machine_23

@SandyofCthulhu Suspicious that they chose to confine the native american land to only include the modern continental U.S.

Everyone is legal on conquered land.

@SandyofCthulhu And oven baked, not microwaved :)

NO. The correct way to build nachos is the Texas way. EACH CHIP is individually built. It doesn't need a "tower" of toppings. Just cheese, beans, a pickled jalapeno slice, and maybe some fajita meat. You dip your individual nacho into sour cream, guac, and salsa. Every chip is complete. You never pull out a "dry" chip or have an overloaded chip break on you. Every time I've gotten Texas-style from an out-of-stater they were converted. JRGin's attempt to reverse-engineer Texas nachos is puerile and wrong headed. Stand with me.

Really doubt there will be a 'conventional' war. But I believe that there actually is a real ideologic 'war' taking place, in which the traditional U.S.A. is actually losing. In some ways, it is similar to the way that socialism conquered their host countries in the 20th century.

If it happens (which I doubt) it's not going to be the War Between the States all over again, with blue states vs. red states. It's going to be more like a regular civil war, with people from every state staking their position, and the fighting scattered throughout. And in that case the blue faction will starve and die of thirst almost immediately, because they are mostly in coastal enclaves. The water flows to them from the uplands, which are controlled by red counties.

@SandyofCthulhu The way we do it at home, grilled burgers over a flame.. preferably wood. Though most burger joints in Texas just cook on a griddle. The worst abomination I've seen though was at the fair when some vendor was just boiling the patties.

I promise we don’t do this. We Texans DO deep-fry twinkies, butter, pickles, and coca cola though.

@cb_doge A love rocket if you will.

BREAKING: 𝕏 added a new like animation following merger with SpaceX and xAI.

When we mastered CDs or floppies, the product just had to work off of the shelf. You did everything you could to ensure that what went out was solid. Now that everything is 'in the cloud', project managers and devs have taken it as an excuse to be lazy with the 'we can always patch later' attitude.

So all those years we spent crunching for weeks before game releases were wasted, because it's okay for games to be broken on release. I only had one of my games go out broken (Darklands) and that was because the VP in charge of MPS labs overruled the designers, the artists, and quality assurance in order to get a broken game on the streets in time for the stock market.

@Timcast If this is what they do when they control cities and states, what happens when they control every last institution in the country?

I mean, its beyond insurrection and the DOJ has done nothing. You can argue that maybe something is happening behind the scenes but how did it get this far to begin with?

@SandyofCthulhu Not at my table. I'm one of those GM/DM/Keepers that won't fudge dice. Of course that means I only call for a roll if I'm prepared to deal with any of the possible consequences.

If numbers are “capitalistic” then this explains a LOT about why communist societies fail.

@elonmusk 100% treason. They launched an invasion of our country for the sake of overtaking our representative government.

Well said

@SandyofCthulhu I saw a couple of rants a few years ago demanding 'wheelchair' accessible dungeons. Its pretty clear that these instances in the past few years are more about signaling compliance/wokeness than using common sense. You can't really argue with someone who is checked out.

There exist two types of fictional power. In one, you show how your creation works and how it fits within the world. You don't need to explain everything. If you have a dragon, you can say it flies and breathes fire and your fans should accept it. But if you have your teleport across a continent, an ability not normal to dragons, then they are within their rights demanding an explanation. Or you can say your gunfighter is the fastest in the West. After all one must be the fastest, right? Now if your creation is something novel, like Cthulhu, you need to explain a little more. Cthulhu is huge, immortal, and has vast unknowable powers. "He is from another part of the universe." Then there is the other type of power, where you just invent stuff for comic or dramatic effect and don't justify it ever - like Dragonball Z and One Punch Man. Goku is unbeatable and his power isn't explained, because it's inexplicable and impossible. His ability to "yell so loud it breaks time warps" is just because ... he trained hard? It's on a par with defeating Hitler's blitzkrieg because you pulled out an UNO reverse card on the lead tank in the column. It's nonsensical and silly. Which is kind of the point. It's why we love stuff like One Punch Man. For reasons that are dumb and whiny (I blame myself), it bugs me when someone says "Goku could beat Dracula" or "Saitama could beat Cthulhu". I mean, I guess they could because that's how they're defined. But it's an entirely different way of looking at things. Yes Bugs Bunny could pants Cthulhu, so he'd have to bend over and pull up his shorts while Bugs hits Cthulhu on the head with a frying pan. But understand from which source your fictional power emerges. You can say "My gunfighter is the fastest in the West." without question. But you can't say "My gunfighter is so fast his bullets exceed the speed of light." without either just turning him into a joke or making a feeble attempt at justifying it. This is why the whole idea of wheelchairs in Star Trek or D&D is dumb. It is canon that the "wheelchair" problem has been FIXED in both universes. So you need to invent a reason for it NOT to be fixed. Such as when they said Kirk couldn't take the universal eyeball drug which meant he needed glasses for close-in work. Or Pike's body was so destroyed he would die in seconds without his support chair. Figh wizards, why can't you accept a wheelchair?" is on par with "You accept dragons, why can't you accept a Ford Shelby Mustang in your fantasy world." You CAN accept wheelchairs or, I guess Shelbys, but you must justify it becuase it is from beyond that world. Fight me.

@SandyofCthulhu Wasn't the House character basically a not subtle take on Sherlock Holmes?

So in modern computer RPGs there is a common stereotype of a snarky NPC who always talks down to the PCs. A good example is Naeva from Starfield. The character's thoroughly unpleasant, and just gets your ire up. I genuinely think that modern RPG writers have the false concept that you, the player, will enjoy this kind of character. They may have this idea from whatever weird books or tv series they watch. Like House. "Everyone likes Dr. House right?" Well maybe, but Dr. House spends a LOT of time showing that he is vulnerable, sometimes wrong, and you have hundreds of hours invested in his correctness. The snarky NPC in your computer RPG has less than 10 minutes to get you invested, and that's over the whole of the game. So of course you hate him or her. I do use this kind of NPC in my tabletop roleplaying games, but I do it ONLY when I want the players to thoroughly hate the character for some reason. I sure as heck don't expect them to like the knob.

@DrKarlynB @honeybadgermom I get the feeling that there will be no net loss of productivity felt anywhere in the workforce.

Leftists are planning a mass walkout tomorrow, January 20. They are encouraging people to walk out of their jobs, and students to leave school, to protest. This is not to be confused with the general strike they are planning for Friday, January 23.

@nicksortor They've got a cave troll!

🚨 JUST IN: Some freaking MASSIVE dude just tried to SWING on Border Patrol and quickly got railroaded by agents I hope they have a cell big enough for this fat clown 🤣 Pretty big (literally) FAFO right here

@SandyofCthulhu I had a mechanical with some sticky keys and a teacher that would hit your knuckles with a ruler if you slouched.

How do kids learn to type today? Absorbing from the air?

@iamPB @SandyofCthulhu What I am wondering is if any other nation had inflicted 1:1 casualties on the U.S. though?

@machine23699271 @SandyofCthulhu More US troops died in Europe.

Over the course of the previous two years of war, America had learned that the cost of killing a Japanese soldier was the killing or wounding of an American soldier (roughly). So since we knew there was going to be an army of roughly 1 million well-equipped Japanese, we expected to take a million casualties. Of course not all our losses would be deaths - we estimated about 100k dead. That would have increased our total deaths vs. Japan from 160k to 260k. Dropping the bombs not only saved the million japanese soldiers, but our 100k soldiers PLUS all the Japanese civilian deaths, which if proportional to Okinawa would have been at least equal to the army deaths. And probably more, since Japan was already starting to starve in August, and it would have been severe by the time of Operation Olympic in November.

I fail to understand how we're not in an actual national emergency now. The existing systems would be overwhelmed with the amount of rampant corruption if it where functioning. However, given those same systems are also infested with the said corruption, the process gets sabotaged. In the workplace, this would be an 'all hands on deck, forget processes and make things work before we become irrelevant' type of situation.

Pam Bondi might be the busiest person in the world. How could she address even 1% of what we discovered this month?

@SandyofCthulhu Supervillains must have a lair I guess?

Dol Goldur.

@osgamer74 When I worked in a test lab in the mid 90s, it turns out that the Japanese versions of the windows OS did indeed designate the first hdd as A:.

Even thought this is humourous rhetoric this query still depresses me

@SandyofCthulhu Well, it was entertaining to watch at least. Also.. all the nice stonework was clearly a product of ancient dwarves.

Once on the Ancient Aliens show on the "History Channel", the guy explains that aliens eliminated the dinosaurs by turning them into coelacanths. Fun exercise: explain this to a paleontologist (I did) and you can see their head spin around and steam jet out of their ears.