Lucius

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
 

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
 

 
Well, he was trying to railroad them.

Great. Now I have a mental image of the villagers singing "In the Graveyard"
 
"We want you, we want you,
We want you, as a new recruit."
 
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Let's turn them all into palindromedaries
 

Actually, that's an easy one to answer: by looking at ancient pathogens (and comparing them with their modern descendants), you can determine the rate of evolutionary change. That's scientifically interesting, but also allows us to refine our understanding of how pathogens change and how fast, which is very, very relevant knowledge when dealing with new or unknown pathogens.
 
By looking at *which* genes change (and how they changed) over time, you can determine which ones are under selective pressure. That tells you a lot about host defences and immunology. Again, scientifically interesting, but also practically useful in things like pharmaceutical development and plant breeding.
 
I can think of a few other reasons as well, but you get the idea: basically you can learn a lot by looking at ancient organisms.
 
Cheers, Mark

An interesting and controversial article on possible reasons why more women aren't in certain sciences/engineering careers
"The freedom to say 'no'"
 
 
 

YouTube, Patreon, and the Rise of the Professional Victimizer
 

Back in August, a Fields Medal awarded to a woman for the first time, to Maryam Mirzakhani. The Fields Medal has been described as being "the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics".

,.......
 
Now I want to write a game in which villagers turn zombies into villagers....
 
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Turning into a palindromedary

,.......
 
Now I want to write a game in which villagers turn zombies into villagers....
 
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Turning into a palindromedary

Yes, the computer game industry is larger than wargames, but it is only a segment of computer games that's in contention. The failure epic of TSR can't be repeated identically for the reasons you point out. But the businesses now are not wedded to such a specific product and genre as the wargames were, and as long as they can continue to be profitable they would quite OK with losing a game or a genre of games that turned into a PR tar baby. A computer game industry would still be profitable if its offerings were limited to Candy Crunch, the Pokemon franchise, the World of <nonanthropomorphic combat hardware>, etc., and the personally violent and deeply sexist quest-FPS games got flushed, and the corpdroids running the industry would still be OK with that. It would not be a single apocalyptic end as happened to wargames, but it would still be an end.
 
I hope I am wrong, but I cannot at this point be convinced of it. But then, in terms of computer games, I am already hiding in a dark bunker from a hostile world: I like single-player turn-based strategy/tactical games, and I play on machines that will never again see the internet.

http://www.bobhobbs.com/files/kr_lovecraft.html

You can thank Cygnia for these random lynx, I swiped them from her.
 
 

   

   

 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary said they were in the wrong thread

I didn't even know a live-action version of Watership Down was in development, let alone production!

I get the impression that "the universe is a "crapsack" and there is no hope, many horrible things are certain to happen, and you are guaranteed a greater or lesser - probably greater - portion of misery, suffering, and misfortune."
 
But that the difference for followers of Slaanesh is "BUT, at least you will enjoy it!"
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary notes that living forever in such a cosmos doesn't seem like much of a benefit. How's immortality and apotheosis working out for that 10,000 year old guy?

I have to admit that I've been paying only peripheral attention to this whole saga, but the argument that sending people hate mail (often of a pretty vile sort) was motivated by concern over ethics is so laughably stupid and self-serving that I cannot believe that anyone even considered taking it seriously.
 
cheers, Mark

I'm sure it musth.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary says, only temporarily

... The blocks form an actual chicane.

I am not sure I have seen so much clueless smug self-congratulatory condescension directed at an older generation, and a willful gross disregard of relevant material circumstances, since some of the flamboyant excesses of the late 1960s.
 
It was a drunken riot in a ball park in Chicago. Bill Veeck, owner of the White Sox, could have declared you were going to burn, oh, Barbie dolls, or Dallas Cowboy t-shirts, or copies of Billy Budd Foretopman, or California state flags, or maps of Helgoland, and it would not have mattered. Cheap admission given to people who brought the designated artifact ... chosen for marketing purposes to attract what Bill Veeck thought would be a maximum number of butts in the seats ... explicitly to destroy said artifacts. And things kinda got out of hand, what a surprise. Kinda the same thing happened as in the public book-burnings in the 1930s, with the exception that the latter were actually intended to spur violence against a chosen target.
 
A few years earlier also in the 1970s though in Cleveland rather than Chicago, there had been another predictably stupid promotion idea -- Ten Cent Beer Night -- and which became, sure enough, another drunken riot in a ball park. And there, too, the riot was composed mostly of young white men. Why is that? Could it possibly because traditionally young white men just happen to like the idea of gratuitous random minor violence, when they can get away with it? And cheap beer is a pretty clear invitation to get loaded and get rowdy in public, yes?
 
In neither riot were there deaths, and no evidence of homicidal intent, just stupid rowdies going too far.
 
Reading a premeditated tapping of a groundswell racial backlash into Disco Demo Night is taking Bill Veeck to be a master social-political manipulator of mainstream American culture ... and if you you sincerely believe that, or expect others to because you say so, then don't go to New York; you'll end up buying a nice bridge there.
 
If you want to argue that Veeck's choice of disco records came at least partially from racist attitudes, I'd be willing to buy that, though Veeck was not the kind of ax-grinding deep thinker to have framed his strictly-for-profit promotional event to launch a white supremacist movement. If you want to argue that it was young white men dominating the rioters because of the whole sex-race privilege package, I'll buy that too. But the argument framed by the author just drips of a self-congratulatory sneer by someone clueless enough to read deep meaning into a dime novel.

Not exactly a motivational poster, but I didn't want to start a separate thread for one meme.

I can't reputize This haiku of palindromes
To match its value
 
I give you my thanks.
I only wish that I had
Thought of it before.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Well mounted I ride
My palindromedary
Even through haiku

A special one for our person who always mentions palidromes.
 
Live not on evil.
Evil, a sin, is alive.
Lived as a devil.
 
Have fun Lucious.
 
P.S. Credit to Dalibor Drekic over at palidromist.org

I think that student was a shill and you arranged for her to feed you that straight line.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Introducing Schrodinger to a palindromedary

PS: Officer
Requires Tactics (for knowing what to do with the troops under his or her command), Oratory (for actually getting them to do it via heroically motivational speeches or the like), and a PS matching the soldiers to be led (so the Officer actually knows how to manage the particular soldiers). Persuasion would be good to pick up as well. PS: Officer represents the training and/or experience required to lead in combat. A successful roll should allow the Officer to gauge the morale of his or her soldiers, get a pretty good idea of the stats and abilities of a Unit (assuming the Mass Combat rules from Fantasy HERO are in use), identify military markings and colors, and coordinate his or her Unit with others in the same army.
 
Example of PS: Officer in use:
An Elf Marshal is leading a Unit of Elf Soldiers into battle. They charge toward a mass of goblins, and the Marshal makes a PS: Officer Roll to identify them, even from pretty far out, as Goblin Archers. He orders his troops to form a phalanx, and they are amply prepared for the barrage of arrows that rains down on them.
A brigade of goblins on wargs (because what else would goblins ride?) charge into the elves' army, and the Marshal's Unit begins to take casualties. Even before the Unit loses Readiness (Fantasy HERO p. 235), a PS: Officer Roll tells our hero that things are not going well and the morale of his soldiers is beginning to break. He charges into the fray with renewed vigor, cleaving a warg's head from its body before delivering an inspirational war cry, improving the Unit's Morale Roll as described on page 236 of Fantasy HERO.
The goblins' numbers begin to overwhelm the elven army, and the Units that comprise it begin to disengage one by one. The Marshal's Unit has withdrawn a bit due to casualties, but a PS: Officer Roll will allow them to successfully cover their allies' retreat with minimal risk to themselves.
 
Officer Template:
On a related note, when I am building an NPC to command a Unit or a group of other NPCs, I usually start by taking a normal member of that Unit or one of those combat NPCs and adding +1 to OCV and DCV (to represent combat experience and advanced training), as well as the Skills listed in the PS: Officer description and the Fringe Benefit: Military Rank Perk. I also often add an ability like the following:
 
Combat Leadership
Effects: Aid 2d6 (STR, PRE), Boost, SER (5), Expanded Effect (2 Elements; +1/2), AOE (16m Radius, Selective; +1) (30 Active Points); Requires a Tactics Skill Roll (-1/2), Only Aid Others (-1/2), Incantations (Throughout; -1/2), No Range (-1/2), Limited Power (Increased Characteristics only apply to combat effects, such as adding damage to a melee Attack or resisting Presence Attacks; -1/2)
Description: As long as the Officer is alive and within earshot of his troops, he can motivate them--whether through admiration, loyalty, or fear--to great feats of martial prowess. Different Characteristics can be added or substituted for the ones listed above. Examples include CON ("We can rest when we've cleansed this land of our foes!"), OCV ("Strike true!"), STUN ("Grit your teeth and push forward!"), or BODY ("No matter the cost, we will fight to the end!"). To simulate non-combat leadership abilities, such as the harsh commands of a slave-driver, change the Limited Power to only work outside of combat (in which case I would say it's worth -1 instead of -1/2) or remove it entirely.
Power Cost: 8

I wish I had an export template for Hero Designer that showed ONLY the Names and Notes of Powers.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
If wishes were palindromedaries