Infrared

It may help to think about which cause you want to advance, rather than which organization. What societal issues particularly resonate with you? What struggles have you, your family, or your friends faced that you wouldn't want others to experience? (No need to answer an internet stranger of course, but thinking about answers might help get the ball rolling.)

Fun isn't something one considers when balancing the hatpile. But this... does put a smile on my face.

I'd heard of this but never read the manifesto until now. I always thought tau's area formula was a good reason to keep pi. After reading it seems like a good reason to switch to tau. (The whole hypersphere thing is way beyond me haha.) I've been τurned.

Ooh I like this. Cool concept for a story, and you've done an excellent job capturing that old school vibe (especially during the story of Yi) even though the actual narrative is about later material. Please do write more!

True, the California flag does have some history behind it. I'm a fan myself but the bear could be simplified for sure. Maybe if the C on the Colorado flag were smaller it wouldn't be as tacky? Like this old one.

What are your ten favorites?

Cool design, definitely simpler than the original. Interesting idea basing it on Norse/Nordic designs.

You mentioned flags should avoid text on them, which seems reasonable enough as a general rule. That got me wondering, what are your opinions on the California and Colorado flags? The California flag has "California Republic" written on the bottom but imo the font isn't bland and adds to the design (certainly more so than the text on the Iowa flag). And the Colorado flag has the C that is sort of a logo on its own.

Hi Dorek!

 

needs to be shifted back a year

When I hovered over the actual thing, most of the slope showed searches in 2006. I guess the numbers are just a bit weird.

 

I think it looks weird because 2007 on the graph corresponds to the beginning of 2007, not the middle. Not the most intuitive. Vertical gridlines would help. Up your game Google.

You smart. You loyal.
 

Press X to pay respects
 

BROWN!  OBZPCS ARE BROWN!  RETIRED STAFF ARE ORANGE!
 
#MakeOrangeGreatAgain

I thought it was more of a gold the entire time.

 

 
I've always figured it's copper, since way back when BZP mailed OBZPCs a Copper Mask of Victory.

Dunno man, still waiting on hoverboards myself.

There's a Chrome extension called Force Block that came in handy for me.

Gonna echo Nescent here, TFA is an awesome addition to the series.

Less plastic maybe?

I think this guy could give a pretty informed answer.

Well yeah, Lego fans tend to have ABS...

Is champ there?

...a dad. You've become a dad.

Sounds like quite the Undertaking!

(Also use this version it's worse better)

Oh so that's why it's called Power Scream...

Hey man. Emojis work here? Uh-oh.

(Edit: not in comments apparently)
 
Sorry to hear about your friend.

It's weird because YouTube lists the music in people's videos now, so clearly they could take down the videos if they wanted to, they just don't.   My hunch is that YouTube pays its ad money to the record labels instead of to the video creators whenever copyrighted music gets involved.

Don't let it infect your masks! 

Yeah, I used "cockiness" to mean "arrogance." Sorry, should be been more clear about that.
 

And, as stated before, arrogance is pretty much having confidence when it's bad. So, still another word for confidence.

I'm not sure it is though... sometimes they might seem the same on the outside but internally they can feel different. You can be confident while consciously not being arrogant (think the classic "wise old man" archetype). Yoda wasn't able to defeat Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith but I wouldn't necessarily call him arrogant for thinking he could; just going by Yoda's past experiences with Sith, he totally could have defeated Palpatine. Now during that very fight Palpatine actually does call Yoda "arrogant," which you might say is an example of Palpatine's own arrogance. In fact I would argue Palpatine wasn't being arrogant either--he was very familiar with Yoda's skill level and knew that his own skill level was greater.

Now, the issue is that Palpatine conflates the idea of "bad confidence" with "arrogance"--as you've mentioned. "Confidence" and "arrogance" aren't that clear-cut in real life--I totally agree. At the same time, I feel framing confidence vs. arrogance can be a useful exercise. It's easier (for me at least) to be confident when I feel I'm not being arrogant. If I (broadly) define what "arrogance" is beyond simply "bad confidence," then I can avoid it more easily, and then I can be more confident in my actions. I can't speak to that method's effectiveness for anyone else, but certainly it's worth a shot, no?

The terms might be misused but I'd like to think confidence and cockiness are a bit different from each other.
 
Confidence is knowing your limits well enough that you feel comfortable working within them and even pushing them a bit. It's about self-awareness--you assess your capabilities based on all the information you know. That often requires failure! I think you have to have some humility to be confident.
 
When you're cocky you don't know yourself well enough to know your limits. It requires a lack of self-awareness. You choose--often thanks to your ego--not to develop your opinions based on all the information provided.
 
Now there's of course more nuance to it (if you're inexperienced but genuinely believe you know it all because you haven't been exposed to anything else, are you cocky? Based on the definitions above I'm not sure) and people often conflate the terms, but that's more or less my two cents. You can fail and still be confident and you can succeed and still be arrogant/cocky.
 
Now your working definition might differ from mine, but based on what you've written it sounds like you lack cockiness.   Humility is key to being confident, but it can also be detrimental if you psych yourself out. Like fishers said, I think the key to being confident is knowing your limits, and often that means doing your research but often that means pushing yourself past your limits too! Failing gracefully and learning from your mistakes leads to confidence.

Before the downtime I used red Comic Sans. Then I realized how obnoxious it was so I switched to the default.

The idea of rebelling against destiny is kind of messed up imo.........like don't get me wrong, i love the idea but there's only two options:

 

-the prophesied "destiny" was false and you're actually fulfilling your true destiny

-you fail to rebel against destiny, you just can't beat it

 

I mean ultimately destiny is just cause and effect, I think. The idea that some are "destined" to become Toa, or something's "destined" to transform when it touches Energized Protodermis, it basically just means "these things are supposed to happen according to the Grand Timeline." Like, the reason alternate timelines are different is because destiny is different there.

 

It's kind of weird using a word like "destiny" to describe how you're more or less a slave to the timeline, but in a super optimistic light? Works that deal heavily with time travel or prophecy typically touch on that (see: Homestuck, for instance) but focus on the negatives a lot. If a timeline is concrete and can't be changed, how messed up is it to witness your own death and the deaths of your friends and know that's how it HAS to go down?

 

Interesting how the Matoran put a positive spin on it. I wonder if other cultures, the Skakdi or Zyglak for instance, view destiny with scorn, considering they're not Mata Nui's "chosen" species?

 

It's a little part of "Bionicle culture" that's pretty cool, I think.

Usually in stories with prophecies the term they use is fate, not destiny. Fate is played with a lot in stories and it doesn't seem to confuse people the way destiny does.

I don't know if anyone is familiar with the Aeneid (an epic poem written in Latin), but in it Aeneas flees Troy and (eventually) makes his way to Italy, where he "founds" Rome by starting the bloodline that ends with Romulus and Remus (they're the ones who actually establish the city of Rome). It reveals a pretty interesting take on fate. Someone can be fated to do something and they can know it, but they still have free will. At one point Aeneas decides to lollygag in Carthage and Mercury literally has to fly down from Olympus and tell Aeneas to get a move on.

The main difference I see between Greco-Roman fate and destiny in Bionicle is that you can know your fate but you usually don't know your destiny. Besides that though, they seem to work in similar ways. So maybe your destiny is like your fate kept hidden from you? In which case you're can't really rebel against your destiny, since you don't know what it is. You're just acting on your own free will in a way that seems to go against your destiny to us fans looking on.