Kobolds with a keyboard.

  • 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Do you see yourself going back to Unity after they changed streams?

    The only reason this didn’t stick is because they got overwhelming backlash from it. They didn’t revert it because they’re thinking of their users, they didn’t revert it because they had a change of heart; they did it because it was a PR issue and they decided they’d make more money by reverting the decision than by keeping it. That’s the only reason.

    The next time they think of some half-baked idea to milk more money from their users, they’ll try that one, too, and they’ll just keep doing it until something sticks, then probably start the process again and add something else on top of it. Anything they say denying this is just corporate speak.

    Case in point, they’re still adjusting their prices; they’re lowering them for some very low-revenue teams while increasing them for their larger teams and this is, I guarantee you, because they ran the numbers and realized they’ll make more this way.

    Don’t trust them. Get out if you haven’t already. There’s too many great, free options out there. Godot basically has feature parity with Unity right now except for console exports, and that’s coming later this year.


  • Her hair looks so nice, I’d have a hard time not wanting to touch it, even knowing it’s venomous poisonous. Maybe rather than a stone gaze, her gaze inflicts a variant of Command, compelling you to touch her hair. I’ve been afflicted. Additionally: Maybe she can’t control it, and she hates that about herself; she can never form meaningful relationships without inadvertently poisoning everyone she grows attached to. She’s a sympathetic character and the adventure revolves around trying to find a way to lift her curse without falling victim to it yourselves.



  • Simmons (the woman who murdered the guy) was not the one he had the relationship with. Her trauma (as described in the article) was that she believed her stepfather (whom she stabbed 5 years ago) abused her daughter. As far as the article covers, she had no involvement with the guy she shot and dismembered at all. He had a warrant for failing to register as a sex offender; Simmons apparently saw that and, because of her “disdain for pedophiles”, murdered him.

    Whatever your feelings on the guy, we simply can’t condone extrajudicial killings. I know it feels good sometimes to think “Yeah, that guy deserved it!”, and in some cases, maybe they do, but it doesn’t matter - it’s still vigilantism.

    In this case, it seems that she’s just a violent woman. If I’m reading it right, she stabbed one person, and murdered two (three separate unrelated incidents) so she deserves the life sentence she got, however you slice it.




  • I took a ~1200 mile bus trip about 20 years ago; it had multiple layovers and took about 36 hours total so it sounds very similar to the trip you’re taking. Frankly I would not do it again. This is from a trip up the east coast of the US so my experience might not apply in the country you’re going to.

    I’d have to wait between 3 and 5 hours to board the next bus. Optimist me says great! I could go sightseeing, but with a large and heavy backpack this might not be a good idea…

    If you’re using bus terminals in big cities, don’t expect to be able to get anywhere interesting and back again in that time. Large bus terminals are crowded (basically like a small airport) and sprawling and you’ll likely be fairly overwhelmed just trying to get to where you need to go to. They’re also generally not located in the middle of metropolitan areas; you’d most likely need to take a taxi to get to wherever you wanted to sight-see. It would not be a pleasant experience. If you’re considering this, check a map of the area around the terminal first and see if it’s even an option; don’t just wing it, and plan to need more time when getting back to the terminal than you think you should, especially if it’s a non-English speaking country.

    Then there’s food, which at bus stations or in tourists areas is neither good nor cheap no matter where you are, personal hygiene, pickpocketing… I’d be traveling solo.

    Expect to pay more than you otherwise would. Consider bringing food with you if you’re concerned about that. The only real hygiene option is the sink in the bathroom in the terminal; you’ll probably just be throwing on some deodorant and hoping for the best.

    are travelers allowed to eat in the bus? Am I allowed to bring my own food?

    Yes, and yes, at least for the US-based busses I’ve ridden on. They’re pretty chill. Don’t expect to have a tray table or anything, though; don’t bring messy things. Something like a bagged sandwich, or snack items, though, should be fine.

    The busses themselves were fairly comfortable, much moreso than a plane - the seats are well cushioned, you have room to move around. The ride itself was not bad. However, the layovers are killer. None of the legs of the trip were long enough to really sleep, either during them or between them. It’s hard to sleep on a bus (for me, anyway) - they’re not the smoothest rides, and it ended up being a bunch of short, unsatisfying naps rather than any real sleep. Sleeping at the terminals didn’t seem wise. I was a bit stressed about either missing my connection or someone nicking my stuff, though, so that added stress definitely made the trip worse than it could have been. I felt pretty awful by the time I reached my destination and just could not wait to be off that bus. Thirty six hours is a lot longer in practice than it sounds like when you’re planning things.







  • Are you familiar with the MTGO format Penny Dreadful?

    Basically, any card that was worth $0.01 or less in the preceding season is legal in the current one. It’s an interesting system that, in practice, works similarly to what you’re proposing, except with a ban list rather than mana cost. The cards aren’t likely to fluctuate in price based on external influences (it’s rare that a $0.01 card becomes such a breakout hit in another format that its price goes up, though it does happen on rare occasion) - usually it’s the Penny Dreadful format itself that causes those market fluctuations. If a card is popular enough in that format that it starts seeing heavy play, the price often dips up above $0.01 and it becomes illegal in the next season as a matter of course.

    The rough analog to what you’re proposing would be making any card that saw more than a specific percentage of play banned, but if you’re determined to use mana costs, you could (hypothetically, not practically) increase all mana production and costs by a factor of 1000 (so a basic forest taps for 1000x green, and a llanowar elf costs 1000 green), and let costs fluctuate very slightly as a result, but it wouldn’t functionally change much. Spending (the equivalent of) 0.942 of a mana on something isn’t functionally different in almost all cases from spending 1 mana on it. By making prices only fluctuate on fixed intervals, say, weekly, you’d and only take play within the past, say, 2-3 weeks into account when determining cost, you’d be able to reach equilibrium while also not necessitating frequent deck changes (certainly not match to match).




  • This post feels a little like bait, but that said:

    To me, this is not even a question. It doesn’t feel great to say, but the only correct response is to choose Pathway 2. There’s a lot of things at stake in this election but one of the things on the chopping block if the GOP wins is trans rights. We’ve seen what they do when they have full control (look at Florida - that’s their vision for the whole country); securing a win for them just to maintain a moral high ground on this one issue will only make things worse for trans people. Trans rights being left “in a vulnerable position” is far better than trans rights being eliminated completely. That’s not even taking into account any of the other problems this would cause.

    Anyone choosing Pathway 1 is not thinking through the ramifications of their choice. That said, it’s a stupid premise for a discussion, for exactly the above issue. For there to be an interesting moral dilemma, there has to be a dilemma, and there’s only one here if you’re not thinking about it past the surface.

    To be clear this is purely in response to a hypothetical and I’m not in any way suggesting actually taking that course of action in reality. I in no way believe there’s enough single-issue swing voters for the democratic party being pro-trans-rights to make a lick of difference in the actual outcome.