Sociotard

Okay, two ayes and I'm good to go. I'll repost the rules tonight.

While funny, that is unnecessary.
 
Unconventional Warfare Techniques Manual: Incendiaries

I'm amusing myself with ChatGPT hallucinations.
 
I am playing a tabletop RPG using Hero System 5th edition revised by Steve Long. I want my character to be fully invisible to the Sight Group. How many points do I need to pay for invisibility?
In the Hero System 5th edition revised by Steve Long, you can achieve complete invisibility to the Sight Group by purchasing the Invisible Power with the "Affects Sight Group Only" modifier.
The cost of the Invisible Power depends on its level of effectiveness, which is determined by the amount of Perception rolls an observer must make to detect you. To be completely invisible to the Sight Group, you would need to purchase Invisible with the "Affects Sight Group Only" modifier at its maximum level, which requires observers to roll a Perception check against a difficulty of 18- (i.e., they must roll an 18 or higher on 3d6 to detect you).
According to the Hero System 5th edition rules, the cost of the Invisible Power with the "Affects Sight Group Only" modifier at its maximum level is 30 points per level. So if you want to be completely invisible to the Sight Group, you would need to pay 30 points for each level of the power.
 
I am playing a tabletop RPG using Hero System 5th edition revised by Steve Long. I am using a 5d6 Energy Blast against an enemy with 8 points normal defense. I make my attack roll. How do I calculate damage? Assume we are not using hit location modifiers.
To calculate the damage from your Energy Blast attack in Hero System 5th edition, you need to determine the attack's base damage, which is equal to the number of dice rolled plus the attack's damage class (which is determined by the character's power or equipment).
In this case, you are using a 5d6 Energy Blast, so the base damage is 5 plus the damage class of the attack. Let's assume the damage class is 6, which is a typical value for Energy Blast attacks.
So the base damage for your attack would be 5 + 6 = 11.
Next, you need to compare the attack's base damage to the target's defense value. In this case, the target has 8 points of normal defense.
If the attack's base damage is equal to or higher than the target's defense value, the attack hits and inflicts damage. If the base damage is lower than the target's defense value, the attack misses and does not inflict damage.
In this case, since the base damage of your Energy Blast attack is higher than the target's defense value, the attack hits and inflicts damage.
To calculate the damage inflicted, you subtract the target's defense value from the attack's base damage, and then multiply the result by the attack's damage multiplier. Let's assume the damage multiplier for your Energy Blast attack is 1, which is a typical value.
So the damage inflicted would be (11 - 8 )* 1 = 3.
Therefore, your Energy Blast attack would inflict 3 points of damage to the target.

I teach part time. This year it’s high school math. Today, I asked the students to try to solve a mathematical induction proof using AI. Out of 53 students two of them succeeded in less than three minutes. I asked one of the students to show me his results just to see if it was accurate. It was spot on. 
 
He was using ChatGPT and it looked like someone had solved the same problem (a fairly common problem for PreCal and Calculus) and the AI had just used their solution. However, … a quick look over the student’s chat with the AI showed that he was entering all his homework problems and copying the solutions. It had 9 out of 10 correct answers with worked out solutions.
 
I laughed and congratulated him on his use of technology. “Just be sure you can answer those types of problems on the test.”
 
I think we’re just a few years out from being able to answer just about any question. “What plants would grow well in this corner of my yard?” “What would a 1922 Romanian Monster Hunter carry in their pockets?”
 
I’ve given up being afraid of the future. I just hope the Matrix pods are comfortable.

Perun's latest defense economics blog post steps back from the war in Ukraine to look at NATO and what the US gets from its military alliances that make them good deals both militarily and economically. A bunch of stuff that Donald Trump never understood and probably never could understand.
 
What caught my notice, though, was his mention that the oldest still-operative military alliance is the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, formerly adopted in 1386. Not only is it still legally on the books, it was invoked as recently as 1982 when British ships used Portuguese naval bases in the Falklands Crisis. Wikipedia, of course, has more:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Portuguese_Alliance
 
Apart from being a nerdy-cool piece of trivia, it warms my heart to know that two countries *can* be true to their word to each other for six centuries and counting. History isn't always just vicious opportunism.
 
Dean Shomshak

They've had an AI coding assistant as part of GitHub for a while called Co-Pilot, and decided to use that brand for all their new AI integration.

Seeker is looking better too.
 

Option: Distinguished Alumni: Philip K. Dick.
 
Option: University Staff: Gladys Kravitz (Bewitched)
Role: Trustee
 
 

Option: Distinguished Alumni: Philip K. Dick.
 
Option: University Staff: Gladys Kravitz (Bewitched)
Role: Trustee
 
 

The event was a titanic clash between Magus University and its hated rival. Sure, it was close, but Magus U had it all over their foe in one way:
 
"An  eye for an eye, Rah Rah Rah!"  One Magus University student yelled
"Go Newts!" a freshman joined in
"We'll get better!" Someone took up the  traditional chant whenever the Magus University team was down!
 
Option Pick: The Magus University Official Mascot - "The Fighting Newts!"
 
(Credit where Credit is due, Logan helped me with this, and also made the art work below with an AI generator thingobobbin)
 
 

I better catch up before Monday
 
I think the commissioner missed:
Option: Skull and Bones (Secret Fraternity)
 
University Character: The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon.
Staff Role: Food Services
 

I better catch up before Monday
 
I think the commissioner missed:
Option: Skull and Bones (Secret Fraternity)
 
University Character: The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon.
Staff Role: Food Services
 

I better catch up before Monday
 
I think the commissioner missed:
Option: Skull and Bones (Secret Fraternity)
 
University Character: The Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon.
Staff Role: Food Services
 

"Wait, I thought she was sent to ..."
"Prison. Yes. But she's using a University homunculus to avoid doing the time herself. So, we get her services on the cheap. Plus she reminds the undergrads that misrepresentation will get you far, but only so far."
 
The Grad Student: Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos Founder, Blood Mage)
 

"Wait, I thought she was sent to ..."
"Prison. Yes. But she's using a University homunculus to avoid doing the time herself. So, we get her services on the cheap. Plus she reminds the undergrads that misrepresentation will get you far, but only so far."
 
The Grad Student: Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos Founder, Blood Mage)
 

"Paoulini! Return this man at once!"
 
The wizard continued messing about with his disks. "My equipment was never intended for ... passengers. It will take weeks to get something together to return him with any degree of safety." He mumbled on, something about it not being his fault the rude Yankee grabbed his sleeve at just the wrong moment.
 
The man looked at the wonders around him. Maybe staying a few weeks, or longer?, wouldn't be so bad. He already had a university degree, engineering, but those had gone centuries out of date in the blink of an eye. Well, there was no reason he couldn't start over at any age ...
 
Freshman: Hank Morgan (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

"Paoulini! Return this man at once!"
 
The wizard continued messing about with his disks. "My equipment was never intended for ... passengers. It will take weeks to get something together to return him with any degree of safety." He mumbled on, something about it not being his fault the rude Yankee grabbed his sleeve at just the wrong moment.
 
The man looked at the wonders around him. Maybe staying a few weeks, or longer?, wouldn't be so bad. He already had a university degree, engineering, but those had gone centuries out of date in the blink of an eye. Well, there was no reason he couldn't start over at any age ...
 
Freshman: Hank Morgan (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

"Paoulini! Return this man at once!"
 
The wizard continued messing about with his disks. "My equipment was never intended for ... passengers. It will take weeks to get something together to return him with any degree of safety." He mumbled on, something about it not being his fault the rude Yankee grabbed his sleeve at just the wrong moment.
 
The man looked at the wonders around him. Maybe staying a few weeks, or longer?, wouldn't be so bad. He already had a university degree, engineering, but those had gone centuries out of date in the blink of an eye. Well, there was no reason he couldn't start over at any age ...
 
Freshman: Hank Morgan (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

The Paolini Institute has several powerful planetary spirits pre-bound to serve. These are called synocheis, "connectors," because they supply a connection to the celestial realms.
 
Some of these are housed in telestika positioned around the Institute building and grounds.
 
Only one synocheus, however, is actually considered part of the faculty. The Institute's departmental librarian is a spirit of Mercury: vastly intelligent, highly mobile when released from its home in a consecrated human skull, and with an infallible memory for everything it has ever witnessed or learned. And over the centuries, the spirit has learned a lot. Knowledge is power, making this spirit powerful indeed. Also... very snarky. Famous line: "We have now left reason and sanity junction. Next stop, Looneyville!"
 
Magister Paolinin has commanded the spirit to confine its service to students to answering questions, though; and asks students ta actually read the books, scrolls, tablets, and other writings in the Institute library, instead of just asking the spirit for the answer to their questions. The spirit may appear as simply a yellow-orange glow in the eyesockets of the skull. When released, it manifests as a cloud of yellow-orange sparks.
 
Even a bound spirit can have a price. The Librarian's price is that the Institute's library also has an amazing collection of girlie mags and romance novels.
 
Other Staff Member: Department Librarian, Bob the Skull
(Basic version from the Dresden Files books. Evil Bob and the TV version are still available.)

 
Dean Shomshak

I would like to pick John Constantine as my university pick as contract law professor
CES

Professor:  Lee Harvey Oswald (The Department of Truth)
Specialty:  Fictions and the Truth
 

Megamind organized his thoughts by dangling papers with isolated clues from the ceiling. He began with a Poem. Next to it were times he'd noticed other students trying to memorize the poem, who'd changed the suspect whenever he asked what class it was for. Odd. Students loved complaining about specific professors and the workloads they demanded.
 
Around the edge of the room were sylabi from dozens of classes. English. Philosophy. History. None of them seemed to reference that piece. He hung copies of a few other poems he'd overheard with similar circumstances. He hung references to numbers of instructors in the Conservatory for Misdirection with the actual instructor lists.
The counts were off by one. (Which Oz always denied.)
 
The poems generally discussed ways of knowing and perceiving, subjects tightly bound to the very mission of the Conservatory.
 
There had to be a connection.
 
He tried memorizing the poem himself. It wasn't bad, if a bit long. It began as a simple ode to natural beauty, before moving on to questions of whether it was possible to understand that natural world, or only possible to understand perceptions of it. If the reality could not be known then perhaps it was reality that was a lie and perception that was truth. The phenomenal world was more tactile than the noumenal, and that made it more real.
 
The strange ideas proved to be a bigger hurdle to memorizing the lines than the length of the poem. Megamind decided to try a walk in the park. Maybe immersing himself in those perceptions would help the poem make sense and stick a little better, and he had no better leads at the moment. He walked, reciting the poem, glancing at the paper as needed, until the paper was snatched from his hands.
 
He took off chasing the ... raven? Raven through the park until it dropped the pages. Megamind picked them up and resumed repetition while he put them in order.
"Ah, but if our perceptions are reality, is the perceiver real?" Megamind glanced to the man that asked the question. He was filthy, from his stained clothes to his matted beard, and even the patch over his left eye was caked with something Megamind declined to speculate on. The old man picked a worm out of a bowl and tossed it to one of the ravens in front of him.
 
The poem was finally back in order, beakmarks notwithstanding. "I know that I am thinking about your bird and perceive it, therefore I know that I am real. Mr?"
 
"Just call me Grimnir. And why do you call it a bird?"
 
Megamind rolled his eyes. "because I've seen birds before, and I know that 'bird' is the word for them."
 
"Your old perceptions appear to interpret your ones. Do you know what a rat king is?"
 
Megamind almost sat on the bench, thought of bugs in the old mans clothes, and sat on the path instead. "A bunch of rats somehow stuck in a single mass."
 
"A rat king rolls through a sewer. It rolls over another rat. Did the rat encounter a thing that is not a rat, or did it encounter a bunch of rats?"
 
"I ... a bunch of rats?"
 
"If you were tabula rasa, clean of all perceptions of birds and people saying 'bird' and black things and flying things, would the perception of a raven happen at all? But if you must have old perceptions to receive new ones, is there a you, or is there only the mass your perceptions? A rat king finding a rat. Here, there is something you should read."
 
Grimnir wrote a reference on Megaminds paper, and that was that. The papers wound up hung from the ceiling. So did others Grimnir suggested later. Was Grimnir the secret instructor? He'd never say. If he was, what was he teaching? Why would the Conservatory use a homeless man? Was he homeless, or was he something greater? Or was wondering if he was something other than what he appeared noumenal chauvinism?
 
Megamind wondered if he had enough room to hang paper from.
 
Professor: Grimnir (maybe Odin?)
Specialty: Epistemology and poetry

 
 
There. I had professors who appeared strong when they were weak, now I have one who appears weak but is strong.

The Puck Institute's Star Pupil is Tiana!
 
Tiana is a promising young cook from New Orleans with an affinity for Cajun cuisine. Her “swamp gumbo” is what got her accepted to the Puck institute, but she refuses to share the recipe. Not even with her professors. She says with a wink that she got it from her friends on the other side. “C’est tout.” Tiana has a voodoo-streaked history which practically destined her for a career in magical cookery. An involuntary shapeshifter, Tiana finds that she can still communicate with animals. 

Tiana is an intelligent, resourceful, and driven young woman. She makes friends easily and fries up her special beignets for her colleagues every week. She’s also an ambitious (some say obsessive) student. This year, she convinced Dean Brown to stage a special Mardi Gras celebration at the Institute. As a department, they made up an enormous King Cake capable of feeding the entire student body. 
 

 

Both Both Republicans And Democrats Severely Overestimate How Extreme The Other Side Is
 
The ironic thing about this is that all the factors that one would expect to lead to more accurate assessments only make things worse.