“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
get more anti school now btw. the school system does inhumane shit to countless youth and it's only getting worse.
you work 5 days a week for 8 hours at a very intense job with multiple skills required. you have 5 minutes to grab all of your very heavy tools and navigate to the opposite end of the building when you change shifts. you get a single 30 minute lunch. you have to exercise, regardless of illness, neurodivergence or disability for an hour and you don't get to choose what you do. you have hours of the same work to do at home. also if you fuck any of this up, or do it the wrong way, or stop showing up, you will be punished and your caretakers could go to jail.
maybe you have the choice to do this all at home. the only difference is that you don't have to transport as much. so you're stuck in one spot, alone, head down, working like you usually would otherwise.
completely inhumane, right? but sure, "kids these days are..." alive people who think and feel. you should not torture children.
kids are natural learners. putting them in what is effectively a prison for the first 18 years of their life does not do anything but make capitalists happy.
I...I never thought it was a prison! I didn't do any work besides school, so I thought school was the best! I read there! I only ever read there! I don't know when I'll get to read again, because elementary school and high school were my only reading places.
The worst part of school is that I was bullied there. And I was bullied there, which really led to me being messed up. But school was still really important to me, so I miss it sometimes. sigh...
My home life was occasionally pretty shitty because my mother was mentally ill and I have a disabled sister.
School was often my sanctuary from bad things at home.
I think it's very much a case by case basis - some children will thrive in a less industrialized learning environment, or small classes with personalized attention, or even at home with a one on one tutor, like a caring parent. Others (like me) need the social aspects of group classes, and also a safe place outside of a dysfunctional home with parents who were themselves unable to provide more attention.
If you've ever customized your HUD for easier personal use, please show it to me. I am always looking for ways to improve my setup for maximum efficiency, fun, and aesthetic enjoyment.
This includes customized macro buttons and changed keybinds!
Please note: If you participate in this thread, please refrain from negative comments towards others' choices. Some things that work for you might not work for someone else and vice-versa. Please be respectful of others' preferences. The fact that there is no one single 'right way' to have a HUD in FFXIV is frankly pretty magical!
Some of mine below. (You do not have to be as thorough in explaining things as me lmao)
This is my setup for RDM.
Let's first check out the box of buttons next to the chat box.
The top row:
These 4 buttons are activated by CTRL+SHIFT plus Z, X, C, and V.
The first two is an emergency retreat and a gap-closer, while the third is the standard sprint.
The fourth is whatever the best potion I have on in my inventory; in this case, I was doing Pilgrim's Traverse lately ;p
On all of my classes, I make sure that the sprint is always in the same spot activated by the same keybind. ^^
The middle row:
Sleep (very rarely needed to be used) and two macros for disabling and activating Battle Effects for big raids.
The bottom row:
Quick-change macros to change class! An example of what my class-change macros look like:
/macroicon "White Mage" classjob
/snap motion
/gearset change 2
/hudlayout 3
/minion "Skallic Uolosapa"
Next, the lower-center of the screen;
Most importantly: I put the enmity list right smack-dab in where my eyes usually hover! This is universal for all my classes and is especially helpful when tanking. I am always certain whether or not I have enmity on me and need to run to the tank or (as a tank) grab enemies off of someone else.
Now, the top-right!
EXP bar is made smaller and put in a spot that won't take up valuable real estate from more buttons.
Money and mini-map squeezed together :3
From top horizontal hotbar:
Teleportation ring, macro to yell at the close-range melee DPS to activate Limit Break, a button to send a party invite to my bff (doesn't really work lol), a phoenix down, gysahl greens, class-change macro for crafting, priority aetheryte pass, wondrous tails, unending codex, and 3 macros that show or hide other hotbars.
First vertical hotbar: fireworks, minion guide, a few minions and fashion accessories.
Second vertical hotbar: custom macro emotes, mostly to change the expression during looping emotes or repeat non-looping emotes longer.
Third vertical hotbar: Favorite mounts.
I nestled the Duty Information/Quest Information in the corner there :3 MSQ guide also hovers over the horizontal hotbar while out of dungeon.
The bottom-right corner hotbar!
Standard waymark buttons, the aetheryte passes (again?! oops), aether compass, and a custom emote keybinded to the V key to play the Draw/Sheathe emotes. I no longer remember nor can seem to understand how these emotes work ^^; so I'd recommend looking up a guide on how to use them on reddit since that's where I originally figured it out... but they look like this;
Finally, the main RDM ability hotbar that rests on the bottom-right-middle of the screen.
This is obviously heavily up to preference, and I can't claim to be a pro RDM or anything ^^; but this is something I started to devise when I had a hand injury, and it was decently easy to use while wearing a cast on my dominant (right) hand.
The box on the far left is all buttons that I would activate with the mouse only and need to be activated as much as possible. I keep my eyes on the cooldowns there. The cure and surecast buttons are moreso for very specific emergencies.
On the far right are some buttons that are also mouse-only; things like raise and Limit Break. (I just realized I regularly forget that I even have Engagement...)
Bottom bar also has a few quick chocobo commands for FATE grinding. There definitely could be a better place for them, but I was lazy.
To better understand how the main button keybinds work, see this image:
Aah... does that make sense?
While messing around, I discovered I could also upload my configurations and get a share code! Um.. Feel free to use it, but a lot of it might break on another character without as much unlocked. ^^;
First off, I have a giant monitor. This means I have a lot more screen real estate to play with than most folks. I think my monitor resolution is 2560 x1440.
Second, my primary method of interface is keyboard only. FFXI predated WASD standard, and was made for the IBM 102 keyboard layout (as opposed to the more compact laptop keyboard.)
I don't like to use the mouse in battle, so everything here is meant to minimize having to touch it.
Major keybind changes:
I use the number pad on my keyboard to control movement instead of WASD . Up down, left, right. Strafe is moved to 1 and 3.
Camera is controlled by my thumb on the arrow keys, and that frees up my left hand to control macros. I also flip the arrows around to match FFXI.
Some other changes: Zoom in moved from Home to F5, and auto run is moved from R to the 7 key.
Sprint, mounts, emotes, and even Limit Break are added to freed up letters!
Sprint is keyed to S, on a universal hotbar (10) so its the same on all jobs. This is visible in the top hotbar on my screen.
My mount is either set to H or CTRL+H (since my main character is done with the Hunt log; alts get CTRL+H and get the hunt log flashed in their face to get it completed, ahaha.) CTRL+G is a secondary mount for funsies.
Emotes are set to the E key.
Party finder is set to the F key.
Limit Break is CTRL+L on a universal keybind (also visible on Hotbar 10 on the image I included.)
Summon Chocobo set to CTRL+B on top hotbar. CTRL+R returns it.
CTRL+P is my universal "Mechanics incoming" warning; I still use the "Pork Chop Sandwiches! GTFO!" I've been using for a decade.
I can use the mouse when needed to click, of course.
And I also have a controller that I swap to for menu heavy things, like my retainers or gathering.
I also add in a third permanent hotbar, accessed using the ALT key.
Other changes made related to FFXI muscle memory:
Current quests shoved over to the upper left corner
Current enemies are below that
Party list shoved over to the right hand side
Desperius Clean UI System
This is a complex system of macros on hotbars that leverages the unused hotbars from your base classes. This method lets you keep your base UI out of the way, and focus on what's on the screen.
Mine is accessed with the Up Arrow icon on the top hotbar.
The advent of perfectly accurate live-translation tech made most communication with alien races extremely easy. Except for one thing: It has become readily apparent that every species calls their homeworld "earth", and figuring out which earth is meant in any conversation is now the big problem
The Dbvilink reached out one tentacle to grasp the glass of alcoholic algae the bartender had served up for it. "So that's why your people started calling your home world Gaia, after an ancient imaginary goddess?"
I nodded and took a sip of my own daiquiri. "Yup, same as your people started having to call your home world Dbvlinoya, after your father sea god."
"But your word for your people isn't a "gaia-ling" - it's a human!"
i always forget to draw msq stuff but everytime they zoomed out i would giggle bc this was all i could see 💀 to (accidentally) be on lala too was incredible timing 🤭
The worst characters are the ones were you only get like three pieces of lore about them but the lore is so fascinating and hits your brain at just the right angle to have you behaving like a feral dog in front of your conspiracy theory cork board
John Rogers is the creator of two of my favorite things:
Leverage and Leverage: Redemption, show(s) about criminals who team up to punish billionaires and corporations who take advantage of regular people in ways that the law won't punish. It's a great heist show, it's hilarious, it's satisfying in a vengeance sort of way, it's deeply nerdy in sometimes subtle ways (criminals using aliases from Doctor Who, anyone?), and seeing the characters and relationships develop is really nice, too.
The following quote: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
A billion dollars is the socio-economic equivalent of a loose nuke, and we should work to prevent the acquisition of the former with the same urgency and ruthlessness we use to prevent the acquisition of the latter.
(Here's a link to the post where he says it, but it's only visible if you're logged into bluesky, unfortunately.)
"i just dont think the scientology speedrun trend is funny because if people did that with any other religious institution-" ok guys lets all go to the 'scientology controversies' page on wikipedia and scroll a bit before continuing this thought. lets do this right now
Good point. You can judge the sincerity of a religion by how tolerant they'd be of such a speed run.
"Religions" that are actually cults of tax evasion are like "GTFO"
Religions that are legit might be more like, "yeah sure you come on in during visiting hours, just be quiet in the sanctuary if there is a person already in there"
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