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A fallout of a generation that grew up with and is (overly?) comfortable with technology is an attendant cavalier attitude toward the hazards associated with said technology. I think us old timey tech aficionados have a healthy skepticism for the cutting edge claims we've heard all to often that also all to often have failed to deliver. Thus 'upgrade' does not equate to 'better' for us.

Made this earlier today out of another meme I had on hand:

Well, duh, cheese season is in the fall, after all the baby cheeses have had a chance to mature.

At the rate the Russians have been digging old weapons systems out of storage, I think pretty soon they will be looking for that stuff.

Ah. But still concerning, and I just realized that this actually makes it more convenient for foreign agents looking for chance spills of vital information. Then again I wouldn't expect them to loiter on Total War: Rome forums hoping to obtain vital information about the latest generation of onagers or siege ballistae.

Meanwhile in California https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/11/nudists-save-tourist-attack-castro/

Gullible Thimblewits is a good name for a rock band. Marjorie, the Green Tailor is an Orc NPC that owns a shop near the village square. When you visit, she will regale you with worthless rumors she imagines in the moment. The village is full of half wits, and even they know she's crazy. How can you tell if the Space Lasers are Jewish? Is there some covering they remove for a bris? Do they require an astronaut rabbi to perform the honors? I did not realize Israel had such a space program.

Yeah, that was a major dumb decision.

Around that time I had bigger troubles with the 1998 problem. Yes. The 1998 problem. At the time -- July 1997 to be exact -- I worked in a small branch office that served as a connecting point and legal advice for a lot of bigger office. We had a LOT of mail going in and out. I had just finished reading another depressing article about the Y2K problem and my eyes landed on our old and cantankerous postage machine which was very much mechanical all the way through and thought, "Thank God we at least won't be having any year 2000 problems with that." On an impulse I opened it up to see how it worked. And to my astonishment the wheel that stamped out the dates ended at 1997. If we wanted to be in business after new year, we would need that entire wheel replaced. Really terrible design. So I went into the office of the engineer who was running the place and told him, "Boss, we have a 1998 problem." He replied, "We have a WHAT?" After I had explained he assigned me the job of finding out how to upgrade the darn thing. I soon learned that this would cost so much that we could very nearly buy a brand new machine for that much money and told him so. He got so mad that he assigned me a new job: finding the best possible new machine that would not have this problem. I spent about a week comparing offers and we finally decided on one. Incidentally, during that I found out that normally people who used our old model didn't find out until just before or right after new year, and were always in a terrible bind as a result. My idle curiosity saved our office a lot of trouble and frantic effort.

Lincoln at Gettysburg: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Trump at a rally near Gettysburg: “Our nation was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The battle of Gettysburg, what an unbelievable. I mean it was so, was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways — it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow! I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And uh the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor — did you ever notice that? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill, he said. Wow, that was a big mistake, he lost his great general and uh they were fighting uphill. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’ but it was too late.” It may just be me but I feel Trump's Gettysburg Address kind of lacks a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the original.

"This is MY Human!" - Explorer the Cat.

Seems reasonable. He looks like a poorly made ventriloquist's dummy with really bad hair.

Don't enlarge yourself. Shrink the shelves.

Oh, yeah, that's one of the reasons he gave for not going to the tournament right after he got his spell.

The way I heard it, you take the pot of boiling water out into the cornfield with you. Grab an ear of corn, peel the husk back and take the cornsilk off, then bend the stalk over so you can put the ear in the water.

It’s easier for her to embrace smallness now that it is optional rather than mandatory.

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - Of cabbages - and kings - "

She could always just order the six conservative judges lined up against a wall and have them shot. They've okayed that, after all.

Maybe we should call it a “sidegrade” instead, since everything goes sideways when it happens.

Cabbages have a long history in technology—one of the earliest computers was invented by Charles Cabbage.

Working on that.

Working on that.

They chased me out of the store when I brought my cheese gun.

This page, and the two following, detail Susan’s strategy, which revolves around being able to play her special card at the right time.

“Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make”. They didn’t mind the troops dying, but that was only if they succeeded in killing the enemy as well. Having the soldier fail to get close enough to make the attack was a waste.

How was Apollo 10 unsuccessful? It was never planned to land, only to test the lander and docking in lunar orbit.

If I was a spearman, and had to take out a tank, I'd try a tank sized pit in the road, or possibly set up a massive log fall on a cliffside road. Either would take a lot of prep time. You might take out individuals who were not buttoned up inside the tank with an arrow from a hidden position; might whittle them down. It you are spotted out in the open, you'd better surrender. Maybe you can slip your spear into the tank barrel when no one is paying attention. There is some chance it will jam a fired round, and then there is a good chance that if they don't clear the barrel, the next shot will damage the gun.

The pun is flightier than the sword, if you please.

Politics makes strange embedfellows.

This is me most nights.

The version I heard ended with "Grampa said he'll be ready to go in a few sex."

You know you are in trouble when you raid your museums for armament.

To be fair, when cows jump over the Moon, the landings don't tend to be graceful.

They aren't calling you. Explorer has a side hustle under the alias "Kevin".

Do you realize how much authority and influence a Cat would be required to surrender to hold a mere human office like President? Also, Congress refuses to recognise Kibble as legal tender.

The NVMe saga has apparently come to a happy conclusion. The screws arrived today, and they were indeed different from the ones I got from Amazon. My son installed the 4TB NVMe drive using them, and we then took a few moments to do a slight bit of case dusting before reassembling the laptop. A few hushed prayers and crossed fingers later, we booted up the system, ran Disk Management to set up the drive, and voila! The drive worked. For anyone interested, it is indeed running at PCI-E 3.0 speeds, according to the Crystal Disk Info/Benchmark suite. It reads a tad slower than my Samsung C: drive, but writes just a bit faster. Crystal reports it's built to the NVMe 2.0 standard, whereas the Samsung 970 EVO is merely NVMe 1.3 compliant. Go figure. It's also running cooler than the Samsung, probably due to the graphene heatsink ribbon on top of it. Regardless of the differences, at the moment, I'm happy.

I just want Terra to be Tech Level 8, not this 7.75 crap we are now. We meet all the benchmarks for TL8 other than anti-grav It's possible I spend too much time with Traveller stuff....

I suppose it is a sad reflection on my psyche that I take some joy in the bonehead's suffering. I'll give myself a tentative pass; he really earned it. Thanks for posting that.

Speaking of fireworks, this is a simple tale of inconsiderate people, carelessness and heavy-handed justice from the weather gods. It is well worth reading. https://www.tumblr.com/gallusrostromegalus/754913870711291904?source=share

Assassin sneak attack requires that either he have advantage on the attack or a friendly to the assassin creature be within 5 feet of the target. It's not sneaky as such.

Who hurt Susan? Her parents, I think. I'd say her mother did the most direct damage, but it was part of Mom's response to what Dad did so...

Oh yeah, for a lot of helms vision was secondary to protection. Jousting helms were known for bad vision

Yes, I miss test patterns

Gotta tell somebody. might as well be y'all

"It just took 2 years to sink in, but thank you anyway. Have a nice life, bye now"

"Yes, Camdin, you turned us both to the other team."

There are rumors that he has been attempting ventriloquism recently, so lip movement may no longer be necessary for him to lie aloud.

All that for a small advantage? I once heard a coach say "If you think you can't win without cheating, you think you can't win."

Well, if you want to be technical about it, yeah.

Taken from a Traveller Discord server: