Here is one of the reasons I say that Elon Musk is, broadly, really stupid:

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/elon-musk-hints-at-buying-hasbro-for-dd-after-announcing-ai-game-studio-2993666/

I am dubious of the source of this quote, but it’s often attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald:

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

Put another way: Gygax made the tremendous and inspired leap to turn historical tabletop wargaming to fantastical, theatre-of-the-mind role-playing, a singular and important achievement in the human tradition of storytelling; and also, Gygax was sexist and racist, and a religious weirdo.

Read more...

Perhaps this will cure what ails me

I can’t stop fiddling with things. Last time, it was Pelican, then I was like screw it, use hosted Wordpress, and now it’s Hugo and once-again self-hosting. Kinda fucked up, really.

I have been using macOS on the desktop since the first public beta; I was (and still am) a rabid NeXTStep fanboy, so the idea of “we’re gonna do NeXTStep for modern hardware” was too much to resist. A modern Unix that is free of all the problems of desktop Linux? Sign me up.

Similarly I have been on iOS since the first iPhone. There were a couple of dalliances and experiments with other platforms but my core device was always iOS. Hell, for a while my “laptop” was an iPad!

Read more...

This is another game I’ve been wanting to run. It’s basically a military hexcrawl with time-pressure. It would probably work with something like Traveller or Lancer.

The basic idea is, the PCs are deposited on some backwater planet, with a mission to investigate some McGuffin - an unexpected power spike, meet with some local, recon some area, whatever, it doesn’t really matter.

The “turn” comes when some terribly bad guy appears; something like, an enemy battle fleet jumps in-system. The players need to race against time to meet their extraction.

Read more...

[Please note that this isn’t really super fleshed out with serious world details, it’s more of a sketch]

So one day the Realm is threatened by the Dread Lord, who using the Magical Macguffin will take over and rule with an iron fist for 100,000 years. A group of heroes arise to stop him.

But our Dread Lord expected this, and stops them! He apparently read the " Evil Overlord List" and came correct. As expected, his 100,000 year reign of terror and evil begins.

Read more...

Expend more than you consume. There you go.

But what about -

BZZT! Expend more than you consume. That is it. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Should I do keto, or some other -

BZZT! Expend more than you consume. How is your problem. It should be sustainable, affordable, enjoyable, and should allow you to be happy and comfortable consuming fewer calories than you expend.

What about cardio vs weights vs -

Read more...

So if I read one more fucking post about how the Cybertruck is the greatest creation of humankind since fire I am going to scream.

But then I thought, let’s concoct a simple means to test it! And that test is: is it actually a truck?

Thus, I give to you, the Cybertruck Challenge! It is as follows:

1. Start with a fully changed vehicle.

2. Load the bed with the following:

Read more...

If you go back and look at the predictions of things like Popular Mechanics and Omni, or just about any writer, thinker, or science communicator for that matter, the one consistent thing you see is how goddamn wrong they are. About everything.

The flying car is the poster child for this. It was obvious - obvious! - we’d have them in no time. Energy is cheap, and technology was growing by leaps and bounds. We harnessed the power of the atom, put stuff in orbit, and we’ll be on the moon soon: flying cars are gonna happen any moment!

Read more...

So I saw a lot of “the Cybertruck will be the end of Tesla” posts today, and I started thinking about that a little. I think the answer is a very solid “nope!”, even in the event of actual massive failure. Allow me to explain.

I think the outcome really depends on how you define “the end of Tesla”, and who is really making the important decisions at Tesla.

Scenario 1 is that the adults in the room (the board?) immediately cancel it. Stop the bleeding, end the PR disaster, and write everything possible off. Ship what’s in production and stop everything else. Musk gets to spend the next decade telling everyone they’ll try again in 2-3 years ( remember when he said we’re be on the Moon in 2-3 years? In 2017?), and generally blame the wokes, the normies, whatever. Tesla the company will probably take a huge hit, and possibly set up a future actual failure, but mostly they’ll be OK. Other car companies have launched failures; it’s fine. It’s practically normal. Ford didn’t go under because a model of Mustang wasn’t super popular.

Read more...

So many changes recently!

The Awning Thing

Now we have an actual 270 from 23Zero, and … OK we are happy with it, but it is not without problems. FIrst, the underside is a black spray-on material. This means it can flake off! It also means it makes it darker and colder. In summer, that’s not too much of a problem, but in winter, it’s less than ideal.

We have walls for it. They’re great in heavy rain and especially great in moderate winter wind. The problem is the zippers can easily be damaged; plan on buying half a dozen spares and learning how to replace them in the field.

Read more...