TL;DR: swear words like “shit” usually emphasize the mood of a sentence rather than add new meaning, which is why “shit” seems to change connotation across your examples. Think like the word “very”.

Traditionally in most European languages, the cycle of what is considered most offensive shifts between bodily functions (shit, piss), genitalia and sexual acts (cunt, cock, fuck) and religious profanity (hell, bloody), particularly against the Christian God. Some scholars define us as moving into a new cycle, where the most offensive words are slurs based on race, sexuality, or gender. These scholars speculate that this results in more willingness to experiment with already existing swear words of the ‘traditional’ categories since they are considered less offensive in comparison.

Swear words are almost always used euphemistically and in set phrases. Some scholars go as far as to argue that swearing is only euphemistic and words used literally do not count as “swearing”. In fact, much of swear word usage can be classified as an intensifier, which is a word or short phrase that sort of heightens the already existing mood of the sentence but doesn’t explicitly change the meaning. Using shit as an example, “Shit, the bread’s gone stale again.” In this example, you can also see shit being used as a sort of mood marker, since it is reasonable to assume out of context that the bread going stale might be desirable to the speaker. In this case, the “shit” marks the stale bread is actually bad as well as intensifying the mood as compared to, say “oh darn, the bread’s gone stale again.”

This part is a bit of speculation on the origin of set phrases like “ain’t shit” or “the shit” and I haven’t actually read any scholarly literature on this topic specifically. You can see similarities between set phrases like “this is the shit” and “this is the stuff” and “that’s the spot”. It seems like this is a construction common in the English language to express that something is pleasurable. Whether this is what caused the “this is the shit” set phrase or whether the “this is the shit” set phrase caused the construction remains to be seen. “Ain’t shit” is definitely somewhat different because it probably comes from African American Vernacular English (AAVE). While I would argue that “the shit” could be AAVE in origin as well, I do think it has roots in non AAVE English, whereas “ain’t shit” is grammatically AAVE.

If you’re interested in reading more, I recommend The F Word by Jesse Sheidlower and Holy Sh*t by Melissa Mohr.

From a roleplay/world building perspective, I really like the fact that Fallout New Vegas has an extremely limited radio and I do think the atmosphere would be seriously damaged if they had added more songs. I haven’t played the other Fallout games but I reckon this is probably applicable there too. I understand that people get bored of the same songs over and over again, but that’s a feature not a bug. If you were living a hard scrabble life a post-apocalyptic wasteland where no one has the means or resources to be writing, recording and distributing popular songs, yeah you’d probably get bored of listening to the same music over and over again. And then when you turn the radio off, all you can hear is the creepy horror sounds of the Mojave and suddenly listening to Jingle Jangle on repeat doesn’t seem so bad after all. The repetitive, upbeat soundtrack is super effective at making you feel like you’re stuck between two not so great choices, one awful and one somewhat better but severely lacking. And that really reflects what it’s like to live in the Mojave–you often don’t have the luxury of a completely satisfying choice because you and everyone else is fighting for survival. Specific to FoNV, it really drives home the political climate of the harsh, brutal Legion versus the comforting but stale and ineffective NCR. Honestly FoNV is the first game that really made me think in depth about the music choices in a video game and I’m really really glad they made this choice.

I am pretty sure though that the Big Mountain DLC added a new radio station.

I saw lab grown milk at the grocery store the other day! It’s still pretty pricey and there’s only whole milk but I’m excited that accessible lab grown milk is on the horizon

That’s the beauty of DND, you can play however makes you happy :)

I don’t think shoving someone is going to end up in court unless it’s a super unfortunate situation where you shove someone and they trip and fall and hit their head and die or something.

The article doesn’t go into detail what specifically defendants alleged when invoking the law, but it does say it’s similar to a temporary insanity plea. So “I was so enraged by the fact that a gay came on to me that I killed them”. Which is a little extreme. Imagine every woman that’s ever been hit on by a man they didn’t like just attacking with the intent to kill. Just unreasonable all around to allow that as a defense

I know this is just a meme and a pretty funny one at that, but my autistic ass with a science degree simply must mention that behaviour observed in captivity is not necessarily indicative of behaviour in the wild.

Go read the study though it’s a very cool read and easily found online.

https://youtu.be/6tRUvtyAMOg?si=J2eB_S3nz3ZmhIYX

^ this dude has a theory that the monster was likely a barn owl feeling threatened by the witnesses. I thought it was pretty plausible and cool. He has a longer video about it too

Disclaimer: idk anything about his qualifications but as someone in a tangentially related field to anthropology/history he seems to know what he’s talking about

Sorry if I came off as patronizing. You’re right, that’s definitely a problem and it’s a shame life saving treatments can’t get made because they’re less profitable than gaming our broken system

More exams=better!!

The point is that a TB vaccine wouldn’t be administered much in the US, but mostly to people in extreme poverty in South Africa and Eastern Europe. The article says that the organizations most likely to buy the vaccine would be local governments and non-profits, which can afford to pay a much lower price than insurance companies in the US. That’s why a TB vaccine is a lower priority than shingles, because the market for a TB vaccine would be people living in extreme poverty in developing countries, while shingles is mostly a concern for affluent people with insurance in the US, even though a TB vaccine would save many more lives.

Yeah I feel that. I think my opinion is that it’s fun to play, but it’s not, like, a technical marvel or brilliantly written or anything. I liked the aesthetic and the sort of dark campy tone everything had, but I agree that it gets kinda repetitive. Which is why I’m glad they kept it short

Played it for the first time a few weeks ago, loved it

Sounds like dyslexia