I think the “exception to every rule” part is really dependent on which type of magic the writer is using. Many writers do establish hard rules for their magic. In those cases, it’s less “magic is the exception” and more “magic is engrained into the laws of physics.”

My point wasn’t that fantasy needs elves, but rather that when a fantasy setting does include elves, you likely have a rough expectation of what kind of stereotype they’ll fit. That stereotype is the influence I’m talking about.

The “elves are old, somber, magical, close with nature, tall and thin, magically graceful, pale, have pointy ears, have delicate swooping architecture and designs, etc” stereotype is what you’d likely expect from elves if they get brought up in fantasy… And that stereotype is largely influenced by LOTR. A setting can still be fantasy without elves, but including elves in your story will have the reader automatically setting certain expectations about how those elves will fit into your world. You as the writer can choose to conform to (or rebel against) those expectations, but there’s no denying that the expectation exists, and is heavily influenced by LOTR.

Even if you dislike the story, its impact on the fantasy genre is hard to argue against. I personally dislike the series too, but I refuse to call it overrated because it influences basically every aspect of modern fantasy writing.

You have it backwards. They’re using old t-shirts to sew pillows. The same way some people use old shirts for quilting, or for window cleaning rags.

It’s the whole “couponing is only trashy if you’re poor” mentality.

For the rich, couponing is a game. See how much you can get, for as little as possible. You have the storage space for it, so you’re not worried about excess or waste. All you care about is gaming the system to see what you can get. You had to buy 18 months worth of laundry detergent to get the discount? That’s fine, cuz you have space for it at home. And your basic necessities are already covered, so the coupons don’t need to be for staples that you’ll use quickly or regularly.

For the poor, couponing is a necessary evil. You’re eating chicken every day this week; Not because you really like chicken, but because it’s what you had a coupon for. And now you need to eat it before it goes bad, because you need the space in the fridge for this week’s coupons and you can’t afford to simply toss it out.

They see the blue as shaded white, and the glossy black has enough yellow reflected in it that they think it is shadowy gold. Basically, you’re seeing the dress as if it’s lit from the front. You see the colors as blue and black, because that’s what’s on the screen. But other people’s brains decide that the dress is backlit, so the colors facing the camera are actually shaded.

I can literally switch between perceptions with this exact image. It’s sort of like that “are there six cubes or ten” illusion. Depending on how I look at it, I can see either one.

My father was frustratingly difficult to watch movies with, because of this exact thing. He would pause the movie to explain that the actor on screen had been in some other obscure movie a decade ago. It was especially bad if two actors had previously worked in the same project, because then he would start listing off other cast and crew they had worked with in the past.

Okay, great, please press Play. I just want to watch the goddamned movie.

Yeah, either swing by the store on your way home before cooking, or just buy shelf-stable foods that won’t spoil quickly. I have a 25 pound bag of rice in my cabinet. My wife and I have been eating on it for weeks now, and it doesn’t seem to be any smaller than when I bought it. And it’s never going to go bad.

I think you have far too much faith in the average user. The average user just uses their computer for email, social media, and YouTube. The average user panics when their Google Chrome shortcut disappears from their desktop, because they don’t know how to open it otherwise. The average user doesn’t even know what a botnet is, or why updating would help prevent them.

And the bigger problem is that a compromised device doesn’t only affect the compromised device. It can potentially spread to other devices on a network, steal info from anyone who interacts with the user, or become part of a botnet which is used in attacks elsewhere. Forcing the average user to update is like requiring vaccinations. We do it because it helps protect everyone; not just the one person who was inoculated.

I’m guessing you have different drives, instead of using partitions. Windows only breaks bootloaders when it’s sharing a drive.

Yeah, Windows has a habit of borking bootloaders whenever it’s on a partitioned drive.

The generosity of a $100 tip entirely depends on context. Waffle House? Yeah, it’s generous.

But there are plenty of high end places where plates cost $400 each, the wine can easily be $5000 per bottle, and a $100 tip wouldn’t even cover the wait staff’s tip-out at the end of the night. I have 100% seen billionaire propaganda about “Mark Cuban tips waiter $1500, look how generous he is” when it was just a standard 15% tip on a $10k bill.

It actually addresses this. Chandler was in a high paying job and lived below his means. And Monica’s (much larger, much nicer) apartment was rent controlled; The apartment complex still had her grandmother on the lease from the 1960’s, so Monica was essentially only paying a small increase in 1960’s rent.

That rent control was the topic of one episode, where Joey yells at the maintenance guy. In response, the maintenance guy threatens to tell the landlord about Monica’s grandmother being dead, meaning Monica would need to start paying full price for the apartment. Monica can’t afford the rent, so Joey has to do a favor for the maintenance guy and get back into his good graces.

Before the internet was widespread, it was extremely common for people to actually hang out in person. The show is set in an era where the internet was something you went out of your way to connect to, not something that was already integrated into every single device you used.

Especially since they all lived so close together, it’s 100% believable that they’d hang out together regularly. People also forget that the show takes place over multiple years, and we only see 20’ish episodes per year. Assuming each episode takes place across two’ish days, they’re still only seeing each other two or three times per week. If I lived across the hallway from my best friends, I’d probably hang out with them a few times per week too.

This is especially true from Chandler and Joey’s perspectives, where Monica’s kitchen is only like eight steps away from their own kitchen. Why bother cooking yourself breakfast, when there’s a professional chef willing to do it for you, and all you have to do is open two extra doors?

Ross wasn’t a grad student; He had his doctorate. Initially he worked at a museum of natural history, then eventually got fired (for screaming at his boss) and went to work at the university as a professor. Either way, in the mid-90’s, he would have been comfortable.

I don’t think Chandler is super rich, but he’s definitely comfortable. He doesn’t have the money to outright replace their furniture when it is all stolen, for instance. They end up using lawn chairs (and a canoe) as their living room furniture for a while. But yeah, he definitely lives below his means, because he always has money to pass off to Joey whenever he needs it.

Musk’s daughter, and Trump’s son.

Notably, Musk’s daughter is sort of the black sheep of his family; Musk used IVF so he could selectively only have male children, and she is openly trans. She has a significant social media following, largely due to the fact that she has repeatedly put her father on blast. She deserves better.

I was 100% expecting “Pro Anal” when I read “program analyst”.

It moves your library locations when you install it, so virtually everything that uses a Users\{Username}\{file path} instead of the library’s referenced location will break. Oblivion Remastered players recently encountered this, because the game defaults to saving in a hard path instead of a referenced path. If you have OneDrive installed, the Documents folder exists at Users\{Username}\OneDrive\Documents. But the game defaults to saving in Users\{Username}\Documents. But Steam uses the referenced library location. So when Steam tries to back up your saves to the cloud, it finds an empty saves folder.

Second, it defaults to backing up your desktop. Likely because many users just default to saving everything to their desktop. Which means you end up with a bunch of broken/duplicate shortcuts on each subsequent machine you use, because they all get cloud-imported from other computers.