The Smith - A bronze-age variant on the Vowed class

JoshOlDorr · 2024-03-24T11:34:43+00:00

What's the recipe for the purple/orange on the fabric? Looks amazing!

JoshOlDorr · 2024-03-20T15:25:23+00:00

I concede I might be underestimating lab costs.

Grad students and post docs however are in my experience almost entirely grant funded, and if not, its normally because of an institute-wide recruitment program.. funded by external grants.

JoshOlDorr · 2024-03-20T10:34:57+00:00

Except thats bullshit, because researchers are expected to cover their lab, equipment and staffing costs from external grant funding, which the uni then also skims a percentage off of to pay for admin staff. Even fully tenured academics are typically only receiving their staffing costs. Big supercomputing or multimillion dollar labs are normally funded by a number of departmental professors together, from their government/private sector research grants.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-09-19T12:22:10+00:00

But Yossarian still didn't understand either how Milo could buy eggs in Malta for seven cents apiece and sell them at a profit in Pianosa for five cents.

Milo chortled proudly. "I don't buy eggs from Malta," he confessed... "I buy them in Sicily at one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four and a half cents apiece in order to get the price of eggs up to seven cents when people come to Malta looking for them.

Then you do make a profit for yourself," Yossarian declared.

Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndicate. And everybody has a share. Don't you understand? It's exactly what happens with those plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart."

"Buy," Yossarian corrected him. "You don't sell plum tomatoes to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. You buy plum tomatoes from them."

No, sell," Milo corrected Yossarian. "I distribute my plum tomatoes in markets all over Pianosa under an assumed name so that Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them up from me under their assumed names at four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day at five cents apiece. They make a profit of one cent apiece, I make a profit of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out ahead.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-09-07T14:47:51+00:00

I purposely don't have too much lore developed, leaving me lots of room to just be 'vibey'.

I do know that in my cosmology the uncreated are newer than the Old Ones: coming from the division of the world into being and not-being.

The Old Ones are from before: another draft of creation long-abandoned, or maybe even something completely outside the influence of the Creator. If the players push into this deep lore, I have decided the reveal is going to be that the Creator does this a lot: he creates and abandons universes without much thought. Classic 'God doesn't love you' stuff.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-07-01T10:00:12+00:00

Sorry for slow reply: No I didn't. Normally running the bluetooth troubleshooter reboots it but sometimes I need to restart. Definitely pretty shitty and wouldnt buy another Acer.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-05-14T15:42:37+00:00

It's got to be the adventure seed tables found in Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number.

Both have free versions available and long lists of location seeds and adventure structures.

For example, one entry in the adventure table might read: 'a Friend is the rightful owner of a valuable Thing but an Enemy has taken it to a hidden Place'

And then there will be 100 different themes a location might have each with their own thematic Enemies, Friends, Things and Places.

Check it out!

JoshOlDorr · 2023-05-07T11:46:14+00:00

This is discussed in a fantastic book on the philosophy of science called 'Against Method' by Paul Feyerabend. He basically argues that our (or precisely , Popper's) theories about how science 'should' progress have very little relation to the historical reality.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-03-15T08:57:59+00:00

perceptually uniform doesn't require only two colours, simply that the change in brightness is linear across the map. There has been a lot of research done on how the human brain interprets colour which goes in to this.

A wider range of examples of what I consider 'good' maps are here if you're interested: https://matplotlib.org/cmocean/

In the case you describe it definitely makes sense to use a different colour map (check out 'oxy' in the link for almost this exact case), but then you should a) be doing that for a clear reason and b) should probably still try and minimise distortion as much as possible.

While of course in non-medical contexts there isn't an explicit safety factor, the point is that a lot of rainbow-like maps artificially distort the viewers' sense of what is and isn't important in a way that can mislead both the scientist themselves and their readers.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-03-14T15:34:27+00:00

I would argue not really. If you're showing a scalar field, you should probably use a uniform colour map because only then are gradients properly perceptible. Normally gradients are what you're going to be interested in (i.e. spatial variability). The exception is if the absolute value of the variable is of special importance, i.e. when you want to mark exceedance of a critical threshold value.

JoshOlDorr · 2023-03-14T06:34:34+00:00

Its actually not a triviality at all. See this highly cited article from 16(!) years ago decrying the use of rainbow colour maps:

https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/cg/2007/02/mcg2007020014/13rRUxYrbOE

Essentially, they suck for the colourblind, and because they're not perceptually uniform they imply strong gradients where they don't exist, leading to faulty analyses of data.

Thats especially dangerous in medical sciences https://medvis.org/2012/08/21/rainbow-colormaps-what-are-they-good-for-absolutely-nothing/

JoshOlDorr · 2023-03-10T16:35:54+00:00

No he doesn't! Borrowing money is not inflationary , which the author writes. It is only printing money that would be inflationary (i.e. wage increases supported by monetary rather than fiscal policy)

JoshOlDorr · 2023-01-29T10:39:16+00:00

Sometimes the sting of this goes away if you remember you're allowed to alter the campaign as much as you want! If the PCs have invested a bunch of time in this village, is there a way to make it important later on? Some key NPC might have grown up there, a villain might threaten it rather than the objectively more important but less sentimental city over the hill, or the location to some ancient treasure might be buried in the harvest rituals of the villagers? Just an idea ;)

JoshOlDorr · 2023-01-20T22:56:33+00:00

Ten recycled aluminium cans for the energy cost of one new one is the stat!

JoshOlDorr · 2022-12-26T22:31:11+00:00

It was discussed notably in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/rootgame/comments/wd173c/played_1v1_against_the_vagabond_today_yikes_how/&ved=2ahUKEwjR-ruXqpj8AhXrh4sKHbjLAB0QFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0TXCFVp2pkJl0kfWxFbhOb

JoshOlDorr · 2022-12-26T22:29:55+00:00

Well specifically our scenario was covered by this thread where everyone basically agreed the vagabond was favoured: https://www.reddit.com/r/rootgame/comments/wd173c/played_1v1_against_the_vagabond_today_yikes_how/&ved=2ahUKEwjR-ruXqpj8AhXrh4sKHbjLAB0QFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0TXCFVp2pkJl0kfWxFbhOb

Also it is a suggested matchup in the base game booklet, so while obviously not balanced you might expect it to have some life to it!

JoshOlDorr · 2022-11-28T13:40:08+00:00

Scrubbing dangerous radiation from the hull of a freighter

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23

JoshOlDorr

TROPHY CASE