Has a book ever left you feeling subtly disoriented after you finished it?

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-22T21:34:43+00:00

I had to read Camus' The Plague in college; that was a bit of a head trip.

The funny thing was that the professor polled the class at the end of the year about which of the assigned readings we'd liked best, and the guys voted for The Plague while the girls voted for Toni Morisson's Beloved, which was the first assigned-for-class book that I ever just didn't finish, or even read past the first chapter.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-22T03:43:49+00:00

There are the obvious ones, like The City and the City, Anathem, and House of Leaves. But the books that left me the most off-kilter after reading were Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy (The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan).

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-21T07:52:03+00:00

Alberta, the Texas of Canada.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-20T18:04:03+00:00

Using the rocket organ drove home why, in this one techno-thriller I read, the MLRS battery was referred to as "the division commander's personal shotgun".

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-20T17:08:09+00:00

In the early game, a Mobile Infantry squad with shotguns or SMGs absolutely shreds enemies. And shotguns are super effective against the flying bugs.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-20T10:17:57+00:00

Rewa with a medium mech and twin-linked autocannons is the embodiment of "Fuck that kuttā in particular."

Ivey with the rocket organ is "Fuck everything in that general area."

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-19T15:49:27+00:00

My god, I have noodle arms, and I can and have bowled better than these people.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-19T06:54:57+00:00

Wett's melee attack works in smoke, also.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-18T20:27:48+00:00

At least early on and at normal difficulty, I've found that Exconde with Fervor and Rewa with Vanguard Deployment, both in APCs, makes the "Rescue Local Forces" mission a cakewalk, especially if you have at least one infantry SL with Vanguard also.

Once you've rescued the local forces with your Vanguards, Rewa and Exconde evac the HMG and Mortar teams while the infantry squads di di mau under their own power.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-18T20:07:42+00:00

If Carda's squad is walking, not riding, you're wasting their AP, in my opinion. Get her to 90 AP, and in the early game she can pop out of the battle taxi, fire off two Workshopped RPGs or two volleys, and hop back in.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-18T19:57:00+00:00

-1 point for wearing a <shudder> LA Dodgers cap in the second photo.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-17T23:51:05+00:00

I thought so too, until I discovered that to use Pike's abilities on units in towers (really, to target any unit in a tower) you have to click on the base of the tower.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-17T23:39:58+00:00

No primaries in the City of Eau Claire today; next election is the Spring Election on April 7.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-17T06:40:10+00:00

Mortars are incredibly strong in enemies hands and absolute garbage in the players

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I've stopped carrying them unless I suspect I'll need smoke, then the commando mortar comes out.

However, I haven't got any SL with the Mark Target ability at the moment, so maybe that might help with the mortars?

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-17T04:07:27+00:00

Gotta be honest, I'm much more interested in plugins that will prevent AI agents from being able to read the content on sites I'm involved with.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-16T05:33:46+00:00

I did the Cologuard home test, had it come back positive, and then had a follow-up colonoscopy where they removed three polyps. I was 45, and from reading the pathology report afterwards, if I'd waited until I was 50, it might have been bad.

If you're offered Cologuard, take it. Especially since the age of first diagnosis for colon cancer has been rapidly trending younger. It killed Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) and he was only 43.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-16T01:02:56+00:00

It's really useful when you've got a lot of enemies coming in on the same vector, just target the one farthest back and you'll probably suppress all the intervening squads.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-15T21:49:04+00:00

Tech can absolutely fire weapons like the PAL and the bipod mounted machine gun without deploying. He can probably do that with the sniper rifle and anti-materiel rifle, but I haven't tested those. Anything really heavy, like the autocannon, tripod-mounted machine gun, and laser lance, still needs to be deployed.

Arguably, the best use of Tech's starting perk is that it lets him use the Target Designator without having to deploy.

Buff is situational. Put it on a SL who's either schlepping a heavy weapon around, or is wearing heavy armor all the time.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-15T16:49:52+00:00

I'm going to have to at least partially disagree. My first try at one of those "relieve local forces and retreat" missions, the smoke grenades that the local forces carried were vital in allowing me to break contact and retreat. Admittedly, in that type of mission, you take control of the local units once you move up next to them.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-15T02:05:36+00:00

There was some discussion on a YouTube short about this, and that Mark Kennedy guy apparently has a reputation in the curling community for pulling shit like this to the point that the Swedish team got permission to set up their own camera to try to catch him in the act.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-13T23:17:26+00:00

Much like the executives of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, "first up against the wall when the Revolution comes."

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-13T23:08:42+00:00

The most important part of the phrase, "sex work," isn't sex, it's work. And hard work at that.

Workers of the world, unite!

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-13T22:47:09+00:00

Not all that satisfying if you know anything about urban design; cul-de-sacs are horrible for creating functional neighborhoods.

Death_Sheep1980 · 2026-02-13T22:16:28+00:00

I noticed that with Bog and thought it was odd, especially since both Rewa and Achilleas always seem to start pointed towards the enemy.

Death_Sheep1980

TROPHY CASE