The obvious answers are the games we endlessly replayed historically: Mario Kart, Goldeneye (VS mode), Halo (VS), Smash Bros.

If you specifically want ones on PC, I’d suggest Starcraft, Age of Empires, and probably Counter Strike (I wasn’t into that one, but it had a huge following).

Many board games fit the bill as well. Codenames (physical or online at horsepaste.com) comes to mind, and another commenter also mentioned chess.

Basically any games that were made before endlessly grinding became a thing (yep, that’s only been a thing for a decade or two).

Ooh, or my other trope: be a cleric with heavy armor and a shield. On your first turn in combat, walk out in front of everyone, cast Shield of Faith, and take the Dodge action. As a free action, yell “come at me, fucknuts!” If you can pick up the Shield spell, you’re mostly invulnerable, and it’s pretty much viable at level 1.

My personal favorite aspect with respect to combat is, “I look around, what objects and furniture are in the room?” Then proceed to use that stuff in combat. Long rug? I’ll attempt to trip the opponent by pulling it up. Chandelier? Yeah I’ll throw a hand axe and try to break that chain. Some DMs thrive off of it, some are put off.

It can be quite painful for the person on the receiving end if you don’t get it in the right spot.

Ah, but consider the following scenario: you’re returning from the grocery store with a bag of bachelor chow and a twelve pack of Low Brau, and you need to press the elevator button. With the stick, you’d need to set one of them down first. The Finglonger, on the other hand, has no such drawback.

Might be safer to get in the windowless van with the guy promising candy.

Wait, is the speed included with the holes, or do I have to provide my own?

Relevant:

I think that’s your conscious thinking, but some deeper part of you knows that this is a good thing and feels good about yourself. I know there are those other thoughts that contradict that and tell you you’re not deserving, but try to let those good thoughts have their say as well. They might just be on to something :)

And if you ever need some cheering on, feel free to post over in !dadforaminute@lemmy.world - though fair warning, we’ll probably side with the you’re-great-and-it’s-okay-to-feel-proud-about-it opinion.

“The students kind of recognize that the system is broken and that there’s not really a point in doing this. Maybe the original meaning of these assignments has been lost or is not being communicated to them well.”

The ideal of college as a place of intellectual growth, where students engage with deep, profound ideas, was gone long before ChatGPT. The combination of high costs and a winner-takes-all economy had already made it feel transactional, a means to an end. (In a recent survey, Deloitte found that just over half of college graduates believe their education was worth the tens of thousands of dollars it costs a year, compared with 76 percent of trade-school graduates.) In a way, the speed and ease with which AI proved itself able to do college-level work simply exposed the rot at the core. “How can we expect them to grasp what education means when we, as educators, haven’t begun to undo the years of cognitive and spiritual damage inflicted by a society that treats schooling as a means to a high-paying job, maybe some social status, but nothing more?” Jollimore wrote in a recent essay. “Or, worse, to see it as bearing no value at all, as if it were a kind of confidence trick, an elaborate sham?”

This is the root of the issue, and why it won’t get better until academia is turned upside down. Those handful of professors who still have a soul might value critical thinking skills, but the academic industry as a whole is perfectly fine with all of this. The cash flows, the customers enroll and graduate with their product, the machine works as designed.

But this is the part that keeps me up at night:

The problem may be much larger than generative AI. The so-called Flynn effect refers to the consistent rise in IQ scores from generation to generation going back to at least the 1930s. That rise started to slow, and in some cases reverse, around 2006. “The greatest worry in these times of generative AI is not that it may compromise human creativity or intelligence,” Robert Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell University, told The Guardian, “but that it already has.”

If we’ve peaked intellectually as a society, we’re completely and thoroughly fucked.

Congrats! If nothing else, let yourself feel proud about this. In my experience, it can be hard to view yourself outside of the scope of mental disorders, but this shows that you are much more than that. And managing a 4.0 in the midst of it is that much more impressive. Again, congrats!

Yup

I normally don’t go for two-tone cabinets, but you’ve brought this together really well–the vent area wood tying in with the countertops is great, and the colors all compliment each other well. I’m hoping to redo my kitchen soon, and if mine ends up half as nice as this, I’ll be content. Great work, enjoy it!

I’ve been on both sides of the interview table, and yeah it’s not hard to figure out who lives up to their CV. But unfortunately, that giant pool of useless grads clogs up the already horrible HR pipeline. A lot of good people are turned away before an engineer gets to talk to them.

Yeah, that’s the “put down and exclude” part. The thing is, though, is that the transphobes don’t believe it’s because they want to ruin trans folks’ lives. In fact, they believe they’re doing the Right Thing™. Pressuring people to stay closeted is something they’re definitely attempting to do, but they genuinely believe it’s for everyone’s benefit, even the trans folks (again, this is irrational). They don’t take pleasure from the pain and discomfort they cause (at least not consciously), they take pleasure from feeling righteous.

half 145%

50%

wut

Damn it, I think I left mine in 1999.

A few of them might be, but politics are like fines–inconsequential to the super rich. The disgustingly wealthy can just bail when things get bad. And if sabotaging an entire nation gets them more money in the next quarter, they’ll do it.

No. They should be considering this, given that plenty of trans men look like large and intimidating men (because they are), and they’ll be forced to use womens’ restrooms if the TERFs had their way.

Ultimately, the restroom issue is only superficial. TERFs (and other bigots) will pick issues like this, but they don’t actually care about the issues they’re yelling about. What they really care about is keeping their privilege and their sense of superiority. And that requires having a “them” group to put down and exclude, to clutch their pearls around.

So when you see irrational takes like the restroom thing, remember that it’s irrational because it’s not actually important to them (though they themselves likely don’t realize that).

For an extra charge, the employee will give you the authentic smell by wiping their ass with one of the slices of bread.