The palantíri were created by elves and weren’t inherently evil. It was only when Sauron captured them and exerted his will over them to make it difficult for anyone to use them without sending straight to him that they became evil.

Oh, well then “seriously, OP?” Though in this case the grammar issues are not as bad, because I expect professional media organisations to hold themselves to higher standards than randoms on the Internet.

Though it adds a layer because I hate when people editorialise headlines without it being clear that that’s what was done. It’s misleading and in this case was totally unnecessary, since the un-editorialised headline got the message across just fine.

I know this isn’t the point, but ffs The Verge. “Add age verification to it is consoles”? Seriously?

I suspect that the thinking when he was appointed was that logistics was going to be key to Apple’s future success. And at the time, they also had a number of high profile creative people in other roles, though they have pretty much all moved on since. And if you look at their financial performance in the years since Cook took over—which is the board actually cares about—it’s hard to say that this was a bad approach.

I am surprised to see a non-trivial chunk of 18-29, compared to later age demographics

I suspect that “compared to later age demographics” is key to understanding it. My guess is that younger people are just more likely to be unbanked, and thus cash is their only option.

Cook’s expertise was in the logistics. He’s definitely not been a great leader for them putting out exciting products, but he’s the reason they’re so much less affected by things like global shipping crises or RAM prices exploding than many other companies are.

Oh dang, mad respect for owning up to it!

But uhh, would you mind sharing the gist of what you were saying? I’m too late to have seen it.

Too much pollution? Release wolves in factories in boardrooms

FTFY

by the jews

You mean like the Jewish Australians arrested today for standing up against the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide?

I thought this was, yet again, a shit article on the subject from the ABC. A total failure to provide context to explain the ongoing genocide and our government’s support of the genocidal regime that leads to local protests having a very direct, real purpose. Literally no attempt to explain the meaning of the phrase, no contextualising the use of the term “hate speech”. Not even scare quotes around that term.

It’s quite telling that there’s no by-line on the article.

Here’s a better article. It doesn’t go as far as I would like in contextualising it properly, it but it at least does the bare minimum necessary for journalistic integrity.

Also, side note: according to a Facebook post/video by Michael West Media (but not any proper article from them that I could find), those arrested included Jewish Australians.

fr. that’s like…the whole problem.

What was her response?

Edit: and what was the cheer?

I got a summons once while I was overseas on holiday. The deadline to return the form had passed by the time I got back. I sent in the reply envelope anyway explaining the situation.

That was like a decade ago, and I haven’t had the courts ask after me since.

Since you like D&D, my rec goes to Erin M Evans’ Brimstone Angels series. It’s set in the Forgotten Realms, the default setting for 5th edition and the setting used in both the recent D&D movie and the Baldur’s Gate video game series. Brimstone Angels stars two tiefling twins and their dragonborn adoptive father. One of the twins accidentally stumbles into a warlock pact with a devil, and the series is largely about dealing with the consequences of that.

It’s so well written with excellent characters. And when the final two books (five and six) go to the dragonborn kingdom of Tymanther, an area and culture comparatively unexplored by FR canon, Evans gets to really bust out her worldbuilding chops and put her background in anthropology background to good use.

The good thing is, IMO you don’t need a very big investment to decide if it’s right for you. If you get through the prologue of book one and aren’t interested, it’s not for you. Evans does an amazing job of condensing her style, tone, and themes into the prologue of her books specifically for that reason (and because the first few actual chapters are often slightly different in tone).

If you’ve read the 2014 PHB, you’ve already read some of it. The quotes in the tiefling section and dragonborn section come from the prologue to the first book and from the 4th book, respectively.

Brimstone Angels is a lot tighter than some of the sprawling epic fantasy recommended elsewhere. It’s comparatively easy reading compared to some of the great recommendations others have made like Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, or Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. It could make a good palatte cleanser between books like those, if you’re so inclined. Though I found myself wanting to binge the whole thing.

Only downside is, last time I looked, you literally cannot get the first book in paper. It’s ebook or audiobook only, since it’s been out of print for a long time and second-hand copies go for instance amounts. When I looked, the rest of the series was easy, but that may have changed; it’s been like 8 years.

Just please don’t make a grimdark Drizzt clone at your next D&D game!

My rec goes to Erin M Evans’ Brimstone Angels series. Another set in the Forgotten Realms starring two tiefling twins and their dragonborn adoptive father. One of the twins accidentally stumbles into a warlock pact with a devil, and the series is largely about dealing with the consequences of that.

It’s so well written with excellent characters. And when the final two books go to the dragonborn kingdom of Tymanther, an area and culture comparatively unexplored by FR canon, Evans gets to really bust out her worldbuilding chops and put her background in anthropology background to good use.

The good thing is, IMO you don’t need a very big investment to decide if it’s right for you. If you get through the prologue of book one and aren’t interested, it’s not for you. Evans does an amazing job of condensing her style, tone, and themes into the prologue of her books specifically for that reason (and because the first few actual chapters are often slightly different in tone).

If you’ve read the 2014 PHB, you’ve already read some of it. The quotes in the tiefling section and dragonborn section come from the prologue to the first book and from the 4th book, respectively.

Only downside is, last time I looked, you literally cannot get the first book in paper. It’s ebook or audiobook only, since it’s been out of print for a long time and second-hand copies go for instance amounts. When I looked, the rest of the series was easy, but that may have changed; it’s been like 8 years.

Nah, that seems pretty unlikely.

That story she tells about wanting to be a boy is basically tailor-made to drum up sympathy for her while shooting down a carefully-constructed strawman that doesn’t actually resemble the real experiences of body dismorphia, but superficially appears as though it could.

Revanced (or possible Morphe, which I’ve just learnt may have supplanted Revanced) gets you all the benefits of both YouTube Premium and YouTube Music completely free. Plus it gives you Return YouTube Dislikes and Sponsor Block along with blocking the base YouTube ads.

On your Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs, you should also have an ad blocker and the Sponsor Block extension. I’d also recommend an extension to at a bare minimum redirect YouTube Shorts to the regular player (which Revanced also can do), or possibly block them entirely.

Wait, what’s the drama? I’ve just installed Revanced on a new device in the past month and it seemed fine?

Says the guy who still has an Amazon account :/

I mean, I still have an Amazon account. I even used it, less than two weeks ago. But that was the first time I actually used it to buy anything for nearly a decade.

People shouldn’t hold themselves too strictly to any sort of puritanism. Avoid the worst options as much as you can, but when it becomes infeasible for you, make an exception. That’s much better than just always going with the bad option.

I thought it hypocritical to crucify YouTube and have a Spotify or Netflix or Hulu subscription

Revanced. Or YouTube with an ad blocker. While supporting creators by directly buying albums/merch.

But I don’t think it hypocritical, necessarily. People can inherently only care about so much. For a long time I stopped shopping at Coles and went to Woolworths instead, because I was pissed more at Coles than at Woolworths over a couple of specific things. Then more recently Woolworths did even more to piss me off, so now I mostly shop at Aldi. At no point in this was it not accurate to say that both Coles and Woolworths are horrible duopolists that screw over their suppliers. But one had at least not been so blatant about its gross hypercapitalism bullshit by marketing the idea of brand loyalty and consumerism explicitly to children. So while both were always bad, one seemed the slightly less bad option. Until it didn’t.