archer

Quitting the team mid-game is a pretty high-profile way of doing things.

Also as noted before, making sure your mask has a tight seal around the nose is very helpful. I try a couple of hard exhales after putting on the mask to test how good the seal is. I keep a cloth mask and a disposable mask on me then switch between them whenever fogging starts to become a problem. Even with a good seal, your mask is going to get uncomfortably moist if you're projecting your voice. Talking while wearing a mask creates problems for me because I have a full beard which makes the mask ride up and ruins the seal around the nose. The only way to fix that is to touch the mask and refit it while resealing around the nose. If you have to do that, I'd recommend having some hand sanitizer on your desk and using it before touching your mask.

Well, the South China Sea is relatively close. But conventional subs move more slowly and can't stay in place to patrol as long after they get there. From Australia to the South China Sea, the estimates I've seen is that a conventional diesel sub would only be able to stay there for 11 days maximum before having to turn around and head back home. A nuclear sub, in contrast, could stay on station something like 83 days if I remember correctly. That's a vast gap in the utility between the two types of subs. And that's not even taking into account the fact that nuclear subs can remain completely submerged at operating depth longer than a diesel sub. I could try to find the study again and post it up if anyone is interested.

It is eight. But he only pulls out the additional two legs for formal occasions.

Did you at least pick up on the product placement?

Ukraine's president compares UN to 'a retired superhero He argues that the organization doesn't do anything and just looks on from the sidelines while countries like Russia, which guaranteed the sovereignty of Ukraine's borders forever in the 1990's, invaded and seized a large part of the country in the 2000's. https://thehill.com/policy/international/573543-ukraines-president-compares-un-to-a-retired-superhero?rl=1 One of the commenters observed: "He's not wrong. UN is toothless now..." So I replied: "When did it ever have teeth? Until there's a United Nations Tribunal on International Law which sends out heavily armed agents to deal with nations, leaders, or rogue actors who get out of line, there won't be any international defenders of freedom."

Just ignore the thousands points of light. Even if they are red....

Troll on highway, Troll on alongTroll on Daddy till you get back homeTroll on family, Troll on crewTroll on Momma like I asked you to doAnd Troll on eight semesters, Troll on(Troll on!)

If they didn't want us to eat them, they shouldn't have been made from meat....

Yeah, I had way too many "LARPing" experiences as a young child playing soldier with the "I shot you!"...."No, you missed."..."No, I didn't."..."Yes, you did." If I'm going to just collaboratively write an interactive story with virtually no rules, why am I paying for a set of rules rather than just collaboratively writing an interactive story?

Neutral Evil - Lex Luthor In one of the versions, I read an essay or article about how "evil" in D&D meant that you were in it for yourself and that you saw everything through the lens of personal gain. So I'm playing a Neutral Evil character and the DM complains that I'm not being "evil". I'm not backstabbing or robbing my fellow party members. I'm not slaying NPC's at random.... I ask the DM how that killing or robbing the person who guards me while I'm asleep is going to get me ahead in the world. There's a million people out in the world who I can take advantage of but only a limited number of people who are willing to make sure I stay okay. So to me, I can't accomplish being evil if I'm not taking care of my teammates to the point that they're happy that I'm around. Because dead people don't get to be evil, in most circumstances. My thinking on "evil" in D&D spiraled out of that event. And I think neutral evil is the natural bent for most of my fantasy characters. Because I can give money to the poor and take care of orphans when it'll give me some advantage that'll get me ahead in the world. And by acknowledging that, it puts me a step ahead of the paladin player because at least I'm being honest with myself (as both player and PC).

Most people assume they live in a kind of stasis, whether they do or not. They have vague ideas that some places are older or younger than the place that they live. Or that some places are much more wealthy or much poorer. But they assume that people live much the same way as they themselves do. I remember back in high school that an illegal immigrant from Mexico was discovered half-starved locked up in the back of a trailer of an 18 wheeler. The police took custody of him but none of them could speak any Spanish and the guy couldn't speak any English. But on the trip from the freight yard through the more squalid parts of the tiny town to the courthouse (which was built in the 1930's and looked more ancient and run down than that), the guy kept saying dahleeze over and over. The police eventually had to resort to sending for the high school Spanish teacher because no one knew anyone who could speak Spanish. So the teacher eventually showed up and talked to the guy. He was under the impression that because the "vast city" he was driven through on the way to the police station was so magnificent, that he must be in Dallas. He knew that vast wealthy cities existed because he'd been told about them. But he lacked whatever it was that it'd take for him to grasp the scale of difference between a town of a few thousand people with paved streets, modest homes, and electricity vs a metropolis with a million people and (comparatively) unlimited wealth. Because apparently, he'd had no experience with either a tiny modest middle-America town or a thriving metropolis. . . . If you take away TV, public education, and yearly releases of new versions of the I-Phone, why would anyone assume that they were living in anything but an eternal stasis, whether it was true or not? People don't automatically know stuff. Most people aren't motivated to find out stuff even when the knowledge is easily available. People see and people accept what they personally see. What they don't personally see might as well not exist and certainly isn't very important. You could have vast upheavals in social systems in most eras and within 30-50 years, most people would accept things as they are and not think about things as they used to be or about how things might be....

Personally, I'd just move the academy closer to the city. Or perhaps on the other side of a body of water. The Great and Powerful Turtle would do his hero work primarily in NYC then head out over the water, usually at night, and people would lose sight of him. The public never figured out that he was based in Bayonne, NJ and neither did any of his fellow heroes until he chose to share the secret with someone after his first couple of decades adventuring. Among other things, it saved him from the stigma of being from New Jersey.

I once went to England, Scotland, and Paris without even leaving the Southwestern Conference.

We can look at what's in the video. Eventually. The doctor is Ryan Cole, who is a board certified dermatopathologist (studies skin dieases) according to this pro-Ryan Cole website. More on this website later. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/rfk-jr-podcast-dr-ryan-cole-pathologist-early-treatment-keydelta-variant/ According to this website, he also has specializations in Anatomic Pathology, Clinical Pathology, and Surgical Pathology...all from highly credible institutions. His hospital privileges are at a local VA hospital. https://health.usnews.com/doctors/ryan-cole-724324 Now Ryan Cole is also the CEO of Cole Diagnostics, whose website looks like a typical website for medical testing services. https://www.colediagnostics.com/ But if you go to the shop tab on his website, you can buy cactus, watches, shoes, perfume, lamps, and backpacks...so I'm not entirely sure what his business is. https://www.colediagnostics.com/shop?page=4 But if you believe that pro-Ryan website I listed earlier, it says after diagnosing COVID (presumably through his lab services) that he believes in a multi-vector approach to treating COVID which includes monoclonal antibodies (a treatment which actually works), steroids (which are pretty standard to treat patients having breathing problems), ivermectin (horse de-wormer), hydroxychloroquine (as pushed by the previous administration), the cholesterol drug fenofibrate and the anti-depressant drug fluvoxamine. Fenofibrate, well, there's been a study in the UK and a small one out of Israel suggesting that it could have a positive impact on COVID. Fluvoxamine, on the other hand, hasn't had a clinical trial. There's been a couple of studies where patients with mild symptoms were given the drug or a placebo then self-reported the results. But so many people dropped out of the study mid-way through that the results, even for what it was, is inconclusive. Fenofibrate is relatively benign as a drug but Fluvoxamine can have serious side effects including increasing the risk of suicide. https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/immunomodulators/fluvoxamine/ So if you believe the pro-Ryan article, he's experimenting on his patients with unproven and possibly dangerous therapies. As for the video, it was posted by thewatchtowers dot org which is a site devoted to conspiracies and which no one takes credit for in the websites "About" section. Their Reddit page say the subjects up for discussion include "Politics, Crime, Economy, UFO's, Conspiracy's, Corruption, Paranormal and Faith". Dealer's choice on whether "the watchtowers" is a reference to Wiccan beliefs or to the Jehovah's Witnesses publication. The video as listed on their own website https://thewatchtowers.org/scientist-shows-vaccine-effects-in-autopsies-dont-believe-it-see-for-yourself-if-you-want/ praises this doctor for being as courageous as America's Frontline Doctors, which is the medical scam site which we've discussed here previously. (Other articles tell such things as how people who are vaccinated set off store alarms because of the vaccine in their body. Another article about how an occupational therapist in Hawaii claims that he's seen 32 elderly people pass away immediately after getting their Moderna vaccination.) The doctor's speech itself: At the one minute mark, he says we've done studies on lab animals and determined that the vaccine when the COVID virus isn't present causes the same diseases in the body that having COVID does. And a few seconds later he says that the vaccine causes COVID. It would have been nice if he'd mentioned who "we" were and given us a link to the studies themselves. Because multiple studies which conclusively prove that the vaccines cause COVID would be a cause for concern if it were real in any way. He says multiple times that people have died because of the protein spikes floating around in the bloodstream...but he doesn't give any names and doesn't claim to have done any pathological exam of anyone who has died in such a way. He shows pictures of a heart which supposedly has inflammation after the person got the vaccine. But we don't get any "before and after" pictures of the same person to see if the person already had an inflamed heart before getting the vaccine or whether the heart was normal until getting the vaccine. He's also not telling us how many vaccinated people he had to look through before finding one with an inflamed heart (or lung, or whatever). He's also not being clear in admitting that most doctors can look at people who are old, overweight, or have other visible problems and determine just by looking at them that they likely have something or other in their body that's inflamed. So is he finding his examples by randomly picking vaccinated people out of a hat and getting a wide cross-section of people or is he cherry-picking to find the people who most likely have a pre-existing inflammation. He cites a 200 fold increase in a particular heart disease in children which he claims in from them getting the vaccines but doesn't cite a source for his claim. He also doesn't tell us how many cases there were to start with because going from one case to three is dramatic statistically but not a dramatic increase otherwise, even if true. The 16% decrease in fertility in rats cited from the Pfizer study would be concerning if true. (It'd be more concerning if I didn't think the world was way over-populated but that's another matter. And randomly decreasing fertility without publicizing it to people would be ethically wrong regardless, IMO.) At about 8 minutes in, he claims that all the supposed inflammation is caused by micro-clotting...but that you can't see it on "x-ray or scan". He also says "if we look at this in the patients, we know it's micro-clotting (emphasis in the original)". It'd be interesting to find out where he gets this knowledge from looking at this in the patients since normal inflammation isn't caused through blood clots, the pictures he's shown aren't of clots, and the x-rays and scans don't show clots. I'd normally go through the rest of the video but I'm old and have been doing three doctor appointments and errands all day today and I'm wiped out. If anyone wants to make a request for me to go through the last five minutes of his speech and give my impressions of it, go ahead and ask. In any case, getting back to BitChute. The reason why the website which this video is posted to is relevant to the discussion is that shows up on BitChute rather than a credible website is that the information which is most often posted on BitChute is not credible. And if it were posted on YouTube, it'd be removed because it's a pack of hogswallop which is pretending to be credible information from a doctor who is in the business of trying to sell horse de-wormer, cactus, shoes, and backpacks. Not everything which is posted on BitChute is automatically nonsense. But there's often a reason it shows up there rather than websites which at least try to have some kind of very minimal standards. And the organization which chooses to post a video is often relevant as well. A wiccan-named organization which admits it is into conspiracy theories, UFO's and alternate spirituality...they're probably trying to find information which promotes their point of view rather than be an unbiased source of the news of the day.

I prefer working for an establishment which doesn't make you wear a Thai for lunch....

That's goofy.... They shouldn't have tried to charge the Aussies a cool million dollars to change the design blueprints over from the proposed subs using incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs. That kind of price gouging will always upset a customer, even if you're delivering on time...which the French weren't.

From the article: "The scientist championing the naming of a new ninth planet, Caltech" Personally, I think that'd be a great name for the ninth planet. Anyway, I've been under the impression the fact that Pluto was much smaller than previously thought had a large role to play in its delisting (early telescopes were detecting both Pluto and its very large moon Charon together and astronomers attributed the size and mass of both to Pluto alone).

Aha! So we launch a sneak attack against Russia in winter and paint bomb the entire country. Combined with an EMP pulse to shut down their electrical grid, they'll freeze solid inside their shelters! Diabolical!

Scientists created the world's whitest paint. It could eliminate the need for air conditioning. https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-created-worlds-whitest-paint-163538024.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall It not only reflects heat from the sun and surrounding air but it sucks the heat out of the surface it's painted on and emits that out into the surrounding air.

Try an electric smoker rather than a grill. Load it up with cheap cuts of beef and a couple of whole chickens before you go to work. And get home to a week's worth of perfectly cooked meat. https://www.foodfirefriends.com/smoker-vs-grill/

Exploring and minor quests mostly. The places which are explored are invariably dangerous because I do a "points of light" style of world. Places of mystery are found from time to time. However, they're almost never "dungeons" because moving and removing that much dirt and rock from the ground is a herculean task which doesn't make any sense to me for most purposes. So the places of mystery are towers, keeps, and abandoned towns & cities...with the occasional mine or caverns thrown in. I don't attempt to do romance because I don't want to look players in the face and tell them that I'm falling in love with them. Politics and intrigue are sometimes a tangential part of quests but hardcore politics and intrigue bore me to tears. My inclination as a player is to kill all the politicians involved and let the gods sort them out. And I'm afraid that attitude carries over to GMing. (As a player, I wouldn't actively blow up a game that the other players are enjoying, regardless of my inclination. But I'd also let the GM know that the storyline isn't my cup of tea and find ways to fill my pockets with loot from all the interested NPC's involved. And if loot wasn't available, I'd find other ways of amusing myself as I go along for the ride.) Now as a player "starting some intrigue or meddling in politics" is a very different thing than tolerating NPC's indulging in it and expecting me to play along nicely. I like epic quests as a player. But as a GM, putting players through an epic quest always seems too cheesy. Even if the players seem to enjoy them, I don't feel like I'm doing a great job and I agonize way too much over what I did wrong or could have done better.

I've picked a style (culture) or an area and went with names appropriate for the area. Like Ashkelon is a wonderful name for a city and players when first introduced to the name aren't quite sure if the place name has something to do with ashes, skeletons, or skeletons which are made of ashes. The real-life Ashkelon was one of the main cities of the Philistines so other cities took place names from ancient non-Israelite cities in the area. And the gods became Baal, Moloch, and others (with the names filed off because players are more likely to recognize god names than ancient place names). For cultures which have five syllable or more names, I pick a syllable or two for use as a familiar name for every day use and the full name is either secret or only used in official documents. So Mitth'raw'nuruodo becomes Thrawn, Mitt, or Odo while Abimelech would become Mel, Lech, or Abe.

The chicken tastes about the same to me. I can't eat as much as I used to because I can't tolerate the grease, but the flavor is much the same. The coleslaw is notably less sweet than it used to be. And it used to be the best thing on the menu. They either greatly reduced the amount of sugar in it or changed over to a non-sugar sweetener. There's also been a notable drop-off in quality of the other side dishes but it's most obvious with the coleslaw. ==== I can't stand coffee and I don't drink alcoholic beverages. I gave up sodas completely for 15+ years but now have started drinking them infrequently.