Why would you pay to make your Rhino’s bulge smaller?

Also, how is Warframe now? I last played eight years ago and I’m a little surprised that it’s still going strong.

Always remember to wear a steel codpiece.

They better hope they’re not in New York state.

He’s not wrong about the squirrel…

Another thing to consider is that Melkor was never known to show understanding or mercy to his servants who failed him. I would have to think that any balrog who failed to come to his aid would have been killed (or worse as you postulate) as soon as Morgoth was freed.

Hah, now I’m imagining an alternate, sillier Arda where the balrogs had the same conversation as the villain’s abused lackeys did at the end of Disney’s Hercules. (A really underappreciated movie, IMO. Just don’t watch it expecting it to be about the Greek myth.)

He’s not going to be happy when he gets out of there.

You mean if he gets out of there!

If. If is good…

I think you know much more about the legendarium than I do, but I want to nitpick one point:

Also, there were no more than 3 or 7 balrogs ever according to later writings by Tolkien, which indicates that no balrog was weak or cowardly.

I think I should have phrased what I said differently. No balrog was weak or cowardly in an absolute sense. Durin’s Bane attacked and defeated all the dwarves of Khazad Dum at the height of their power. It wasn’t initially afraid of Gandalf. However, Ungoliant was another matter. She had consumed the light of the Two Trees and overcome Melkor himself. She might also have been capable of doing something far worse to a Maia than destroying its body and banishing its spirit. I think that though the balrogs were able to drive her away, their victory was not inevitable and I can imagine even a balrog faltering when called to face such a foe.

That’s true in a trivial sense: there’s no law of nature that enforces verisimilitude in any work of fiction. However, most authors aim for verisimilitude, and the good ones achieve it. I’m not talking about the top speeds of balrogs because I think there’s some objective answer, but rather because I think that Tolkein does achieve verisimilitude (at least in some regards) and therefore there is a foundation for discussing the traits of his fictional beings. He easily could have given balrogs rocket skates, but he didn’t.

The balrog in Moria was chasing the fellowship. If it could move at 400 mph (by any means) then it would have caught them immediately. We know that some balrogs are weaker than others since it is said that Gothmog was the mightiest. My conclusion is that if the balrogs literally flew by mundane means to Melkor’s aid, then the balrog in Moria was particularly weak (and cowardly) and did not participate in rescuing Melkor. I presume that’s also why it hid deep underground for so long rather than fighting and being banished along with the other balrogs.

With that said, I think Melkor summoned the balrogs to himself by magical means (but they can’t teleport on their own). None of them could go 400 mph. That’s just silly. They’re not Sonic the Hedgehog. I also think that balrogs can’t fly. The word “wings” is a metaphor for the way flames spread from them.

(I don’t claim that the text rules out the possibility of wings and flight. The balrog might have fallen with Gandalf because they fought a metaphysical battle, dragged down by the “weight of its sin”.)

Edit: I think we actually agree. I’m just elaborating.

Edit 2: I found a picture that shows what I think a balrog’s “wings” look like.

My problem with Windows is that when I want to eject a USB drive, Windows refuses to do so, refuses to tell me what program is apparently still using the drive, and certainly refuses to kill that program. I am removing the drive. I can’t just not remove it!

I’m seeing $30,000 per ton there (as of 2018) so wouldn’t the cubic meter cost about $645,000?

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Wasn’t there a 3.5 build that could in theory throw the moon?

I oppose letting anyone define hate speech as a matter of principle, because even if I agree with the definition completely now, I may not continue to agree with the definition in the future. Look at what has been happening in the USA since the October 7 attack: a lot of people I had considered my political allies turned out to have beliefs I consider to be hateful, and meanwhile these people consider my own beliefs hateful. The solution is not to empower a single central authority to decide which sort of hate is allowed. It is (as it has always been) to maintain the principle of free speech.

I’m a little surprised to hear people so willing to let the government of Ireland determine who they are allowed to hate and for what reasons.

The apartment I bought had cabinets with fake, decorative drawers on them. Except it turned out that one of those drawers wasn’t decorative. It was just stuck.

Inside there was a full set of silverware (as in literal silver) from the 60’s complete with the original receipt. It’s worth thousands of dollars. I guess whoever lived there before me was in no condition to pack and the people who packed didn’t know about the silver…

Libre Office (at least Calc which is the one I use most) is usable but it has bizarre random slowdowns and crashes relatively frequently, whereas I have never once had issues like that with Microsoft Office. I still use Libre Office (on both Windows and Linux) because it’s free but I acknowledge that it has disadvantages.

You don’t mind their UI conventions? I suppose I could probably get used to them, but while I’m comfortable with Windows and Linux desktop environments, I find the Mac one to be quite unpleasant to use for some reason.

You use Arch? Bah, I am Arch.

Yeah but then what are the cat ears?

No, the tongs are for when the vacuum wants to take you alive.