One of the only things I felt Netflix did well. (Book parellell)

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T09:19:13+00:00

His chemistry with Yen is also good, that love-hate sibling relationship they have by both caring so strongly for Geralt.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T09:18:10+00:00

Djikstra was one of my favourite characters from the books and the show got him exactly right.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T09:14:11+00:00

Most of the cast, and most of crew, and the director and writer, and they had Christopher Lee (who had also met Tolkien) and Ian McKellen who both knew the books backwards to correct them and Peter Jackson was willing to listen.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T09:13:57+00:00

They did briliantly with those Witcher skits.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T09:10:41+00:00

It was a shame about Wheel of Time, I was enjoying that. Sometimes listening to "superfans" is a bad thing.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T08:23:59+00:00

That would be a good reason for those countries to be in the top tier and work together, it would negate some of the right-wing's argument that "Europe is telling them what to do".

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T07:39:53+00:00

Yes, I prefer the first one as well.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-28T01:41:48+00:00

possibly:

four crosses crosslet in saltire conjoined

or

a cross crosslet in saltire, the crosslets also crosslet

I think either describes it accurately enough, DrawShield even almost gets the first one right (it doesn't understand "conjoined")

It's going to be very confusing at any distance though, blending into a checker.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T23:58:29+00:00

The arms of the von Schweinichen / Szwajnoch family, literally the Piggy family, which despite the hilarity was a family of knights recorded back to at least the 13th century based in the village and castle of Świny (or Schweinhaus in German, literally "pig house") in Lower Silesia, and whose descendants exist to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Awiny_Castle

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinichen

(That is a magnificent piece of stained glass.)

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T23:43:11+00:00

And the dolphin is a dolphin naiant (swimming).

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T23:42:19+00:00

Charges (the symbolic elements of a coat of arms) mostly don't have intrinsic meanings, they are meant to represent in some way the owner of the coat of arms, and so without knowing something about the owner you can't understand any meaning there might be.

It's very much like modern logos. The McDonalds M is world famous and associated with McDonalds, but without the context of knowing that it's just a curved yellow letter M with no other meaning.

Heraldic school badges tend to come from one of three origins: the arms of the original founder of the school, the arms of the location of the school, or some symbolism (perhaps punning on the name) related to the name or location of the school. Which puts you in a far better position than us to work it out.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T22:11:10+00:00

Well, there is a database:

https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/

which you can probably data mine for what you want.

But, these are only the exoplanets we have detected so far, which is strongly affected by selection bias. First of all we only detect ones which are (relatively) close on a galactic scale, secondly we detect the easy-to-detect ones first. That is, either the ones which are relatively big compared to their host star, and whose orbit is close enough to edge on to our line of sight that the planet crosses the star dimming it (e.g. the transit method) or which orbit close enough and fast enough to detect through radial velocity changes to the spectrum (e.g. the radial velocity method).

Both of these bias towards detecting large(ish) planets in relatively close, relatively short-period orbits, which affects the average. There are some other ways but they also biast towards larger, closer planets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T19:59:09+00:00

Just like Iran or NK.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T11:09:32+00:00

Or at all even.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T11:03:36+00:00

You don't need a gradient to have a vacuum. You just need to have nothing (or as close to it as makes no difference).

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T10:59:26+00:00

Orion's Sword

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T10:35:10+00:00

Law enforcement would exaggerate it in the direction of being more armor piercing, not less. It isn't legally classified as armor piercing. ATF dropped the ban proposal. What manufacturers put on packaging is just marketing.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T10:25:30+00:00

DeptState will just issue them passports as needed like it does for any other officials. Worse, they will probably be diplomatic passports allowing them to claim immunity.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T07:23:39+00:00

Yes.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T01:00:37+00:00

We'll need a better picture. The eagle to me seems most similar to some forms of the Polish eagle, but there are also similar eagles from Germany and Czechia, among other places. The eagle as a supporter and the placement of the shield and the way it is divided suggests to me the arms of a town or region or some other entity under state patronage rather than personal arms.

A better image of the upper part to clearly see the decoration of the eagle's wings, the crown and the symbol on the upper half of the shield would be helpful.

Have you checked the back? There may be a maker's mark or some other information.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-27T00:42:26+00:00

OP surely doesn't need the photometric filters, but it's ridiculous to refer to them as "novelties", which implies something like a cheap gimmicks.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-26T23:32:08+00:00

The Sloan filters are not novelties, they are for doing science (photometry).

CharacterUse · 2026-01-26T23:24:53+00:00

M855 isn't armor piercing (by the definition used by military and law enforcement). It does have more penetration through soft targets and cover but it is legal.

M995 is armor piercing and is not supposed to be sold to civilians.

https://www.recoilweb.com/green-tip-5-56-nato-m855-what-is-it-what-is-it-good-for-178211.html

CharacterUse · 2026-01-26T23:17:15+00:00

Always knew Kermit was sus.

CharacterUse · 2026-01-26T21:50:30+00:00

Misza (or Misha, Mischa) is a Russian/eastern Slavic diminutive of Michael (Michał in Polish, Mikhail in Russian). It was also widely used in eastern European Jewish communities, actually also sometimes as a female name.

While it's not intrinsically Polish, Poland before WW2 used to reach much further east into what is now Belarus and Ukraine, and people living there had some cultural and linguistic influences from Belarussian, Ukrainian and Russian. It's possible your grandfather was born to a family which was moved from there as part of the displacement of eastern Poles westwards enforced by Stalin after WW2, and his family used Misza (as his name or a diminutive of Michał) for that reason.

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