Always remember to wear a steel codpiece.

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

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 did a 1000-calorie daily deficit for a few months, in order to lose two pounds a week. I got used to being hungry all the time after a couple of weeks, but having a lot less energy and being sleepy during the day were harder to deal with. My body was trying to conserve calories that way, but pushing through it was possible.

The hardest part was actually accurately counting the calories. It was relatively simple for off-the-shelf food, but a lot more annoying for things someone else home-cooked for me. I had to ask for the recipe every time, weigh how much I ate, and then track the calories per ingredient on a spreadsheet. Restaurant food was effectively impossible to count, but that didn’t matter much because I was so focused on filling food that I wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. I’m a vegetarian, so I ended up eating mostly beans, tofu (which is also beans, now that I think about it), and vegetables. Other things weren’t as filling per calorie as those foods.

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.

They had to prove themselves worthy by fighting the oven with nothing but their bare hands, man to microwave.

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.

If you’re a billionaire intent on becoming even wealthier, that usually implies that you really enjoy being a successful businessman. I don’t see why business success for its own sake would be inherently less satisfying than other sorts of accomplishment.

The answer does say

The reason isn’t some special string of A’s, G’s, T’s or C’s found in dad’s DNA.

It’s true that two same-sex parents of either sex have the basic genetic information to create a female child (a male child needs at least one male parent) but the natural process of embryo development is a big deal!

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

You don’t have to go to a specialist to get antidepressants; many GPs will prescribe them if you ask. I also see a lot of online clinics offering prescriptions without an in-person appointment, but I don’t have personal experience with that. The standard antidepressants are fairly safe and I wouldn’t be too worried about side effects to take them without a psychiatrist’s supervision. Nothing except antidepressants worked to end my depressive episodes, as opposed to making them easier to bear.

Other than that, what helped me most was realizing that I couldn’t trust my own thoughts. It’s hard, because generally “X is true” and “I think X is true” are subjectively the same thing. When I went through periods of depression, I sincerely believed that I had never been happy and that my depression would never end, but as a matter of fact I had been happy (or at least reasonably content) for most of my life and prior episodes of depression had ended. Being able to realize that I had actually been happy and probably would be again, despite what felt true in that moment, made depression much more bearable.

Another key intervention for me was moving closer to my family. It felt like a huge defeat (here I was, an adult who couldn’t handle living on his own) but I told myself “plan based on who you are, not who you wish you were”. Having supportive people around helped a lot; when I’m depressed I don’t want to be around other people but that is actually the wrong strategy. “I just want to be alone” is one of those thoughts that I shouldn’t trust.

Finally, a really useful mental strategy is to consider what advice you would give to a good friend in a situation similar to your own, and then to act on that advice yourself. My depression was accompanied by a great deal of self-loathing but that loathing didn’t extend to my friends (even my imaginary friends). I found that I often knew exactly what advice I would give a friend, and it wasn’t to do what I had been planning to do.

It’s cool that humans have no problems interpreting cartoon depictions of faces which are so grotesquely exaggerated.

He clearly hasn’t been dumping STR.

Most financially secure people still work full time. I suppose that in theory, they’re able to quit their jobs without suffering immediate, catastrophic consequences but if they actually did that sort of thing, they wouldn’t be financially secure for long.

(In my experience, many financially secure people actually work much more than full time. I think they would be better off if they didn’t because at some point time becomes more valuable than money, but they have the sort of personality that compels them to. This is often related to starting out without financial security.)

The very rich can do crazy stuff without consequences but they’re such a small part of the population that I don’t think comparing oneself to them is useful.

Googling this is unreliable because Microsoft keeps patching out ways to do it. I couldn’t get what I read online to work when I got my Windows 11 laptop back in May, but what did work was using the keyboard button that turns on airplane mode.

I get why Microsoft (acting in its own best interest) wants to discourage offline accounts but trying to ban them completely is ridiculous (especially since Windows 11 works just fine with the offline account). I think I would have returned the laptop out of spite if I couldn’t get an offline account to work, but I’m probably much more spiteful than most people.

I never feel inconvenienced by having to wear clothing. I suppose part of that is because as a man, I can go shirtless without getting stares and I wouldn’t want to be without underwear (for support) even if I were on a deserted island. I wonder what the circumstances you have in mind are in which you would like to have the option of being nude in public.

Edit: Now that I think about it, there have been a few times when I wanted to go swimming and just swimming in my underwear wasn’t an option because I would have to walk while wearing it later and that would be uncomfortable.

I remember when I was at school (this was 6th or 7th grade) and the teacher wrote y = x and drew a diagonal line on a Cartesian plane. At that moment, I realized that the world was made of math and I was enlightened. I’m not exaggerating - the experience revolutionized the way I could think.

The interesting thing to me is that I have worked with physicists who appear to be capable of even higher levels of abstraction than I am. If I read an equation, I need to think about its geometrical representation but they claim to think directly in terms of equations. (Pure mathematics, not the letters and numbers that make up the written equation.) I believe them because they can comprehend equations much faster than I can; they and I would go to talks where the presenter just put up slide after slide of equations and I would be lost almost immediately while they were able to follow along. I don’t think that’s simply because they’re much smarter than I am, because I am otherwise generally able to match them intellectually.

That’s how I did it too. There is a sphere on a plane. A force is applied to the sphere, parallel to the plane. Neither the sphere nor the plane have a defined color, size, material, etc. Nothing specific pushed the sphere.

My job is often to mathematically model the things people say to me, and in those circumstances thinking like this is correct.

I don’t think this way when I daydream, although the visual components of my daydreams are more like the feelings I get when I look at something than like concrete mental pictures.