mo_ztt ✅ @ mo_ztt @lemmy.world

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673

Joined

2 yr. ago

Yep. This was how I learned to play. We played at tables or while walking around as needed, and for times we needed random numbers we had a little piece of paper with a big grid with numbers and we'd flick a pencil at it and wherever the eraser landed was the roll. Everything was d20 and we had very little idea of the rules, and over time as we got sourcebooks we started to absorb them gradually, but mostly we used the sourcebooks as a repository of lore as opposed to as anything prescriptive in terms of the mechanics we should be using.

10/10

You have to make sure you don't have any power-hungry dickbags in your group that will abuse it I guess, but we had an absolute blast in every sense.

I saw some supposed-expert-for-what-that's-worth on reddit according to whom this isn't quite accurate. He said the doctrine he'd been taught was, if you get hit in a tank then it's highly likely that more is coming, so aggressively moving in the direction from which the fire came and shooting the shit out of anything you see is your best chance for survival.

This was a comment on a video of Russian tanks getting blown up, and he said the Russian response he was observing, of stopping the tank moving, wandering around briefly, and then trying to get away with obstacles blocking you was basically the fastest way to get yourself and everyone in your tank killed. So at least the US box of this graphic should read: "FUCK EM UP FUCK EM UP MEAT'S BACK ON THE MENU"

Yeah, 1,000%. I reached out about volunteering but I never followed through on it. I should call again and try to volunteer for the next one.

What they're trying to accomplish is to make people afraid to get involved in administering elections unless they're "on the right side."

This particular effort might or might not have any effect at all. But the point is, it's in concert with a thousand other things. And, more importantly, they're getting practice, and learning about what works and what doesn't and what they can get away with, and who they can trust as their allies when things get real.

Individual privacy and security is national security.

The "nation" in anything resembling a democracy is made up of individual private people with their own motivations, and their own sometimes considerable power, whose security is protected even when it doesn't line up with the interests of whoever happens to be in charge of the government. Those nations can become extremely powerful, much more so than "secure" states, because they have within them powerful people who give good faith to the systems of government that can organize and wield state power. It has to be that way. Any government that betrays that relationship will collapse into something akin to modern-day Russia. Certain policies might be bad for "individual privacy" in the short run, and good for "national security" in the short run, but there's a reason why the nations of Nazi Germany or the USSR who prioritized state security so high above that of individuals, weren't at all secure in practice. On an individual or a national level.

In the absolute middle of World War 2, when Britain was fighting literally for its life against the literal Nazis, and losing, the government had to deal with paying rent to the sometimes disagreeable landlords for their military intelligence offices, and they had to face angry questions from civilians in government about firebombing in German cities and how it was inhumane. They weren't allowed to just get on with whatever they decided they wanted to do. There was no question about "well this is a government matter so I don't care what you think, as a private person, and I don't have to." That's not how a democracy works. Some people might disagree, but in my opinion that's why the side that Britain was part of ultimately won the war: Because the British people knew their rights as individuals would be respected, and so they in turn felt comfortable giving wholehearted support back to the government when the government needed it.

Anyone who describes "national security" as a thing that has to be balanced against the rights of the people who in actual reality make up the nation, is probably talking about something more akin to "state security" in the USSR or Nazi sense. Not the security of the actual nation, but the safety and convenience of policymakers and their friends, sometimes specifically their safety from the nation (i.e. the people).

I got it backwards as regards this election for some reason. Fixed, thank you.

And this is after they tried very very hard to rig the election to put obstacles in the way of people voting for the measure.

Actually getting abortion bans in place is the "dog that caught the car" moment for Republicans. The world is so complicated and people have so little attention to spare, that the GOP can get away with blaming "the economy" or "jobs" or "crime" on the Democrats, and for the most part, people who support them will go with it, even though they spend most of their time being in power making the problems worse and stealing money for themselves and their friends.

Abortion is dead simple. If people know someone who's suffering in a terrifying way, and it's because of something the Republicans have been banging their fists on the table about how bad they want to do it for the last fifty years, it becomes a lot harder to shift the blame.

Edit: I backwards

I wish so much that this type of headline would end with "Leads to Federal Election Tampering Charges".

I wouldn't even go that far, although I'm not deep into the tactics and action of getting progress done like Huey was. To me, fighting for trans rights right now is obviously a good thing. As is fighting for worker's rights. Refusing to fight for worker's rights alongside someone, unless they're willing to also join your fight for (for example) trans rights, is what I think is silly.

There is nothing in any state or US constitution that says that only responsible people are allowed to vote, or that extra requirements in order to be able to vote are a good thing.

Everyone gets to vote. That's the rule. There's absolutely a place for good-faith restrictions to be enacted to make voter fraud a difficult thing, but as the plaintiffs in this lawsuit point out, there's no indication that voter fraud is happening on any scale in New Hampshire, or that this requirement will make it more difficult. Which makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that the real reason is to make it just slightly more difficult for certain types of people to vote. Which is a hell of a lot more of a problem than someone voting who, for reasons other than fraud, can't prove on the spot where they live.

The point I'm trying to make is, you don't even have to do that.

There are already laws against revenge porn and realistic child porn. You don't have to "prevent" this stuff from happening. That is, as he accurately points out, more or less impossible. But, if it happens you can absolutely do an investigation, and if you can find out who did it, you can put them in jail. That to me sounds like a pretty good solution and I'm still waiting to hear what his issue is with it.

What the hell is this guy?

"Here's a case where people made and shared fake nudes of real underage girls, doing harm to the girls"

"But what the hell, that's kind of hard to stop. Oh also here's this guy who went to prison for it because it's already illegal."

"Really the obvious solution everyone's missing is: If you're a girl in the world, just keep images of yourself off the internet"

"Problem solved. Right?"

I'm only slightly exaggerating.

I am not "arguing." I'm saying I think the kind of performative anti racism described in the OP article is silly, especially when it involves so badly stretching the definition of "racism." Maybe, though, it's overall not the worst thing in the world and I actually tried to partially retract some of my criticism of it as being overly harsh. But I still think it's silly and can actually be counterproductive.

If you think different, that's fine. I think I've explained myself at this point. I am in no way shape or form interested in having an exchange with you where we try to determine which of our viewpoints "wins".

All we need to do is to add to this comic another guy over on the riverbank who says anyone who doesn't agree with his new river chart is racist.

Quoting myself from elsewhere in the thread: "Maybe I was too harsh. I’m not trying to be critical of someone who’s at least trying to make the world a better place."

Not sure what argument you're looking for with me, but a lot of what you're ascribing to me here isn't accurate. I'm just going on an internet forum and saying how I see it, same as you.

Haha oh yeah, I wasn't talking about you. Just I've noticed that certain viewpoints tend to attract a lot of downvotes here. I suspect that a lot of people like to do performative antiracism more than they do genuine antiracism, because it's a lot less work, and that extends to giving out vigorous downvotes to the "wrong" point of view.

But yeah, I can see the argument too. Everyone's going to draw the line of what's okay and not okay to say in different places, and at the end of the day I do think there's something to be said for trying to make the world a better place even in some kind of trivial way.

Hold on, lemme put on my downvote boots.

To me the defense is, if people are going around and saying that calling it an "Inca Dove" is racist or misogynistic and we all have to spend time and money and effort changing it around to something else, then it's going to hinder genuine efforts to resolve racism or misogyny because some people are going to start putting it alongside the "Inca Dove" thing into a category of "stupid stuff that doesn't matter." Changing "Oldsquaw" sounds great because that's actually racist. Changing the confederate name thing, eh, it seems weird to me but I can see it. "Inca Dove," alright now you're just making up stuff to get upset about and asking everyone else to play along with it and if they don't want to, they're some kind of bad person.

Just my opinion.

I mean, broadly I do agree with this. It's whatever. Maybe I was too harsh. I'm not trying to be critical of someone who's at least trying to make the world a better place, even if I think the way they're going about it is a little artificial and silly. I do think it's artificial and silly though.

I believe they're trying to change any bird that's named after a person, and any European-centric name that replaced an existing indigenous name.

To me it sounds like it used to be that way, but at this point this is just someone questing around for a "problem" to solve so they can prove to the world that they're a really good person.