Mantergeistmann
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User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
1hr ago
What, in case you get Isekai'd to a fantasy realm?
Mantergeistmann
5hr ago
They're entirely opposed to "Red Tribe, called America".
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Korea is one of those weird economies/markets that's classified as both emerging and developed, depending on who's doing it, right?
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
I try to always keep $40-50 as a minimum on my person (separate from my spending cash in my wallet).
As far as cash in the house beyond that? None. The situations where I will need cash in an instant and a check/electronic venmo/run to the ATM won't work are... basically just an EMP/solar flare situation that I for some reason can't wait out for restoration. Maybe that happens, I run out of food in a week, there's still no government response, but the stores have product they're willing to sell for cash only?
Perhaps I'm unimaginative, but it just seems too unlikely to be worth worrying about for me personally. Not that there'd be any harm in keeping extra cash in house, though, so it's not a terrible idea just for things I haven't thought of and/or convenience.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Considering getting back into League of Legends. I stop whenever I remember how much I hated playing against other humans.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Hah. I lost it a long time ago. Possibly in a move, possibly thrown out after water damage. Possibly given away to a younger cousin?
Still remember when my cousins and I were opening packs, and I got a second holographic Charizard and had to give it away to another cousin out of "fairness". Was pretty bitter at the time, but it was definitely the thing to do in hindsight.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
I'm honestly sad that most of the large D&D subreddits have banned anything with a whiff of AI, because I think it would be nice if there was a space for non-slop AI-assisted products for D&D. Instead we have /r/dndai which is 50% sexy elf girls, and 100% slop.
It's always entertaining to me when the large D&D subreddits are so hostile to AI character portraits... apparently everyone forgot that the truly virtuous way to get a character portrait was to google some vague traits and grab the first thing on image search that was kind of like what you had in mind.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
The Abyss was deemed ineligible for the Oscar for best visual effects because it used CGI.
Did it not win?
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
At least some people do care about how art gets made. (Others don't, of course. It's an issue that people at large are genuinely split on.)
To be cynical, how many of them only care because it's become somewhat polarized? If it had instead gone the route of "AI is left-aligned, because it allows the poor and underprivileged without money or time for training to create art and collaborate", and anyone against AI was getting pilloried on social media in certain circles, I have a hunch that there'd be some (but not all) reversing their dtance.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
Solid response. Objection withdrawn. Carry on.
Mantergeistmann
3d ago
"Lord, protect me from my friends sympathetic press; I can handle my enemies on my own."
Mantergeistmann
3d ago
this seems like just about the most macabre kind of hair-splitting I've ever encountered
Yes, but it's still important. There is a significant value in truth and precision. If nothing else, it prevents people from saying, "Aha! You were lying or exaggerating about this, clearly I can disregard the rest of your claims equally!"
If you're not prepared to stand behind a claim, you shouldn't make it.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
Might not claim they were trained for it, but certainly claims they were used for it.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
Chuck Tingle is deep enough on one side of the culture war that he almost certainly is Pro-Palestine. At least he would be publicly.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
It seems like the original report the NYT is reporting on/linking to is from Euro Med Monitor, a group which has a squeaky clean wikipedia page and zero discussion of bias or untrustworthiness. Or, to speak plainly: there's a lot of allegations about their bias elsewhere, some as always likely overblown and some true, but it seems there's been a dedicated effort to clean up their Wikipedia page even since the last time I was there a few years ago.
For those of you curious, the Euro Med Monitor has also identified the source of the dogs: those dastardly Dutch! Who are, of course, therefore on the hook to pay up:
Lastly, the Dutch government and implicated companies must establish a dedicated compensation fund for surviving Palestinian victims affected by the use of these dogs.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
Never imagined I'd be posting this on a Wednesday morning
So what date/time would you have imagined?
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
Re-reading How Not to Write a Novel. Not really for the writing advice at this point, but because it's genuinely entertaining, especially the snippets of deliberately bad writing throughout.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
I think that for the most part, civilian nuclear programs are mostly unrelated to weapons programs.
I will say that the US order of things was kind of insane: nuclear bomb -> nuclear submarine reactor -> civilian reactor.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
They don't have to, but the US submarines do. I believe the Russians and UK do, and therefore India as well. Not sure about France and China, though.
They'd be pretty useless to Iran, though, as they don't need boomers (sonce they don't have nuclear weapons, natch), and they don't need to transit significant distances at high speed. See also: why the Baltic/Nordic powers don't bother with nuclear.
That's all pretty much a moot point, though, since Iran hasn't even pretended that they were ever going to consider a nuclear propulsion program, so they can hardly use it as a fig leaf justification for enrichment.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
I'm going to go ahead and assume that there's therefore also no reason to recommend Burroughs's Barsoom books?
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane short stories?
There above the dead man's torn body, man fought with demon under the pale light of the rising moon, with all the advantages with the demon, save one. And that one was enough to overcome the others. For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, equally abstract, form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost? Kane fought with his arms and his feet and his hands, and he was aware at last that the ghost began to give back before him, and the fearful slaughter changed to screams of baffled fury. For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
If you are not trying to achieve a tactical objective, but the goal is to spread terror, then chemical weapons are probably 10x as effective per death than bombs are, and radiological weapons might be 100x as effective as plain old explosives. That Japanese cult could have achieved the same death toll of their infamous Sarin attack by throwing a few pipe bombs into a crowded subway car at a fraction of the operational complexity of synthesizing a nerve agent. But if they had done that, their attack might not even have made the top spot in international news, and would long have been forgotten outside Japan.
It's the same as dirty bombs. The radioactivity from a dirty bomb will not, realistically, cause particularly many cancer cases. It will, however, cause an absolutely absurd amount of panic, and I mean that both in the literal sense and as an intensifier.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
Credit is excellent (848 Experian; 825 VantageScore); purchase is ~10k. I looked at the AmEx Platinum since they're willing to give you an offer prior to a hard credit pull, and it was only 100k points, which barely seemed worth it. I'm leaning towards going for the CSR.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
started the first Ukraine war
Alright, I'll bite: you can criticize him for inaction concerning Crimea, but how did he start it?
For me, that's more likely (both to happen and to have immediate requirement) when I'm traveling, hence (one of the reasons for) keeping a nominal but not bank-breaking "emergency cash" in my wallet. Plus multiple cards, including with differing institutions.
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