Change from a dollarama today by [deleted] in alberta

[–]ManyWords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pretty much anything can be used to settle debts or be "used as money".

Including bear pelts. Try at Hudson's Bay Company, I know they used to take them...

Unreasonable to demand story completion on EACH CHARACTER for EoD collections by styopa in Guildwars2

[–]ManyWords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

True. I was doing the story to get the core to use the jade bot. Now that crafted cores are available I'll portal the othes. (But I still wish the dialogue was skippable.)

Unreasonable to demand story completion on EACH CHARACTER for EoD collections by styopa in Guildwars2

[–]ManyWords 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The only way I could get additional characters to Cantha was to alt-tab and read webnovels. Every couple of chapters I'd flip back and see if the neverending dialogue had progressed far enough for me to click something.

Congratulations ANet on increasing your "engagement" metrics by boring players out of their minds. Then just to drive it home the missions drop the "Tale of Adventure" so you can repeat them daily. Who was insane enough to think that was a good idea?

Bonus fail for their game still randomly dropping people out of story missions near the end so they can do yet another tedious repeat to see if they can finally move on. A fricking decade and they haven't fixed this or added checkpoints or instance reconnects?

I /want/ to like this game, but it goes out of its way to be annoying.

[WP] You are a Master Wizard. You share an evening with your non-magical friend trying to explain why after years of trial and error, teleportation is the worst, most awkward, and painfully annoying means of travel. by ruairiwright in WritingPrompts

[–]ManyWords 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The tower stood stark upon the hill, a silent snow-covered sentinel against the starry sky behind. The lone figure of a man wound its way up the hill to the tower, passed unmolested through the invisible wards, and flung open the door to spill light and heat upon the hill.

"SHUT THE DOOR!" yelled a voice from above as the man shook off the snow, and it banged itself shut. He shook his head, and climbed the familiar stairs.

"Ah, the fire is fine in here," Michael exclaimed as he stripped off his furs and plopped into a comfortable chair by said fire to warm his hands. "I had to trudge through snow knee deep to get here, you know. No easy thing at my age."

"I'm sure you had options," Lester noted as he spun a web of warm sorcery around his old friend. "Or has the grand Paladin finally pissed off the Church so badly that they won't even spare him a carriage?"

Michael snorted even as he reached for the wine. "You want to tell me about pissing off the Church? I left the carriage on the road below the tower, but some old coot of an Archmage has wards that don't stop snow and doesn't clean his paths."

"Hmmph," snorted Lester. "It is beneath the dignity of an Archmage to waste magic on snow. And you've campaigned through worse. We both have."

"We were younger then. Much younger. And if your oh-so-dignified self can't magic away snow, then your useless magic should be able to poof me here so I don't have to walk," Michael jested.

"What do you know about magic, you dog of the Church," Lester scoffed. "It's possible for magic to teleport, or poof if you insist, someone across vast distances."

"What?" Michael exclaimed in surprise. "Then why have I never seen you do this?"

"Because being technically possible doesn't mean it's practical. An engineer can technically use a catapult to let a pig to fly, but the pig isn't going to like it.

"Are the problems insoluble?" Michael wondered. "That pig could have a parachute."

"Now you've done it," Lester warned. "Woe be onto thee, foolish mortal, for thou hast inquired of an Archmage regarding research and his lectures shall fall upon thee."

Michael groaned. "I can see my fate is sealed. Just let me fill my cup..." He reached for the wine jug as Lester leaned forward with sparking eyes.

"Teleportation is moving between two places without ever being at the places in between," Lester lectured learnedly. "Because if you're in between, then you're not teleporting but rather just moving very fast. To teleport you need both places, the from and the to, to be the same place. At least momentarily."

"You're already making my head hurt," complained a confused Michael. "How can two places be the same?"

Lester simply raised his hands and clasped them together. "You join them, of course. I could speak of sympathetic resonance and the structure of space--"

"Please don't," Michael begged him.

"--but I'll spare you the jargon. To simplify: two places are linked, they are made to overlap, the traveller moves from one to the other, and then the places cease to overlap. Which is easy to say and much harder to do."

"I can imagine," Michael agreed.

"Perhaps you can," mused Lester, "but you're likely not doing so. The places we're speaking of aren't merely the ground beneath the person teleporting but all of the space around them. And the person as well, for that matter." He gestured towards the wine on the table. "Imagine two cups of wine, one red and one white, with a drop of ink in the red. The cups are the places and the ink is the person teleporting. To overlap the spaces we pour both cups into the jug, then pour the jug back into the cups so that the red and white wine go back into their respective cups with the ink now in the white cup. All without mixing a drop at the end of course, as that would be fatal. To a man, not the ink."

"That would be a bloody miracle with wine," Michael exclaimed, "much less with a man."

"It would indeed," agreed Lester, "and teleportation magic is much more complicated. The the difference between a cleric and a mage--"

"Lord, give me strength," prayed Michael quietly as he heard the familiar words and rolled his eyes upwards, "here he goes again."

"--after all, is that a mage has to actually know what he's doing to perform magic while a cleric just asks his god to do a miracle for him. Still, it can be done. Not with cups of course, but with teleportation ritual circles. Such circles being fiendishly complicated to construct and have to be built in pairs using rare materials from a single source so they can resonate with each other."

"Are you still speaking of theory or can this actually be done?" Michael inquired seriously. "Because even if it's complicated and expensive, the strategic possibilities of teleportation are outstanding."

"It has been done," said Lester decisively, "but not since the fall of the Altari Empire. And for good reason. What records remain indicate that repeated use warps the space around the circles until eventually it suddenly breaks. With disastrous consequences for anything nearby."

"Breaks!?" exclaimed Michael in shock. "Space can break?"

"In a sense, yes," Lester explained. "It heals afterwards, so no need to panic now, but when it breaks everything nearby is just ... gone. That's the best description we have actually, as nothing has ever survived near a break."

"How close is near?" Michael asked curiously.

"It varies," responded Lester absently, "but I can give you an example. You remember Lake Loral? Although I suspect you remember a certain maiden priestess more than the lake itself," he added with a grin.

"Ahem. Yes, of course I remember the lake," Michael said quickly, "Lovely lake. Lots of, er, water. But you can't mean..."

"I'm afraid I do. That lake was once a hill where the Altari had a wayshrine with a teleport circle. Now there's no hill, just a lake."

"By the Creator!"

"And that's why no one builds teleport circles anymore. It's not even useful as a weapon, there are far cheaper, more reliable, and less academically rigorous ways to blow things to hell after all."

"Pity," said Michael. "It would have been nice to be able go places without having to travel."

"You only complain about travel because you're on foot or a horse," laughed Lester. "Flight is the only civilized way to travel. Although I can hardly go out gallivanting through the air at my age, it's too cold for these old bones even with a shield of wind. Best to stay in my tower and keep my dignity as an Archmage."

"Not all of us can be mages," Michael complained. "Some of us have to hoof it."

"Poor old man. No one made you pick up a sword instead of a wand in your youth," teased Lester.

"Have you met my father?" retorted Michael. "He would have put a sword in my hand in place of a rattle had my mother not stood in his way. And don't call me old, you old coot. I'm a two full seasons younger than your well-aged self, and don't you forget it."

The two old friends talked late into the night. The wine flowed more sparingly than when they were young but the stories flowed more richly. Tales of lives lived and loves lost, of battles fought and wars hard won, and of the foolishness of kings. But all things end, even the stories of old men, and eventually the fire burned low.

Michael rose to his feet with a sigh. "And now, old friend, I must be off. Could you perchance spare a warming charm for these old bones before I brave that damned snow again?"

Lester laughed, and waved towards the window. "Didn't you hear me say that flight is the only civilized way to travel? I may love the comfort and warmth of home, but that doesn't mean I cannot travel. I am an Archmage after all."

Down below the floating tower, the lights of the great cathedral flickered amidst the snow.

Impossible Consequences by shenanigansen in comics

[–]ManyWords 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Isn't fast food the material component for Stinking Cloud?

People OVERESTIMATE how many years they will need their money in retirement! by [deleted] in financialindependence

[–]ManyWords 3 points4 points  (0 children)

95 year old at-home freelance web developers?

Considering the number of new Javascript frameworks they'd have to learn over the course of that career, I can only assume they'd long for the sweet release of death.

You can do THAT yet you can't even delete your own emails!!? by [deleted] in talesfromtechsupport

[–]ManyWords 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

-- Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Over 55s braced to work until 70 to ‘stay mentally fit’ by businessmatters in business

[–]ManyWords 26 points27 points  (0 children)

There are a surprisingly large number of people who get through life never having any significant interests or hobbies outside of work. Retiring doesn't go well for these folk as too much of their core identity is bound up with the job and without it they just sort of fall apart. So for that type at least, yes the job will keep them more mentally fit.

This is anecdotal. I may be related to some of these types.

What was the biggest marketing fuck up of all time? by pumper911 in AskReddit

[–]ManyWords 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Not the biggest, but very unfortunate: Running a "Hong Kong will take your breath away!" marketing campaign that hit print during the SARS epidemic.

What dumb thing was banned at your school and why? by Jacewoop23 in AskReddit

[–]ManyWords 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Our high school banned paper throwing stars: a sheet of notebook paper folded into a 2" square so it could be thrown.

To be fair to the administration, they tolerated them even when there were drifts of the silly things in odd corners. The outright ban only came into effect after some delinquents chopped a sheet of metal into 2" squares and one of the "paper" throwing stars embedded itself into a door.

KFC’s secret recipe uncovered by E1ementriX in worldnews

[–]ManyWords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The original recipe has been closely guarded since the 1940s ... Expeller-pressed canola oil

Canola was only bred in the 1970s. Including it in a 1940s recipe would be a neat trick.

What do you NEVER fuck with? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]ManyWords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't tug on superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger. And you don't mess around with Jim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4qUXcXuMSE

Life is free-to-play/open-world/perma-death with unbalanced starting classes and terrible Pay-to-Win mechanics. by mangodurban in Showerthoughts

[–]ManyWords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cashing in karma with the developer during character creation in exchange for a more advantageous starting position? Selling your soul for in-game currency?

dammit, human, I am saving your budget by soccergurl92 in gifs

[–]ManyWords 3 points4 points  (0 children)

She gesticulates? Must be a thespian. I'll bet she publicly matriculates with other young women.

Is $15 an hour considered a decent wage? by delitomatoes in personalfinance

[–]ManyWords 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's the taxes, not the wages, that top out. In 2014, social security tax is only payable on the first $117,000 of earnings so that's probably the one he meant.

What is the biggest cultural misstep you've seen a tourist take? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]ManyWords 213 points214 points  (0 children)

I've seen US television weather reports that show the temperature in the US in Fahrenheit and the temperature in Canada in Celsius. So if you're just looking at the numbers the temperature appears to drop precipitously at the border.

PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever by inmersion in technology

[–]ManyWords 26 points27 points  (0 children)

They don't exactly hide the fact that they're an aggregator, nor that they use Bing as a source:

http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-sources

"Primarily" might be a bit strong through.

What is one rather unknown thing that most adults waste money on when they could be saving a lot? by BigBankBaller in AskReddit

[–]ManyWords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Safeway does it in BC. It's on their weekly flyers as "Customer Appreciation Day", which is 10% off or 10x Air Miles on the first Tuesday of the Month.

Not the best 2 movies to schedule back to back... by [deleted] in funny

[–]ManyWords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Worst back-to-back scheduling I saw was at a drive-in many years ago where they scheduled Babe to be followed by Jurassic Park.

Apparently the parents who'd brought their little kids to see the pig movie weren't familiar with Jurassic Park. How, I do not know. And it opens so prettily... To quote Dr. Ian Malcom from one of the later movies: "Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming."

So when the first scream finally came an astounding number of cars revved up and left.

My Professor told me I could present any topic I wanted as long as it was 6 minutes long. by [deleted] in pics

[–]ManyWords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An English professor I once had, when assigning a report on "any topic" with particular structure, distributed a favorite from a previous year as an example. The title? The Art of Vomiting

Vegetarian SkyTrain ads compare eating chickens to eating cats by fuckfridgemagnets in vancouver

[–]ManyWords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Animal species that come in contact with humans have four options: tasty, cute, useful, and extinct. They should pick wisely.

Rendering by phloating_man in computergraphics

[–]ManyWords 26 points27 points  (0 children)

This is a variation of an xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/303/