blushes

You're too kind

Easily one of the top 5 best concert films of all time

Appropriate.

Oh, now I have an idea for a new BBEG: A lich that got to their position by taking advantage of their privilege and refuses to acknowledge it.

Definitely should be fully fleshed out (no pun intended) by flavoring with historical Trump actions like blaming minorities for everything ("that jogger was violently assaulted by these 5 goblins that simply happen to be nearby"), refusing to pay contractors for services rendered ("great job building my phylactery, it would be a shame if you got deported before I paid you"), using populist rhetoric to blame progressives for the problems caused by capitalism ("Minions, I know your wages are low, but it's those adventurers fault for donating gold to the orphanage and causing all this inflation"). When he flees the adventurers, they could be slowed by a magical spell called "malicious litigation" that functions like a web spell on anyone who is not of noble birth.

Minions could also include a ghoul as diplomatic envoy whose hair dye leaks and who accidentally books an event at Four Seasons Total Castle Care and several half-ogre sons who think they are going to inherit his lichdom but are too dumb to see they're first on the chopping block when the chips are down.

Ah, yes, I forgot; getting a haircut is clearly the same level of complexity and cost as finding childcare or earning a college degree.

That's fair, and I think a realistic view of the current situation is definitely beneficial for aspiring academics, especially given the current "academic industrial complex" pumping out PhDs far faster than jobs open up.

holy shit, that dude is still around and posting content! Albeit, just 5 times in the past 4 years, but still.

Typically, the amount of grant money you receive does not affect your salary. It can affect your job security and it can be a factor in earning tenure, but in general, writing more grant proposals=/=higher pay (just more money for research).

Plus, even at R1 schools, tenure-track positions are often starting out with pretty low pay compared to tuition and very low compared what the professor could be making in private industry. According to this study by National Center for Educational Statistics, only about a third of college budgets are spent on instruction, with about another third on support services (counselors, financial aid, tutoring/library services, accessibility services, etc.), with the remainder spent on administration. But that doesn't look so bad until you realize that at most schools, 50%-75% of the courses are not taught by full-time instructors, but by adjuncts, and adjuncts are often paid at or below the poverty line (about 25k/year in 2020). Even as a tenured instructor with 10 years of salary schedule advancements and a partner with a full-time job in higher education, I'm still living paycheck-to-paycheck.

So, yes, it is more complicated than "all professors are underpaid," but not by much. It's really more like "75% of college instructors are near or below poverty level."

Community college professor here. I'm lucky enough to be tenured at this point, but when I started teaching, I was making just enough money such that if I had been paying the going rate for rent edit: and health insurance, I would have been losing about $100/month, before taking into account other expenses like food (or health insurance or gas or utilities...) (edit: I went back and checked numbers, my memory was a little off). And that was with me teaching 75% at two different schools (so, a total of about 24 units per term when full-time is usually 16 units per term)

I was privileged enough to be able to live with family while I pursued a full-time position and extra work, but many are not so lucky.

So, yeah, college professors are drastically underpaid, on par with K-12 teachers

Hell, just getting 50% of high school students to understand Russell's Teapot and the Burden of Proof would have a huge impact on political discourse in the US.

My geologist coworker said that agate isn't really a mineral either, mostly because it gets used too broadly and doesn't have one singular chemical composition.

Then again, I'm just an organic chemist, and classifying minerals seems suspiciously like biology to me...

That's great! It's not super helpful for me, though, since I teach students that often aren't good at troubleshooting technology issues on their own so I need an app that's pretty universal and user-friendly. Plus, the question specifically asked about stuff in the Android play store...

CamScanner (intuitive and powerful scanner app that processes images exceptionally well and interfaces cleanly with all sorts of other apps) and Hiper Calc Pro (scientific calculator that shows you your input and looks like a classic calculator interface)

SpOoOokyyy...

When you go through the house and turn them off, the ghosts mysteriously turn them back on as soon as you leave the room...

slug metal

Also, may I introduce you to our slug metal overlords, Slugdge

Windhand was my gateway into this whole world, and I couldn't agree more. The first time I heard their stuff, it just blew my mind in a way I hadn't experienced in probably a decade.

I came into metal from metalcore, and there's no faster way to get yourself banned from the metal subs than posting metalcore, so I feel you in the gatekeeping, too. The doom scene really does pull from all sorts of influences and tends to be pretty accepting of a ton of fringe bands and sounds so you get people that are excited to talk about music instead of just shitting on other people's taste. So you get "doom wop," stoner rock, doom 'n' roll, fairy doom, witch metal, caveman battle doom, and so on.

Have fun exploring it all! There's a ton of good shit out there, and for my money, to this day, nothing hits like that first time hearing "Forest Clouds"

Not really all that related, but if you like Panopticon by ISIS, you might also appreciate the best Appalachian atmospheric black metal I've ever heard, Kentucky by Panopticon.

Happy to get you excited with some new music! I've listened to heavy music for decades but it had definitely gotten a little stale for me. It was only in the last 2 years that I discovered stoner/doom as a sub-genre, so I'm not all that far ahead of you. Some really great stuff that is frankly just as heavy but much catchier than most other metal subgenres. I mean, I love me some black/death metal, but I'm just not really getting obsessed with those bands/albums/songs the same way as I can with this slow riff worship you see in stoner/doom.

Pallbearer and Ahab are both pretty good for funeral doom or death/doom (depending on who you ask).

I like a little bit of "epic" doom themes but trad doom, power metal, and actual epic doom are a little too cheesy for me, so I lean toward Conan (very heavy, approaching a sludge-drone hybrid) and Khemmis (who describe their sound as "doomed heavy metal")

I actually usually skew more psychedelic doom or stoner/prog doom, which has a lot of great stuff in the past few decades. Sleep's Holy Mountain (classic stoner metal), Grief's Infernal Flower by Windhand (psych doom), Clearing the Path to Ascend by YOB (heavy stoner/prog), Lore by Elder (very proggy but still catchy).

Also, I assume you've seen the most common recommendations for classic sludge, The Melvins (especially Houdini and Bullhead), Eyehategod, and Side B of My War by Black Flag. If not, get started there

edit: Obviously I've got lots of other fun options in each of these veins, so hmu if you want more