Lurker > CynicalZealot

Wait, god damn it. This isn't contextually appropriate either!
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

shadowsword87 posted...

Oh, the biggest one: microphone or no microphone?

'Cause I don't play without a microphone, and PO doesn't play with a microphone.

To be fair, I don't play on Roll20 at all, because of how clusterfucky it was last time.

Maybe it's improved since then, but my biases take a long, long time to fade.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

You seem like a lovely person, and I am sure you are popular at parties.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

FrozenBananas posted...

I dont understand why you HAVE to have a universe.

Because The Avengers made a billion dollars.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Welp, time for me to be the change I want to see, etc etc.

BLOODSHOT MOVIE.

Opinions?

I'm not sure how to feel about it. On one hand, it's based on a Valiant comic, and it's always been a neat premise. On the other hand... Vin Diesel.

It pretty clearly ate shit at the box office due to... obvious reasons. But Sony released it digitally, because they straight up gave up on the idea of anyone going to the cinema any time soon. Which is going to make this a weird beast, in terms of success/failure/critical opinion.

Has anyone seen it? Planning to? Does anyone care at all, other than me and like three other people?
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

That was honestly the least of that movie's problems.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

If anything, I'm probably getting more now. At least 1-2 every day, if not more.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

There seems to be a lot of non-Geek posts in this topic. I feel like I might have to slap a bitch.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Furiously masturbating.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Revelation34 posted...

There's a difference between reality and paranoia.

There's also a difference between rational precautions and unnecessary panic.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Mead posted...

so can making love

No risk of anyone on this site doing that.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

What's the name of an aphorism that implies both answers are correct?

Because that one.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Shadowbird_RH posted...

For those going shopping, my advice, and not just for my own sake. Be especially keen on keeping your distance from the store employees. The other customers may be others like you, self-quarantining as much as possible, regular odds of being infected. The workers though, rather than once every week or three or whatever, are out there every working day, and are thus many more times as likely to have come into contact with an infected customer, and thus be carrying the infection themselves

This is mainly why I feel like people who are like "Well, I'll just stay home and order everything delivered" are setting themselves up for trouble, because no one seems to think about the fact that you're interacting with delivery people, who themselves are interacting with tons of other people.

Sure, it's generally short contact, but you're still upping your odds of having a problem.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Topics like this are why I always chuckle to myself whenever someone says we all need to pull together as people in the face of crisis, or that we'll somehow come out the other side as better people who don't get upset over petty things.

Everyone in the whole world could wind up dying, and the last three people left will be fighting over whose fault it was.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

If they want Earth specifically, they likely want it because it has a biosphere and an atmosphere they like. Causing an extinction event enough to wipe out all humanity would also cause, shall we say, a lot of damage to the planet's biosphere, and the atmosphere itself may be rendered less than ideal for a significant time.

Depends on their culture. Even on Earth, there's a difference between cultures that want immediate results, and ones that are willing to sacrifice in the short-term for long-term gains (ie, "Five Year Plan" scenarios).

A hypothetical alien civilization that tends to plan ahead could potentially decide to fire off a dramatic impact now, and wait for the effects to settle down over the next hundred or so years. Doubly so if they have advanced technological means of their own to help "clean" the environment after the fact to speed up the process.

This can become even more likely if we're talking about a race that has to take the "long way" to get here, where you're talking things like generation ships or decades of cryosleep-style travel. Who would, incidentally, be far more likely to latch on to any habitable planet they find (regardless of whether or not it's already inhabited) because it takes so long to travel to look for one. All you'd need to do is send a smaller strike team here first, have them make your initial strike and sweep for survivors later, so by the time the actual colonization fleet gets here you're already mostly back to normal.

And on that note, for anyone who has free time these days and is looking for something to do, you might want to consider the Worldwar series by Harry Turtledove (In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, Striking the Balance), which is basically a story with that sort of long-term planning alien race coming to Earth during WWII. And how they might be willing to scorch a bit of earth on the way to conquering their own little piece of it.



Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

Also, that is not how neutron bombs work.

To be fair, if we're talking about an alien race capable of interstellar space flight, they could have access to any amount of technology that we either currently do not possess or outright don't understand. They could theoretically have something akin to that sort of weapon, wherein short-term lethal radiation is released over large swaths that can kill larger organic life without leaving extreme fallout or other consequences that can't be fixed.

Presumably most alien invaders wouldn't necessarily care, though, because they'd have no real interest in preserving structures when they can just bulldoze and rebuild in their own image. So they wouldn't need anything along those lines.



Sephiroth C Ryu posted...

In short, you can kill a lot of humans easily (likely well over 90%) without hurting the planet you want much. But getting rid of them all is decidedly not easy, as a few can use various resources to survive things that by all rights they normally wouldn't just based on their physical stats.

Yes, but to be fair, if you can take out 90% of the species quickly and easily, you've reduced the survivors to scattered bands and isolated individuals who can almost certainly be hunted down and eliminated over time (in fact, you could easily make it a sport for interested individuals - imagine a race of aliens that go out in power armor like Halo and hunt surviving humans like the Predator because they find it fun).

You also start coming up against issues like breeding bottlenecks (if you can't get enough humans in contact in specific areas, they won't be able to breed effectively enough to increase their numbers long-term).

Again, if you have an alien race patient enough to plan in the extreme long-term, they could easily aim for an initial strike that takes out a majority of the population, then follow up with sweeps to reduce the population more and prevent survivors from clustering together into settled regions. Over a century or so you basically reduce the entire population to hunter-gatherers with Stone Age level of tech, which won't be able to put up much more than nuisance resistance once you actually bring your colonizers in to stake their claim.

Again, it's essentially what we did to Native Americans - most of them weren't nomadic hunter-gatherers before Europeans got to the Americas, but massive sweeping plague followed by constant military harrying radically altered their entire lifestyle, and forced them into situations where they effectively couldn't win in the long-term against continuing colonization. Now imagine that scenario, except the Europeans have 21st century planes, tanks, and guns.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

JixHedgehog posted...

UHF

My wife says Weird Al does things to her pants

FUN FACT:

The guy who plays Gandhi in that is actually Al's manager. When Al does signings, he brings him along.

I got them both to sign my copy of the DVD a few years ago.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

DirtBasedSoap posted...

lmao PO got warned for that post

Yes yes, congratulations on your triumphant victory. I'm sure your parents are proud.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

At this point, there are more confirmed cases in my county than anywhere else in the US other than NYC, so I'm probably fucked.

My main saving grace is that my circumstances allow me to self-quarantine for long stretches at a time, and I can afford the economic hit, but I still need to go out every couple of weeks to buy food/supplies, so I can't completely isolate. If I'm lucky I don't wind up catching it while shopping.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones

DPsx7 posted...

papercup posted...

There's no such thing as "too much testing", jfc.

Yes there is. Testing supplies are limited right? Early detection for those at risk is better than using them on the jerks who deserve it by not staying home.

New Jersey is explicitly limiting testing for exactly this reason. They're strongly suggesting that you don't waste everyone's time and resources getting tested unless you've literally been in a high-risk situation, have been actively exposed to someone who had symptoms, or you're starting to exhibit symptoms yourself. Even then, you have to register in advance to apply to be tested if you're under 65 (anyone over 65 can basically just show up at testing locations as a walk-in because they're high-risk).

It's the same reason why people are recommended to stay home unless they absolutely can't - the idea is to "flatten the curve". Reduce active infections at one time to keep hospitals and other facilities from being overwhelmed, especially because there are already medical supply shortages. It's actually a deliberate trade-off - you lengthen the overall time scale of infection to decrease the immediate spike. In theory, if effective medication or vaccines can be created quickly, flattening the curve increases the number of people who will be able to benefit from those things later. You don't want immediate spikes consuming all available resources, and thus run out for more crucial cases in the future.

Everyone rushing to get tested at once even if they have no meaningful reason to do so other than personal fear would cause far more problems than it actually solves.
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"This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
--- Vyvyan, The Young Ones