The General Chat thread
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
viscomica wrote:I did it! Payed my credit card bill.
Excuse me while I hide in a cave for the next three days until I get paid.
Woo-HOO! YEAH!
I'm proud of you; PROUD I say!
- plummeting_sloth
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Re: The General Chat thread
viscomica wrote:I did it! Payed my credit card bill.
Excuse me while I hide in a cave for the next three days until I get paid.
I don't know how to tell you this... but cave-rent is due.
He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it (Description of U.S. Grant)
Elomin Sha wrote:I love the smell of napalm'd sloths in the morning.
Re: The General Chat thread
plummeting_sloth wrote:viscomica wrote:I did it! Payed my credit card bill.
Excuse me while I hide in a cave for the next three days until I get paid.
I don't know how to tell you this... but cave-rent is due.
Awww man!
empath wrote:Woo-HOO! YEAH! I'm proud of you; PROUD I say!
Thanks! It was ... interesting, haha. Thanks to online banking I didn't have to actually go to the bank so at least there's that, haha.
In other news, I'm so tired! I need vacations. Sweet, sweet vacations.
- plummeting_sloth
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Re: The General Chat thread
just sell some stuff of Krogs-list
He habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it (Description of U.S. Grant)
Elomin Sha wrote:I love the smell of napalm'd sloths in the morning.
- Prospero101
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Re: The General Chat thread
Krogsnet going downhill. Krogsnet full of cave paintings of she-people with no pelts on. Krogsnet need search engine.
It's all over but the crying. And the taxes.
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
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Re: The General Chat thread
Heyyyy guys. With great grad school comes great debt... so I'm trying to pimp the shit out of my store this weekend. There's a link to it in my sig... I'm not asking you guys to buy things necessarily (although you can if you'd like!), but I'd really, really appreciate spreading the word about it more, if you're so inclined. You can tell people about it yourself, or just retweet my tweet about it (I'm @Fayili) or reblog my post about it (nonsensicalsounds on tumblr).
Thanks so much for any who want to take a couple seconds to do this. <3 <3 <3
Thanks so much for any who want to take a couple seconds to do this. <3 <3 <3
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
So...long story ahead; get out the blankets and pillows!
So back when I was a teen, I got into 'Battletech' (a futuristic giant-robot board-wargame), and the attendant 'Mechwarrior' RPG and the milieu in general. My friends and I had an 'alternate universe' campaign going, where in one session each of us were rulers of stellar empires and trying to cope with the sudden unveiling of a minor 'neutral' faction's huge hidden army, and in another session we were piloting mecha on both sides of one engagement during this 'Comstar war', and then we started getting into an RPG mini-campaign where one empire's counter-offensive against the upstart commenced with a black-ops mission to disable part of the sensor and defense system grid of Sol itself - one DM'ed it and the rest of us were the agents.
Okay, so we sneak in in a small shuttle and make it all the way to Luna, to a nexus of the satellite's power grid - destroy or disable that, and most of the facilities that control the solar system's defenses are crippled long enough for our nation's main forces to arrive and start their offensive.
So we infiltrate a high-energy R&D lab on the dark side, and get things set to blow all the connecting power feeds going to the rest of the lunar facilities, but naturally we get detected, and fight a running battle against numerically superior defenders.
We get penned in one lab, and an attempt to seal the doors activates the device in the lab...
...and a large chunk of the facility (including our shuttle sitting on the roof)....shifts - to us it seems that the facility (and every other structure on Luna) beyond the field created by the device has just been obliterated.
After some emergency actions - aided by the facility defenders - to preserve oxygen integrity, hostilities cease and everyone takes stock.
There's no comm traffic besides us, no even debris visible beyond what seemed to be inside the field, and not sufficient life support to sustain the survivors of the battle and the 'shift' for long...
So a mixed team of agents and defenders agree to take the shuttle and look for signs of life or safe refuge or even just stocks of oxygen, water & food to hold out longer.
And when the shuttle stops being 'eclipsed' from Terra, the improvised crew get a shock at the changes to everything:
The device has apparently taken a spherical chunk of the moon, the facility and everyone in the affected area from AD 3015, to AD 2015, without moving in the normal three dimensions.
The players (and a fair number of grudging allies...for now) are stranded in the past. Sure there's a near infinite stock of food, water and air just a short shuttle deorbit away, but the consequences of doing anything (including keeping the shuttle visible to people and devices on Earth) discourage action.
-----
Okay, so there's the setting of our adventure...back in the 80's.
Skip ahead: last night was the first clear night of 2015 where I could actually see the full moon; as I'm driving home from work, the sight makes me think back to that game...
...and then Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage/Eclipse" comes on the radio.
♫And if your head explodes the dark forbodings too♫
♫I'll see you on the dark side of the moon♫
So back when I was a teen, I got into 'Battletech' (a futuristic giant-robot board-wargame), and the attendant 'Mechwarrior' RPG and the milieu in general. My friends and I had an 'alternate universe' campaign going, where in one session each of us were rulers of stellar empires and trying to cope with the sudden unveiling of a minor 'neutral' faction's huge hidden army, and in another session we were piloting mecha on both sides of one engagement during this 'Comstar war', and then we started getting into an RPG mini-campaign where one empire's counter-offensive against the upstart commenced with a black-ops mission to disable part of the sensor and defense system grid of Sol itself - one DM'ed it and the rest of us were the agents.
Okay, so we sneak in in a small shuttle and make it all the way to Luna, to a nexus of the satellite's power grid - destroy or disable that, and most of the facilities that control the solar system's defenses are crippled long enough for our nation's main forces to arrive and start their offensive.
So we infiltrate a high-energy R&D lab on the dark side, and get things set to blow all the connecting power feeds going to the rest of the lunar facilities, but naturally we get detected, and fight a running battle against numerically superior defenders.
We get penned in one lab, and an attempt to seal the doors activates the device in the lab...
...and a large chunk of the facility (including our shuttle sitting on the roof)....shifts - to us it seems that the facility (and every other structure on Luna) beyond the field created by the device has just been obliterated.
After some emergency actions - aided by the facility defenders - to preserve oxygen integrity, hostilities cease and everyone takes stock.
There's no comm traffic besides us, no even debris visible beyond what seemed to be inside the field, and not sufficient life support to sustain the survivors of the battle and the 'shift' for long...
So a mixed team of agents and defenders agree to take the shuttle and look for signs of life or safe refuge or even just stocks of oxygen, water & food to hold out longer.
And when the shuttle stops being 'eclipsed' from Terra, the improvised crew get a shock at the changes to everything:
The device has apparently taken a spherical chunk of the moon, the facility and everyone in the affected area from AD 3015, to AD 2015, without moving in the normal three dimensions.
The players (and a fair number of grudging allies...for now) are stranded in the past. Sure there's a near infinite stock of food, water and air just a short shuttle deorbit away, but the consequences of doing anything (including keeping the shuttle visible to people and devices on Earth) discourage action.
-----
Okay, so there's the setting of our adventure...back in the 80's.
Skip ahead: last night was the first clear night of 2015 where I could actually see the full moon; as I'm driving home from work, the sight makes me think back to that game...
...and then Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage/Eclipse" comes on the radio.
♫And if your head explodes the dark forbodings too♫
♫I'll see you on the dark side of the moon♫
- Valkyrie-Lemons
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Re: The General Chat thread
Fayili wrote:Heyyyy guys. With great grad school comes great debt... so I'm trying to pimp the shit out of my store this weekend. There's a link to it in my sig... I'm not asking you guys to buy things necessarily (although you can if you'd like!), but I'd really, really appreciate spreading the word about it more, if you're so inclined. You can tell people about it yourself, or just retweet my tweet about it (I'm @Fayili) or reblog my post about it (nonsensicalsounds on tumblr).
Thanks so much for any who want to take a couple seconds to do this. <3 <3 <3
Do you ship to the UK?
Some of your stuff looks pretty neat.
Prospero101 wrote:...is it weird that I REALLY hope that someday I say something memorable enough to be quoted in someone else's signature?
I'm trying this 'Twitter' thing, if you just want to send a message/question/joke, please send it to: @Valkyrie_Lemons , thanks!
- Prospero101
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Re: The General Chat thread
empath wrote:Okay, so there's the setting of our adventure...back in the 80's.
Out of curiosity, what did 2015 look like to you guys back then?
It's all over but the crying. And the taxes.
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
Welp, according to Jordan Weisman, we'd have just had a 'Second Soviet Civil War' by that point.
And we'd be on the way to a stronger global government (the 'Western Alliance') which would push technological advancements like function fusion power, and bankroll (and bankrupt itself on) extrasolar exploration...
And we'd be on the way to a stronger global government (the 'Western Alliance') which would push technological advancements like function fusion power, and bankroll (and bankrupt itself on) extrasolar exploration...
- Prospero101
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Re: The General Chat thread
It's interesting that a mere thirty years difference made for such a futuristic picture.
It's all over but the crying. And the taxes.
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
Yeah, there were still dregs of all that 'dreaming of the future' that Neil deGrasse-Tyson mentioned we lost since we stopped going to the moon...we still had dreams of big change, but I guess the Cold War made them a little more dystopian.
Now? What to we see the world being like in 2045?
*sigh*
Now? What to we see the world being like in 2045?
*sigh*
- Bebop Man
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Re: The General Chat thread
At this point any kind of lasting global alliance seems impossible. We could have an alien invasion 30 years from now and I know of 10 or 15 countries which would go exactly the opposite way of a unified coalition, just to spite los capitalistas (and the invasion would actually be a product of yanqui propaganda, blah blah blah, hey let's forge a diplomatic alliance with Iran while we're at it, because they have so much more to offer than USA and UK).
- Lord Chrusher
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Re: The General Chat thread
I only ever played the computer games and read the novelizations but I miss the BattleTech universe. It was the right level of hardness of science fiction for me.
We are all made of star dust. However we are also made of nuclear waste.
Remember to think before you post.
- Prospero101
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Re: The General Chat thread
To be fair, the UN does actually do stuff. Although we should probably figure out a better way to punish insane governments than economic sanctions, which do nothing but starve civilians and encourage criminals.
It's all over but the crying. And the taxes.
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
You're all right. In reverse order:
1. The United Nations is a stabilizing influence, even if it can't quell ALL the waves in this wading pool of ours.
2. What I liked about the Inner Sphere is...well, everyone was 'grey' - there were no clear-cut good guys and bad guys, just a pile of factions with marginally different philosophies (but still neo-feudal structures) that allied with and fought against each other. At least before all that FedRat fic that got written :/ And don't get me started with the 'Clams'!
3. And yes, a 'one world government' that's even remotely benevolent is just a dream at this point - IMO there's too many people with too many disparate cultures and ideologies for humanity to join under one banner; we either need a drastic pandemic or similar to cull our population to the point where we'd want to unite more than stay apart (and relatively alone)...
...or we'd need a diaspora to bring Terra's population down and maybe give the more...isolationist peoples some REAL 'lebensraum'. Mind you, then that would just be a unified government on Earth, and not for all of humanity.
1. The United Nations is a stabilizing influence, even if it can't quell ALL the waves in this wading pool of ours.
2. What I liked about the Inner Sphere is...well, everyone was 'grey' - there were no clear-cut good guys and bad guys, just a pile of factions with marginally different philosophies (but still neo-feudal structures) that allied with and fought against each other. At least before all that FedRat fic that got written :/ And don't get me started with the 'Clams'!
3. And yes, a 'one world government' that's even remotely benevolent is just a dream at this point - IMO there's too many people with too many disparate cultures and ideologies for humanity to join under one banner; we either need a drastic pandemic or similar to cull our population to the point where we'd want to unite more than stay apart (and relatively alone)...
...or we'd need a diaspora to bring Terra's population down and maybe give the more...isolationist peoples some REAL 'lebensraum'. Mind you, then that would just be a unified government on Earth, and not for all of humanity.
Re: The General Chat thread
empath wrote:3. And yes, a 'one world government' that's even remotely benevolent is just a dream at this point - IMO there's too many people with too many disparate cultures and ideologies for humanity to join under one banner; we either need a drastic pandemic or similar to cull our population to the point where we'd want to unite more than stay apart (and relatively alone)...
...or we'd need a diaspora to bring Terra's population down and maybe give the more...isolationist peoples some REAL 'lebensraum'. Mind you, then that would just be a unified government on Earth, and not for all of humanity.
Actually, one of the things I've learnt in International Law 101 (just to give it a name, haha) is that international law is what happens between anarchy (in terms of nations not talking to each other, so to speak) and a 'one world government' and that if either of those two scenarios were to occur, international law would cease to exist.
Personally, I think a one world government would be problematic.
The whole idea of international law is having some kind of boundaries for countries actions and every international organism is regulated by another one and so on. A one world government would have nothing above it and I find that kind of worrisome.
Of course, this is hypothetical
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Re: The General Chat thread
Valkyrie-Lemons wrote:Fayili wrote:Heyyyy guys. With great grad school comes great debt... so I'm trying to pimp the shit out of my store this weekend. There's a link to it in my sig... I'm not asking you guys to buy things necessarily (although you can if you'd like!), but I'd really, really appreciate spreading the word about it more, if you're so inclined. You can tell people about it yourself, or just retweet my tweet about it (I'm @Fayili) or reblog my post about it (nonsensicalsounds on tumblr).
Thanks so much for any who want to take a couple seconds to do this. <3 <3 <3
Do you ship to the UK?
Some of your stuff looks pretty neat.
I definitely do!
- Master Gunner
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Re: The General Chat thread
Being a long time since I was waist-deep in a snowbank. Actually still fun, if rather surprising. And hard to climb out of.
Twitter | Click here to join the Desert Bus Community Chat.TheRocket wrote:Apparently the crotch area could not contain the badonkadonk area.
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
Yeah; St. John's has been dodging most of the bullets of this harsh winter, surprisingly - it's like there's an invisible line running NNE from about Sable Island to around St. Pierre, and then up through the island to about Gander; on the west side of the line? Snow, snow, and more snow. On the east side of the line? Rain, freezing rain, ice pellets sometimes, but often just gales of wind.
Hearing what the Maritimes are getting hit with reminds me of 2000 here; rang in the 21st century (shaddap pedants) with something twenty feet of snow over the winter...
Hearing what the Maritimes are getting hit with reminds me of 2000 here; rang in the 21st century (shaddap pedants) with something twenty feet of snow over the winter...
- Prospero101
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Re: The General Chat thread
Point of clarity: do you just mean you accumulated twenty feet of snow over the course of the winter in aggregate, or that at one point you had twenty feet of snow on the ground?
It's all over but the crying. And the taxes.
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
- Master Gunner
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Re: The General Chat thread
Both, roughly. Once the snow starts, it doesn't exactly go away until March or April.
Twitter | Click here to join the Desert Bus Community Chat.TheRocket wrote:Apparently the crotch area could not contain the badonkadonk area.
- empath
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Re: The General Chat thread
Well, out here on the eastern shore of Newfoundland, we get warm air/water from the Gulf Stream just off shore, so typically our snow doesn't last - a few days later the winds change and a day of rain washes it out.
But in 2000? Gulf Stream must've drifted further out, or the Labrador Current right outta the polar ice cap was stronger, and every flake we started getting with an 80cm weather bomb in mid-December stayed all the way until MAY. Street signs were disappearing under the banks...
But in 2000? Gulf Stream must've drifted further out, or the Labrador Current right outta the polar ice cap was stronger, and every flake we started getting with an 80cm weather bomb in mid-December stayed all the way until MAY. Street signs were disappearing under the banks...
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Re: The General Chat thread
Can someone help a dumb? I can't seem to find a link to Desert Bus Chat anywhere. Can someone help me out?
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