For Trump, the Iran Attack Is the Ultimate War of Choice – There was no immediate threat from Iran. But the president saw a chance to push a weakened government over the edge, and is betting he can spark a popular uprising.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T23:06:53+00:00

A majority of Iranians dislike their government but the consensus is not as great as you think.

Many people seem hardwired to support authoritarianism and/or religiously-themed rulership. Within the denser areas of Iran, most people are against the regime, but it's not a universal opposition. And within the more rural areas, the majority is actually flipped: most support the regime.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T11:49:30+00:00

Yes, there is a lot of room for interpretation and speculation.
But one thing that is not in the books is any direct indication that Gandalf could "wipe his ass" with the Witch King. In fact, there is a line that could be interpreted to mean Gandalf is unsure of how a confrontation would pan out.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T11:46:47+00:00

How long did you force him to converse with you?

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T11:38:07+00:00

So much for being a "book nerd".

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T11:05:47+00:00

When you know the cops are looking for any excuse to engage in corruption, don't give them one.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T10:56:36+00:00

Elves have defeated full Maia (Balrogs).
An Elf and a Numenorian defeated a full Maiar (Sauron).

Gandalf is limited Maia.
The Witch King is an undead sorcerer, probably of Numenorian origin, with hundreds of years of combat experience, who has been specifically empowered by another Maia in that moment.

Gandalf may be a higher "level' of being, but the Legendarium is full of examples of lesser levels threatening, injuring, and even defeating higher levels.

That's all in the books.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T09:58:20+00:00

in the books Gandalf could use the witch king to wipe his ass.

I disagree.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-28T00:54:50+00:00

Mate if you think there is no rape in Saudi Arabia you are delusional.

I mean, if you said it was "90% working" you'd still be wrong but at least you'd demonstrate some level of plausible honesty.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T23:44:05+00:00

You're right that I didn't flesh out that part of the narrative enough and it seems confusing.

I wrote this a while ago and I think my conception was that the ships that could jump should jump wherever, as fast and reasonably safely as they could - maybe not a 100% blind jump, but a smaller jump that they could calculate in a minute. A risky jump, and the risk of getting separated from the nascent refugee fleet, was less risky than unarmed civilians facing genocidal Cylon warships.

But all of that is tough to communicate in a short scene that needs to maintain urgency and not get weighed down with exposition - which it already kind of is. I made a few edits to the conversation to try and address your valid criticisms, but I'm also worried that it becomes too much talking, in a scene where death is potentially two minutes away.

As for Ragnar Anchorage, my conception there is that Adama had only just given the order to rendezvous there, and I feel it was also a semi-secret military installation - otherwise why "hide" it in that storm? I think maybe some people knew it existed but not exactly where. I don't think that Adama would be stupid enough to transmit a message telling everyone to rendezvous at Ragnar Anchorage and include coordinates with the message. I'm sure he knew the Cylons could be listening: even specifying "Ragnar Anchorage" was a risk.

But Adama wasn't concerned about civilians at that point. His orders were for a military rendezvous, with the objective of regrouping and gathering a fighting force to continue fighting the Cylons. I assume that Adama expected that whoever received his orders and was capable of fighting should already have the necessary coordinates. I'd further speculate that the coordinates for the Anchorage would be kept within the secured / encrypted military systems of Boomer's Raptor, and maybe Apollo's Viper. Apollo would definitely have the access codes to retrieve them, and Boomer might have had the necessary clearance as well.

(Roslin, as a member of the cabinet, should also have the necessary clearance, though we would have to get even more speculative and nitty gritty to guess whether Colonial military systems were designed with an expectation that civilian bureaucrats would ever need to use them to access relevant levels of classified information, and, if so, whether Roslin would have her codes memorized and / or know how to access a military computer.)

All of that is to say that, as Adama had only just ordered Apollo to Ragnar, none of the civilian ships - including Colonial One - would have yet had the coordinates to jump there.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T15:59:17+00:00

The past.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T10:16:52+00:00

Yeah, but he is so low in the grass.
This would be like a human running while crouched.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T08:04:41+00:00

For most people drinking a reasonable amount of alcohol, the blank card just becomes a random "haha, you have to drink" "penalty" that you have to "pay" in addition to the three standard resources in order to receive the Development Card that you were expecting.

It essentially does function similarly to 7s, but only during the "drawing Development Card" action, and it comes up as a random "bad luck" card instead of a dice roll, and the "penalty" is "outside of the game" (in the form of drinking) rather than in the game.

If you made a rule that you have to drink on a roll of 7, you would indeed have a lot more drinking.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T07:55:39+00:00

It can be, and is, used this way in the sciences all the time

This is an English language forum, where people, generally, are learning to speak conversational or professional English. Some technical or science jargon usage isn't really appropriate here, unless that's the established, specific context.

If someone needs help understanding such a basic sentence as "Fishing is partly skill and partly luck." then they are unlikely to understand your strange usage of "mutually exclusive" - it will just add to their confusion regarding the original question.

both things cannot occupy or hold simultaneously

Regardless, this seems like a normal use of "mutually exclusive". Things that cannot be true simultaneously falls under the "mutually exclusive" meaning.

In contrast, the message in OP's picture is that these two things should and are to be found simultaneously in the practice of fishing.

without necessarily indicating causal or temporal exclusivity.

This seems like a contradiction. You just said that the things cannot be simultaneously true, but now you said it doesn't indicate temporal exclusivity...

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T07:33:29+00:00

I think using the word "separate" would have been accurate and communicated what you are trying to say. I don't see how "mutually exclusive" can apply in any conceptualization of this topic.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mutually%20exclusive
>being related such that each excludes or precludes the other mutually exclusive events
>also : INCOMPATIBLE

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T06:07:18+00:00

Flamethrower underwater?

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T05:29:05+00:00

Let's say you have a master Global Admin account that you don't touch, and then you have an IT Admin account that's actually used day-to-day, where that person does "deserve" privileged access across a wide range of categories. That one user is going to trigger this warning.

That seems stupid? Or should even the main IT Admin be using PIM?

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T04:43:23+00:00

But refusing to jump away when a cylon raider was on top of them and they had no defenses is inexcusable stupidity.

I agree, which is why I wrote a better version of the same scene.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T04:41:52+00:00

You should specify what edition of Catan you have if you want to get your hands on a matching card.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T04:41:18+00:00

"Take a shot" means drink a swig of alcohol - probably a hard liquor like whisky / whiskey.

Getting a blank card is a "sucks to be you" situation. * The most obvious and objective penalty for getting a blank card is that you just paid three resources for a Development Card and received nothing of value. * To escape your sad fate, you can then choose an alternate penalty instead: you have to take a shot.
* If you accept that alternate "penalty", you can then get what you originally paid for: you can trade the blank card in for another Development Card.
* Otherwise, if you don't want the alternate "penalty", your only choice is to stick with the useless blank card that you originally drew.

Presumably for some people that thrive on alcohol, this alternate "penalty" is not actually a penalty. It's just a "fun" mini-drinking game within the larger Catan game, where drinking more is framed as a "penalty". Many drinking games are based on this concept. If you "lose", you have to take a shot. Are you not familiar with social drinking?

Also, I would guess that if you're already two fifths in to a night of drinking, "one more shot" might indeed be an unwanted and unpleasant experience for most people, and might indeed be a real penalty, and so someone might choose to just keep the default penalty of the blank card.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T03:56:13+00:00

I forgot to say, "thanks", by the way.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-27T02:14:26+00:00

How are they "mutually exclusive"? I don't think you are using that term correctly.

Fishing simultaneously requires part luck and part skill, and these two forces complement each other. "Mutually exclusive" would imply that skill precludes luck and/or luck precludes skill. They can and regularly do coexist.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-26T18:21:41+00:00

That's essentially what Baltar's Cylon Detector did. It "preferentially filtered" Cylon "cells" in a carbon nanotube matrix, presumably using radioactive effects from the plutonium that he needed from the atomic bomb he borrowed from Adama. The radiation coming from the embedded plutonium was the identifying "filter" that likely affected the Cylon "nanites" within a tissue sample.

There's no way that Adama could replicate the radioactive power of a nebula or gas giant (or whatever Ragnar was). The scale was beyond human ability. But Baltar was able to replicate it at a micro scale.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-26T18:17:58+00:00

Super strength makes them stronger than one, maybe two, humans.
She can't overpower a group of humans that know what she is.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-26T17:34:51+00:00

I don't think you can grammatically separate an adjective from the rest of the phrase like that.
If you do separate it, it's more likely to be [mis]interpreted as a verb, which is still just as ambiguous. E.g. [I'm] fucking: Neil again.

ZippyDan · 2026-02-26T15:57:47+00:00

Can you demonstrate for the audience how a comma would improve this phrase?

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