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Welcome! 03/05/2016
Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change. If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away. I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
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ChronosCat
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Content count
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Joined
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Days Won
31
Posts posted by ChronosCat
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4 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:While this is a given, I think you are underestimating his base's ability to see this through an utterly distorted lens.
But it wasn't just his base that voted for him, otherwise he wouldn't have had the numbers to win. Also, things were very close in several swing states; if the Republicans fail to rig the system further, small numbers of people changing their minds could make all the difference. For that matter, there's always less of a turnout for midterms, which could also make the difference.
And again I'm not saying everything will turn out all right, I'm just saying I think there are still reasons to hope for something other than a worst-case-scenario.
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So I've been fighting anxiety and dread ever since the election, and I don't think I'll be able to completely shed this feeling of impending doom until/unless things suddenly turn for the better or we at least see a light at the end of the tunnel.
However, I would suggest not giving up on American democracy and freedom quite yet.
The Republican majorities in the House and Senate are close enough that a small number of Republican congresspeople refusing to play along could stop some of the worst legislation from passing. (We don't necessarily have to rely entirely on their better natures, either; there may be those who want power but think they have a better chance of getting it through being elected to a higher position than by trying to get in Trump's good graces and/or trying to become his successor.)
Last time around Trump's incompetence somewhat limited the evil he could do, and this time he's surrounding himself with others who will likely be similarly incompetent (though admittedly that incompetence could cause its own problems).
The states still have a certain level of autonomy, and I expect many state governments to fight to protect the rights of their citizens as best they can (I believe a few governors have even said as much).
Both in and out of the government there are plenty of people who are preparing to resist the evil things Trump and his allies have been planning.
And if the democratic system can hold on until mid-term elections, there's a good chance the House and/or Senate will turn blue again (particularly if Trump fails to make the economy any better), putting some major obstacles in place to hinder Trump.
Of course it might turn out all these things combined aren't enough to save the US, and even in the "best case" I can see at this point things are going to get bad, but it seems to me that if the alternative is despair, it's worth holding onto any sliver of hope one can.
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6 hours ago, mlooney said:Dropbox. Will require you to either move your work product to the "Dropbox" folder or play some games with the Dropbox set up. Once done, it runs in the background and keeps your back-ups current to the second.
I'll grant it's more useful if you have fiber, where your up speed is the same as your down speed.
I've always been skeptical about "cloud" storage and try to avoid it; I prefer to not to have my files on the machines of other people/organizations (except for those I'm sharing online, of course). I suppose I'm probably being overly paranoid, but I'm still not currently inclined to change my ways.
At any rate, I don't have fiber based internet (I rely on a mobile hotspot).
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6 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:I have spent most of my life developing ways to stall & ham it up. None of my work has resulted in cat girl villainess transformations.
So far Dan's stalling & hamming it up has delayed the catgirl villainess transformation.
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2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:Birds and lizards are represented, so I guess 'furry' means feathery and scaly too.
Lizard-people and dragon-people are sometimes called "scalies" within the furry community. I can't recall hearing a bird-person get called a "feathery", but it probably happens (and if not I'm sure there's some other term for them).
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So it looks like our only hopes of avoiding a dictatorship are either Democrats winning the House (assuming that's actually a possibility) or there being enough Republicans in positions of power who care more about democracy than winning at all costs (something I'm not hopeful of but I suppose isn't out of the question).
Even in the "best case" scenario though, it's going to be a bad four years for women's rights, minority rights*, and LGBT+ rights. This hasn't been talked about this election as far as I heard, but I also worry about the future of our welfare system. And given Trump's view of Putin, I also expect this to be very bad for Ukraine.
On a more existential note, even under Democrats we haven't been making the progress we needed to at reducing/reversing/adapting-to global warming (which I see as a threat to civilization), but things are going to be even slower (if not get worse) under Trump and a Republican majority... Luckily there are things other nations can do, but without the US's help it's going to be that much harder for them, and we're running out of time (as it is just reducing emissions won't be enough to keep the warming from continuing, and the effects of the warming are already getting bad).
* I suppose if they're still worried about getting elected again some Republican politicians might be reluctant to make things worse for certain minorities, but I doubt it will be enough politicians to help.
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There are some Trump-fanatics who are willing to resort to violence on his behalf; I suspect enough of them to be a problem. I'm worried that even if Harris wins (which I'm cautiously optimistic will happen) the next few months will be messy.
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On 11/2/2024 at 11:48 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:Considering the legend Princess Peach would become, I am surprised how easily Donkey Kong was able to capture her.
It wasn't Peach that Donkey Kong kidnapped*, it was Mario's first girlfriend, Pauline (who has made occasional re-appearances since, so is not just another name for Peach). Princess Peach has on the other hand been kidnapped countless times by King Bowser Koopa; considering that a couple times he just swooped in with his flying clown-car and grabbed her, I'd say your point still stands.
* At least not in the original game; there was a remake of a Game & Watch Donkey Kong game that had Peach as the Damsel in Distress, and there might be other more recent games I'm not aware of where Donkey Kong kidnaps Peach. There are a lot of games featuring Mario & Friends and I only know so much about them.
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On 11/1/2024 at 2:04 PM, Don Edwards said:(Hopefully all this works. For some reason when I try to edit one of my posts, the existing content doesn't show up on my screen.)
I don't know if you're encountering a new issue, or the issue the site has had for many years where when editing a post (other than the first one in the topic) all the text displays as white in the edit window. If it is the old problem, my solution is to highlight it all, then click the big underlined "A" in the menu at the top of the edit window and change all the text to black. (If it's a new problem I can't help you as I haven't encountered it.)
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On the topic of backups: I have three backup drives I still use (plus some old ones too small for my current needs that still have years-old backups on them). I back up everything on my computer every other week, and keep one of the hard drives at my sister's place as off-site backup. In addition, if I do something I don't want to risk having to redo (usually writing), I'll slap a copy on a thumb drive.
I realize it's not a perfect system, but when my previous laptop died I didn't loose anything important. (And a similar but far less extensive backup scheme saved everything but a few stories I'd downloaded and links to the latest web-comics I was reading when my first laptop failed back in 2006.)
The one thing I've been trying to decide is if I need some other type of back-up media in addition to hard drives and a couple thumb drives (thumb drives which are far too small to hold everything I store on my computer) - and if so, what.
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So I'm simplifying the geography a little bit by saying the spring is near the top of the hill... there's a wide not-quite-flat area at what I'm calling the "top" (where the road passes over the hill), and I think the land does raise a bit more if you keep going in one direction from there, though it doesn't rise enough to be visible over the trees (this is in the middle of a forest). So it's possible the water is still flowing down from somewhere, but if so it would still have to be pretty high up inside the hill.
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14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:This will catch up with you as you age. It is inevitable. Walk regularly, it is the best antidote.
I go for a walk basically every day. Uphill both ways, no less! (Well, actually half uphill and half downhill.)
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On 10/29/2024 at 2:29 AM, Darth Fluffy said:Tedd is the cat girl Dan wants to be.
On 10/29/2024 at 3:42 AM, mlooney said:Both cat girl Tedd and dress wearing Dan are cute. Cute in different ways, but cute never the less.
While his outfit is pretty feminine, Tedd is actually a cat boy right now. (Not only does Tedd not have the figure he normally does when female, but Minion said "his" referring to Tedd... And on Patreon Dan confirmed Minion used the correct pronoun.)
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On 10/29/2024 at 10:52 AM, mlooney said:Which does bring up the point, who puts a well at the top of a hill? The water table would be closer at the base of the hill and require less digging.
Depends on the hill, I think. I live on the side of a hill, and further up the road not too far from the top of the hill there's a natural spring.
23 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:I have yet to experience that moment
I experience it all the time. After all, while I might occasionally try to "reclaim" the "weird" insult, as far as I'm concerned I'm the normal one - it's everybody else that's weird.
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11 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:In breakfast cereals that have them, well, yeah, they are pretty much a part of the game, but those tend to be sugar bomb cereals that all but kids avoid. (I assume. Or are some of you catching yer Lucky Charms?)
I recall having eaten marshmallows for their own sake, but I was knee high. Or camping, and the marshmallows were toasted, and it was as much a camping activity as a quest for a snack.
I regularly eat Lucky Charms and other sweet cereals. In fact last month I bought several boxes of "Monster" cereal (Count Chocula, Boo Berry, Frankenberry, etc.) and have been slowly making my way through them. I always eat something healthier first though; sweet cereals are just my desert.
Mind you, as a teenager I made a conscious decision not to abandon the interests and tastes of my childhood just because I was growing up, and I've only doubled down on that decision as I've grown older. Also, I've always had a sweet tooth.
As for eating marshmallows for their own sake, I have to admit I pretty much only do so if they are toasted; while I don't hate them I almost never get the urge to eat them straight out of the bag.
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I hope Jay isn't too offended by Hope calling her "Jill"; like she said in one of the linked comics that may be the name on her driver's license but it's not one she goes by these days.
(Can you imagine how Susan would react if some stranger walked up to her and called her "Tiffany"? Though given that Jay easily admitted her real name was Jill, it's probably not quite as big a deal for her as it is for Susan.)
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4 hours ago, mlooney said:This is what, their 4th avatar design?
- Squirrel masc
- Curvy squirrel fem
- Current "I'm not Tedd"
- The one coming up.
You forgot the feminine squirrel form he had during Sister (he only changed to his masculine squirrel form after Sister ended).
Also, it was only for one strip (as far as we know), but Dan's very first in-comic avatar was Grace.
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If this story results in Dan making a cool new avatar (and is as short as he said), it'll be worth it. If we get several strips or more of Dan trying out different cool looks, I might find myself really enjoying this story in the end. However I do have to admit it hasn't been very impressive so far (I'd almost call it boring except it hasn't gone on long enough for that for me yet).
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1 hour ago, mlooney said:Yep. If the current theories are correct, brown dwarves and smaller red dwarves have a life span longer the the predicted life span of the universe. Which tells me on or more theory is wrong.
So there are multiple possible ends to the universe; out of curiosity did you have a specific one in mind? The ones I'm aware of that would occur before the end of red dwarfs and the like (such as the Big Rip or Vacuum Decay) are unrelated to the lifespan of stars, so I don't see how some stars surviving to that point would be a problem with the theory. Heat Death on the other hand only occurs after the last black hole has evaporated (so long after the age of stars that said age is not even an eyeblink in the history of the universe), and as such any prediction of when it would happen would have to be long long after the predicted end of any stars (and the numbers I've seen given fit that).
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1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:I didn't get this one either. Sarah, as Dan's voice, is saying Hope and Ellen have a connection. I don't see it. Living on someone else's memories? We'll see next week.
Ellen doesn't just share Elliot's memories, at first she saw those memories as her own even as she knew she was really a copy. So she too was stuck in the position of not being able to continue being the person she remembers being, but feeling too connected to that life to be someone entirely new. She even faced the situation all over again (in a slight variation) with her Second Life, as she was given a set of memories that felt like her own but which were tied to another person she couldn't be.
(As a side note, I'm still wondering how Kaoli will react to discovering that our Ellen is a very different person from the Ellen that Kaoli remembers from their shared Second Life experience.)
12 minutes ago, mlooney said:That would be it I suspect. However what is important here, at least to me, is that Pandora didn't pass on her role in the creation of Ellen. It was a major part of her "I'm bored" actions before she took on the "make the world more magical" mission for Raven, so it's a bit odd she didn't pass that on.
The fact that she only did it because she was bored (and felt no emotional connections to Magus or Ellen) is probably why she didn't pass it on (at least assuming she didn't, but the alternative that Hope simply hasn't made the connection yet doesn't feel like it deserves an "oh snap"). I imagine that Hope will remember (like the memory of Jay would have revealed itself if Pandora hadn't deliberately sealed it away) when she meets Ellen, which is going to give her even more to feel guilty about.
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In the Terms of Service for X (Twitter) that will be going into effect next month, they say outright that the user agrees to let their content be used to train X's "AI"s / machine learning software. I'm glad they actually admit it, but it doesn't look like there will be an option to opt-out.
I don't post much there, but I refuse on principle to willingly help train an "AI" belonging to some corporation (or Elon Musk) for free. So I guess I'm going to be saying goodbye to X.
It's not as big of a concern for me since I rarely ever block anybody, but they're also weakening the "block" function (it's basically just going to be "mute": you can't see stuff posted by the person you blocked, but they can still see what you posted). This is a big enough issue for someone I'm following that she's leaving over it.
It's too bad, Twitter was pretty cool back in the day.
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5 hours ago, mlooney said:However Hope is rattling off a bunch of new Immortal rules, which out being all cryptic like Zeus was, which raises the question, why did Zeus do it the way he did?
I can see three possibilities. One is that since Pandora/Hope was busy regenerating when the rules were changed she might have missed out on some of the new rules somehow (either in the sense of her not hearing about them, or in the sense of them not applying to her). Another is that Zeus, being fearful around more powerful Immortals is playing it safe, while perhaps Hope inherited Pandora's confidence in her own abilities (whether this would be justified remains to be seen) and is really only worried about social interaction. Finally, there may be some difference between the relationship between Hope and Sarah and the one between Zeus and Susan that gives Hope more freedom (perhaps considering her a friend, or perhaps her promise to help Sarah get more magically powerful).
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13 hours ago, mlooney said:OK, I don't do Japanese media. I have no idea what Dan is talking about, but they seem happy about it.
I mostly followed Dan, but not due to my own experience with Japanese media. While I do consume a fair amount of Japanese media, I tend to be years or decades behind, and my focus is relatively narrow. (It doesn't help that when I encounter a franchise I like I tend to be very thorough checking out everything I can in it, meaning I have less time for checking out things outside that franchise.)
I know of the Otome genre because over the past couple years that has become my sister's favorite genre of video game. The rest of my knowledge of what Dan is talking about comes almost entirely from following Dan on social media (Dan talks about "Isekai" anime quite a bit, and "My Next Life as a Villainess" is one of the ones he was focusing on for a while).
At any rate, the second panel is the important one; the third one is Dan just saying "There are a bunch of examples of what I'm talking about, with lots of variations" (which I have to admit was news to me).
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7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:We bought several C-64s dirt cheap at yard sales for our kids, all coming with tons of software. They did not all work all the time, but we could generally cobble together a working system from what we had. They had a blast. I eventually gave them a hand me down PC, and they took to that (the games and graphics were lame compared to the Commodore).
My uncle gave me his Commodore 128 (one of the two "C64s" I was talking about) when he moved on to a Windows 95 computer, including a ton of games (most of them pirated). It was fun playing around with for a while, but I eventually realized that none of the games I tried could hold a candle to the games we had on the NES (let alone SNES). In retrospect I wish I had tried out the Zork series (which for some reason were among the few games I got from my uncle I didn't try, despite them being my uncle's favorites); I suspect that would have kept my interest better. At any rate we lived in a small house and the C128 required a lot of space, so as soon as it became apparent we weren't using it much it went into storage.
7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:I believe I've seen converters, not sure if they are still available. The market would be small. You could homebrew one if you do electronics.
I just bought a RCA to HDMI converter for my parents this spring, so they could hook up their old VCR and/or Playstation 2 to their new TV.
Political Discussion Thread (READ FIRST POST)
in Off Topic Discussion
Posted · Edited by ChronosCat
Wording
Why do I think we will have elections again? I think we'll probably have midterms because I'm fairly confident most of our elected officials would like to at least preserve the illusion of democracy (and I also suspect a large portion of the Republican politicians don't actually want a Trump dictatorship, they're just using him for the sake of their own careers). And we'll probably have another presidential election in 4 years, for the same reasons. Of course Trump might have different plans, but if he cancels all elections (or tries to get a "third term" without a constitutional amendment) I suspect we'd be dealing with a second Civil War rather than Trump being undisputed dictator of the nation (and there's at least a chance that whatever governments(s) rose from the ashes would have elections).
Why do I think they will be fair? I suspect for large portions of the country they won't be fair; in many states they already aren't. However so far everything I've heard of that has been done by Republicans to rig elections has been at the state level, and many states are still not in Republican control. It's possible they could manage to rig things on the national level, but with such slim majorities in congress that would mean pretty much every Republican congressperson would need to be in on it. Which is all to say, "Things won't be truly fair, but just maybe they'll be fair enough."
Also, as a reminder, I qualified my thoughts on the midterms with "if the democratic system holds on until midterms" and "if the Republicans fail to rig the system any further". I am in fact extremely concerned by the possibility that we might not have any more elections in the US where people's votes matter, I just don't see that possibility as a certainty.