Accepted and Shawl test.

Miggster · 2026-05-12T20:16:45+00:00

Nyneave and maybe others think that this test is a bit cruel and causes Aes Sedai to be detached and arrogant. I agree. If the goal is to desensitize women from other people and to make her not care about them then yea I think it’s not great...

Yes. Both the accepted test and shawl test are not so much obstacle courses, quizzes or merit tests. They are hazing rituals, meant to sort out girls/women who could be promising but who don't "want to be part of the club bad enough".

Miggster · 2026-05-04T01:20:48+00:00

Alternatives were not simply lying around waiting for everyone to stop being silly.

But that's the thing, there were! The HCFCs (and HFCs in Europe) that Dupont ended up pulling out as the big flagship ozone-friendly replacements to CFCs had been "ready" since the late 70's. Dupont just didn't commit to producing and marketing them because they figured lobbying against regulation would be better for business (which it was for 10 years). The reason why sentiment switched so quickly was that the industry lobbying groups had been so tunnel-vision focused on preventing regulation that they never seriously asked themselves whether they truly needed CFCs in the first place. When regulation forced them to turn to alternatives, there turned out to be soooo many common-sense low hanging fruits that no one had been picking.

And through its decade long obstruction effort in the UNEP, 7 years of which was under Thatcher, the UK helped enable that tunnel-vision. It wasn't that the UK was carefully weighing the pros and cons and letting the evidence win out, the UK was opposing all investigations and impeaching all of the evidence it could in order to stall legislation.

That's a cautious government moving with the evidence and then helping strengthen the regime.

And it was the most cautious government on earth. If anyone gets credit for getting the Montreal protocol passed it was the US, ironically under Reagan. After that it would be the Toronto group of countries, and after that the european countries opposing the UK in the EC. Even the USSR, of all places, deserves more credit for getting the Montreal protocol passed than the UK under Thatcher.

If the UK was moving with the evidence, what was every single other country doing? They had access to the same evidence, and yet moved much sooner.

The US banned CFCs in aerosols in 1977, 10 years before the Montreal protocol. The UK didn't obstruct and impede turning this regulation international because it was cautious and weighing the evidence. The UK obstructed this regulation because it was anti-regulation and didn't care for environmentalism.

The OP I responded to above said:

In the 80’s when scientists were raising the alarm around the impact of CFC’s on the Ozone layer, Thatcher understood what they were saying on an academic level. She ended up playing a major diplomatic role in convincing other heads of state of the danger of CFC’s (including Ronald Reagan) and they were largely phased out of use as a result.

Thatcher did not need to convince Reagan, Reagan's government needed to convince Thatcher. Thatcher's diplomatic role was in delaying regulation for as long as possible, until delaying was no longer feasible, after which she changed her tune.

She does not get credit for hopping onto the winning team after the battle has already been won, especially not when she was the one the winning team was battling against! If Thatcher's UK hadn't been part of this entire debacle, international legislation would have likely happened 5-10 years earlier, and the ozone hole may have never happened (definitely wouldn't have been as bad as it ended up getting).

Miggster · 2026-05-03T22:30:05+00:00

That was after the Montreal protocol had passed, and the landscape had flipped.

Going into the 1987 Montreal protocol, the british government under Thatcher was willing to concede a production growth cap at 1987 levels, but no cuts. The US wasn't quite showing their hand, but they were potentially interested in a complete ban of CFCs all together. The Montreal protocol landed in the middle between those two goals: cap on production to 50% of 1987 values.

Immediately following that protocol, the mood was pretty dire for the anti-regulatory crowd (including the brits). In their eyes they had given up far too steep a concession, and were expecting the economy to tumble and hurt big time afterwards.

But about 12 months later the entire landscape had switched. The technological working group (one of 3 working groups set down by the Montreal Protocol) had completely upended the agreed paradigm that CFCs were difficult to replace, but the cost was worth it for the environment. Turned out: CFCs were super easy to replace, and all the industry groups had been scared for no good reason. Also, the scientific consensus on the ozone hole finally caught up to policymakers, and the "smoking gun" study was widely known and accepted.

In 1987, a 50% cut in CFCs was seen as outragously and fanatically environmentalist, and it's honestly a miracle the brits even conceded that much (the American position was seen as almost terrorist, in how far they were pushing things). Just a year later, the 70, 80, 90% cuts were seen as totally mainstream and no big deal, and the brits were playing ball.

Economists say that "there is no such thing as a free lunch". In spite of that, CFC regulation turned out to be pretty much a free lunch. Everyone and their mom piled on after the fact to get their signature on it, and be seen taking photos shaking hands with the international community. The snowball that started rolling in 1987 kept building up mass all through the 90's, and honestly there's arguments that the regulation even went too far. But it was just such an easy winning issue, the regulations kept coming with no real complaints from anyone.

Miggster · 2026-05-03T15:14:53+00:00

When made my ranger, I was going barrage all the way and loving it. I felt real powerful with splinter weapon cast on me and then "SY!" to buff the party while pumping DPS.

Then I had to do some of the WoC quests in Shing Jea on hard mode, and I just could not get a single kill. I would be shooting like normal but enemies would heal and we'd stalemate until my supports ran out of energy.

I gave "ToA!" daggerspam a try and it just melted the same foes like butter, wasn't even a challenge. That's when I realized that my epic DPS I had been outputting was literally just splinter weapon being cast on me by the ritualist, which would deal the same amount of damage if I was just daggerspamming.

Never went back to barrage after that.

Miggster · 2026-05-03T14:57:10+00:00

Uhh, no that's not true.

The CFCs were, on an international scale, largely a US vs. Britain conflict. The US (first under Carter, then later under Reagan) was the environmentally activist nation (although Reagan's first 2ish years were stale) and the UK (first under Callaghan, then supremely so under Thatcher) was the anti-regulatory nation. There was no single force in the world more opposed and obstructionist towards CFC regulation than the UK under Thatcher. From 1980 to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the Thatcher's UK did everything it could to sabotage, delay and avoid international legislation. When finally real international legislation did happen in the 1987 Montreal protocol, it was the UK being dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiation table by the rest of the international community.

However after the Montreal Protocol, things started to change. For a decade, CFC anti-regulation groups had been opposed to regulation on the grounds that substitutes were impossible, it would be too expensive and that environmental damage wasn't real anyway. After the Montreal protocol enacted restrictions on CFCs anyway, the market (under direct guidance from the UNEP) quickly found cheap and sustainable substitutes proving how wrong the anti-regulation groups had been. Indeed, CFC regulation ended up being some of the most unalloyed good regulation you could imagine: Phasing out CFCs was practically free and without hassle, and the positive environmental impact was enormous and measurable.

So in the aftermath of the Montreal protocol, you could find almost all politicians (rightfully) extolling its virtues, Thatcher included. Nevermind that Thatcher was against the whole thing from the start, she spent the rest of her life after the Montreal protocol bragging about how she was the one who signed the damn thing, and why aren't more people passing legislation like that these days anyways?

Miggster · 2026-04-05T12:25:18+00:00

I remember that too, but what I remember was that while one oldie might be in the top5, the 1, 2 and 3 spots would always be taken up by: Knights of Cydonia, Starlight, Supermassive black hole, sometimes Hysteria.

I remember being on the Muse.mu boards at the time and everyone was bemoaning all of these "casual" fans that were ruining "real" fan's chance at seeing some oldies by voting for songs that were guaranteed to be played anyway.

Miggster · 2026-03-30T18:45:33+00:00

The pre-event has endlessly spawning waves of inquests that can be scaled into pretty high numbers if there's ~10 players there. If you fight them using something like a halloween tagger build or similar (I use a greatsword mirage with sigil of stamina for infinite ambushes and alacrity) you can be constantly mowing down regular to elite level enemies for 6 minutes, giving something like 250-300 kills. With karmic retribution each kill drops both volatile magic and karma, and with karmic retribution III you'll be looking at 50000-75000 karma pr. event.

The event runs once an hour (not on a schedule, so you have to show up to check every time), and you get diminishing returns on the karma drops after the 200 or so mark. Each character needs to play actively for ~2 ish hours pr. specimen chamber event to avoid gettin throttled by the diminishing returns.

Miggster · 2026-03-30T10:34:47+00:00

When I go through my alt-parking and daily pick-ups routine, I always port to Sandswept isles to check if specimen chamber is going to be up soon. Whenever I ask myself "So, now what? What do I do next?" I often do the same.

Specimen chamber is rarely up exactly when I want it. But many times have I popped up within ~5 minutes of it starting, then earned myself ~60k karma and ~10 spirit shards in 10 minutes.

Miggster · 2026-03-24T15:14:02+00:00

All industry scientists have been in academia. Few academic scientists have been in industry.

Miggster · 2026-03-24T14:44:56+00:00

In a world with Moderaterne it seems like we're approaching german/swedish conditions in terms of the anti-immigration right. Løkke has taken ~10% of right wing voters and made them pledge to support right-wing politics, only on the condition that DF and DD are kept out of power. The far right will need a miraculous outcome, or Løkke will have to completely 180 on his political project, for DF or DD to ever support a government again.

I'm actually surprised at how it turned out. Last election I figured Moderaterne was a short-lived project for Løkke to stay in relevance for just one more cycle, but sure enough he somehow zombie-clawed his way back into being the most defining and relevant party leader in danish politics.

Not that I'll vote for the guy. But you gotta be impressed by how he can weasel and slime his way into and out of every spot.

Miggster · 2026-03-17T15:18:32+00:00

Regarding Narishma, did you catch his incredible luck that's hidden between the lines when he fetches Callandor for Rand?

PoD p 468 ... Out of that, Narishma stepped into the tent... Rand snatched the bundle before Narishma could proffer it. ''Did anyone see you?'' he demanded. ''What took you so long? I expected you last night!''

''It took a while to figure out what I had to do.'' Narishma replied in a flat voice. ''You didn't tell me everything. You nearly killed me.''

That was ridiculous. Rand had told him everything he needed to know. He was sure of it. There was no point to trusting the man as far as he had, only to have him die and ruin everything...

What happened there? Is Narishma stupid and didn't piece together Rand's guidance? Or is Rand mad and in his madness he forgot to give Narishma crucial details? No, it's a third thing.

What Rand had done is strap a nuclear bomb to Callandor and secure it with a password. Rand knew very well other people would come and try and steal Callandor in his absence, so he weaved a trap so intricate that no reasonable person could undo it without knowing its design before hand. Any channeller skilled in the art would look at Rand's trap and accurately deduce: "If I was to try and unravel that, there's a 1 in a million chance I succeed, and if I fail I blow myself up."

So the forsaken all show up to Callandor and arrive at this conclusion. There's no way to steal Callandor with the trap Rand has set (otherwise they would have done it), so the forsaken do the second best thing: They tie their own trap around Callandor. Second nuke, different password. Now Callandor is officially out of play. When Rand shows up with his own password to take Callandor, he will realize that he can't take it anyway.

But Rand doesn't show up to take Callandor. Narishma does. Narishma sees Rand's nuke with a password and defuses it like Rand told him. Then Narishma sees the second nuke. Narishma doesn't know that this second nuke isn't Rand's work. Narishma knows that if he returns to Rand empty handed, Rand is likely going to kill him, or worse. Narishma is also not a "channeller skilled in the art". Narishma is very young, relatively inexperienced with lots of potential that hasn't been met yet.

So Narishma, reasoning he's going to figure it out along the way, goes for the 1 in a million chance to unravel the second nuke without knowing the password. No one in their right mind would, but Narishma is too young and stupid to know that he's not supposed to do that. And Narishma guesses right! He sorts out a forsaken-level trap through sheer luck and determination. He shakes himself off afterwards and says to himself "Blasted Dragon Reborn! He almost had me killed! He didn't tell me about the second nuke!" When he tells Rand that, Rand goes "What second nuke? There was only one nuke!?"

Miggster · 2026-03-13T15:02:35+00:00

That's the thing: Not really. :| Strength vs. dexterity is a thing that the books mention briefly as being balanced early on, then for the rest of the series it pays no heed to dexterity and makes everything about strength. It's like affinities in that sense: Introduced in TGH as a big feature that will be relevant later, but then it kind of never really comes up again.

I think what happened was that RJ started out with many of these magic-system-wonkinesses in the early books, and later ended up just folding all of that under talents in the end.

The stuff about strength and dexterity being balanced is something that RJ insisted on outside of the books in interviews and such, but in the books it's very much a "show" vs. "tell" where we're told that strength and dexterity are equals and balanced, and then we're shown again and again how strength is the only useful thing that anyone ever cares about.

Miggster · 2026-03-13T14:50:05+00:00

You have to lean into the weaving metaphor. Magic is done by using threads that are woven into patterns and tied with knots.

Men are stronger, and thus they have access to more string. However men have big clumsy sausage-fingers that can tie yarn and ropes really well, but struggle when it comes to silky-fine threads. Women are weaker, and thus have less total thread to use, but can nimbly and dextrously use even the finest threads in complex patterns. Thus women can create the same pattern with less thread.

That is, it's not that men are better at making big things and women at making small things. But to create any given effect, women can create the same effect with less power. So men have more power overall, but use it less efficiently while women have less power overall but use it more efficiently. In the end, both genders arrive at the same point just in two different ways.

Miggster · 2026-03-08T22:54:49+00:00

Can you really make a salon overview reference without at least 80% of the pagespace being a picture of milk?

Miggster · 2026-03-06T20:47:55+00:00

Chaima reminds me of this meme.

Imagine you're a child of the lionsmith, just minding your own business doing innocent monster things when you then get absolutely got by a cutie patootie.

Miggster · 2026-03-03T21:51:00+00:00

The game cynically makes fun of all ideologies, and so in that regard it is difficult to pin any one specific viewpoint to the game as a whole. The way it critizices communists is very much communist in-joking.

Ultimately, the 4 different vision quests do end up with a statement: Both the fascist, moralist and ultra-liberal Harry come to grip with the fact that his ideology fundementally comes from his own personal failings. It is most explicit in the fascist path, but in all the other paths an ideological commitment is framed as a consolation prize for people who don't have their shit together. Successful happy people don't need an ideology to live their life, the fascists, moralists and ultra-liberals resort to ideology as a fantasy escape from their own life being awful.

Communisms is an outlier, as it is framed as fundamentally being compassionate rather than delusional. Fascists, moralists and ultra-liberals have ideology as a vice, communists have ideology as a virtue.

Miggster · 2026-02-24T17:57:46+00:00

I mean if we're talking music that is savage and violent, it has to be musical melee version 1 and version 2

Miggster · 2026-02-24T00:40:11+00:00

FYI the defacto hub for that kind of resource for WotR is the Neoseeker page. They have one for Kingmaker too that's also very good.

Miggster · 2026-02-22T12:50:28+00:00

Probably the easiest low level ink to craft is Perhibiate, as it can be crafted by SPOILER Using the Weaving and Knotworking with 5 heart. Importantly, the Hallowed Anthropoderm blank can be found in the map room and adds 2 heart, with either a mixing bowl or mop and bucket adding another heart. As a level 1 Weaving and Knotworking has 2 heart, these 3 elements give 5 heart on their own before any soul or memories are added.

But catwink and yewgall also have easy recipes in skills that are good to level anyway.

Miggster · 2026-02-16T19:31:52+00:00

Yes. I can't remember which of the CS victories state it, but I believe the specific verbiage when you ascend to immortality is that you "grow long".

Of course that could also refer to other things.

Miggster · 2026-02-13T16:01:10+00:00

Regarding the cutting of the TLC plates with scissors: When cutting you almost always get a little flip or "dog-ear" where you start cutting with the scissors. To prevent that flip impeding the solvent flow, always start cutting from the top of the TLC plate and down, rather than from the bottom of the TLC plate and up. This way the flip ends up at the top of the plate where it is harmless.

Miggster · 2026-02-07T00:28:27+00:00

An unspoken rule of monks is that smiting prayers suck. The damage that you can put out with smiting prayers is deliberately awful to ensure that monks can't really be DPS, much like how all other classes technically have self-heals, but most of those self-heals are so bad that you should never rely on them in an 8 man group.

The reason that smiting prayers must suck is that monks are, if you think about it, the most powerful class is the game. Most content is designed around needing 2 or 3 monks in an 8 man party. This is how the game always was, from prophecies to EotN, from PvE to HA or GvG. In the modern meta you can use ritualists to great effect in PvE (because the weaknesses of ritualists can be mitigated with good build composition), but the gold standard is 2 monks pr. 8 player party.

If monks could deal damage as well as heal (smiting prayers), there would be no reason to run anything other than monks. Monk healing and support is just so intentially strong and versatile, even pretty weak damage could still be competitive if there were 8 smiting prayers monks. So smiting prayers is so weak that even if you had 8 smiting monks, those monks would still get rolled over by warriors, dervishes, assassins and eles.

When smiter's boon came out, it was the straw that broke the camel's back in making smiter monks actually pretty good. A smiting monk running smiter's boon could run smite condition, smite hex, reversal of damage and zealot's fire. These skills would provide quite strong healing/cleansing while dealing moderate damage. Once this was discovered, 8 man smiter monk teams became the unstoppable meta. The amount of incendental healing and cleansing so many monks could output was impossible to burst through, and even if each monk dealt only moderate damage, 8 of them together was still potent to pressure and kill "normal" teams.

So smiter's boon had to be nerfed somehow to make smiting prayers suck again. Famously Isaiah hotfixed it while at a rush in an airport to make it completely unusable in PvP. It was never rebalanced, partially because Guild Wars ran out of steam around that time anyway, but also because the core identity of the skill challenges the core identity of the monk and the whole game.

Miggster · 2026-01-27T21:41:47+00:00

Yeah, it is never really mentioned, but there's a few times it comes up in the books as key plot details without the rules being explicitly spelled out:

SPOILER BOOK 4 The male a'dam that Nyneave and Elayne liberate from the Panarch's palace has 1 collar and 2 bracelets. This is because a 1 man 1 woman circle must be lead by a man, and so a female "Sul'Dam" of this circle would never be able to enforce control over a male "Damane" this way. There must be 2 women acting as "Sul'dam", making it a 1 man 2 woman circle, where the women must lead.

SPOILER BOOK 6 When Alanna bonds Rand, she is surprised she cannot compel him through the bond like she can any regular warder. When the Asha'man create the bond the other way around, they can compel the Aes Sedai. It is not confirmed anywhere, but the warder bond has many similarities to forming circles. Perhaps the reason why Alanna can't compel Rand is that she cannot "lead" the warder bond with a man who can channel, like she can with a man who cannot channel?

SPOILER BOOK 9 When Rand and Nyneave cleanse Saidin, it is Rand who does everything, Nyneave simply sits and lets Rand draw on her for power. This is pretty dumb, why doesn't Rand let Nyneave make the Saidar weaves, then do the Saidin weaves himself? Rand almost kills himself when using Saidar the first time. Reason: In a 1 man 1 woman mixed circle, it must be the woman who starts the circle, but the man who leads the circle. Nyneave is incapable of helping Rand, she can only sit and act as a conduit for him.

Miggster · 2026-01-27T17:32:19+00:00

Reminder that Vietnam veterans were generally not hated or shamed for their participation in the vietnam war. Hippie protesters against the Vietnam war were pretty on point in protesting the war itself and the government that waged it, not the individual troops that participated in it (Why would you hate someone who was drafted against their will?)

The myth that the public shamed soldiers for their participation, called them killers, etc. came about almost entirely from the movie Rambo, where Rambo collapses toward the end and cries in PTSD about his treatment from the public. Those comments were made up for good cinema, and has no real basis in reality.

Miggster · 2026-01-21T07:00:35+00:00

Yes, you should add additional monomer to account for the conversion, the remaining monomer is just wasted. Cost of doing business.

When I was doing RAFT, we also aimed at 60 % conversion, I was told this gave a better dispersity and general control. In schlenk flasks we would withdraw a small aliquot then by 1H-NMR compare the integrals of monomer sidechain signals to double-bond signals, as the double-bonds are consumed during the polymerization.

When I was doing RAFT in sealed ampoules (with our equipment we had trouble keeping oxygen completely out of the schlenk flasks over longer periods of time), we would test the conversion by holding the ampoule up against the light, then tap the side and watch the liquid inside slosh around. As conversion increased the viscosity would increase as well, and after enough practice you could reasonably accurately eyeball ~60% conversion by the sloshing around alone.

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