Nate Winchester

@douglasernst @iconic_comics (Kamen America would be a definite fit for unviersus - they had several My Hero Academia sets after all. Soulfinder... could fit in there, but I wouldn't blame you if you wanted it in a different game/experience. Like... say, Deliverance. boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2738…)

I’ve had multiple people approach me about card games over the years. I’m open to it, but I’m historically very cautious about branching out unless I can guarantee the quality is high. For example, today it looks like I **finally** found the right company to work with me on apparel, etc. We’ll see, but I got to speak with them face-to-face and I was impressed with their ability to address my most pressing concerns.

@douglasernst, I wonder how feasible it is to get @iconic_comics to do some promotion with universus. Back in 2020 they did a cross promotion with zenescope zenescope.com/products/gft-o… A big appeal of the game is the "mega crossover" possibilities. (hypothetical card posted)

@douglasernst @iconic_comics I can say, if you ever want a quick review of game companies - hit me up. There's a good chance I have played something they have put out so can give you overview of game play and components.

@douglasernst @iconic_comics Totally understand that. Though universus has been around for like... 10 years now. So it does have a more proven track record than say... myself. (who dreams about making games but still hasn't got to launch yet)

@2centsOfficial @BullyEsq Thank you. I was about to rope in @disparutoo if somebody didn't bring this up.

@BullyEsq I have very bad news for you...

@BStardAlan @AriKrauss Meme still relevant. knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-was-on…

@AriKrauss It's ok.. it was "sarcasm".. 😉

Imagine being this uneducated on a topic you feel this strongly about

@FoxFier3 @HouseofMourthia Unlike the meme, she IS a credit to the Empire.

@simplegarak @HouseofMourthia They couldn't get blood colors right, and they couldn't keep their own continuity solid.... But that a kid whose main investment in Star Trek is "mom and dad keep dragging us to Kirk's future birthplace" knowing that off the top of her head made me giggle.

Its cancellation was about as shocking as Liberace's sexuality.

@FoxFier3 @HouseofMourthia That is literally the least canon break thing they did on that show... (suppressing rant... suppressing rant...)

@HouseofMourthia Didn't watch it, heard from a friend that they screwed up the Klingon language on screen-- and my 15 year old daughter frowned, went "aren't there like a dozen translation sites that will do that for you?"

@kamas716 @_Mark_Atwood @aakashgupta I'd bet Elon's dream is spaceFab one day...

@_Mark_Atwood @aakashgupta North Dakota would be another geologically boring place to consider. It has had one measurable quake, in 1968. Only about a dozen quakes from other states/provinces have been felt here.

The math on Terafab should scare every chipmaker on Earth. TSMC made $122 billion in revenue last year. It controls 70% of the global foundry market. It took nearly four decades, over $100 billion in cumulative capex, and the concentrated talent of an entire island to build that position. Elon just announced he’s spending $25 billion to build a competing fab from scratch, in Austin, targeting 2nm, with zero semiconductor manufacturing experience. Here’s why dismissing it might be the wrong call. TSMC’s largest individual fabs cost $15-20 billion each and process around 100,000 wafer starts per month. Samsung’s Taylor, Texas fab ballooned from $17 billion to $44 billion across two modules for 50,000 wafer starts. Intel’s two Arizona fabs went from $20 billion to $32 billion before producing a single commercial wafer. Every major fab project in America has blown past its budget. Terafab’s $25 billion estimate is probably low. But the demand math is what matters. Elon claims existing global fab capacity covers roughly 2% of what Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI will need across vehicles, Optimus robots, and orbital AI satellites. Tesla ended 2025 with $44 billion in cash. Its 2026 capex guidance already exceeds $20 billion before Terafab costs are folded in. The company spent $8.5 billion in capex last year and generated $6.2 billion in free cash flow on $94.8 billion in revenue. That’s thin for a project this size. Tesla’s own 10-K acknowledges the company may need to raise additional capital. Now consider the demand side. Tesla wants millions of Optimus robots, each needing inference chips. Cybercab fleets need onboard AI compute. SpaceX filed with the FCC in January to launch up to one million satellites for orbital data centers. xAI needs training and inference silicon at scale. If even 20% of that roadmap materializes, no external supplier will prioritize one customer’s capacity over existing commitments to Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm. TSMC allocates capacity based on margin and volume commitments. When the queue gets tight, and it’s already tight at 3nm and below, you either own your supply or you wait. Elon has spent a decade getting told that vertical integration was a dead end for an automaker, that no car company could build a charging network, that manufacturing your own battery cells was impossible. The Gigafactory in Nevada was dismissed as a vanity project in 2014. The 4680 battery program was late and messy. But the Gigafactory model worked. The question is whether that playbook transfers to semiconductors, where the physics are harder and the talent is scarcer. One detail worth watching: Tesla already designs its own inference chips. The AI4 and AI5 are custom silicon. Terafab would move from fabless design to in-house manufacturing. That’s the leap AMD avoided and Apple never attempted. The last company to pull it off at scale was Samsung, and it took them decades. The semiconductor industry spent 40 years consolidating into three companies that can make leading-edge chips. Elon just bet $25 billion that a fourth seat at the table exists.

@monsterhunter45 I was happy to finally see Forgotten Warrior books in Barnes & Noble when I went there yesterday. Finally got the copy of book 4 I needed. (I now wish I had gotten the larger soft back prints but I'm stuck on the smaller paperbacks right now)

@simplegarak From Valiant Armory.

That is everything I’ve published. That’s written, cowritten, or I was the editor. Tetsubo and Angruvadal for scale.

@Andros_le_wuff @LT66236 Then the community can support it. Why do the feds need to give them money? Crowdfunding is in an amazing place today. Put museums on something like patreon and let volunteers who like it, support it.

@LT66236 4/ It's a community-oriented historical museum with rotating exhibits, educational programs, and preservation of local material culture and the HVAC upgrade was needed to protect those collections from temperature/humidity damage.

I finally got around to watching hours of depositions of the DOGE kids that leftist groups forced on them purely to harass them, saddle them with huge legal expenses, and, more importantly, discourage anyone else from ever volunteering for their heroic effort. This is what is known as lawfare. Legal processes are abused to make people’s lives miserable, not because they did anything wrong, but because others disagree with them on policy. Those disputes should be fought entirely in the political arena, but the left does not fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules. They do whatever works. In this case it is even worse because these DOGE kids are not political actors and certainly not MAGA activists. They were literally there to perform a narrow technical task: identify wasteful and DEI grants in order to save government spending. They are not even decision makers. They are essentially clerks who flag questionable grants and compile lists, after which political appointees decide what to do. One of these kids even testified that he had donated to Obama, but that did not matter to the mob. The whole exercise was completely beyond the pale and totally devoid of substance or justification. The lawyers pushing this spectacle failed to identify a single serious problem. By the end they were so desperate that they started questioning the witnesses about one ridiculously wasteful grant that apparently slipped through the cracks. In other words, they ended up arguing the opposite of their own case, effectively conceding that DOGE had been doing a great job while desperately clinging to the idea that it had not achieved total perfection. But of course that was never the point. The objective was intimidation. The kids were harassed, others watching will think twice before stepping forward, and the government grift machine will roll on.

@SandyofCthulhu All within my lifetime. If I can see the final communist states fade away before I go, it will have been a great life.

In 1980, there were 22 officially Communist or Marxist states. Today there are five. Four of these have explicitly adopted capitalist objectives and elements such as foreign investment, market reforms, and private enterprise. Almost the only "communist" feature they've kept is the one-party state. So Communism went from 22 nations to 1-2 (depending on how you count Cuba), and it was, in every case, voluntarily abandoned. Not forced out. But yeah keep telling me capitalism has failed and I'm on the wrong side of history. (image: shopping plaza in "communist china")

@nightflyblog @RocketPulpHack @SarahAHoyt "Sharky, formerly Saurman, austere palantir scholar and tower decorator, has been brutally executed by savage Hobbits today."

@RocketPulpHack @SarahAHoyt “Sauron, brilliant jeweller and craftsman, has died”

I can't take the gaslighting, guys. I really can't. Some Hobbits are now running around saying "Mordor has been waging war on us for 4700 years." Okay then why didn't any of you call for a siege of the Black Gate at any point until now? Why didn't you make a case for Elves and Men "ending the war, not starting it" until precisely the moment when Aragorn did it?

@freddoso Same as the rest of us. One day at a time.

Every now and then I remember something pertinent. How did I get so old?

Fun fact: In 1996, Barack Obama won his first elected office (Illinois state Senate) by throwing all of his opponents off the ballot. One of his tactics for disqualifying them was to challenge signatures on his opponents' petitions by married women who signed using the wrong name. Happy International Women's Day. wsj.com/articles/SB121…

@RobFergRC @monsterhunter45 (the blade isn't black enough though) I wonder if I can pay extra for the AI add on for it...

@simplegarak @monsterhunter45 looks pretty sweet: valiant-armoury.com/products/fs-80…

@RobFergRC @monsterhunter45

@monsterhunter45 @Parisianaes1 Umm....

@Parisianaes1 The US has the descendants of the guys who built that stuff, while the losers stayed home.

Europe has the Eiffel Tower Europe has the Colosseum Europe has Big Ben Europe has the Acropolis Europe has the Sagrada Família Europe has the Louvre China has the Great Wall China has the Forbidden City China has the Terracotta Army, etc The United States has...?

@LavenderGhast This looks like the setup for a Habitual Linecrosser video... (I can hear them in my head now)

Meeting of the Ents if LotR was American.

@John_Cyrano I mean technically wouldn't Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland count as Isekai?

You probably didn't know this but isekai didn't begin in Japan. I read the heck out of this series. Let me know if you've read it before?