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Darth Fluffy

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Posts posted by Darth Fluffy

  3. Posted · Edited by Darth Fluffy
    Added a factoid,

    4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    I would say another big part was named Robert McNamara. I don't know, he might have been a good businessman. But a military genius he wasn't. What possessed the man to draft mentally retarded young men and thrust them into a war they were incapable of understanding, much less fighting?

    A 'good business man', where else have I heard this?

    Robert McNamara was a fish out of water; he was more interested in cutting costs than being effective. That particular practice is particularly heartless; I did not know that was his brain-child, but it seems on the nose. Still he did not act alone, so others share the blame for implementing it.

    I am reminded of A Christmas Carol, where early in the book, Scrooge is being solicited for contributions to the poor. After a heartless diatribe, the two men who are asking for his contribution say that many of the poor would rather die than go through the process of Scrooge's rant; he responds, "Then let them die, and decrease the surplus population!"

    Much later, one of the spirits echos his words back at him, "Take care who, in the sight of Heaven, that surplus population is." Scrooge gets better, after they literally scare the hell out of him; I'm not sure Robert McNamara ever did.

    Robert McNamara's middle name was 'Strange', which seems oddly prescient.

     

  6. Posted

    33 minutes ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

    Luke's suffering seems to me to be peculiar to his personality. He seems to be a worrier. Or is it that it allows him to see a world he cannot fully enter, and makes him feel inadequate because he can see that others have more power?

    Yeah, I would not call him a bad result exactly, 'can't handle the responsibility of having access to the information' would say it more accurately.

    I bet the magic police would like to register him. He could even be useful to them.

  7. Posted

    1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

    I amend that slightly. The guys that track results for the Ukrainian military have incentive to be accurate. The guys who tell the rest of the world the results, only have incentive to not be caught lying. (The easy way to achieve that, of course, is for them to also be accurate.)

    Those folks (their US equivalents) getting caught lying is a big part of why the US lost the Vietnam war. (Not the only big part. Back at the very beginning of that mess, the Pentagon's Plan A had been "stay the hell out of it." Johnson chose Plan C. Or maybe Plan F, considering that the terms of engagement he ordered prohibited the US military from acting like they actually intended to win.)

    I understood that; that was the rest of the verbiage about honest figures vs lies. 

    The US had no business in Vietnam. Well, not at that point. In WW II, the Vietnamese were our allies against Japan. We armed them, and we were seen as heroes. They cheered American planes. We sold them out to the French, more or less, then fretted about 'Communism'. Ho Chi Min was our ally in WW II, and he would not have been our enemy if we did not pick a fight. They have no love for China; China has dominated SE Asia for hundreds of years. 

    Today, after effectively driving us out, they are still Communist, very willing to do business, more allied with us than we deserve. It is a very odd world. Plan A would have cost much less, and would have gotten us here faster.

    Also note that our South Vietnam puppet government was far more corrupt than the North. 

    I'm glad I did not get conscripted to go. I was close, then the 'War' wound down. It messed a lot of folks up, for no real gain.

  9. Posted

    5 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    Seems like Putin just had a bad day. An Ukrainian surprise drone attack just smashed a lot of Russian strategic bombing planes, reducing their strategic bombing capacity by 25% or possibly as much as 33%. It seems they have also destroyed the Russian equivalent of an AWACS.

    An AWACS is cheap, fast and easy to replace, right? :danshiftyeyes:

    You have a gift for understatement. 

    I heard "about a third" of the remaining Russian planes on YouTube. Significantly, one of the strikes was 1200 miles into Russia; 1900 km. And I'm sure they prioritized targets, so a higher percentage in terms of capability.

     

    32 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    41% according to Kyiv Independent. Take that as source, but they are normally right about that sort of thing.

    And Russia is down to 2 or 3 R-50, not enough to keep one constantly in the sky over even part of the battlefield. This is going to lead to more Air to mud attacks by Ukrainian F-16. 

    I would tend to trust their numbers; they are close to the source, the guys that track results, and those guys have incentive to be accurate. 

    So far, they have not had the need to follow Russia's example of lying about results to prop up morale. (That really doesn't work anyway; the troops have a feel for the truth, and all you do is destroy your credibility.)

  12. Posted

    On 5/28/2025 at 5:11 AM, ijuin said:

    Jerry said that Immortals start to go loopy when they go much past the recommended age for resetting, and Pandora had gone farther past that age than nearly any Immortal had done since they adopted the custom of regular resets. 

    Pandora remained functional longer than normal immortals. She had a good relationship with a human, and had a son she cared about. She became sane again when she resumed interacting with people, beginning with Sarah. I think the isolation is what drives them crazy and makes them bored; IRL it does that for humans as well.

  19. Posted

    On 3/31/2025 at 1:07 PM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    I am grateful Charles Babbage did not foresee what would grow from his ideas. 

    Be glad that heavy handed government types decided that there needed to be rules for folks that operate motor vehicles. There was a time this was not true,

     

    On 3/31/2025 at 2:15 PM, ijuin said:

    And television was envisioned as a tool for remote education—apparently Philo Farnsworth did not even foresee that people would be mainly watching the exact same stuff that they were already watching at the cinema?

    It does both.

     

    On 3/31/2025 at 2:28 PM, mlooney said:

    Only, mainly, not as high quality.  And with ads.

    It's gotten better. I'll give a pass on the ads, they are often entertaining (in limited doses).

     

  20. Posted

    On 5/16/2025 at 10:50 AM, mlooney said:

    And of course the Illegal options.

    If you mean hemp related, they are legal many places, and becoming more so, so keep checking your state's stance. I don't use them, but know of folks that do, and the 'allowed' is often based on loopholes that are exploitable - can't buy locally, can order from out of state, can't buy the plant nor parts, can buy relevant factors extracted. Varies widely by where you are. 

    How tied are you to your location? You are not far from east Colorado.

  24. Posted

    26 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    Well, earlier version of D&D (2nd ed in particular) had roles where low was good.  Ability checks, for example.

    But if you want to make your game high stakes, with only crits, either hits or misses, there is this dice: (note currently out of stock)

    Jason_Fox_High_Stake_D20_470x.jpg

    I had not seen that one. He used to have one that was all 20s.