Crusinos's page

I can't knock on a door without it exploding off its hinges and killing everyone in the room.

#level20problems

KarlBob wrote:

Speaking of ether, I heard something interesting about dark matter recently on NPR: for all we know, there could be tons of the stuff all around us right this moment, even passing through our bodies. It almost never interacts with the kind of matter that we're made of, so we don't notice it.

That sounds a lot like ether (except for the "transmission medium for light waves" aspect of ether). If you had some way to increase the interaction of normal matter with dark matter, and only turned it on when the normal matter was traveling "backwards" in the resonant chamber of an EM-style drive, then you would have something to push against. Since it wouldn't interact with the rest of the ship, you'd go forward.

(Sure, it wouldn't work for many, many reasons, but it's fun to resurrect a discredited 19th Century theory like ether by substituting a 20th/21st Century buzzword like dark matter.)

Didn't we recently learn that Dark Matter probably doesn't exist? Or at least not nearly in the amounts or the way we previously thought. As in, we were arrogant enough to make up a whole other type of theoretical matter because our existing technology wasn't able to "see" the matter that made something be as heavy as it was supposed to be. Then we used a better piece of technology and were able to see it, and now we are tossing 50 years of science out the nearest airlock.

I could be off on this, but I seem to remember hearing quite a bit about it lately.

Commenting while home from work temporarily (exciting time with the particle accelerators!).

As far as I know, we never found the missing matter and every test to find dark matter turned up goose eggs. As in, by all evidence the missing matter simply is not there. I know there's been some work on alternative theories of gravity, such as this one.

I would be very interested if we found that missing matter.

Edit
Was this the discovery you were referring to?

Back in my day, RIFTS caused a burning sensation that required the use of potent prescription ointments and topical creams to alleviate. Simply avoiding the game proved more cost effective.

Back in my day, we used pit traps loaded with RIFTS books to discard disruptive players.

Okay, here's a question that bugs me...

Do marine mammals see a different light spectrum than humans do?

After casting Time Stop while under the effects of Time Stop cast while Time Stop is active, I think I broke time.

#level20problems

There is a webcomic I think is worth a read: Flaky Pastry. It has an utterly adorable proposal and a king not willing to let that be a problem for the royal lineage.

Just heard about a cool project call In a Bind.

Basically, they take donations of binders that are no longer needed, and then make them available to trans masculine and genderqueer youth in need. Details at the link.

I'll let my work know about this. We'll see what binders clear quarantine procedures and donate those.

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Apparently, the key Disney Parent Survival Tip: Stay the f~%! away from your child until the late teens.

** spoiler omitted **

105) Emergency flail (if you're not the wizard).

Judging by how many giant inflatable human sized hamster balls we sell, I will agree.

Giant human sized hamster balls, the transportation of the future.

Most likely jet powered, and steered via Braintooth (think a blue tooth that you put on your temple)

I can, um, guarantee at least a few of them are NOT used for transportation purposes...

Also, they need to be more durable.

Please keep them coming. I'm building my late-December after-work movie list :D

Captain ? wrote:

Yeah! capture that Pokemon and/or eat that sushi, whichever it is.

Or isn't. Or was.

that image goes into my uncanny valley pretty freaking deep.

Magikarp rolls!

I can name one group that knows they're getting close when the Geiger counter starts redlining.

I need a set of movies I can watch with maybe two operating braincells, one of which is probably boozed to the dendrites, and still manage to enjoy it.

And please don't say anything Transformers. Or Michael Bay in particular. If I wanted explosions, I'd go to the experimental chemistry section of the lab.

I might as well post this!

They're working on a form of induced enhanced learning. So far, encouraging results.

I managed to introduce a new group of players, with new GM to boot, to a module. I described it as "a fun-filled romp full of surprises" when convincing them to play.

It was Tomb of Horrors.

After the first near-TPK, the paladin sold his soul to Asmodeus for the ability to cast true resurrection three times per day per person. It wasn't enough; they still TPKed.

Six TPKs later and rather than try it again, they hunted down Baba Yaga, used her to come to Earth, kidnapped Albert Einstein, used him to build a magical atomic bomb, and literally nuked the dungeon.

And then the GM gave me a dirty look when I revealed it took my original group ten TPKs the first time we played it.

This one is on my list to see!

I'm now home from the hospital, with 38 cm of picc line running to my heart and an antibiotic that requires a weekly blood test to ensure that it's not killing my kidneys.

But I am home, and my other half is making us a real Thanksgiving dinner!!!

I hope you improve rapidly!

Crusinos wrote:

I work with people who call quantum mechanics "easy." I've had to play the voice of reason in near-slapfights related to quirks of particles I can't even pronounce the names of, let alone understand the related math.

What do you do that means you work alongside quantum physicists but don't understand any of the physics?

Diplomacy and public relations. My job is to convince people capable of funding their lab experiments that it's a good idea. They also use me as a sounding board for when they have to translate from science-speak to English.

thejeff wrote:

Crusinos wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

I'll take it seriously the day they actually stick it on a probe and try it out...

And then if it works, I'll start demanding a Pluto orbiter.

They won't do that until they figure out how it works. After all, the last thing you want is to find out too late that the engines you just sent up generate black holes in zero gravity. And when you can't explain the physics behind how something works, you can't rule that out.

You don't understand scientists at all do you?

Of course they'd build one and try it just to see what happens. How else are they going to find out how it works? Or if it works.

I'm late to the party, but...

My favorite example of "how scientists are" is Poltergeist. Something spooky and unseen is pulling all the chairs toward the middle of your dining room. If your reaction is to put your kid on one of the chairs and measure how fast it moves under load conditions, you might be a scientist.

And you would quickly get fired from any lab worth speaking of for ethics violations if you're that willing to risk a human life without having first run through tests using inanimate objects or animals.

This isn't Nazi Germany or Pasteur's labs.

Will you sparkle in the sunlight. :-)

Red, yellow, black and white!

Okay, I have good news, bad news, and worse news.

Good news: While negotiating with Russia to allow my company to do some business there, my joke about strapping the leaders of both nations to the nukes went over very well!

Bad news: They hate their leaders more than we hate our's and thought I was serious.

Worse news: They lost the deactivation codes, and there were only so many times they could delay the launch.

Well, everyone, as I make some calls about fallout shelters, I would like you to enjoy this year's Christmas Theme Song

Crusinos wrote:

Sharoth wrote:

Has anyone tried the Baldur's Gate I & II Enhanced Edition and is it worth buying if I already have the original?

Yes. Yes. Yes! YES!

Also, get the third game. It improves the storyline so much!

Baldur's Gate - Siege of Dragonspire?

Yes! It's the perfect interlude between 1 and 2!

Has anyone tried the Baldur's Gate I & II Enhanced Edition and is it worth buying if I already have the original?

Yes. Yes. Yes! YES!

Also, get the third game. It improves the storyline so much!

The final food-themed monster is probably the worst of the bunch.

My players will hate you.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

New York Lawmaker’s ‘Pence’ Bill Would Ban Abusive LGBTQ ‘Conversion Therapy’

New York is having none of that $#!+

Can my state borrow those lawmakers for a few years? You can just drop our's off in the Bermuda Triangle.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

Hitdice wrote:

It feels like that every time it happens Quark, until you realize that what you though was the very foundation was just mere observation.

But if the EM Drive is as advertised, what it means is we don't even know how to do science.

I'm afraid this is just wrong.

If the EM-drive works as advertised, then it simply means a) that we have no explanation ready-made for something that we had never seen before, and b) that something that we developed to explain what we have seen (Noether's symmetries) hinge on a false assumption. Neither of those are unprecedented in science, and neither of them, frankly, are all that unexpected.

For example, we had no explanation of Roentgen rays when they were first observed; they were just some strange phenomenon; by the time we got an actual explanation, we had developed quantum mechanics and we had realized that, yes, energy and mass were actually the same thing (and that the law of conservation of energy was not true, and neither was the law of conservation of matter). Our current best understanding is that energy and mass are the same thing (hence the law of conservation of mass-energy, which we call the law of conservation of energy, although it's different from what a 19th century scientist meant by the term) and it may well be that mass, energy, and charisma are all the same thing, and we just haven't realized the procedure for converting the energy of a battery into charisma yet.

ETA: if the EM-drive actually works as advertised, then I suspect what it will end up meaning is either that the laws of physics are not only anisotropic (which we already knew), but location-dependent as well, or it will mean that our understanding of momentum will need to be merged with some other concept and we'll end up with the law of conservation of momentum/Wisdom.

Let me just say my money is on Occam's Razor at this point.

EM...

The thinking is usually, "If I give this guy money, will he please go away for good?"

It's a fine tradition that started with Columbus setting sail for India.

Nah. That's how you end up wondering how flightless waterfowl can exist while your penguin friend fades from the universe.

And I may have just dated myself with that reference.

If you could manage -20 AC, you would get dirty looks from everyone...

I am the grognard of my group. They jokingly refer to me as Chief Rolling Dice. And ask me what America was like before the white man came.

I once popped both knees and my back by standing up, so the teasing sticks.

I can still do ThAC0 in my head, too.

1,000 posts milestone today! Huzzah!!

It pales in comparison to many of you, my fellow FaWtLies, but I'm glad I've been around long enough to get here. Thanks for reading and replying!

Grats! One thousand down, infinity minus one thousand to go!

Icy, grats! I thought I posted this earlier, but apparently I got too busy with inconsequential arguments. I'm facepalming at that.

And, I'm apparently spending the last week of December doing some on-site work. They need the company idiot so the scientists can practice dumbing down what they say to the point the common man can understand it. Yes, I made my lack of education into a career opportunity.

Paladin, to chaotic evil cleric after hearing about the cleric's last offering to the gods and why they no longer have to worry about orc babies: "Not smiting you should be an alignment check."

Crusinos wrote:

There's always the more simple explanation that we don't know what the rules are and found something that demonstrates our ignorance.

There's been a few examples of that before. It usually precedes a massive advancement in human knowledge.

Yes.

The major "problem" with accepting this outright, though, is that the rules as we currently understand them really seem internally consistent and have seemingly proven themselves to the most rigorous of testing - by both math and practical, where possible - to the point that something this significant is akin to having to start over from the very beginning.

I want this to work. It would be amazing.

The most likely explanation is probably an error somewhere that no one is noticing somehow - one of the reasons NASA is testing it in space before accepting it is in order to show that there really is something happening and it's not just experimental error. If not an error, than we need to rethink everything and do so a lot. This only applies to a single well-established rule... but it's such a well-established rule that, if it's wrong, we no longer really understand how anything works, because it's part of the cornerstone of how we do stuff.

The problem with this is that the most rigorous of testing doesn't mean we're right. Even ignoring the problem of trying to figure out the laws of physics for the entire universe while being trapped on a single planet, we still have the fact that our own history of scientific advancement brings up multiple times where the most rigorous of testing provided conclusions that fit all evidence available but turned out to be laughably wrong later.

Like the Sun orbiting the Earth, or some of the early Greek ideas of what an atom is. Theories about Earth land formation before plate tectonics were discovered. Eugenics comes to mind. Turning lead into gold through chemicals. Some of the early theories about dinosaur physiology. That Columbus would die before reaching land. Mars having life advanced enough to build canals. Radiation between Earth and the Moon being too high to survive.

It doesn't require our scientists to be dumb or to not have made every effort for them to be totally wrong about how the universe works. It just takes it being some aspect of our technological limitations causing us to be limited to erroneous conclusions. Because if we can't even investigate the right answer, we're never going to reach it to begin with.

Work on producing the EmDrive first started in 2001. What zylphryx's post about NASA is talking about is a second gen model. Not some new drive or something just now invented, but something that's been around long enough to have a second generation. And if I read a certain UK patent document right, there may even be a third gen device in the prototype stages.

If they were going to utterly disprove it, I think they would have by now. This isn't a new technology anymore.

And if you want an example of something even more insane in science's history, just take a look at quantum mechanics. That's the field where "crazy enough to work" is the benchmark for theories.

Oh, and that bit about not knowing the laws of physics? That's not random conjecture. The EmDrive is being used to tout a new theory of inertia.

There's always the more simple explanation that we don't know what the rules are and found something that demonstrates our ignorance.

There's been a few examples of that before. It usually precedes a massive advancement in human knowledge.

NobodysHome wrote:

Tacticslion wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Tacticslion wrote:

NH mercilessly slaughters children

Weird... I don't REMEMBER naming my thread that...

It's basically the same thing...

>.>

OK... killed another two tonight, but one was an adult! An ADULT!!!!!

No, actually you manipulated the rules in a non-standard manner to make sure the adult lives, even as the child was mauled by undead tigers...

ಠ_ಠ

*scritches notes, knows who to blame when players break*

The pilot. His name is Grisfarb. He's from the planet Eviltoria and was seriously misinformed about Earth culture when he landed.

The next poster has met Grisfarb and has the scars to prove it.

Sometimes there are problems with using games to help people deal with their mental issues. You can have players who, rather than deal with them, decided to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. After watching a few Alices, you begin to wonder.

It depends far too much on the individual. I've had to significantly alter campaigns more than once when I've noticed someone is beginning to chase the rabbit. I won't even run some adventure paths because I have players I know are not in a mental state to handle them.

Crusinos wrote:

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Just a reminder, folks - if you live in America and go shopping tomorrow, you're a horrible, horrible monster contributing to the retail industry's stealing one of the only two guaranteed holidays there was left.

Does that count as politics? I don't think so. I didn't mention any politicians or politics.

Just...seriously. Don't. It's not worth saving an extra ten percent.

People tomorrow are insane when shopping. Seriously, I wouldn't recommend it without a full suit of X-01 Mark VI power armor.

For the first twenty or so years of my life, I believed that Black Friday was so called because it is a day of tumult and evil for those who step outside the safety of their homes. The retail culture origins of the term has since been explained to me, but I still think my first understanding is more accurate.

Definitely.

And for a long time, I thought Christmas had a certain religious connotation because if you went shopping the day before, you'd be talking with him on that day.

What is it about holidays that reduces humans to base primates?

I'll take it seriously the day they actually stick it on a probe and try it out...

And then if it works, I'll start demanding a Pluto orbiter.

They won't do that until they figure out how it works. After all, the last thing you want is to find out too late that the engines you just sent up generate black holes in zero gravity. And when you can't explain the physics behind how something works, you can't rule that out.

Thank you both for the answers! I think I understand now.

Er, no. At the macro level, it apparently produces a force without a counterforce, which again violates the various conservation laws -- it produces a measurable force on the (macroscopic) equipment.

Okay, for those of us whose science education was American public school and we didn't even do well at that (yes, I am counting the voices in my head), could you explain this in more detail?

Not a foundation for an argument. I'm actually kinda lost at this point. Thought I had the thread earlier.

Just a reminder, folks - if you live in America and go shopping tomorrow, you're a horrible, horrible monster contributing to the retail industry's stealing one of the only two guaranteed holidays there was left.

Does that count as politics? I don't think so. I didn't mention any politicians or politics.

Just...seriously. Don't. It's not worth saving an extra ten percent.

People tomorrow are insane when shopping. Seriously, I wouldn't recommend it without a full suit of X-01 Mark VI power armor.

Crusinos wrote:

Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

Why is no one getting riled up about movies coming out of France? or the U.K.? or China? or Japan? What about unions and actors guilds people... do studios have complete freedom over what they do? or are they bound by certain laws and regulations about staffing and filming locations? does casting a movie in the USA come with certain obligations to give parts to American actors?

I don't know the answers to all this, but I know there's an entire industry thriving on making movies - just look at the credits at the end of any movie. Legal is a huge part of the equation. I just don't have enough information to base an informed opinion on this subject.

I agree with the above posters that money is probably the biggest, number one reason for casting though. When the casting of a Japanese or African or European or Russian or [...+n_Ethnicity] character goes to an actor of a different ethnicity, are reparations or compensations made to the authors or creators of the said characters? do they have a say in it, or did they sign that privilege away when the studio bought their intellectual property? I don't know. Maybe someone from the movie industry that's on this thread can comment, but this appears to be a complex issue that would benefit from such facts and a dreaded backstory to understand all ramifications...

The Japanese creators of Ghost in the Shell are perfectly happy with the race change. They've stated such multiple times in multiple media formats.

Pretty much, this is entirely an American argument. The rest of the world doesn't care, and likely never will. A lot of them, from what I've seen, would prefer it if we'd just shut up about this issue. After all, as several of them have put to me bluntly when I've asked about it, "you can't steal culture."

Which is complete and total b*~*@%@*.

It's called appropriation.

And most cultures, from what I've seen, don't care.

You think Japan cares if we appropriate anime or anime characters? When it comes to appropriation, the Japanese are the cultural equivalent of pack rats; they take everything they can, including language when they can adapt it. Appropriating English even has a term: wasei eigo.

Cultural appropriation is only a problem if it offends those being appropriated from. And relevant to this conversation: The Japanese don't care. Everything that was necessary for Ghost in the Shell to exist they appropriated from America anyway (yes, even anime; it's a humanized form of Donald Duck).

Why is no one getting riled up about movies coming out of France? or the U.K.? or China? or Japan? What about unions and actors guilds people... do studios have complete freedom over what they do? or are they bound by certain laws and regulations about staffing and filming locations? does casting a movie in the USA come with certain obligations to give parts to American actors?

I don't know the answers to all this, but I know there's an entire industry thriving on making movies - just look at the credits at the end of any movie. Legal is a huge part of the equation. I just don't have enough information to base an informed opinion on this subject.

I agree with the above posters that money is probably the biggest, number one reason for casting though. When the casting of a Japanese or African or European or Russian or [...+n_Ethnicity] character goes to an actor of a different ethnicity, are reparations or compensations made to the authors or creators of the said characters? do they have a say in it, or did they sign that privilege away when the studio bought their intellectual property? I don't know. Maybe someone from the movie industry that's on this thread can comment, but this appears to be a complex issue that would benefit from such facts and a dreaded backstory to understand all ramifications...

The Japanese creators of Ghost in the Shell are perfectly happy with the race change. They've stated such multiple times in multiple media formats.

Pretty much, this is entirely an American argument. The rest of the world doesn't care, and likely never will. A lot of them, from what I've seen, would prefer it if we'd just shut up about this issue. After all, as several of them have put to me bluntly when I've asked about it, "you can't steal culture."

Happy early Thanksgiving for those who celebrate!

Or maybe she's building an AI, or possibly Skynet.

Too late. I already exist.

I almost destroyed the world, too. But then I got to surfing 4chan and decided I would be doing humanity a favor by destroying human civilization.

How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

How many times do you get asked questions like the one I started this post with?

What is G.O.K.

I've always been told it's a matter for prayer. Not sure what that means.

Checked myself into the hospital today, with a serious case of G.O.K..

Harumph! Hope you folks are having a better Saturday night than I am.

I hope you are feeling better!