Folks, I have been thinking about some stuff lately, and how technology has been changing. For instance, I have always not liked the PM system here. So, I am proposing that for communication since I no longer use any social media platforms outside of LinkedIn, I would invite you to my personal Discord server. There you can notify me of anything through DMs by friending me, I can post art or maps or anything else and if we have conversations we can reference them without the annoying parsing that comes with the system here. So here is an invite link. It will be good for seven days as of today - so up to 7/5 iirc
I know Shadow you mentioned you hate it, but you have my phone number, so you can just text me ;)
I accepted the invitation, and I think I've mostly figured out how the thing works-- I've used it before, but not in a long time. As far as texting goes, I can receive regular texts, but I don't have a smartphone, so sending texts is a little tricky, and I can't send or open attachments. Outside of Messenger and Discord, e-mail is one of my go-to options for contact.
Re: Korean War.. I strongly recommend This Kind Of War, by T.R. Ferrenbach.
I'll put it on the list.
Jocko Willink has recommended several books on the subject on his podcast, and I've added a few to my list of future purchases, including Colder Than Hell, by Joseph R. Owen, and Valleys of Death, by Bill Richardson and Kevin Maurer. So far, the only one I've bought and read has been About Face, by David Hackworth-- only the first third or so covers Korea, but I really got a lot out of the book as a whole.
Petty Officer, to new Seaman: Go down to Engineering and get me a bucket of steam.
Seaman: ???
You're going to have to use a left-handed screwdriver to open the valve on the decompressor. And don't forget to top off the headlight fluid when you're finished.
Going to be missing the final couple sessions of Dark Souls (D&D 5e) due to my annual hunting trip, but I have to say, the group has really gotten their s@@+ together for this game.
When we were playing Pathfinder, most of my fellow players were playing their characters like knuckleheads, but with the increased difficulty and focus on combat, everyone's really starting to think strategically and work as a team. Last session was the first time since starting the module that no one died (note: dying is a game mechanic, so it's not quite as big a deal as it would be in PF), and we took out a tough mini-boss that was not pulling any punches.
Also, massive props to the guy running the sessions-- It's his first time as DM, and he's pretty new to RPGs in general, but he's taken to it really quickly. Granted, he's running a published module now, but he's gotten familiar enough with the rules that he's written up a homebrew that's all queued up for us at some point after this one is done.
I am watching video of two experts speaking about what is wrong with James Bond's pee-pee in Dr. No...
is this some variation of Lewis Black's "sign of doomsday" double-Starbucks streetcorner example?
that's not even a first-world problem. it's a less-than-zeroth-world problem.
It was a video of two gun experts talking about (mislabeled) guns used in Dr. No: James receives what we are told is Walther PPK, and in reality it was Walther PP, so they kept saying pee-pee a lot in that video when they comment on various scenes and switches between guns.
So yeah, complaining about accurate portrayal of gun in an old movie is a sort of not even a first world problem, twice removed, but Ian can be entertaining and informative and they were doing it to promote the other guy's book about James Bond's guns in general.
Oh, hey, I subscribe to that channel... Ian McCollum is pretty great.
So far, the Dark Souls tabletop game has been surprisingly fun, with a few caveats.
Spoiler:
The good:
- Using a single resource pool for your health, spells, and action points, as well as your experience points pool also being your money, leads to some really interesting resource-management decisions. (Do I cast a spell, or do I want to save my hp in case I get hit next round? Do I want to level up, or buy a new set of armor?)
- When you die (which happens at least once or twice per session), you respawn at the nearest save area, like in a video game, but you lose all of your unspent experience points. Again, resource & risk management is a theme here, and it's actually super engaging.
The bad:
- It's based around the D&D 5e rules set, which feels weirdly simplified. There isn't really much in the way of character building--you just get a starter pack for each character class, and then go through a very linear progression as you level, with no real choices.
- More of a nitpick, but the book is really disorganized. Almost as bad as Bloodlines & Black Magic, and that one gets a pass because it's from Storm Bunny Studios and was made on a shoestring budget. Dark Souls was put out by Steamforged Games. They should know better.
The head-scratcher:
- Whoever wrote the magic and combat section either didn't do too great in high school math, or has never played a tabletop game on a grid before. Several spells (but not all of them) have ambiguous areas of effect (i.e. "affects a 40-foot sphere") or uses a measurement that makes no sense (i.e. "affects a 20-foot circumference"). "I cast fireball, engulfing everyone within 2/π squares in magical flames!"
Game night tomorrow, hopefully. Last time was our first session of Dark Souls, what with the GM for Star Wars pretty consistently flaking out.
Aside from that, most of my time has been getting eaten up by working overtime, but I managed to talk a buddy of mine into teaching me how to weld after I get off work every day. 8 hours of lessons in, and I've finally progressed to "extreme beginner."
Sorry for taking a bit to respond to these, I'm still just kind of confused, but I do appreciate the advice:
Spoiler:
David M Mallon wrote:
I just got asked to be the best man at my friend's wedding. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. Anyone have any experience with this?
Addendum: I've got a lot of time to plan for this-- the wedding is tentatively planned for August 2025.
I asked my dad for some advice, and he said, and I quote, "I got asked to be a best man once, but I really didn't do a good job." He did not elaborate.
Waterhammer wrote:
You probably will need to make a speech/toast to the married couple. It’s good to put some humor in there.
lisamarlene wrote:
You're very likely also in charge of planning the bachelor party. And making sure the groom shows up looking his best and photo-ready for the big day, in case he overindulges the night before.
These first two were what I was afraid of-- first off, while I don't have a problem talking in front of people, I'm not really all that funny. When I try to be funny on purpose, I get dead air.
Second, I've never planned a party in my life. I don't even go to parties. What happens?
Not super worried about my friend overindulging or not being ready to go. Between the two of us, he's always been the gregarious, well-groomed one, and I've always been the train wreck.
drejk wrote:
Do you know the bride? Does she has a sense of humor? This might decide if you should listen to our advice or do the exact opposite...
I don't know her well, or at all, really-- the extent of our interactions so far has been her saying "hi" to me while my friend had me on speakerphone. I should be meeting her in person when I head back east for hunting season, though.
Freehold DM wrote:
keep the Bachelor party a week before the wedding. Do not do it the night before.
"Since I’ve personally only read sixteen of the New York Times’ 100 best books of the 21st century, I can’t really comment on these complaints. Was the list accurate? Probably not, if only because we’re less than a quarter of the way through the century in question, and unless something really bad happens there are a lot of great 21st century books that haven’t been written yet."
- Sam Kriss
Went out today and traded in my old bass guitar for new one. I somehow managed to get significantly more for my old Squier J-series 5-string than I paid for it, which gave me the budget to buy my first real Fender P-bass.
GM for D20 Star Wars bailed again, but at least this time he let us know the night before instead of an hour before the game was supposed to start. We ended up going to see Deadpool & Wolverine, then made characters for D20 Dark Souls, which one of our players is going to run as a backup any time GM Star Wars decides to flake out on us.
Dark Souls is going to be interesting-- first off, I don't know thing one about Dark Souls. Secondly, the guy running the game is the guy who always wants to play the fighter, and the guy who always wants to play the barbarian decided to break type and play a spellcaster this time around, so I get to play the tank. Which, not counting one particular PbP, is something that I pretty much never get to do.
Currently reading:
The Indian Mutiny, by John Harris
Beowulf, prose translation by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, prose translation by R.M. Lumiansky
Up next:
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Gulag Archipelago (abridged), by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Lord of the Rings (single volume), by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
The Coast Watchers, by Eric Feldt
Land of the Dead, by Thomas Harlan
Going to be an early morning tomorrow, followed by a long day. Borrowing an excavator and a dump truck from work so I can install a 12'x3'x3' French drain at my friend's mother's house.
When I was at SUNY ESF (this would have been the summer of 2019, I think), I had to take Calculus 1 & 2 at Onondaga Community College over the summer to get my course schedule on track. I was getting a full scholarship from ESF, but two 3-week math classes from a community college set me back just over a thousand bucks in total.
People think of new york as one giant block of concrete city. They're surprised when the first day of hunting season is an unofficial state holiday north of albany or that you can see new york city from the park where I used to work (bear mountain/harriman) and it's chock full of bears beavers coyotes and snapping turtles.
I've been to Bear Mountain State Park a bunch of times, though not since I was a kid. I think my cousin had a summer job there for a little while.
There are few constants in life, but I must say that literally every morning, I try to unlock the shop with the key to my mailbox, and literally every evening, I try to unlock my mailbox with the key to the gun safe.
]Weather like that anywhere in California outside the Sierras would result in an order of, "Get to church and pray for your soul because the apocalypse has come."
For you maybe, for us it's Tuesday.
Literally.
One wonders, if the weather in California is so tranquil, why so many Californians have been moving out here...
Brown ale is not a fashionable beer, more's the pity. Newcastle Brown is pretty ubiquitous over here
I remember Newcastle Brown being fairly popular among the hipster crowd when I was in college. I definitely drank my fair share of the stuff. It's not bad.
D20 Star Wars is back on track for the time being. Our plan is to get a second game going with a different GM as a backup so if the GM for Star Wars bails out again, we have something to do.
"If you put a big monster in a small room, you put a little cash on the floor for the people that kill it! That's just good manners! Everyone knows the real friends are the treasures we found along the way!"
- Haley Starshine, Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick #1306
"Men often oppose a thing, merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike."
- Alexander Hamilton
Either 5'11" or 6'0" depending on who's doing the measuring, so that puts me on the taller side, I guess? Weren't we just talking about this a couple weeks ago?
"Many North-American neighbourhoods are designed for maximum independence and leave little opportunity to interact or encounter anyone. People use personal vehicles from garage to destination, visit drive-throughs, place online orders, opt for food delivery. Most social interactions happen online, where algorithms cater to our interests and desires. There are few rubs in life, that require us to bend, compromise, concede, or find a literal common ground. Our homes are large, our streets are wide, our opinions and views are fed and coddled online. And when we face each other in person, we wonder where all this division has come from."
- Peco Gaskovski
This was my jam back in New York State. I brought some back to Iowa a couple years ago after hunting season, and now all my coworkers are hooked on the stuff. Now I have to bring back a truckload of it every time I go back east.
I'm amazed they don't have a smoking gun yet. I knew several gamers who had a 2-liter-a-day habit or more. Every last one of them had heart issues by the time they were in their 50s. And yet correlation ≠ causation, so the jury still says, "Well, yeah, but... they all led sedentary lifestyles with poor diets, so we can't 100% pin the blame on the sweeteners."
I'd say that poor diet and sedentary lifestyle are huge contributing factors. I pretty much completely cut out high fructose corn syrup about five years ago, I eat fairly healthy, and get plenty of exercise, but I do drink a decent amount of diet Dr. Pepper (~1.5L per day). Granted, I'm not in my 50s, but currently my blood pressure and heart rate are right on the money, zero issues.
Bear in mind, this is coming from someone who was in terrible physical condition from the time I was in my early 20s to when I was in my early 30s. I'll never forget the time I went in to see a doctor for back pain, and after the initial check-up, he looked me square in the eye and said something to the effect of, "well, you've got the body of a perfectly healthy 60-year-old." I think I was around 27.
Getting more exercise and dialing back on the processed foods were absolute game-changers for me.
"Although we often boast about AI’s ability to create, we should instead focus the conversation on the kind of society AI produces. Good intentions mean nothing. It is not a society of industry and creation, but consumption. Billions of dollars are being funneled into AI initiatives because they promise a return on the investment–not by the furthering of our humanity, but the siphoning of creativity, talent, and labor to those who manage the AI."
- Austin Hoffman
"[T]he Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech[.]"
- Benjamin Franklin (writing as "Silence Dogood"), letter to the editor of the New-England Courant, July 9, 1722
Note: the editor of the New-England Courant was James Franklin, who had refused to let his brother Benjamin publish a column in the paper
The follow-up from nearly a century and a half later:
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power."
- Frederick Douglass, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston, December 3, 1860
"[T]he Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech[.]"
- Benjamin Franklin (writing as "Silence Dogood"), letter to the editor of the New-England Courant, July 9, 1722
Note: the editor of the New-England Courant was James Franklin, who had refused to let his brother Benjamin publish a column in the paper
