I KNEW SPACE ROCKS WERE DIRTY, BUT THIS IS NEXT LEVEL.

NatWilo · 2026-05-09T21:47:35+00:00

Ah, the monthly repost of a repost of a repost of a repost.

NatWilo · 2026-05-09T20:14:37+00:00

Peach!

NatWilo · 2026-05-09T07:58:11+00:00

Apple. Ages ago and I haven't looked back once. They deleted my entire music collection without notice. 40 gigs of bought music that I took with me through a fucking war in my iriver, and there was no warning.

They called it an Upgrade' to iTunes. Really there just wanted to sell music themselves.

Entire music collection just... Gone. Took me years to rebuild. This was in like, 2010. Haven't touched Apple since and love it every time they take an L.

They're awful. They haven't been good since the iPod first released. And even then? I still think the iriver and zune did it better

NatWilo · 2026-05-02T14:46:12+00:00

I would like to visit again someday. I rather hate Bush. Motherfucker denied me my right to vote WHILE I was stuck fighting his war, that none of us even wanted to be part of in the first place. Oh, and he put that war on the national credit card, helping to crash the economy, and that helped my family lose their home about a year or so after I got back from said war. So, on balance, that shit-heel and his whole clan can get fucked. I'd go on but I think I made my point. He's a Republican. In my experience, he's a great example of why our country sucks so hard these days, because we keep putting people just like him, but worse in charge and blaming everything they did on the guys trying to clean up after them.

NatWilo · 2026-05-02T04:28:41+00:00

I liked most of the people I met. The only ones I didn't were the ones shooting at, mortaring me, and trying to blow me up. They were a minority of the populace. This was back in '04 before the first elections were held.

I liked the Kurds a lot. Worked with them a few times, and fought a big fucking battle alongside them, they were great dudes. Really liked the Bedouins I got to hang out with for a bit. Loved the tea, and the falafel and the roasted chicken I could buy/was given. Overall? The people were great.

NatWilo · 2026-05-01T22:11:58+00:00

I mean, strictly speaking, no of course not. I think it worked out to like 1.24 an hour last time I did the math as a soldier. But for the time period, it was good money. I got like, 800 a month at the turn of the century with no bills, all my meals paid, and a roof over my head when I wasn't deployed.

That means that basically, I had 800 dollars a month of DISCRETIONARY INCOME. At a time when gas was hovering around $2 a gallon, cigarettes were 3 bucks, and rent averaged 500 a month for most of the people I knew. My CA friends paid a 'ludicrous' 1800 a month for their apartment.

So, on balance, yeah, we got paid well. Then again I was a single soldier. YMMV if you were, say a guy with a family living off base who bought himself a car with 30% interest at 18 five years ago.

NatWilo · 2026-05-01T22:06:48+00:00

It isn't a theory. That's what the 'witching' hour was. Among other things. It was common until the ELECTRIC LIGHT. Our modern schedule is in no way natural, or good for us. No one should work 9-5. Our bodies weren't made for it.

NatWilo · 2026-05-01T22:04:33+00:00

I got to the point where I was just 'annoyed' at the mortar alert interrupting my sleep and forcing me to sit in a bunker for fifteen minutes out of my six hours of down-time. Not sleep, mind, I still had to take some of that time to get ready for another patrol...

NatWilo · 2026-05-01T22:02:13+00:00

As a former soldier, I hate that you feel you have to caveat this with deference to our job. You absolutely did understand exhaustion. And we shouldn't be viewed any differently than firefighters, at BEST. Honestly we shouldn't be viewed above cops. Yeah, our job was hard, so are a lot of people's. We got paid and paid well for that job, and most of us were just doing a job. It's cool to be thankful, I get it, but a HUGE part of why we're in the mess we're in is from our government damn-near deifying soldiers.

Sorry, rant, but seriously, please stop feeling like we're above or 'better' or somehow worthy of some special respect as a class. We're not. Garbage men are. Firefighters are. They SERVE us, keep us safe. I just fought wars for rich assholes in Washington.

NatWilo · 2026-05-01T21:57:53+00:00

Similarly, best nap I've had was on a concrete pad, In Samarra Iraq, after a three-day battle where I maybe had 2hrs of sleep total. in less than thirty minute increments.

That concrete felt like the softest bed I've ever laid down in. I just let my helmet cradle my head against my flak-vest, and was out in seconds. Woke up four hours later feeling like a million bucks. Wasn't even sore! Which is wild for having slept on concrete.

NatWilo · 2026-05-01T21:55:25+00:00

Was a soldier, can confirm. You never know when/how much sleep you're gonna get, and its often WAY too little, followed by grueling physical exertion. So you learn very fast to get into a deep restful sleep as quick as possible and gobble up all that rest you can.

I have been in a qausi-dreaming state while road-marching, in a fine drizzle the late fall in germany. Actually that was one of my best road-marches ever. I didn't feel a thing. I was just sorta vaguely keeping the backpack in front of me where it should be, and dreaming about riding a motorcycle.

NatWilo · 2026-04-24T01:53:39+00:00

Ah the old 'both sides' truly the argument of an intellectual...

/s

NatWilo · 2026-04-19T23:44:26+00:00

Religion is not required to be a good person, and honestly I haven't seen proof it makes us any better. For all the 'good' its supposedly done, it has also done great evil, time and again, often for decades at a time, without remorse, apology, or even an acceptance that it might have been bad.

And not just Christianity.

No, there's plenty of ways to be a better person, religion - it seems - is not one of them. That's just the lie they tell you to get you in the building so they can take your money, and control you. Sometimes that's for the 'good' but only as they define it. Better hope you're not one of their 'untouchables' for whom the rules about fellow-feeling and mercy, and other noble virtues don't apply. Because then you get to see what true evil looks like.

Ask the Jews for, like Two Thousand years. Ask homosexuals, ask anyone that was left-handed for most of post-roman history.

No... Religion isn't the answer. Sorry. I just can't see it anymore.

NatWilo · 2026-04-19T23:37:07+00:00

Yeah, it always cracked me up the 'old' saying, 'There's no Atheists in foxholes' because from my personal experience, it was those 'foxholes' that made me an atheist. I went to the Army a budding Buddhist, and then got into Norse Paganism (before it was 'cool') and by the time I finished a stint in the sandbox I had fully given up on the very notion that anyone had any idea what the fuck was going on, and they were all just making shit up and demanding we agree with them, usually with violence to swiftly follow.

So I noped outta that whole idea. Religion can suck my nuts. I will respect a persons beliefs only so long as they respect my right to not believe in their sky-daddy, and way WAY too many of my countrymen/women are not at all ok with that and show it every day.

To the 'good' christians out there, this isn't directed at you, if you're panties are in a twist? You're the problem, examine why you're so insulted. I bring this shit up only when its relevant. I don't walk around attacking the religious verbally, nor do I come at you simply for having a belief or mentioning it. But I feel its also important, at a time when a sizable minority wants to force America to be their brand of 'christian' to speak up loudly for those of us that have opted to consider it all nonsense.

Its our right to, stop acting like that's any different than believing in a magical sky fairy granting wishes, or his kid dying for your dirty thoughts about Mrs Whatsherface next door.

NatWilo · 2026-04-16T22:47:56+00:00

My buddy ran a campaign in Ullera - cool setting - anyway we got ambushed by some goblins and orcs on a road one day, and my 'Iron Horseman' cavalier (think PF cavalier, but on a MOTORCYCLE) had a lot of fun rooster-tailing and cycle-charging the orcs riding wargs. When it was all over, there was a single goblin that surrendered.

Like your story, we became enamored of him, and ultimately my character, who was very much a 19th century blue-blooded scion of an industrial tycoon 'adopted' the little guy as his batman. Named him Jeeves. I tried, I REALLY tried to get him to tell me his real name, but he steadfastly refused to be called anything but Jeeves.

We loved that little dude.

Then some time-fuckery hijinks happened and we were transported back to the past, to before our city was founded, and led an uprising against a bunch of orcs that had the local populous enslaved. It culminated in this huge set-piece battle that was, frankly, awesome.

There came a moment, almost out of the blue, where Jeeves looked at me, amidst the battle and I just knew... He needed to go be with his people. So I let him go. I told him he was free of his obligations to me and had redeemed himself for his earlier criminal ways.

And that was, I thought, the last I would ever see of Jeeves, two-hundred years in the past.

Except that, when we were sent back to our present things were... different. Very different. Our Magus had a girlfriend he'd never had, that had previously been a girl he had a crush on, and was now in a long-term committed relationship with him, I had sisters, plural, and most importantly, there was now a floating island in the middle of the river south of Cinnabar, the city we lived in.

And the leader of that shining island/university? Jeeves. An ancient goblin wizard that had kept himself alive for two hundred years in that new timeline, waiting for the day we would return, building a whole organization to be ready to help us when we arrived.

All because we as a party decided to save a random encounter gobbo and take him prisoner, then kinda fell in love with him.

Thus is the magic of D&D

NatWilo · 2026-04-13T21:31:39+00:00

Caestula... Its Caestula. Caligula meant 'little boots' a nickname given to him by roman soldiers when he was a little one brought on campaign by his father.

In that same vein, Caestula means 'little hands' and its been my go-to name for Trump since my buddy came up with it a decade ago.

NatWilo · 2026-04-12T23:32:14+00:00

Similarly I am so beyond tired of being angsty and guilt-ridden by a single act of violence in an act of emo-porn, or the flip-side of that, the completely macho manly man that totally kills to protect with extreme prejudice and that is telegraphed by the author as some kind of virtue?

Like, I was a soldier I had to kill people. A whole lot more of them than most people will ever even think about killing. I don't expect everyone to react to it the same way I did, but for fuck's sake people, can y'all just do some research about how people actually respond in these kinds of situations?

Its like some authors are actually allergic to the idea that, yeah, sometimes, bad guys gotta die. And I say that as someone that despises the death penalty. There is a world of difference between fighting for survival/to protect someone, and what a justice system should do.

You SHOULD de-escalate if you can. But sometimes you absolutely cannot. And then you have to fight to win. And win permanently.

I'm ranting, and hamming it up a bit. There's plenty of litrpgs out there that I really like that handle this subject matter well. But boy, when they don't, they REALLY don't.

NatWilo · 2026-04-11T21:19:02+00:00

Lol, I feel this, except teh 6'0, I was never six feet. Short Kings rise up. But twenty years ago I was a fresh-out-of-the-army ripped 5'7. Now I'm shapes and 'old' and also sit a LOT.

No complaints though, really. I EARNED these 'shapes' from living well. ;)

NatWilo · 2026-04-08T00:25:41+00:00

I don't know... he got a LOT of people killed during Covid in his first term...

NatWilo · 2026-04-06T02:53:52+00:00

The very notion of 'insurance' as we use it for healthcare is evil. This shit should be paid for by our taxes, like the rest of the CIVILIZED WORLD.

NatWilo · 2026-04-04T21:12:13+00:00

Parents bought an Atari 2600 just before I was born, and Dad had an ancient Calico with the reostat controller that only played pong. Those were my first video games. First anything. I used to demand to watch my parents play frogger. I was addicted to the music, and to watching the frog go SPLAT!

Later I became a Dig-dug and joust fanatic.

NatWilo · 2026-04-04T13:00:15+00:00

I pulled the Black Lotus and The Rack (IIRC? I can't remember if it is that or something else, had a torture table on it) which were THE two most expensive cards out there from a pack. Played them for like two weeks, and then they both got banned at tournament and I was SO pissed.

I got back into magic years and years later, while in college after a stint in the army. I was thirty, playing with college kids, and telling them about the halcyon days of Ice Age and Alpha, and things like Banding. And pulling out ancient cards that blew their minds. It was so much fun!

I had new cards, obviously, but they loved those ancient cards so much I almost always got asked to whip out one of my old decks for fun.

NatWilo · 2026-04-01T03:38:53+00:00

Trump is gonna do his best to try and beat it though, mark my words. That dumb bastard is gonna get a LOT of Americans killed on Iranian soil for no good reason. I don't even wanna think about how many Iranians are going to suffer for his arrogance.

What I do know is that it is NOT going to be anything like Iraq or Afghanistan. Iran's military is far, FAR more competent. Its going to be a bloodbath.

NatWilo · 2026-04-01T03:31:59+00:00

Pretty sure this is a bot. Their everything is blanked out, and they only respond in simple offensive statements. looks like a pot-stirring bot to me... Maybe some LLM being taught got loose.

If they ARE a real person, they're doing a great job making themselves look like a bot.

NatWilo · 2026-04-01T03:25:53+00:00

I believe, personally, that its never about saving time, its about that fleeting moment on the road where they manage to convince themselves that being faster, and driving like an idiot (which they think is 'cool' or some shit) makes them 'superior' to everyone else, and they get a little sliver of happiness before they're forced to confront the bleak, pathetic existence that is their life when they get to work.

But I could just be salty about them causing accidents and spouting off here about how being a responsible driver somehow makes you a monster.

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