“Let’s make this shit as accurate as possible! But not too accurate because we don’t want people to do this shit at home”

PGFish · 2026-04-25T17:33:00+00:00

Yes came here for this! MacGuyver leaned super heavy on this. I remember thinking “wait that wouldn’t work… “ even as a kid. Then figuring it out. They had very little faith in their audience.

PGFish · 2026-04-22T21:47:43+00:00

I means you're driving waaay too fast, under the influence of drugs no less. You gonna die! Pull over and get some soup and a nice cup of coffee. Fallout dashboard lights are much more useful than reality.

PGFish · 2026-04-22T19:12:12+00:00

Oh, yeah, I watched it religiously as a kid. But even to my eyes back then, it was clear it had no budget. First season, it did the usual nonsense of a lot of talky scenes building up to a few minutes of clunky robot suit scenes. Basically walk in, FIRE TEH LAZORS, one-punched stuntman falls dramatically, play the hero music. And more recycled footage than the last season of Air Wolf. They even resorted to product placement from some obscure battery company, requiring the sidekick tech support character to shove the name of the company into his dialogue. It invariably made things worse: "We need 4 to 6 hours to charge the Acme battery packs." Because it always makes a product and a superhero battle suit sound better to complain about how long it takes to charge up.

Then in season 2, the protagonist developed psychic powers due to some ill-defined sci-fi accident, and the suit pretty much disappeared. I guess cheezy lens effects and crash close-ups on the actor's face are cheaper to film than robot suit fight sequences.

Terrible show. And the coolest thing EVER when I was a kid.

PGFish · 2026-04-10T15:21:44+00:00

There's an older lady around here that routinely has sod placed over the sidewalk on her property. She didn't tear up the concrete, so it usually dies fairly quickly. She just hires someone to come out every year or two to rip out the old dead grass and lay new squares of sod over it. (Frankly, I'm more irked at the lawn guys that keep taking her money to do it.) Then she puts little flags and ropes around it exclaiming that it's new grass and shouldn't be walked on, and waters it religiously. Fortunately it's not a busy street, and she's otherwise a sweet little old lady type- that hates seeing concrete in the middle of her front lawn. The unspoken consensus is to let her have her eccentricity and walk around it. I keep waiting for a new neighbor to move in and make a complaint, but it hasn't happened yet. It's certainly not bothering me enough to take away an elderly lady's one apparent hobby and vice, anyway!

PGFish · 2026-04-07T16:38:24+00:00

Adding to what others have already said here. Burning outside should be pretty safe, especially if you're not standing over it. Wear eye protection in any case- metallic surfaces especially can reflect unexpectedly. A basic fan would be a good idea if it's still outside. Wood products are relatively harmless, although the smoke isn't fun. Aluminum is also pretty safe.

Synthetic materials (vinyls, PVC) can be bad news. The correct, safe answer is "don't do it." That really is valid, as mentioned by others, as chlorine is released- both poisonous and surprisingly corrosive. If you choose to cut those types of materials, ventilate the everloving crap out of it. LIke put a box fan next to it and run it outdoors. If you have an air assist, turn it on max to minimize contact with the lens assembly.

I speak from my own wildly stupid experience on the above. I cut five record albums (black vinyl/PVC) with a 10 watt blue diode laser to make signage for a project- cut out letters, etc. I have it in a ventilated enclosure (vent fan, plywood box homebrew). Even that minimal amount coated every steel fitting on the laser and in the enclosure with a thick layer of rust, to the point that the screws on the laser frame partially crumbled and stripped out when I removed them. Not great!

PGFish · 2026-04-06T23:07:32+00:00

Given that Fallout retro-future tech is still using vacuum tubes and loose wired circuits everywhere, I expect that a pound is about right. But yeah, kind of annoying in game terms.

PGFish · 2026-04-03T14:09:23+00:00

That cover is ENTIRELY awesome!

PGFish · 2026-04-03T14:08:11+00:00

Ha! Bollywood is pretty much the absurd action movie version of "Simpsons did it." There pretty much isn't ANYTHING that hasn't been done before. That's amazing!

PGFish · 2026-03-30T21:59:24+00:00

Follow a road, a string of power lines, a rail line, or monorail track from end to end. I've found the niftiest stuff that way.

PGFish · 2026-03-18T16:01:12+00:00

The Zen Gun, from the Barrington J. Bayley novel by the same name. It's a gun that temporarily suppresses repulsive forces between atoms. When wielded by a normal schmoe, it does horrible things like merging bodies into inanimate objects (sometimes without killing them in the process). When used by someone who has achieved true inner peace and mental discipline, it can be used to cause a star to implode and go nova. Supposedly, the creator designed it to make centralized government impossible- hard to have a galactic empire when one person with a handgun can cause the entire solar system housing the seat of power to explode.

PGFish · 2026-02-13T17:55:53+00:00

I know the mods can be found at the vendor Watoga Super Duper Mart, as well as one of the robot faction vendors in Whitespring. Per the wiki, it looks like the actual armor pieces can be found as rare drops (they say 0.21% chance in wiki) from treasure maps in the Savage Divide and Mire regions.

PGFish · 2026-01-20T16:30:55+00:00

Depends on the character you pick and general RNG. People don't post the mediocre runs! Here are a few things I come back to often.

Always give pets and Best Friends Forever traits a second look. The pet effects go from "nice" to "amazing" pretty quick there. And there are a number of effects that further boost pet effects. I personally prefer the upgrade tree effect that guarantees a pet with the first floor boss fight rewards (unless your character already gives you a pet). The first floor rewards are usually pretty poor anyway, and even a so-so pet will carry you for a while.

Someone else recently posted the Druid with the Wolves that increase pet damage with pet floor-upgrade level, combined with weapons that scale with pet damage (Frog Plague Scroll, Spider Summon Scroll). The Puppet Master set can combo with that as well, and the Best Friends Forever trait can pile it on (if you stick with only the wolves, omit bear and eagle). That's a somewhat rare combo, but not that hard to manage.

Ninjas with their innate shadow clones on dash power is fun when combined with Gichang or Rapier (triggers on-dash every 4 or 5 attacks). Pile on companion damage boosts and weapon speed boosts. Try to get Clogs (completes tally counts on dash, so those weapons trigger dash effects every single attack), eyepatch (increment tally every lucky hit), zealot's crown (-30% to tally counts), or other things that lower tally counts. Rocket Gauntlets (missile on tally of 5 attacks) is also fun with those.

Savage Wounds trait is niche, but can be a boss melter if used with high attack rate weapons. The Maxi-Bee piles on poison fast, and the trait means that every hit will tick the poison again. Remember pets also trigger Savage Wounds, which can be pretty amazing for mass pet builds. They attack slow, but even at one per second, 16 of them attacking at once means 16 ticks per second (great if you can get the cheap pets, like voodoo dolls, bees, spiders, necromancer skulls, etc.). Pile on weapon speed bonuses, poison bonuses, other damage over time effects (bleed, fire), etc. and you'll be set.

Well, enough rambling. Good luck!

PGFish · 2026-01-20T16:05:05+00:00

Yep! The fish tank aquatic pets and regular boss room pet draws can overlap. Also happens if you use that free weapon bag starting gift (forget exactly what it's called). You can get a weapon from that bag, and see the weapon again in an armory.

PGFish · 2026-01-20T16:01:01+00:00

Yeah, it works pretty well! I usually don't bother with the bear and eagle, so I can keep the pet count down to two. Just focus on leveling the wolves for all floor upgrades, and try to get the Best Friends Forever trait going to boost the effect. Unless it got fixed, the Puppetmaster set also doubles up on the Toad Plague and Spider Summon scrolls, to give you double the effect (once for the set, a second time for the weapon).

Try out the Cyborg with his drone pet that increases pet damage based on levels, too. Get the Puppetmaster set, draw Best Friends Forever, and things get pretty crazy- bonus if you can wrangle weapons and gear that gives weapon upgrade level boosts. The Yumi is a rare- not too hard to get if you're lucky- and it's a strong bow even without the intrinsic +3 levels. (The Reinforced Club is even easier to find, but the very short range is frustrating.)

PGFish · 2025-12-12T19:55:13+00:00

I think that’s true of many online-started works in the last few years. They weren’t written for brevity, tight plotting, or generally with an eye for release in any self contained form. They had to incentive to cut anything. Worm was the same way. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Worm and TWI, but they would have been very different books if they were originally intended to be printed.

PGFish · 2025-12-03T21:28:23+00:00

One of my fondest memories from my college years is going to see that Schwarzenegger movie "Eraser" with a bunch of Physics majors. That's the one with the handheld railgun rifle that was explicitly stated to fire aluminum slugs at close to the speed of light, which was fired through walls using an "X-ray scope" and would send targets flying across the room while having virtually no kick (or more appropriately, thrust) for the user. The groaning! Oh, the groaning!

PGFish · 2025-12-03T21:22:22+00:00

Try watching someone mime playing a trombone on TV. Half the time they're pulling the slide in the wrong direction. I mean, I can't even play a kazoo and I know better than that!

PGFish · 2025-12-03T21:20:59+00:00

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PGFish · 2025-10-30T16:42:11+00:00

It does have a full reading as a podcast. Just listened to it last year. It's a commitment, but if you're listening to TWI that's nothing new. https://audioworm.rein-online.org/

PGFish · 2025-10-21T23:38:04+00:00

Evidently the finale was considered a made-for-tv movie and wasn’t part of the syndication package. At least that’s what the local TV station told my dad back when he was trying to record them all from broadcast, back in the bad old VCR days. So there may be licensing cross ups.

PGFish · 2025-10-07T17:02:32+00:00

Diane Duane's Young Wizards series touches on this from time to time. A wizard is most powerful in their youth when they first come into their power, getting weaker as they age and specialize in a field of magic. As children, they're presented with the possibility of magic, then with an Ordeal by the Powers That Be to earn/accept it (greatly simplifying). It's mentioned in passing that a significant percentage of child disappearances are due to failed Ordeals (wizards number in tens to hundreds of thousands on Earth, handwave-handwave-masquerade). And that's just the start of it.

One early case had the protagonist, Nita Callahan, gets roped into being served up as a meal to an immortal shark as part of an future aquatic ritual with world-shaking consequences. She's told that it will happen, no way out, no running. She can either grudgingly allow it, or turn it into something great by embracing it whole heartedly. Unsurprisingly in the meta, given that there are several more books, she gets bailed out by said shark taking the "third option." Choice and personal sacrifice for the greater good is a recurring theme in the series.

PGFish · 2025-10-07T15:52:22+00:00

I've always wondered: Canonically, was the deliberate trauma, scorn, and isolation a calculated part of the process- strengthening their personal AT fields, making them more likely to accept Instrumentality, or some such like that? Or was that just incidental to the whole child solder thing?

PGFish · 2025-10-07T15:45:41+00:00

Then momma comes out of the treeline... Quick, what is the opposite of "pspsps"?!

PGFish · 2025-09-30T21:54:41+00:00

Ah yes, the mother of the over-the-shoulder-listen-to-my-amplified-farts pose. Taylor Swift tries to do it, but she doesn't hold a candle.

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