. Then millennials decided that their self-inflicted problems were caused by boomer pensioners and landlords, collectively choosing to other anyone who doesn't compulsively look at their cell phone every ten seconds.

This fundamental unwillingness to understand anything not in their social media feed is rather benign until you have to deal with the "okay boomer" mentality.

4. Semi-literacy

Facebook autocorrect

There was a time that misspelling 'potato' could literally end your political career. Back when nuns would smack you with a yardstick if you made a mistake writing in cursive on parchment. Society has overcorrected hard - or perhaps it has autocorrected hard. Boomer humor lol

As someone who frequently punctuates texts with the letter 'm', I'm not going to drag anyone over the coals for legit typos. But c'mon, it's at least worth the effort to learn the meaning of there/they're/their. Not an adequately self-centered reason? It will save you having to call people "grammar Nazi's" all the time. A few more:
None of this is autocorrect's fault.

And, of course, we can't forget it was millennials that decided literally meant figuratively.

Using 'literally' to mean 'nonliterally' is okay because Charles Dickens used it that way once so it's okay.

Okay doomer.

3. Generation Me Pt. II

Generation me me me Time cover

The uncharitable description of millennials is that they're egocentric and have an underdeveloped sense of accountability (particularly with misspellings). A quick survey of social media will tell you that there is truth to this, but such a statement should be qualified just a bit.

As a xennial, I'm familiar with the "you can be anything you want" mantra pushed on kids born after 1980. We all know the story - boomers fought a cultural revolution then raised special snowflakes who could be president-astronaut-doctors, but ended up with a permanent basement tenant. And so you have a cocktail of self-centeredness combined with feelings of crippling failure all fed through the amplifier of a delicate social media persona.

Yoomers versus Doomers Tweet

And here's where yoomers and doomers divide. We had an analog childhood where friends were friends, rumors were word-of-mouth, and confrontation was in-person. The bulk of gen-y has had to deal with the growing presence of social media, personal branding, and emotional manipulation. And here they actually are victims of xoomers and yoomers like Zuck and Tom from Myspace lol

2. Gatekeeping, toxicity, triggers, safe spaces, and other problematic things

Harry Potter keeper of the whatever I do not care

If you recall, my highest praise for millennials was that they are intolerant of injustice. Well, for any great thing there also exists lazy, copycat pretenders willing to abuse a good idea for positive reinforcement.

Millennials are the center of their own universe - their parents told them so and their social media tells them so. So when something is uncomfortable or offensive for them it's everyone's problem. The best way to convey this, of course, is to refer to the uncomfortable thing as 'problematic'; millennial for, "I can't relate this concern in an objective manner because I am too lazy and unwilling to consider the viewpoints of others".

Since problematic things are highly individualized, it's important to discuss these things in self-supportive teams. This helps build confidence and consensus on the platform. It's not so effective when you encounter another team, or some thot who says, "Sorry Karen, NEXT!" At that point, the entire situation becomes 'toxic' which is millennial for "I'm not going to confront this problem and if you ask me to it will trigger my anxiety".

This is a revolutionary method of solving problems and finding compromise, and that's why any large company has specific manager trainings on how to deal with gen-y.

Gatekeeping is another fun one. If you're not familiar, its use is illustrated in the following two interactions:

Boy: Girls aren't allowed in the treehouse.
Girl: That's gatekeeping!
Boy: I mean, there boomer-literally is a gate here, and I'm the keeper, but I understand your point about baseless discrimination. As long as you have your cooties vaccine I will permit entry.

Doctor: Your child needs a polio vaccine so he doesn't get polio.
Karen: Vax? Yikes! I don't see any medical need for this, he doesn't even ride horses.
Doctor: I'm sorry, what are your medical qualifications?
Karen: Don't gatekeep! My beliefs on medical therapy are just as valid as yours!

Like 'problematic' and SAD, calling something gatekeeping is employed as an argumentative cheat code that everyone's opinion is equally valid.

1. Appropriation and the birth of the citizen psychiatrist

Millennial anxiety panic attack Reddit post

Millennials literally all have SAD (social anxiety disorder). Social anxiety probably existed in my era, but nobody had it. Or if they did, they internalized it because they didn't want to get made fun of. How mean were we back in the day?

But the pendulum has swung pretty far in the opposite direction. The legitimate issues caused by overmedication and techonology have been drowned out by self-diagnosed SAD. At this point when my brain hears "my anxiety", it involuntarily decides that the person just wants to avoid doing something mildly unpleasant. That sounds harsh, but confirmation bias is involuntarily and so telling me I'm wrong would be extremely problematic.