Do you think the ticking feels like a heartbeat to it?

Generally speaking in America it’s very difficult to obtain custody of a corpse after the authorities have it in their possession. While there are many types of funeral options viking burials are not one. Regular fire does not burn hot enough to fully burn a human body, which is why cremation uses special equipment. Generally nobody wants partially burnt corpses in their river, so you’re either going to be illegally polluting or going to international waters. Generally you’ll need to convince some combination of funeral director, medical examiner, coroner, hospital director, and the police to give you custody of the body. It seems unbelievable to me that you’ll be able to convince all those people to give you a body for a viking funeral

On to illegal ways you could accomplish this: not reporting a dead body is not only a crime but also makes you incredibly suspicious for fraud at a minimum and murder at the max. Not acquiring a death certificate will make dealing with any estate very difficult. Stealing the body from wherever it is located will likely get you charges for defacing a dead body. You could bribe some people to look the other way but if that fails that’s also a crime

In short, no you can’t really do it. However, this is America, so presumably with enough money to the right people you could probably work it out. But we’re talking .01% level money and connections

Sure, we might have record unemployment, inflation can be low, and by most metrics the American economy is doing well. However people are feeling squeezed. They’re spending more on rent, groceries, health insurance, other necessities than they have in their entire lives. Most people don’t have the vocabulary to describe that economically so they use words they’ve heard. In most people’s heads inflation=things are more expensive. So they complain about inflation even if that’s inaccurate

Some retro suggestions:

• Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 - it sounds like your cousin is probably too old for this but this has one of the best “younger sibling” modes. They help collect and shoot bits. Which ultimately doesn’t matter much
• The Legend of Zelda 4 Swords Adventure - It’s basically multi-player Link to the Past! Bonus points if you dig up a GameCube, link cables, and GBAs
• Kirby Super Star - a mix of competitive and coop games
• Super Mario World (any) - you take turns but if you don’t go 6 levels without dying to his one it can be fun
• Halo 1-3 + ODST - Great classic shooters, the campaigns are customizable for difficulty, and a little kid probably loves alien shooters
• Borderlands 1/2 - Looter shooters with a sense of irreverance
• Dead Rising 2/Off the Record and 3 - Zombie hoard murdering with combo weapons
• The Simpsons '91, Battletoads, TMNT, Streets of Rage, etc - Beat Em Ups are great for multi-player

One thing to consider is that delivery and takeout are significantly more popular than they were 4 years ago. Some of these chains either anticipate or encourage you to heat your cookies just before you eat them and halfway cooking them gives the best results. A place just down the road from me encourages 1 minute on high in the air fryer or 3 in a toaster oven before eating

I love that he’s going with the Shaggy defense. CNN had more receipts than an accountant in April

Maybe it is actually cursed. The curse is that while you wear it your life goes by faster but if you remove it you slow down. Most people get too greedy and slow their life to a standstill but you are actually using it perfectly to enjoy your free time at night and less time during your work

I agree that this is a bad idea. Bus travel sucks. It has basically all of the downsides of air travel with basically none of the upsides, minus cost obviously. Without knowing what countries you’re going to be going through it’s harder to say. Bus stations in my experience can be difficult to navigate in my language, in a language I don’t know I’d be even more concerned. Usually you can eat food, but like airplanes try to be considerate about what you have. Avoid fish, common allergens, smelly food, etc.

Finally consider that over those 36 hours you’re going to have to either bring food, or buy it, you’re losing time wherever you’re transit, and are at the mercy of the bus time tables instead of waiting on a single flight

Clearly you don’t go to the movie theaters very often. There’s been big ass marquees for it for over a month now

There are just some people out there who despite having every moral reason to do so, can’t get themselves to kill another person. I don’t necessarily think those people should be shamed. Especially because they are trying to defend their home and it may have taken getting to the front lines before they realized that they just aren’t capable of doing it

I see you also saw Crimes of the Future

M. Night Shyamalan’s viral marketing for Trap is getting really weird

If everyone wears bright neon clothes then nobody will be depressed! Remember how the disco 70s and the radical 90s eradicated depression?

Conversely the worst is when that happens and a bad boss blind screws your run

Yeah, have you ever had an annoying roommate? Isn’t it so much more frustrating and isolating than living alone? You don’t even have your own space to get away so you just become more irritable all the time. Now imagine if you wanted to not live with that person that you need to get lawyers, your family, another family and the government involved

A lot of people get married because “they’re supposed to”, “they’ve been dating for a while”, or because it’s arranged. Is it shocking that those people don’t have the foundation for a good long term relationship? Is it shocking that every day is a little bit worse for them?

It’s hard to offer strong heuristics for Balatro because you could theoretically build up to a point where you’ve got a crazy high multiplier but if your chips are low it doesn’t matter.

For example let’s say you’ve got a face card 4 of a kind build going with: Pareidolia, Zany, Smiley, Trio, and Family jokers. These give you (respectively) all cards are face cards, +12 mult for 3 of a kind, +20 mult for each hand (all cards are face cards), x3 mult, x4 mult for a total of 384 multiplier! On base 4 of a kind this is

60x([7+12+20]x3x4)=28,080

However if you were to drop smiley face (+5 mult per face) for scary face (+30 chips per face card) which by almost every heuristic is a bad decision your score becomes:

(60+120)x([7+12]x3x4)=41,040

Which is a way bigger score!

So while people can offer general advice like stack high chips on plasma, always go for total score multipliers, etc. sometimes you just have to evaluate your specific build and figure out the best play

Finally outside of decks like abandoned and checkered which are specifically made to get certain hands, there isn’t a “best” hand to go for. The highest possible scores I’ve seen all come from high card builds but most normal players won’t get those. I’ve won two of a kind runs, flush 5 runs, straight runs, flush runs. You just have to evaluate your deck and tarot cards to see your options

Generally some good advice is that Balatro is a math game first and foremost so you want to focus on things that raise your score the quickest. So adding chips is ok, adding multiplier is better, and multiplying your total is the best.

For example let’s say you are playing straights and you have a 10-6 with level 3 straights. So you’d have:

10+9+8+7+6=40

(40+90)x10=1300

So let’s compare how jokers impact that score:

Devious joker: +100 chips if you have a straight

(40+90+100)x10=2300

Crazy joker: +12 mult if you have a straight

(40+90)x(10+12)=2860

The order: x3 mult if you have a straight

(40+90)x(10x3)=3900

You can see those are very big differences! It’s also helpful to pay attention to the order of your cards. Generally Balatro cards are scored left to right. The most important thing is to take any card that multiplies any part of your score on the right so you can add as much to the score as possible, then you multiply that number

So in short: multiplier jokers are best, additive multiplier jokers are good, additive chip jokers are ok, and pay attention to the order of your jokers/played cards

For plasma specifically I’d focus on high additive chip jokers. While that’s normally bad advice, consider how crazy good a card with +50 mult on it would be. Now consider that a +100 chip joker is effectively a +50 chip/+50 mult (I know that’s not technically true but I’m illustrating a point). Also eventually you do hit a point of diminishing returns because plasma prevents you from having a super high multiplier or chips, so like every build, total score multipliers are the best

Enjoy!

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The Day After Tomorrow

Snowpiercer

If you know you know