zipwitch

13 ms·

61.
by zipwitch 7y ago
The government picking well-connected winners for private profit is just "American capitalism". As for socialism, I'll quote Harry Truman's 1952 speech, "Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every adva
62.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Should we be calling this branch of science electrophrenology?
63.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Your memory is likely faulty, or you may have read an abridged version. Odysseus first has to choose between Charybdis and Scylla. He and his (surviving) crew pass Scylla and reach the isle of the sun-god. There, the crew kill and eat the c
64.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Moldy? Psh, that's nothing. The real excitement begins when you play with the sweat coming off the dynamite, like we did back when I was a kid in the 80s! Note: the above is sarcasm. "Sweating" or "weeping" dynamite
65.
by zipwitch 7y ago
As opposed to Legends of Tomorrow, which is an RPG party doing "adventure of the week" on a timeship. (I enjoy Legends of Tomorrow a lot. It totally feels like the writers are running weekly gaming sessions and turning them into s
66.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Was that "union rules" or "the way the company had agreed to comply with their agreement with the union"? Because 'work to rule' can be a double-edged sword, and in my experience companies just love to blame
67.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Seveneves is a great book (although a little grim for my taste), but it is not about Kessler Syndrome. It's about a scenario where (spoiler alert for the first sentence), the Moon blows up, and humanity has to deal with the consequ
68.
by zipwitch 7y ago
The US government's High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)(1), a favorite subject of conspiracy theorists, uses a high frequency, high-power transmitter to temporarily excite a small part of the ionosphere. One theoreti
69.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/937/
70.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Then there's what's often called "privilege" (circumstances of birth). What are the consequences to you of taking a risk on being lucky and missing ? For some people, dropping out of college and spending a few years w
71.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Verbal thinker hear as well. Weak mind's eye, but imagined scenes or objects are actually easier to visualize and describe than memories of real objects or places, most of the time.
72.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Strongly verbal thinker here: weak "mind's eye" (or nose, or ear). I can remember and later identify images, music, etc with a high degree of accuracy, but when I call something up for "internal recall" my memory wi
73.
by zipwitch 7y ago
No good alternatives. For years, I had smartphones with slider keyboards. Now, I carry a foldable bluetooth keyboard in my bag. Onscreen keyboards are for emergencies only. But a lot of people view lugging the keyboard as unacceptable.
74.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Not even a mention of Password Safe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_Safe It's what I've been using for Windows-running non-savvy relatives for decades.
75.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Aerial Board of Control? :-) (Kipling also wrote SF short stories, set in a universe with the aforementioned organization as a world government, for example "As Easy As A.B.C." (1912).) https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
76.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Challenger did not explode . The key events of the disaster took place over about three seconds. A leak of high-temperature gas in the right solid rocket booster damaged the external stack of solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank. T
77.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Solar wind as the culprit was still being tossed around in 2017. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-maven-reveals-most-... "The new result reveals that solar wind and radiation were responsible for most of t
78.
Unexplained Gravitational Wave Burst Off the Shoulder of Orion Detected(iflscience.com)
1 points by zipwitch 7y ago|0 comments
79.
by zipwitch 7y ago
If I recall correctly, the pound is just a unit of account (I think I'm using that right) during the Medieval era. No one is actually carrying around pounds of silver.
80.
by zipwitch 7y ago
As it happens, I've been putting together notes for a new D&D campaign I'll be running in the near future. I downloaded this exact price list as a reference three days ago.
81.
by zipwitch 7y ago
> (Balrogs don't fly.) Them's thar's fightin' words. :) I don't have a copy of the old Usenet FAQ handy, but here's a tiny sample of the debate for any curious readers: http://tolkiengateway.net
82.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Cue the great SF writer E.E. 'Doc' Smith of Lensman fame, who went into detail on the challenges of just getting two spaceships to match velocities closely enough to allow docking at transfer of passengers and cargo. (He did han
83.
by zipwitch 7y ago
In the good old days, of usenet, James D. Nicoll had a signature that read: "Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our depth." "Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
84.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Obligatory pedantry: "Angmar" was the name of the northern realm which the Lord of the Nazgul once ruled as the "Witch-King of Angmar". We don't know what his original name was, although I believe there's a ref
85.
by zipwitch 7y ago
I think it's great slave farms in Southern Mordor, around the inland sea of Nurnen. http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/n/nurn.php (There may also have been farms in the East that I'm not remembering. The East
86.
by zipwitch 7y ago
That's a popular and oft-repeated conception, but not precisely canon. Tolkien was never able to definitively pin down the origin and nature of his orcs to his own satisfaction, and never reached any final decision, afaik.
87.
by zipwitch 7y ago
In popular culture "Curzon" is probably most familiar to StarTrek:DS9 fans as Curzon Dax, the predecessor of the Jadzia Dax. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Curzon_Dax (The character - a diplomat - was
88.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Ann Leckie's fantasy novel The Raven Tower is set in a world where such pagan gods are real, and dives right into a description of how human tribes will spend generations training them to respond favorably.
89.
Climate tipping points – too risky to bet against(nature.com)
2 points by zipwitch 7y ago|0 comments
90.
by zipwitch 7y ago
Yes! I had Archon II as a kid and loved it. I remember that playing against the AI was a very different game than playing against another person, as the AI could do things during the fights with perfect aim and split-second reflexes that ma

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