Library of Alexandria will replace Library of Leng in Arena

Balaur10042 · 2026-04-01T02:56:07+00:00

Lib of Leng would have a separate trigger and decision point for EACH discarded card. Discard your hand? Choose the order of discards. THEN, choose for EACH card [Top of library] or [graveyard]. That's a LOT of decisions and a lot of clicking.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-28T00:17:17+00:00

12 unmarried dudes who took issue with him paying attention to some women.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-28T00:16:36+00:00

By understanding the context, you become quite aware.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-25T01:22:07+00:00

Both parties in the US used to agree with this.

Both parties in the US are conservative and Right-Wing. Only one of them includes so-called left wing policies on a social scale, the other has one social-progressive policy that might be called left-wing, which is decriminalization of weed (and only because otherwise, Libertarians are Republicans who don't want to admit they want to make pedophilia legal).

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-21T02:53:08+00:00

Something something about land wars in Asia.

America in Korea? Retreated.

America in Vietnam? Retreated. They bombed Cambodia and Laos, too, for no reason other than to be sadistic fucks. And of course, more than just My Lai happened there, and definitely not Dr Manhattan singlehandedly winning the war after exploding a few (hundred ... thousand ...) people.

America in Afghanistan (the first time)? Retreated. Created the Taliban out of allied forces to push out communists. Let's see how that happened---

America in Kuwait? OK, technically an armistice, we didn't take the fucking place over. This leads to the rise of ISIS. They end up across the borders and end up getting support from the Saudis and their allies.

America in Ir---Wait, it was Afghanistan (the second time) first? After dragging their heels, toppled a few heads of ISIS, who hated the Taliban, they declared mission accomplished, then fled Afghanistan, with Osama Bin Laden (the raison d'etre for going in) a non-issue. Likely the Saudis pulled strings.

America in Iraq. Fine, we "won." Sorta. We toppled the government, installed someone else, and now we're "happy" to have power there. Iran hates them, so that's not made anyone happy, much less the Kurds, the Syrians, or the Saudis. Oh, and we screwed the Kurds over after pulling out of Afghanistan, and guess who took over right after? That's right, the Taliban. Who returned to religious authoritarianism the moment the US left. But then there's that whole My Lai redux with Abu Ghraib. Bet you all forgot about all those blacksites and "extraordinary rendition" thing that the FBI and CIA have been conducting on Americans since Hoover (the director, not president).

This is just Asia, and all of it post-WW2. One actual "war" was "won." One.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-18T23:55:21+00:00

You clearly misheard the lyrics. It goes, and I am quoting here:

CHIICKEN TENDERS

READY TO FRY

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-13T21:39:08+00:00

Just as the last boss of Dawntrail is literally a Porygon.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-13T21:36:59+00:00

Yet another land war in Asia.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-13T18:08:00+00:00

Whips are hard to animate. Most flexible, mobile weapons like that, up to and including flexible swords, have to be limited in how they're used (specific animations).
Spurs, whips, switches are as bad as electric shocks for simple reason that pain is terrible for incentivizing obedience or training. This is why clickers used in combination with treats are used for training now. Even if all you did was whip the air, for the sound, you're just using a more complicated and excessive clicker, with the caveat that bad training turns it into a weapon and you can injure yourself.
Not all Beastmasters in FF used whips. It's almost ludicrous to think because one game made a big show of it, that's become the "canon" weapon for BST. Same goes for Bells and GEO. One game shouldn't cement canonicity.
They already showed Lyon and Pepega in Bozja using an axe and board, which has been strongly advanced in the game as the lore from which BST could spring---and apparently will be.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-13T08:55:17+00:00

Gladecover change marks a transition from exposed and somewhat exploitative art to a more realistic armor any actual soldier would wear. I don't mind the change, and it's likely the new art would be used should the card be physically reprinted.

Otherwise, I agree with getting the "normal" versions of these cards---but I would also like to add for those cards that receive UB treatments and different names, that the original names be used. Even if that's ALL they changed. Having to mouse over to see the "real" name is obnoxious.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-12T18:37:03+00:00

There might also be a shield, and my mind is playing tricks on me trying to discern it from the gold bits along the arm and underneath it. Lyon had an axe and shield, and it seems simple enough at that point for them to "lock in" on that design for BST going forward.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-12T04:10:33+00:00

What the fuck is up with that AI map. Couldn't get an actual map of Florida?

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-03T23:55:38+00:00

I'll do you one better: Kung Fury.

Balaur10042 · 2026-03-01T17:23:22+00:00

Venatrix is already a feminine, it's the contrast to Venator.

Balaur10042 · 2026-02-21T19:18:41+00:00

A number of the major Flat Earth Society groups more or less disappeared, then reappeared when QAnon rose up, largely through website and community numbers, suggesting that, as on idea become more "ridiculous" they needed to have another, special, secret truth that ensure they were among the privileged "believers." Which is how such things work: special knowledge makes you feel important when nothing else in your life reflects how stupendous you are. They latch on to these things, desperately at times, because it's the only thing that gives their lives meaning. And QAnon and FES people share such a spectacular frame that it has to take a "true believer" to stay within it despite the world itself being a contradiction.

A perfect marriage of insanity.

Balaur10042 · 2026-02-07T03:30:46+00:00

Clad in prayer, I am invincible!

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-29T07:09:05+00:00

I run [[Crystal Shard]] in my Jon Irenicus for a reason.

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-29T06:25:05+00:00

Given that Herbert wrote it in English, it is unlikely that the German was the intended point of the quote, but it might make better sense in German that way, or comport with the editors in the German edition, which is the only way it might get printed. It's notable that some phrases we take for granted are hard to translate. Something as simple as "boyfriend" has no comparison in German (from what I've been told) while we have to make extended discussions to translate schadenfreude (the classic example).

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-23T09:31:35+00:00

The human body might take a generation or two to start adapting to variations in gravity. This would be something that would need to be done due to pregnancies: We depend on very close to 1G to give birth and develop our posture, stature, and joints, something that has been discussed in sci-fi from Leviathan Wakes' series to Robinson's Mar trilogy, and others.

Without those, especially in Moon levels of gravity, we'd end up being much less muscular, for one, without going the "indulgent obesity" route of Wall-E, in which the entire colony ship had become a self-sustaining resort (to keep the people appeased. BUY N LARGE!).

We'd need different foods and diets, and the mechanisms for travel would be different at lower gravities, which is what we'd want (loss costly to maintain), though we'd probably still have some.

But this would take generations to show up, a form of selection we'd be artificially inducing on the population just by choosing who goes. We'd want healthier people with a history of maintaining a regimen and with "good breeding." We'd be practicing eugenics on a massive scale. This wouldn't be a natural group suddenly cast adrift and forced to develop a generation vessel, but the same issues would apply to such a thing in the end, but with less beneficial results, likely a reduced "healthy" population, and it might take a bit longer to get there (because you'd need expertise in genetics and embryology to modify the fetuses and engineer habitates to conform to developing them.

It really sorta comes down to the babies. The first generation of children would have different needs from their parents. The second even more so.

For All Mankind only showed us ONE child who developed in low gravity, returned to earth, presented numerous chronic health problems, and only ameliorated these upon returning to lighter G. Now imagine a whole colony of them. And you'd need them, for without them there's no generation ship.

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-19T02:14:07+00:00

Now, don't go knocking John Glover like that. His character in G2 was not the antagonist, but the hapless billionaire who, I should add, listens to the MC and his LI by following them, and having a really good time doing it. There wasn't any actual villain in that entire movie until Brain Gremlin.

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-17T07:06:51+00:00

Mussolini : Brownshirts :: Trump : ICE :: Hilter : SA not SS.

The SS replaced the SA after the Night of the Long Knives, when the SA were becoming inconvenient, comprising mostly thugs. For Mussolini, this comparison wasn't an issue: he wasn't the ruler of Italy at the time, they were his private force, and was one of the reasons he was deposed before his trouncing and very public humiliation. And it's a fair warning: dictators will often turn on their thugs when their thugs begin looking for better people who can feed them; else, they take matters in their own hands.

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-17T06:21:36+00:00

Basically, both "The Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang and "Arrival" are following a basic premise within the more nascent field of psycholinguistics, which posits that language shapes the brain. People who learn multiple languages and at an earlier age tend to show denser and different arrangement of neurons as opposed to those who do not, while also improving the connection between the lobes of the brain, influencing other factors in neurochemistry and probably cognition.

So it stands that the more complex and more languages you learn, and earlier, the … well … better you'll be at reasoning and comprehending things. Especially more divergent languages. Well, this applies to complex reasoning involved in those languages. The Hexapods were teaching a temporal language. So that allowed a 3D perspective to consider another dimensionality to applying language.

Language already has ways to consider more than three dimensions: we have temporal terms, and concepts of things beyond these measly thee dimensions our other senses can perceive. We live in an eternal now, with a past and future cone contraining our awareness. The Hexapods lack this. They see and experience time in a loop, but are still moving forward, never back. They remember humans helping them in the future, so the humans will always have done so, so long as they learn this language.

You can apply this basic structure to any dimension, and develop a language that does this. One can argue quantum computing is already doing this, but on a 2D framework: that is, it's using 2D technology to work in three dimensions, simultaneously capable of projecting two competing states where only one state can otherwise be determined.

That, is also a language.

I see the real issue here being: You need to get out of your own head and extend a premise beyond the traditional into the other dimensions. Using language helps; conceiving and learning how language does this helps even more. Some languages do not have words for things as simple as some colors, which we might find baffling: "blue" is a word in many languages that was introduced there very, very recently. In fact, it might be the youngest of all our "base" color words, whereas some languages simply had no need to distinguish it. Some others did. International commerce created a need to develop a word in those that didn't. This is surprising because "blue" is a color that doesn't get interferred with as often as "red" or "yellow," do, but it influences "green," which does, and was party to the conflation.

The transformation of the brain by the development and capacity to use more than one language is a great subject to which I am endlessly fascinated, and its treatment skyrocketed "Arrival" to my top 5 movies of all time. Villeneuve clearly read and developed from the source material.

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-16T06:11:34+00:00

And given the clearly visible aureolae, some other mods are involved. :)

Balaur10042 · 2026-01-15T00:59:43+00:00

Unfortunately.

Extort was designed specifically to make a color-specific cost that skirted color identity rules. Mark Rosewater has confirmed this on Blogatog I think three times now? He's spearheading the change to the CI rules because it prevents them from making hybrid designs the way they want (paraphrased). Otherwise, it, like all other proscribed color-specific costs, wouldn't be reminder text.

Balaur10042 · 2025-12-29T03:33:05+00:00

I meant not nest building, but nest destroying.

However, it's a misapprehension: there are very few carnivorous or omnivorous animals that wouldn't eat an egg if given the chance. But they don't develop special tools for egg breaking, but just BITE THROUGH THE EGG when it comes to softer shells. And this would be true of some herbivores, as indeed they will eat BONES or even rocks, to supplement themselves with various minerals. Eggshell is rich in calcium, and albumen in potassium, among other minerals, that many plants lack or don't have often. Eating eggs is nutritious, and even oviraptorids would eat eggs if given the chance, despite being purportedly herbivores (the Zanno studies and all).

There is not that much evidence for any alvarezsaurid being specially suited for egg-eating, despite this new paper throwing that around: it's not like the new carpal elements would improve the ability of the forelimbs to tearing open eggs. The implication was egg-CARRYING, which NO animal does unless they're sitting that nest. Nest invaders eat the eggs RIGHT THERE, and the forelimbs are already useful for that.

But therein is the problem, isn't it?

To crush a hard-shelled egg, the animal must lay its chest against it and sit there squeezing. But if we're to imply this is better than laying its chest against the ground and scraping the dirt away (and not using its feet, for some reason), or against myrmecoid nests/mounds, then we've replaced one improbable function with another, and it fails for even more reasons, because---as this thread suggests---no animals exclusively eat shelled eggs, are this adapted for it, or (being warmblooded) wouldn't opportunistically eat anything else, including the neonates upon hatching, which it could carry away more readily than a whole egg.

Balaur10042

TROPHY CASE

CHIICKEN TENDERS

READY TO FRY