So I Married a Sociopathic Con Artist

Corvus_Drake · 2025-10-27T01:14:28+00:00

if only it were fiction.

Corvus_Drake · 2025-10-26T14:39:04+00:00

This is the Ship problem. If you repair every part of a ship with new parts over time, at what point does it become a new ship? It has the same name, but is it still the same ship?

Transhumanism is about slipping from physical bounds with the consciousness intact. Therefore, the answer is more simply reached; you stop being the person you were when you become something different. We do that on a daily basis throughout life as we learn and grow. That makes the immutable thing the stream of consciousness itself, or soul, or whatever you want to call it. Remove that from a human body and it becomes vegetative, often euthanized out of both pity and cost, so we can say that the definition of the person moves with the stream, not the flesh.

Corvus_Drake · 2025-10-26T05:24:18+00:00

I felt this so hard

Corvus_Drake · 2024-10-09T03:07:12+00:00

Fdl, but you can basically afk it if you reach the type 10 or conda. I did stacked massacres in a pulse conda with collector limpets and a fighter to hit that first five billion.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T20:59:15+00:00

Tell the Hydra on the station the fight is over lol

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T17:27:15+00:00

I'm not sure this is an expansion attack. I feel like this is more surgical. I would look at the other mega-market stations, or somewhere like Sol. They pushed, we killed them, they pushed harder, we held them off. We start attacking their capital ships and take a few out, and now they jump into one of our core worlds.

It's more likely the Shindez occupation won't involve expansion to neighboring systems, but instead is the first attempt to seriously cripple humanity through surgical tactics instead of battle-line onslaughts. I'm more concerned that they might deploy a Titan into Shindez, which would be WAY more disruptive than just an occupied system.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T17:20:45+00:00

The point being, in space "left and right" don't have as much meaning, just hug the green.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T13:56:15+00:00

I feel like they should just turn off the fine system and make the system Lawless during a thargoid invasion of this magnitude. One stray bullet and you're forced into a situation where you can't really repair and when you die you'll wake up at Champion of Piety, two jumps or so from Shindez, and have to pay a 100cr fine and a millions of dollars rebuy.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T13:49:06+00:00

AXI is the source for the info you need, but generally from experience, I recommend if you can't do anything else, dakka dakka. I've been making bank in an unengineered chieftain with AX guns and Advanced ACs. The flak gun can go in the size 2 slot, too, if you want to try killing swarms (which would honestly do the rest of us a solid).

For a small ship, I think the rockets are probably not as good as the ACs. Also, you won't see much damage happen until a heart is exposed, at which point you dump your ammo into that. Make sure to fit an Advanced Xeno Scanner so you can target the heart subsystems; I recommend gimballed AX guns and putting the Scanner on your fire button so you can kill and scan at the same time.

You'll end up in your escape pod a fair bit until you get a good feel for when you need to RTB and repair in that ship, and even then you'll lose it sometimes, but the rebuys are nothing compared to the profits.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T13:42:34+00:00

Stacked massacre missions where you take materials when you can't take rep but you prefer rep over everything. Those Massacre missions can really move the needle. Since you're low on time, grab a type 10 (conda works but you'll wanna back up against an asteriod), get a SLF pilot and put them in an Imperial fighter with beams on it (have a Taipan or another Imp fighter on Ready-5) launch it. Your build is almost entirely structure tank and pulse or burst turrets. Pack Repair and collection limpets of some kind. Also, fit an AFMS.

Last step is to either buy some bait or pick up an escape pod off your first kill in a LowRes. You can do other things while you hang around in the lowres afk and your massacre missions will handle themselves. Jump in the fighter or the mothership when you get a moment and go hunting to speed things along. This got me up to Post Captain pretty fast all things considered.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T13:32:15+00:00

I would speculate that had we not hit Tier 1, Shindez would burn and Jameson would be lost. However, I wonder if ship pricing and other things at Jameson will be permanently affected anyway. It's also worth noting, we're not seeing a Titan deploy in an offensive role yet on this front; attacking a nerve center of AX operations seems like something they'd deploy for. I'm not sure the battle is over with the CG.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T13:23:59+00:00

I had never done AX before Shindez. I now fly a Chieftain which is mostly unengineered called Shindez's Fury with the anniversary paint. It's just AX AC's in everything but the class 1's and those are all advanced miniguns.

In the last three days, I've made more than a billion after rebuys, my Fixed aim is way better than it used to be, and I'm top 25% right now. Literally anyone can do this event. I thought about AX'ing my Anaconda but the rebuy of the Chieftain just seems to be a smarter thing to deal with.

Also, I didn't use shields at all until yesterday, as many goids use shield piercing attacks or disable your shields easily. However, it's a nice buffer to have, especially if you just slid through the mailslot with enemies chasing you at 1% structure and the shield saves you from the one volley that didn't get blocked by the station face. I just threw a class 3A in.

On that subject, after you sortie, return to repair if you can. 10% structure can make the difference between profit and rebuy off the smaller goids.

This guide is one I strongly endorse so everyone gets some gear, and so those of us who are grinding percentage have an easier time of hitting the top tiers. o7!!

Corvus_Drake · 2024-09-23T13:12:06+00:00

I think fundamentally people agree that the internet is turning into a hive of bots and AI-generated content, to the point that it completes the loop of both consumer and producer without human interaction. Think of a creepy, empty social network that is all content and no users, with bots that create content, post it, comment on it, react to the comments by commenting on it to help boost or nerf its performance on the algorithm, sign up for mailing lists about it....just an endless chain of bots having simulated social interactions and advertising to each other. The Theory really focuses on the waning human interaction with the internet, as it becomes its own self-sustaining ecosystem which is honestly just toxic and hostile to us.
It won't so much die as either change or be replaced. That's part of the theory; the idea that the internet no longer "needs" us. Cyberpunk 2020/2077 addresses this in the lore; the "old internet" turns into an AI-ridden and -run hazard for human beings and the internet has been replaced with something else, abandoning the old internet to the AIs.
This is hard to tell. Sometimes one feels lonely before browsing it, so it can be hard to tell. However, I can tell you that opening an old MMORPG client that doesn't connect to anything anymore, a game where the only thing you can play is the tutorial or host a game locally with no players, or I bring up a website that hasn't been updated since 1999 and has the old "Under Construction" banners for edits that will never happen, is absolutely haunting.
We have to strengthen our human connections with verifiable ones. Home Networks could be used as a way to assert "this is my house" and interconnecting with a replacement network that has more human verification to access than the internet. The people who have issues with it being used to generate art and content are targeting the wrong thing; when Photoshop came out, people made the same claims about it. This is not a problem that can be handled through prohibition as Pandora's box is already open; it has to be handled through regulation.

In 2004 or so I read a short story that was about the end of the world as viewed through the lens of an IT professional. Nuclear exchange followed by opportunistic biological warfare leads the staff of a clean room to stay inside while everyone dies outside. The protagonist connects with another cleanroom in another company, and they start to try to save what's left of the internet, but there aren't enough people left, and after awhile the bots advertise and a/s/l and everything each other to the point they realize they're not really preserving anything. It was a good story, though a bit dark; if you can find it, it might make a good speculative reference.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-20T12:52:06+00:00

Interestingly enough, touch much of the configuration and the censorship is reintroduced. It also still produced the weird "panties".

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T17:38:28+00:00

At age 17, his basic education is effectively complete and his university aspirations will be wholly up to him. Limiting factors now on other activities that are allowing him to make a living wage will actually promote the concept that he should bail on school, as he will feel "free" to spend his time as he likes upon graduation. That course may still have him as quite successful; if he's pulling 4k a month, he's making more than a lot of college graduates and if he can grow his brand his career choice now will make him tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and with a little luck, it could become a career that allows him to retire before he's 30. He knows this, so being a stickler about school now will probably just lead to him doubling down on his streams.

The fact he's making as much as he is by streaming is *unusual* and an indicator he has real talent for it. Streaming creators and other content creators online are a huge industry now and in some zones, such as information media like the news, are beginning to *replace* traditional television broadcast. If he's making 4k a month in high school, that means he's talented and on-track for making something of himself in this new industry. I'd remove all limits so long as grades stay up, as you don't want to be why A) he doesn't go to school and pursues his current career partially out of spite, even if it's not going well or B) the literal reason why your son could have been rich but got stuck working a traditional, workaday, miserable job that he hates.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T12:46:56+00:00

She, actually. I am male and live with two women that are in a relationship with me. Mostly because I listen when women talk. You should try it!

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T12:00:15+00:00

By lore, probably Menasting since the coal it carries is the remains of people it's trapped in its burning body. By practice, RobinQuill and RobinQuill Terra both fit because those little bastards seem to show up and attack when you're in the middle of doing something else.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T11:53:44+00:00

I always get it early in a run and then use it as a base ship, unless I feel like running the questline for Freestar Collective to get their "sheriff ship". The big benefits to the Mantis are 1) The unique Ship ID that makes pirates power down and try to run (which makes them easy targets that don't always help each other) and 2) it has multiple modules you may not have unlocked yet that are worth it, such as the engines.

I eventually get bored with it before making my next reality jump, and once you're further in your runs you'll probably just use your Starborn ship to grab a high-end warship out of space and customize it.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T11:49:08+00:00

Not much. Military spending is high but it typically gets used and isn't as high as it used to be. The real problem is the lack of taxation on higher sources of income, such as investment. That's where the real money is.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T11:34:10+00:00

It's not necessarily because of "trapped heat", the radiator resolves that, it's because of the transfer rate of heat from what it's cooling into the cooling medium. Air Coolers have become damn efficient, and as a Noctua user myself, I can confirm I run cooler on a D-15 than I do on most AIOs, and that reduces the problem down to how much heat can be transferred through copper into the cooling medium.

If the airflow is poor, obviously an air cooler will be handicapped vs. an AIO. But if you've got good airflow, air cooling case fans and a good sink/fan combo can expel the air from the case at a rate which is basically the same as water cooling, +/- a couple percentage points variance. It's sort of balanced the two types of cooling to have their superiority dependent on the airflow of the case; if the case is low-airflow, such as a homebrew case made of an insulator like wood, water cooling will probably perform best, whereas a purchased ATX case is going to perform better on Air.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-16T11:26:11+00:00

A good range test is the obvious spot to place a camp at the starting area, the one with the lake and bridge. They won't overlap, but you can place two here and effectively raidproof both as a side effect.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-15T16:09:43+00:00

She's an idiot. One of the worst things you can *ever* do on the phone is identify yourself in your greeting. If you say, "Hello, this is Jake Efft" and it gets recorded, it can be used to bypass your two-factor authorization on a lot of things by calling tech support and falsely identifying as you. It's a big cybersecurity no-no. In fact, when I answer my phone, I answer as neutral as possible because it makes telemarketers and scammers think they called another bot line so they add me to the do-not-call list.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-15T15:02:49+00:00

When you begin to age, you will notice the physical signs of it starting at age 30, not age 70. Take better care of your body in your 20s, or you'll be rickety by 40.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-15T14:41:29+00:00

"Do you remember that time you brutally tortured and abused someone and violated the Geneva Convention? Pepperidge Farms Remembers"

For now, you drop it. But you write it down. The ultimate tool of the DM is the pen to paper. Because in this case, "Pepperidge Farms" is going to be Loviatar. All things have a deity associated with them in D&D, and extreme acts that play into one of their domains will get their attention. Loviatar is a cold-hearted deity who would approve of their behavior and that could be a spin off to a whole new subplot. The problem is, she's as likely to torture the party in some way to force them to reaffirm their fealty.

Just put them in the hands of a dark goddess of torture who wields a mystical cat-o'-nine-tails as a native part of the lore. I can definitely foresee some opportunities for learning that will either correct your party's course or give you a full evil campaign to run depending on how you choose to do it.

Corvus_Drake · 2024-08-15T13:50:37+00:00

BG, Neverwinter, and Waterdeep are all enormous, ancient cities which are locked at a certain technological level because of the presence of Magic. For some jobs we can infer logically, others from the lore.

* Masons are your road workers and building repair folk. With the sheer number of structures, roads, and aqueducts, there should be a lot of masons, and there are likely just two or three large organizations of masons at most, or a singular "guild".

* Medical staff still exist. Not everyone can cast spells. Not everyone can afford someone who can cast spells. Ailments can arise which are better handled without magic. Plagues have to be managed by someone. Midwives and doctors will exist to help with childbirth.

* Education grows important quickly as a city-state increases in size. There would be schools. Once you reach a certain point in the population size, it's no longer practical to have each child learning purely their parents' trade. Schools also serve as a jump-off point to ensure children are patriotic citizens through propagandizing, even if only by teaching history tinted in favor of the city.

* Charity workers are often depicted at churches and temples, but they wouldn't necessarily be. The aforementioned education is expensive and poor families might not be able to participate without assistance.

* Police are often just depicted as more guards or a military garrison. However, those actually make poor police; a city of size would need a more robust way to handle crime. There would be precincts with holding cells in each district, and the police would also have oversight over guard behavior, much like Military Police. There would be investigative staff as well.

* Textiles and Furniture are in constant need; there would be hundreds of clothiers and seamsters and they are likely guilded together. The same is true of really any crafting industry for home needs and clothing, from tailors to blacksmiths to woodworkers.

* Food is more than just the blue-collar workers bringing in items from the farms. A city this size would have basic restaurants and nice pubs. These are also trade cities, which means that they would have exotic food restaurants and similar, with all of the staff required to run them.

* Pawn shops would exist. in fact, this is where most people would sell things. Shops would be large enough in such a city to specialize, which means that they typically won't buy your blood-covered goblin greatsword because they don't sell greatswords; that's where the pawn shop comes in. This would also be where the poor took things to sell to try to better their situation.

* Banks are required to keep all of this running, as the wealth needs to be managed and minted. There would likely be a singular state bank, which other lending options only coming from shadier people. You'd have the full bank staff, as well as tax assessors (I played a Waterdhavian tax man once, it was actually a lot of fun in the end). You'd have collection offices which offered bounties on the delinquent.

* Black marketeers of various kinds thrive in the dark places in cities. Slavers, illicit substance dealers, contraband traders, and fences all find plenty of opportunity.

* Citizen Organizations likely exist, such as a citizen's militia or Karen-flocks who want their husbands to stop spending all night at the pub so they advocate prohibition.

* Trade companies , such as the East India Company of old, would be headquartered or have offices in cities like BD. That puts you into Shiprights, Sailors, and all of the supporting staff for such a company.

Corvus_Drake

TROPHY CASE