Arlen Walker

And another round battling the broken US healthcare system: @cigna has been billing both my wife and I for her dental coverage. For quite a while. The Whole system is badly designed and inefficiently run.

@SandyofCthulhu Does it still allow players and DMs to be lazy? Of course. Takes away friction from starting to play. Is that the game’s fault, the DM’s, or the player’s? Could make a good argument for any, but I’d blame the DM‘s crap world building, myself.

This happened to me more than once in the 1970s playing D&D. Friends of mine who were still playing D&D in the 1980s reported it was still a thing. Player: "My character is a cleric." Me: "Oh? What god does he worship?" Player: "Er ... I don't know, but he's lawful good." Is this still a thing?

I swear @turbotax UI gets worse every year. Between the eleventy-seven pleas for me to switch to online, and the doomsday loop when trying to transfer data from last year’s return, I’m thinking it’ll be easier to get out my pen and file by hand this year!

@ANNELAMOTT The interface is tricky when it comes to reposts. It looks to me like it labels the repost with the time it was reposted, but files it in the feed at the time it was originally posted. Could that be part of your issue?

I need your help: I have tried everything (and I mean everything) to get tweets to post in chronological order. I have gone to Following and checked "most current" etc. But there are 1 day tweets at top, in between 53 minutes and 7 hours. Any ideas?

@Weevil2077 @SandyofCthulhu Oh, and just for a more complete picture of the era, the ISA1950 was passed by a Democratic-majority Congress over Truman’s veto. The 1940’s and 1950’s were an interesting time for politics.

@Weevil2077 @SandyofCthulhu It was easier and safer to prosecute under the Smith Act, and the Internal Security Act of 1950, both of which required specific actions to be taken. Legal experts even at time of passage for CCA1954 didn’t think it would fully survive judicial review.

Guess which political party prevented him.

@SandyofCthulhu Um, if you’re talking about the law I’m thinking of, none of them. It passed and he signed it.

@unclebobmartin @imjcmartin Always liked the AMSuper’s approach when I was at Offutt: ”Wave signs, clog and slow the gate traffic. It’s OK; I signed up to defend your right to do it. But if I’ve got my lights flashing, get out of my way; I’m bringing an injured airman to the hospital and I won’t stop!”

@imjcmartin The sons of liberty did not have a vote. The rioters do. In our system the way laws are changed is by voting out the old lawmakers. Rioting is just the juvenile tantrums of the poor sport losers.

If you want to protest, go ahead and protest. That’s your right. As soon as you throw something, spit, kick, block a road, or do anything other than just protest, you are a criminal.

@unclebobmartin @imjcmartin 2 thoughts: “block a road” just made 90% of the civil rights protesters from the 60’s criminals, sure you want to go there (Think of the bridge in Selma)? 2) So when the government breaks its own laws, you have to let them do it for 2-4 years before even trying to stop it?

Why do people use @1password? Installed it, it pops up a dialog box I can’t dismiss. Go to web site to figure it out, it says “I’m sticking a marketing tracker cookie on you, and you don’t get to stop me!”

@basebaritone @SandyofCthulhu Well, when I read “it’s only good for one thing…” I certainly felt sneered at for daring to like it. That comment negates any appreciation of it as a reference work. If you’d left off the penultimate sentence, I wouldn’t have objected.

@Arlen @SandyofCthulhu 1} I don't recall sneering or saying someone can't enjoy a reference book. 2}It was not written by Tolkien to be sold. It was compiled by his son. Thus: a reference work. 3}I have been put down many a time for not liking it. The sneering comes from the alleged Tolkien purists.

When I said I couldn't get through the first couple chapters of the Silmarillion, the most common comment I got back was "Well it's not supposed to be like LotR and The Hobbit." My response: If it's NOT supposed to be at all like LotR, then why the hell should I read it as opposed to any number of other, far more entertaining books, which are also not at all like LotR. I love Alice in Wonderland, but that doesn't mean I want to read "The Fifth Book of Euclid Treated Algebraically" which is by the same author. One disappointed fellow said I should show more interest in the background that led to Middle Earth. All I can say is I can read actual Greek and Norse myths which also set up a world-view and a background.

@basebaritone @SandyofCthulhu There’s apparently another thing it’s good for; giving you a chance to sneer at other readers’ tastes. If I may slightly rewrite Pink: it’s not here for your entertainment. Some folks want to see the scaffolding, some don’t.

@SandyofCthulhu The Silmarillion is terrible. Less than 1/4 the way through, it becomes obvious it was a reference work. Compiled. Not written in the sense of a book to be enjoyed. It's only good for one thing. it gives rude Tolkien fans a chance to lord it over the rest of us. #LOTR #Tolkien

@SandyofCthulhu Nothing at all wrong with not liking it. It’s not to everyone’s taste—just like every other book ever written, if it comes to that. To me it was like reading DaVinci’s notebooks. I wasn’t expecting entertainment.

@julesgambit O good grief! Events in chess have fostered discussions of vibrating anal beads and created a scandal named “Toiletgate” and his big worry is sleeve lengths? Who‘s looking at a hemline under the table? I’d like to give *him* something to document in his personal records!

Being a woman in chess be like…

I’m considering now just starting to copy/paste some irrelevant Douglas Adams or G B Shaw passages, maybe see if I can gin up a little more absurdity in this. I know, but in these bleak times you sometimes have to take the entertainment where you can get it.

At this point I’m not asking questions, and even telling them there’s no question to answer. And they reply as before. None of the replies are identical, but they’re all equally useless and demonstrate no one is listening.

I’ve been going through a monologue with cur8trend (can’t call it a dialogue, that would require they were actually reading the messages I sent). Been thinking I might write it up as a comedy piece if it continues in this vein.