The premise is like Survivor: don't get eliminated. The thirteen contestants vie for immunity and each week's loser gets axed. The games are mostly board game-style gambling -- from straightforward poker derivatives to deckbuilding.

The show is completely unscripted and the cast is a mixture of minor celebrities, professional game players, and -- in seasons three and four -- ordinary folks from the general public.

The show's marketing material describes the show as an investigation of what genius is. There's a case to be made for this -- the games are diverse, well-designed, and the gameplay onscreen is always interesting. You'll be constantly saying to yourself "I didn't think of that," even the second or third time you watch the show. There's often more than one way to win each game.

What the show does well is presenting mundane reality TV dilemmas psychologically. The show takes place in a kind of liminal space where it isn't clear who's going to become the monster and how. There's lighter stuff and camaderie -- on-camera shtick like hugging and bowing and begging, eating delicious food. Sometimes, there's a little bit of sexism.

It ends in something continually getting worse, and nobody's ever sure exactly what. It usually takes more than one episode for someone to pinpoint what it is. A lot of the tension comes from how the first time something strange happens, it's OK or you excuse it as a coincidence -- and the second or third time it happens, your fear of confirmation bias makes it so you're still not entirely sure if it's a pattern. The show spends a lot of time on this precipice.

The people on The Genius are abnormal. Some of them play the games weird and some are weird themselves -- some of them have learned to hide their biggest character flaws and some of them haven't. At the most extreme it's like sitting next to someone on the bus who snores loud, but not loud enough to make you give up your seat, and then he shoves his hand down your throat.

You can view the first season here, subtitled in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpwIgWPfNvc . Most of the fans consider Episode 2 a very strong episode, so you should watch at least until that, or skip to it if you're impatient.

If all the psychodrama stuff I mentioned sounds appealing to you, skip to season 2, the darkest season. Unfortunately, the later seasons aren't on YouTube, but you can find them in a lot of places: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGenius/comments/5s7eh9/the_genius_s2_s3_and_society_game_file_links/

I've been rabidly evangelizing this show to all my real life friends for years. Please ask any questions that will lead to you watching it! (PS: To those who've seen it, please don't post spoilers in this thread!)

In the latest DnD 5e session, we basically invalidated about 10 sessions of prep, due to jumping over a lot of plot points.

Should the DM have railroaded us a bit, or was it a good decision to just let us say fuck it, and do what we want?

I have been an advocate for privacy for a long time, but recently I don't even know why I am doing this anymore. I do most of my browsing through TOR, and that has made me give up a lot of conveniences. And that's what I miss. I miss not having to think about privacy. I also miss not feeling like I am being spied on. Now I am torn. I don't like companies like Google mining my data, but I also think I am being paranoid (the people in my life have shared this sentiment). I don't want to leave a permanent cache of my mind. But I also feel like doing so won't really affect me. Not to mention that I despise the predatory nature of advertisers, and I hate giving them even more info about me.

What do I do, Tildes? Have any of you felt this way? How do you balance running from Google while still staying sane?

I'm looking for a project to contribute too. I'm not that experienced with programming, so I want something that isn't too complex. I'm also looking for a fairly young project. Big, mature projects don't really have much that a newbie can work on.

There's been a bit of drama regarding the direction of the general story, but I reckon they know what they're doing - I'm mostly excited for the new zones anyway. And quests, storylines in new zones, etc.

WoW has been on a slow and steady downward trend in terms of popularity, and it's not very talked about in gaming communities - but hey, it's now 14 years later and it's still going strong with millions of subscribers! Although mildly annoying that we can no longer see exactly how many there are, it's understandable - if nothing else for the beauty of an updated version of this graph!

So who's excited for BfA?

Probably most appropriate for the "Activity" tab.

I would love to be able to click some kind of toggle that only showed topics that I've started and topics that I've commented in. Not sure how taxing this would be on the server, but figured I'd throw it out there for consideration. If it's been suggested before, sorry. No search function yet!

I flew to Ely, Minnesota in August with my friend Jared.

Hope the images work, I'll rehost if they don't.

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2631.jpg

Me left, Jared right.

He takes a regular trip with his family into the Boundary Waters (BWCA) and my in-laws have a cabin on a BWCA lake. In order to avoid driving and to get some flying hours in, we took this tiny plane from Columbus, OH to Ely, MN.

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/flight-path.jpg

Red line is actual GPS route. Blue line is simply airport-to-airport route.

We were trying to avoid flying over large bodies of water because when you’re in a single engine airplane, you don’t have a lot of options besides swimming if your engine goes out (ours didn’t).

We meant to get fuel after Chicago but the day we were flying we had 30 (thirty!!!!) knot headwinds even low to the ground. It was stupidly impressive bad luck. So we had to stop in Gary, IN to grab some gas before heading up again.

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2647.jpg

Gary, IN

After grabbing gas, we were off. We saw the Blue Angels parked on the north ramp of the airport as we were taking off but it was too late to grab a picture. Turned out they had a show over the Navy Pier in Chicago a little later in the morning.

We know because we flew through the TFR (before it activated).

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2657-e1506799924440.jpg

Chicago, IL

We thought we only had about 15 minutes to get through the TFR which we thought we could barely make, but also thought if we’re going to get intercepted, would be pretty cool to get intercepted by the Blue Angels, then realized the time change to Central and that we had an extra hour still before the TFR went active. The Blue Angels did not intercept us.

Next we flew up towards Duluth. Still staying low because of the ridiculous headwinds, but that meant things were also super bumpy.

Jared puked for the first time ever in a small airplane. I always have a puke bag in the plane for emergencies but never expected to use it with two pilots on board.

So Jared pukes. The turbulence and motion wasn’t getting to me until then, but that puke-bile smell? Oh yeah. I could feel it.

The problem was that I only had one puke bag in the cockpit. If I had to hurl, it was going to be in the same bag Jared used earlier. Gross.

Furthermore, Jared told me point blank that if I hurled, he was going to need the bag back to go again.

Faced with the prospect of sharing a puke-bag and passing it back and forth, we decided to land and take a 45 minute break.

We felt better after taking off (and getting the back-up puke bag from the baggage compartment).

Anyway, here’s Duluth:

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2675-e1506800330868.jpg

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_3147.jpg

After turning the corner at Duluth, we went along Minnesota’s North Shore to drop Jared off in Grand Marais.

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2689-e1506800486520.jpg

Two-Harbors on the North Shore of Minnesota

Then finally, with the plane to myself, I flew over the Boundary Waters due west to land in Ely, MN.

http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2716.jpg

Somewhere in the BWCA between Grand Marais and Ely. Endless untouched nature.

Was a fun trip. 9.3 hours in the plane due to the ridiculous headwinds. I was super happy to get a burger on the ground.