Red Duke Games

@elonmusk @Rothmus If it wasn’t actually 100% designed that way in the first place…

@Rothmus Any given government program will become the opposite of its name

The War on Poverty didn’t conquer poverty, it entrenched it, fostering a permanent underclass through dependency and family breakdown. The Inflation Reduction Act did no such thing, it fueled more spending and inflationary pressure. The Patriot Act was anything but patriotic, erecting a vast, permanent surveillance state that eroded civil liberties in the name of security. Time and again, these grandly named “Acts” deliver the precise opposite of their promises. Government interventions routinely ignore second-order consequences, distorted incentives, unintended behaviors, and cascading failures, leaving us with more problems than we started with. Perhaps it’s time for Washington to step back from micromanaging the economy and people’s lives, before the unintended damage grows even worse.

@Brodysseus93 Here you go, straight out of our cocktail book - LoveCraft Cocktails

@RedDukeGames But where is the Tequila cocktail for #CincodeQuatro?

5 oz #woodchuckcider 1 oz #thistlefinchdistillery Tom’s NecroNomNomRum 0.5 #blackriflecoffee dark roast #starwars #maythefourth #rum #coffee #cocktails

I'm deeply interested in the subject, and have always thought "~96% of the universe is totally invisible and probably always will be" very unsatisfying. I wondered if the universe looks the way it does because of the texture of the canvas it's painted on, not because 96% of it is missing or invisible. How did space get a near-infinitely fine (well, down to the Planck scale, at most) fractal texture? Suppose the primordial matter-antimatter annihilation left a permanent mark on the fabric of the universe...? Might that do it? I have no idea, but these ideas accompany me to sleep most nights. It's heartwarming to know I might have touched an inkling of a possible truth.

@RedDukeGames @skdh Red Duke you are kind and correct. Your intuition is spot on!

What if dark matter doesn't exist? A short collection of some physicist's opinions (including mine) here: gizmodo.com/what-if-dark-m…

That’s…wow. I have a lot of reading to do - most of which will be mathematically way over my head. If I read the abstract correctly, this postulates a “geometric substrate”. So, ‘dark topology’, not matter. We’re speaking the same language, you’re just saying it with far, far more precision?

@RedDukeGames @skdh Brilliant Red Duke!!! I agree, proposed, tested, and published. ijqf.org/archives/8110

Suppose that space itself has texture at a fine scale? Not only does “empty” space fold around mass, it also grabs and holds it like a kind of friction. Galaxies don’t fly apart because all matter is embedded in something that at the smallest scales grips it just enough to produce the universe we see. Such a thing should be testable, and would eliminate the need for dark matter.

One issue with the standard dark matter picture is that it leans heavily on Gaussian equilibrium assumptions for halo structure and velocity distributions. Those aren’t derived from fundamental dynamics—they’re imposed for tractability. If the underlying system is non-equilibrium or history-dependent, that approximation could be the source of the discrepancy rather than the solution. ijqf.org/archives/8110

@hikaruganji That is certainly a very good example of a person, at least.

この方は、人間の姿をした神ですね。

@japan_nobunaga That person should be ignored. Loudly.

My hands are shaking writing this. A small Japanese flag, the size of a paperback book, tied to the bumper of a city bus on a Japanese national holiday in 2026. And online, someone is calling it "discriminatory." A flag. A bus. A national holiday. In Japan. In Paris, the tricolor covers every boulevard on July 14. Nobody calls it discriminatory. In Texas, every porch flies the Stars and Stripes on July 4. Nobody calls it discriminatory. In London, the Union Jack drapes Buckingham Palace for the King. Nobody calls it discriminatory. Only here. Only our flag. Only on our own holidays, on our own buses, on our own quiet streets. I keep asking how we got here. I do not have an answer. That flag is not too loud. The shame trying to silence it is.

@CuriosityonX @skdh

If aliens requested a meeting with a sole individual to represent the human race, whom should we send?

@JoshPhillipsPhD Exactly.

The idea that one reads simply to “understand the summary” misses the point and it’s depressing to see people in the industry pushing this idea You read for the prose. The love of the language. To savor the unfolding story. The point of reading isn’t to get through books quickly

@RobertlewisIR I don’t think you’re wrong. Weird to say, but it fits.

Something I've been thinking about lately. It seems for some reason widows in particular end up being targets in what some may call the culture war and others may call spiritual warfare. And they end up targeted more directly and more maliciously than so many others. I remember a social media thread I saw several years ago, long before any of the current political bickering took hold. Indeed, it wasn't even in the context of anything political, religious, or involving public figures. It involved people who were ostensibly friends or at least friendly business acquaintances. But it's haunted me. One of them had recently lost her husband and she posted a completely non-confrontational religious message. I don't remember if it was an Easter greeting or just a remark that she appreciated the prayers, but it was something along those lines. But it was clearly nothing more than a grieving widow expressing how her faith gave her some meaning in such a troubled time. Sure enough, the trolls--even people she thought she knew well--came out of the woodwork to mock her faith and give her hell for what she'd said. I honestly struggle to call that kind of behavior anything short of demonic. 🕯️

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@SandyofCthulhu @memeslich I think it is counterproductive. It disengages players who (if you did your job right as DM) worked hard for those milestones. I prefer attribute drain. It accomplishes most of the same immediate impact, without punishing dedication to the campaign.

@memeslich Is it time to bring back old fashioned level drain?

Ask me any dungeons & dragons questions you have.

@RobertlewisIR Someone cast Inexorable Entropic Enshitification on it.

Remember when the Internet was just full of nerds and if you signed up for an email address or built a website, things just *worked* the way they were supposed to? What the hell happened to that? 🕯️

@sirCharIess @cb_doge To help people regain the use of limbs? Speak? Function, recover, and use prosthesis? The inhumanity!

@cb_doge Saying he favours humanity over computers while elon musk is literally putting chips in peoples brains lmao

Elon Musk turned down all shares when he left OpenAI because he believed nonprofits are not meant for self-enrichment. "The reason I founded OpenAI was because I was concerned, based on my conversations with Larry Page, that he was not sufficiently concerned about the dangers of AI. At my birthday party, he, in front of a large group of people, called me a speciesist, for favoring humanity over computers. So after that, I was like, We got to have some counterbalance to Google, because Larry doesn't seem to care if humans make it or not. So I thought, what's the opposite of Google? It would be an open source nonprofit, and that's where the word open, in OpenAI comes from. It means open source. I provided all the money, recruited the key people, and taught them everything I know. I actually even got them to deal with Microsoft. And for all that, I did not seek any financial reward whatsoever. The reason I actually took down the offer for shares is because, I mean, I felt like what are the shares, and why like nonprofits supposed to have shares? Nonprofits are not supposed to be self enrichment, so that's why I turned on the offer of shares." — Elon Musk

What about the harm you do in allowing the miscreant to feel emboldened by lack of consequences? “Broken windows multiply.” By sparing minor bad actors from serious consequences - we create major bad actors. Are we not then partially responsible for the harm they do? Could we not have spared their victims some amount of suffering by teaching the right (even if harsh) lessons sooner? Is sparing the rod the wisest course?

This post is an excellent litmus test for understanding of just war theory. Despite the fact that I can see how effective this would be, I must oppose it because the damage it would do to my enemy (who bashes in my mailbox) would far outweigh the good of saving my mailbox. Its disproportionality is opposed by our duty in charity (and even justice) to watch out even for the good of our enemies. (Yes, by the way, I have had my mailbox bashed in by random vandals.)

@RobertlewisIR @insatiablevine By pointing out the rot. Loudly. With derisive laughter. And shaming. And mockery. Until it dies.

@insatiablevine Start by getting our own heads right. Then putting our families in order. Then fixing our neighborhoods. Then our towns.

How do we unfuck this Country ? 🆘

@SandyofCthulhu You’re right. A possible exception is Faerie Tale, by Raymond E. Feist . I’ve started several horror novels. They always want to turn into adventure. Short fiction seems to be my preferred medium. Those, I finish.

There are mostly only good horror short stories and novelettes. It's so hard to make a good horror novel that it has only been accomplished a couple of times. Bram Stoker did it once (Dracula), Arthur Machen did it once (The Great God Pan), Shirley Jackson did it twice (Haunting of Hill House & We Have Always Lived in the Castle), and there's not many others. Think about Stephen King. His short stories are head and shoulders superior to his turgid over-long novels. When we think back on his novels what do we remember? The characters? No. We remember Ralphie floating outside his brother's window, or an evil clown peering out of the storm drain, or the Overlook's topiary animals stalking Danny. No one remembers the plot, because they stink. Ask someone to remember the plot of Lord of the Rings or To Kill a Mockingbird or Death on the Nile or Harry Potter and they can recount it at tedious length. But The Stand's plot? Um ... there was an epidemic and then ... Las Vegas? Or something? We only recall the short scenes - the books' equivalents to short stories. I think King knows this, which is why his books go for about 2 chapters, then a scary scene, then another 2 chapters, then scary. Rinse and repeat. Lovecraft's two longest tales clock in at about 130 pages. M. R. James never wrote a horror novel. The two sentence horror trend is solid. There's a reason for this, and it's because it's very difficult to keep the terror going for a novel's length. Below is one of the shortest horror stories ever written, by Fredric Brown, who wrote some REALLY scary short vignettes. He wrote novels, too, but they weren't horror and thus are just fine. Here's your chance to prove me wrong in the comments.

@nagoyan2gou That’s bullshit. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, and Christianity and Nazism were not associated at all. Everyone was friends with each other, with no regard for who was what.

昔の「ハーベスト・タイム」での中川先生の話。ユダヤ人にクリスチャンといったら何を連想するかと聞けば、第一にあがるのはナチスだという。立ち位置が変われば連想するものも異なってくる。