Skulldrinker
No bio...
User ID: 1874
Skulldrinker
10mo ago
based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures
These statements would be way more compelling with some more detailed examples that would indicate that anyone with some degree of scientific literacy is in the loop. I'm not quite clear on if "Unique Atomic arrangements" are referring to novel chemicals or novel elements or novel isotopes of elements. I'd love examples of what kind of vehicle morphology would prove non-human intelligence. A fucking rough sketch from this guy of what vehicles he's seen isn't even forthcoming. Any of this stuff would massively change human understanding of physics and materials tech, the fields there haven't been real theoretical breakthroughs in in forever.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
I remember when a recent whistleblower or leaker or whoever said that a crashed captured UFO was found to contain "Unknown Elements," with no further explanation of what that's supposed to mean, and it very much killed all of my interest in UFOs. We know what an element is even if we haven't seen it before. All the elements on the periodic table are known, or theoretically known. There's no room on the table for an element that isn't an rapid-decaying ultra-heavy metal. Unless we're talking about an incredibly exotic isotope of element 325 that somehow exists for more than 2 seconds and isn't hideously radioactive. Or Element Zero, in which case, I guess we should head to the Charon Relay in the outer system. Is the unknown element he describes a tiny sample in some sort of larger mechanism, like the Freon in a refrigerator? Or is the hull of this thing made of 70% Glorkium? Or did the guy mean elements as in elements of construction? Then I'd love a cursory description of the novel metamaterials that this thing is made of; whatever nanotubules or gels or frictionless fluids or super-conductors it's made of would be super-interesting to just have a cursory description of. Or is this guy just a 'tard that knows "Element" is a science word?
Also, your top-level post is bad and you should feel bad.
Skulldrinker
3mo ago
Isn't that a bit of an absurd leap? Both towards cutting off power to the rest of the country and assassinating governors. Neither Biden nor Abbot are tryhard fedposters fantasizing about the Boogaloo, they're elected officials with investment portfolios and re-election campaigns.
but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.
Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."
The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.
Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
That's because D&D is (was) really a Western dressed up in an anachronistic pseudomidieval setting. And it's settings and monsters owe more to Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than to Lord of the Rings.
Now it's become an alice-in-wonderland tea party for non-binary tiefling warlocks.
Skulldrinker
5mo ago
My objection to ethnic swaps is also related to the use of race in (semi)original works; my best recent example is the The Last of Us HBO adaptation, which was overall very good. But I still noticed that no diverse person is ever allowed to be bad,. The closest we got was a reasonable Asian FEDRA school administrator who's technically a fascist, and Marlene, a character that is worshipped by 1/3rd of the cast, is a romantic revolutionary, and who's mild badness is part of the show's entire grey/grey moral choice thing re: Ellie. In "bad" settlement #1, everyone is a beardy Midwestern type you'd see at a MAGA rally, with guns and trucks, and they're obsessed with hunting down one particular guy, who appears to have been the only black man in town (and who has a great moral excuse for ratting on his neighbors, conveniently. In the game, he and his brother weren't being specifically hunted by white people, they were just survivors like the main duo). "bad" settlement #2 is also mono-ethnic. They run into one "good" settlement, which of fucking course calls itself communist and is run by a black woman. It's like Stephen King; black people are so good they're magic. You can always tell who's good and who's bad by where the African-Americans are. The game itself has this too, but it's pretty tame by comparison and I don't have issues with it beyond Noticing.
When you have to have diversity but also can't depict anyone diverse as "bad," all the antagonistic roles get concentrated in the non-diverse characters, and any diverse antagonist that sneaks in has a maudlin excuse that makes them tragic and sympathetic, only the straight white male is capable of just being evil.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
It's not ugly women and pathetic men that makes the score go up, it's just interacting with SBI, and corporate decision-makers see no reason NOT to chase ESG, since to them "quality" is a vague untrackable nonsense term uncorrelated with the financial success of a product, but ESG rating IS trackable and legible
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
I could have put this in Wellness Wednesday, but I'll phrase this as a question:
When am I allowed to mace a hobo?
The story: I'm working at a food stand at a winter market festival downtown for a month. It's over $25/hr after the copious tips, and short 6-hour shifts, but my ulterior motive is about getting an In with the bar running it, and just to network amongst the Hospitality Folk.
But, this means I'm taking the CTA for a change, and thus keep seeing things that can't be unseen. The other day, there's a ranting man on the opposite platform, wandering up and down it, shouting nonsense. Not old, bent, or decrepit, cheap clothes that are still in one piece. I'm waiting for my train, and see him eventually fixate on a woman and start leaning in to her and gabbling. She stands there frozen and ignores him as he shuffles around her like a giant annoying pigeon. There's a bunch of back-and-forth of this guy wandering away, coming back, going down the stairs, then back up, then looming over her and gabbling at her. I'm staring the whole time with what must have been a thunderous expression, the woman meets my gaze a few times and mouths something once. Both of them are black, incidentally; she looks like a nurse or something adjacent: South-Side Respectable. I'm trying very very hard to control my temper and not escalate the situation, actual physical harm in these situations is pretty rare, this is just emotionally harrowing for the poor woman.
He wanders away a bit and she makes a move for the stairs, I see him start to follow, and I've finally had e-fucking-nough. I go down the stairs and meet her sheltering by the turnstyles. He sees me and stops on the stairs, starts going up and down them, in that attempt to be nonchalant that the mentally ill always fail at. My train is a minute away, she's crying, I say it's okay, and shout to the attendant "Hey, there's a ranty hobo that isn't leaving this woman alone. She needs help."
With my train arriving and my shift starting soon, I go back up to my platform, get on the train, and see though the window that same woman, standing on the platform, crying, while the hobo stands behind her gabbling. She's got her own train to catch. This is what I'm left with as my train leaves the station.
After, of course, I realize the optimal move would have been to being her up to my platform, get on my train til the next hobo-free platform, then continue on her way. My presence alone would probably have dissuaded him. But I didn't want to be late, I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I didn't want to be tempted to beat up a brain-rotted hobo.
Cut to work.
Background: One of my fellow döner-kabob-slingers is a early-30s woman that I was initially a bit taken with; she introduced herself to me as recently-divorced, asked me if I had a partner or not, and just generally paid way more attention to me than I'm accustomed to (which felt good, because it doesn't happen much, which made me sad. But also made me uncomfortable, because of the unfamiliarity of it, which also made me sad.) There's a bit more incidental physical contact from her than necessary. She's skinny and wide-faced and granola-y, we talk about nature and wildlife stuff; she's involved with urban ecology project planning and...equity. Dang. Also, I later overhear her talking about Polyamory or some shit (Polyamory as practiced by women is just laundered Friendzoning/Cucking, Polyamory as practiced my men is just laundered Playa-ing. She wants to fuck around but needs a buzzword for it). So my interest is...reduced. The woman who mutilated my heart in 2019 was also a recently-separated devorcé, fool me once and all that.
Anyways, I arrive at work all bent out of shape and want to talk about it. So I ask my not-crush, as someone who's lived in Chicago for a while, and as a woman, if stuff like that ever happens to her and what bystanders can do to help without making the situation worse. I narrarate the story pretty much as I do here. (I leave out the part about them both being black, it isn't relevant). I'm genuinely looking for advice, but I also want to untangle my feelings, and, yeah, I want to convey to her that I'm the sort of person that struggles to not White Knight.
The first thing she says?
"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."
The walls go up inside me. She's Orthodox Woke. "Yes, I should have been more technical: Bum, Gabbling Stalker Variant, Able-Bodied."
"You don't understand, access to mental health services has been reduced because Republicans-
"I'll go tell that woman to not cry, then, it's Ronald Reagan's fault for kicking him out of his mental hospital."
So that's the story of how I stopped being attracted to someone.
Just to quickly double-check, I ran this story past a close female friend who moved here from Nebraska, and an apolitical Chicago native bartender, and both had different flavors of "What the actual fuck?" Reactions. She was speechless, he laughed.
Because of stuff that's happened to me, I carry a can of mace on my keys. But I notice my hand going for it in situations like this, where I'm almost looking for an excuse to use it, and I'm worried I'm eventually going to spray a particularly-annoying panhandler in the face.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
Game writing was dreck before these consultants and is so now, too. The reason for this is simple - almost all game writers are D&D geeks who almost exclusively read science fiction and fantasy garbage and have no understanding of classical literature or even film to broaden their ability. Everything is a Marvel movie to them because it’s all they know.
D&D geeks have been writing nothing but in-jokes and sci-fi references since before MCU films were good, and WAY before they were bad. I'm surprised you didn't use the boo-word "capeshit." Being incredibly derivative and tropey are would be an improvement over woke writing.
Skulldrinker
2mo ago
One morning at a farmer's market, in front of our families and newborn babies, I said I didn't like the new Star Trek and another liberal father there started yelling at me at the top of his lungs in public about the importance of punching fascist.
I remember the day I said The Last Jedi wasn't very good and some 40something mom said I was just against strong role models for girls. I told her to go back to the internet and take her opinions with her. It was a big moment for me, because politics intruded on one of my favorite hobbies; bitching about film and TV.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
I didn't realize pretending to be hetero-queer to get college-educated pussy was such an old tradition.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
You're a fucking idiot. I threw away my first love for the same reason, and regret it to this day.
Skulldrinker
6mo ago
Why do you expect consistency from social posturing? The college kids chanting River to the Sea are just making mouth noises that they've been told are the mouth noises non-excluded, invited-to-parties people make. They wouldn't know what to do with a Jew even if they caught one.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
Once in a RPG, a new player said
"wait, this character has Int 9, Wis 10, and Cha 16. How do I portray that?"
And I said
"Easy. Speak the way Russel Brand does."
Skulldrinker
3mo ago
I'll add that as an Atheist, Ive concluded that politics has become everyone's new religion and I hate it, and I especially hate the progressive/leftist religion. To my mind, I'm the last New Atheist, being a stubborn prickly contrarian against smug sanctimony and moral panic regardless of the mask it wears.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
It's not necissarily funded by Disney, these days you can have grassroots astroturfing. There are people who comport their entire lives ideologically and will go to bat for anything they think has progressive values in it, and an overlapping group of people who will go to bat for anything they think toxic incel cis white male haters will hate. Tranny Jannies do it for free, and so do these people.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
"women have it so tough because men are so evil" falls flat to me. I have no sympathy for it. I spent my entire youth being told that women's #1 priority is to avoid "abuse" and that any time a woman lied to me or flaked on me or was less than honest with me it was because I made her "feel unsafe." I'm reeeeealy tired of hearing it.
I post pro-bono on behalf of my own seething resentment over being told what opinions I should have. I care about storytelling and creativity as a craft, not as a political tool.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
Why are some young women apparently trying taboo a 22 year old women dating a 28 year old man when they are also disproportionaly hooking up with older men on the dating apps?
People in general are quite capable of saying the thing they think is currently popular, then doing something else. Women on the Internet in particular, but everyone does this, male or female, on the internet or off. Everyone I've seen complaining about "Capitalism, amirite" still has the latest iPhone.
Skulldrinker
5mo ago
By the numbers, what IS the median experience of an Israeli taken hostage? What's the % on being released? The % on being tortured before being released? The % on just never being seen again? Honest question.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
I know too many women who seek out and stay in relationships with shitty men that already do this stuff to them. For people so afraid of sexual assault and abuse, they're really, really bad at avoiding it.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
That'sthejoke.jpg
Some people are so ideologically motivated that they'll shill for free/for goodboy points.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
A week ago in downtown Chicago by Daley Plaza, there was a large van with LCD panels on every side of it showing dead Palestinian children, and it's stereo blasting uncreative rap lyrics about free Palestine. I deeply regret not getting footage of it, but I did say "Look, a semi-automated propaganda van! Boy do I love living in a cyberpunk dystopia."
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
There appear to be some peculiarities to police in the UK that I've heard are to do with a scandal in the 80s that left them incredibly paranoid of being accused of racism, and they therefore are overly-relisnt on procedure and ass-covering paperwork. As a beat officer, any time you interact some sort of minority, that minority will apparently call you racist, which will be officially logged and looked in to. The joke is that going after mean Tweets and people who quote rap lyrics is a better investment of police time/money for the police; makes the numbers look good in terms of arrests vs complaints of racism, since no one goes outside.
I use these sorts of bikes occasionally. They cost x¢/min, starting when you unlock and totaled up when you relock. If you don't re-lock the bike, the meter just keeps on ticking. I'm not sure what happens eventually, maybe the rider who's account checked it out gets billed for the "stolen" bike. But the way the QR system works, it isn't particularly possible to grab someone else's bike by mistake. It is possible to be grabbing the last bike (or the last "good" bike, all the rest having flat tires or rusty chains or the like) and someone else to take issue with that. I don't think that happened here. I think a group on young men wanted to grab a free bike, and were expecting to get it through some combination of the target's niceness reflex, confusion as to how the unlock system works (while the target is trying to figure out how the "misunderstanding" happened, the bike is already gone), and the implicit intimidation of a group of agressive youths. In this case, it didn't work, she froze up, got confused, knew something was wrong, and tried to attract bystanders. Then a helpful person re-locked the bike, completely ruining the young men's intent to get a free bike that someone else will be billed for.
Lots of people, (Midwestern Americans and Canadians, in particular) have a niceness reflex; when you, say, trip on someone else's foot, the kneejerk assumption is that you were being inattentive and just stepped on a person's toes; you say "sorry" and yield to them, it taking a moment or two to realize that you've been intentionally tripped. Other people do not have this reflex, either because of their cultural background or because they're dicks; either way, these people notice the niceness reflex of others and try to exploit it.
I also see these bikes left in yards in my (shitty) neighborhood. Now I know how they got there and why the rider doesn't care about being billed for them.
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