Xcal's Blog

Steel should be weak to poison. Because gallium.

@pockyneedssleep

there isn't gallium in steel though

We were maybe not very lucid when we made that post

No, you got a point. Gallium is a poison to steel, and even more so to aluminium. Lots of metal are also super weak to the salt and water as well

Perhaps there should be a specific poison move that hits steel for super effective. Like Freeze-Dry, an ice type move that hits water for super effective, despite water usually resisting ice.

AAA video game publisher voice: "Look. The goose layed a golden egg, and that's nice! Everyone loved that egg. But keeping the golden goose means paying for bird feed and I don't want to, so I killed the goose."

This distinction between the passive resistance of nature and the active resistance of an opponent suggests a distinction between the research scientist and the warrior or the game player. The research physicist has all the time in the world to carry out his experiments, and he need not fear that nature will in time discover his tricks and method and change her policy. Therefore, his work is governed by his best moments, whereas a chess player cannot make one mistake without finding an alert adversary ready to take advantage of it and to defeat him. Thus the chess player is governed more by his worst moments than by his best moments. I may prejudiced about this claim: for I have found it possible myself to do effective work in science, while my chess has been continually vitiated by my carelessness at critical instants. The scientist is thus disposed to regard his opponent as an honorable enemy. This attitude is necessary for his effectiveness as a scientist, but tends to make him the dupe of unprincipled people in war and in politics. It also has the effect of making it hard for the general public to understand him, for the general public is much more concerned with personal antagonists than with nature as an antagonist.

Important as I think anti-imperialism is, a lot of people take it too far and act like all progress and social safety and comfort in the West is all wholly dependant on exploitation in the global south. I don't think they even realize that they are essentially making a pro-imperialism argument there in the eyes of most Westerners. But regardless, it is simply untrue. Productivity has in fact increased, and we can have a lot more stuff now. It is distibuted unfairly, and that is a problem, but it does not depend on the unfair distribution.

my controversial opinion is I don’t think Zuko was confused by “my first girlfriend turned into the moon”

he was there during siege of the North. he infiltrated the spirit oasis. he has an uncle who studies spirits and the spirit world. he watched the sky go dark then the moon suddenly reappear like everyone else in the entire world did. and most importantly he watched zhao get eaten by a giant godzilla fish spirit.

his entire life since he saw that beam of blue-white light in the south pole has been ‘this day has already been so goddamn weird’

The only really new information was that that was Sokka’s girlfriend

Also, Iroh was there? He literally watched Sokka make out with the moon spirit. And you want to tell me that a romantic sap like him would not have immediately told Zuko about this romantic tragedy? Please, Zuko has known about this for ages, he just knows that this is not an acceptable situation in which to say “yeah, I know.”

[image: tags by samwisethebold: #it’s not that he doesn’t get what sokka means #it’s that how on earth do you respond to that]

When you put it like that, this is actually a legendary display of tact on Zuko’s part

maybe the problem is that people care about other people too much. so if you say, here's a political agenda that'll make you rich, they'll be like, wait, won't this also make other people rich? i don't want that. i'd rather have the other people be poor. i'm very sensitive to the condition of other people, you understand, such as people i read about in the newspaper, and people i hear about on tiktok – and i want them to be poor! ideally i'd be put in charge of making sure that the other people are poor, but someone's got to do it. whereas if you don't care about other people you're like, shit, i want to be rich! sign me up! what's the next thing that's as useful as the refrigerator, i want that. why isn't energy too cheap to meter, i want energy too cheap to meter. i want every disease to be cured because otherwise i might get one, et cetera. and the most politically viable way for me to get what i want is for the political order to make everyone else rich also, which i don't care about

I think if you are anti renewable energy, especially because it "costs more" and "pushes electricity prices up" you are legitimately so stupid that you should be in state care and have an appointed legal guardian. quite possibly the dumbest counterfactual it is possible to believe in 2026. you are a danger to yourself and others and can't be trusted to keep the fork out of the socket!

I know I should control this reflex but every time I read a "rural people aren't stupid: here are their real concerns" I give it a fair shake and their real concerns are stupid as fuck. oh my god they're worried about solar panels? the ones the government pays them to put up as a subsidy to cushion their agricultural business? and they seem to believe, somehow, that the urban centres are being subsidised by the regions? that urban centres don't have solar or power plants or, sin of sins, transmission lines?

The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.

I’d just like to point out that every single thing that has happened in the 6 years since I created this post has only reinscribed its absolute moral correctness in my mind.

To clarify, the point is that it is not fixable merely through purging a minority of "bad actors" and that, while things can be fixed for the better, you cannot simply "go back" there is complexity there.