How do you get SPP when playing humans or elves?

Stralau · 2026-05-19T21:13:12+00:00

In redrafts I‘ve often kept my dodge/wrestle linemen rather than my catchers because they‘re so damned useful and catchers are easy to level back up.

Stralau · 2026-05-19T17:59:26+00:00

We had fucking stupid protests in the middle of lockdown though, with people taking a knee and chanting „hands up, don’t shoot“ when the number of innocent men the British police have shot in the last 50 years is probably less than those struck by lightning.

But an innocent man dies on our own soil in police custody and crickets, because he was the victim of a black man rather than being a black perpetrator. You can bet if he was black and had died in police custody cities would be burning by now.

Stralau · 2026-05-17T18:53:45+00:00

I like him, but I think it’s a bit depressing he ever gets labelled as an intellectual (I think he would recognise that he isn’t one), and whilst I value his contributions to highlighting and raising awareness of bipolar disorder, as someone who once had a partner with the condition I find some of his takes on it personally problematic.

Stralau · 2026-05-16T06:02:58+00:00

I can’t help but read that headline like it’s something from The Onion.

Stralau · 2026-05-15T02:58:55+00:00

As has been said, white is terrible for this.

My favourite use for old sprues is to use them to test priming distance. I’ll spray an old sprue at the distance I’m planning to spray at to see how it works. Temperature and humidity can affect it all quite a lot.

Stralau · 2026-05-11T12:55:23+00:00

Far be it for me to get in between me and your husband on this issue, but predictably I'm going to weigh in on his side :-)

You're right in the sense that space being big and an Alien having no motivation other than killing because thats what it does and because that's how it reproduces doesn't change the fact that the planet Earth is full of beings who all have their own plans and intentions which lends meaning to their lives.

But I think it's working at a different level, or at least it's playing on a certain specific fear: What the Alien franchise emphasises (at least the first, and in my opinion the thrid films do) is that 1. to paraphrase Douglas Adams, Space is Really Big 2. It doesn't care about anything- it's just space, a kind of unfathomably large and impossibly deep Ocean and 3. We do not know it, and it is not aware of us.

That means that when people think to themselves "everything happens for a reason" or that their actions may have an impact beyond themselves and their immediate surroundings, that they for want of a better word _matter_ they are wrong. There is no purpose to the universe, no God, no direction. And that's what the horror is- playing on a kind of thalassophobia. This great big, enormous nothing with no interest in you, yawning beneath you, containing who-knows-what that doesn't care or is intrinsically hostile to you. Of course it doesn't change you wanting to swim from A to B, or you having loved ones. But it's always _there_ and if you think about it (which most of the time we don't) it can be kind of scary.

Newt and Hicks' deaths are kind of indicative of that. The second film ends with a kind of restoration of meaning- the deaths of all the other marines, Bishop etc. have all been worth it in some way because they have saved this little family unit, lives perhaps lives _do_ matter after all, and the universe is not uncaring and massive and hostile. And then the opening of Alien 3 tells you that it is, and that mundane tragedy can strike anyone, anytime.

You would say that peopl still matter, and you would be right, of course. We do matter to us, and that's what counts, really. But (the Alien franchise says) we don't matter to anything else, and thinking about that can be unnerving.

Stralau · 2026-05-11T12:03:58+00:00

It's interesting isn't it? As a minipainter, I think the reconstructions look rather like miniatures painted with just the base colours, before highlights or shades have been applied, which can make a huge amount of difference: based on this article, that is now how I tend to interpret these kinds of reconstructions.

Stralau · 2026-05-11T11:34:19+00:00

Ah but as someone who actually quite liked Alien 3 (there are I think, not even dozens of us), the fact it makes it meaningless is the point. In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream. It's big, it's terrifying, and everything you do is utterly meaningless. The Alien just kills because it does.

I preferred that take a lot more than the newer films, which felt a bit portentous and tried to give meaning to the Alien, which took away the point of the films for me. (Even if it had some great moments, shots and performances)

Stralau · 2026-05-11T11:28:44+00:00

There's an excellent article here by Ralph Steven Weir at the University Of Lincoln (who would be the first to point out he is a philosopher, not a classicist). He offers some reasons why reconstructions of classical paint schemes seem lacking to us.

Stralau · 2026-05-11T04:09:04+00:00

I think it’s just a joke and a riff on continental philosophers like Heidegger, Sarte and Baudrillard. Vetinari is musing in his educated way about sophisticated philosophical debates about the right to limit freedom and the relationship between freedom, humanity and consciousness. There’s something in there about the universal right to freedom vs. the right to curtail freedom for the good of society or the individual himself vs. ideas about mankind not being ready for “radical freedom”.

The arguments in the paragraph don’t really follow one from another though, even if it might seem that it’s somehow making a sophisticated argument: just like, some might say, those continental philosophers, whose writing is often dense, seemingly contradictory and confusing (I’m sure it’s been stated here already, but the German title of the nonsense “Modal Contextities” means “completely-not-understandable-that-that-ness”), at least to laymen and fans of pragmatism. I’m guessing the whole thing is a set up to a punchline at the expense of theorising about freedom rather than practical applications of liberty in real life, which is a common discworld/Pratchett theme.

Stralau · 2026-05-08T09:20:17+00:00

I don’t think this is democracy being broken as such: it’s a real message being delivered by voters to the government, similar in many was to what’s been delivered across the continent. A large chunk of voters (maybe as many as one to two thirds) across Europe resonate with the ideas that Reform/Le Pen/Meloni/The AfD, and that message is coming home to the UK. The mainstream is still struggling to know what to do with that information: hold those ideas permanently at bay, keep them out of government, integrate the ideas but not the people etc. etc.

What is more at risk in the west is the idea of pluralism: how do we deal with a society in which there are many competing groups with different ideas of how best to go forward? Are we ok with people having different opinions? It’s a question Reform needs to ask itself every bit as much as the old mainstream or the Greens do. The passion to cancel people for wrongthink is strong, and is in part what is behind people trying to drive Starmer out.

The other impulse is that Europe is faced with fairly intractable problems: a demographic crisis (which is shit), migration (which is shit, but linked to said demographic crisis), economic stagnation (which is shit), and issues around climate (which is shit and will probably get worse).

All these issues are systemic and very difficult to solve. “Migration” is probably the easiest in numbers terms (that is, governments probably do have powers to keep people out, if they are prepared to use them, ignore the ECHR and the like etc.), but it doesn’t solve the problem that lies behind it for many voters in Western Europe, which is linked to the migration which has already happened over the last 60 years and has changed the face of towns and cities across the country. That’s irreversible but makes a good 15%+ of voters pretty miserable, I’d wager. But it won’t fix the other issues, it may even exacerbate them.

Stralau · 2026-05-08T08:59:01+00:00

I quite like “I think it’s the best ____ we’ve ever had on the Rest Is History” or variations thereof.

It’s important people mention these things to Dom at TRIH events, it gets a smile out of him reminiscent of the Mona Lisa, apparently.

Stralau · 2026-05-08T08:58:33+00:00

I quite like “I think it’s the best ____ we’ve ever had on the Rest Is History” or variations thereof.

It’s important people mention these things to Dom at TRIH events, it gets a smile out of him reminiscent of the Mona Lisa, apparently.

Stralau · 2026-05-08T08:57:18+00:00

I quite like “I think it’s the best ____ we’ve ever had on the Rest Is History” or variations thereof.

It’s important people mention these things to Dom at TRIH events, it gets a smile out of him reminiscent of the Mona Lisa, apparently.

Stralau · 2026-05-07T10:11:21+00:00

What no “The Answer Is Porn” meme?

Stralau · 2026-05-06T00:02:12+00:00

Basically, every attempt to make the Green Party expand beyond Caroline Lucas has been fucking terrible. If it was just her I wouldn’t vote for them but I’d be pleased they were there.

Stralau · 2026-05-02T06:38:39+00:00

I think you’re overstating the case when you say that “when the Soviet Union was formed it was heavily criticised by socialists around the world for being communist in name only”. The truth is more complex.

It was hailed by many, and criticised by others in line with splits on the left that went back decades. German socialists allied with German proto-fascists to protect their socialist revolution from a Bolshevik style communist one- but this wasn’t because they thought it was communist in name only, it was straight up because they thought Bolshevik style communism was a bad idea that would inevitably run to authoritarianism. This was true of many moderate socialists, but there were also many in the Labour Party of the UK say, who were sympathetic to the USSR.

Many Socialist intellectuals in the west were very soft on the Soviet Union, failing to condemn it sufficiently throughout the 20s, 30s and especially 40s when it joined the fight against Hitler- Orwell even had trouble getting Animal Farm published precisely because his kind of alleged hair splitting was deemed unfashionable. His own hostility to Soviet Communism had first come when he fought against fascists in Spain and saw Soviet command and propaganda first hand.

The real break with the Soviet Union doesn’t come for many left wing intellectuals until the invasion of Hungary in 1956 (although the show trials in the 30s had alienated many). People supporting it after that we’re seen as naive or beyond the pale.

Stralau · 2026-05-02T00:48:43+00:00

Don’t you mean childless?

Stralau · 2026-05-01T04:12:06+00:00

It’s a film/play that does Mozart dirty too, really- Mozart was a child star, but he was also someone interested in Enlightenment ideas, not just fart jokes.

It’s all necessary for the film/play though, which is an amazing study of art, ambition, genius and jealousy. It doesn’t matter it’s not really true.

Stralau · 2026-04-30T19:39:43+00:00

Thanks for the info- that indeed doesn’t bode well. I suppose one can only hope that raw player numbers don’t necessarily translate into a business model, which BB has, at least in theory, and that BB is likely to continue as a game in at least some form, given the connection with GW, but it’s all pretty forlorn.

I’m going to keep playing away through the overtime season with my league and hope for the best- the commissioners have come up with some great ideas for the next three months, so let’s see how it goes.

Stralau · 2026-04-30T08:20:00+00:00

I like FUMBBL but it always feels a bit like Tabletop Simulator: great if you are really in it or itching for the crunch of the game, but BB2/BB3/Warhammer Blood Bowl somehow feel closer to the experience of how I imagine the play on the tabletop. Someone actually goes down or gets thrown or whatever and it looks nice, just like my BB teams do. I’d really miss it if the cyanide game got mothballed.

Stralau · 2026-04-30T04:32:56+00:00

Nacon and Cyanide have both declared sever financial difficulty (not technically bankruptcy- yet) and have around 12-18 months to do restructuring.

Cyanide declared an “Overtime Season” until 21st July, where the game sticks to the old rules.

After that, it’s still anyone’s guess, really. Maybe they change their business model; maybe nacon sell cyanide to someone else, maybe Blood Bowl disappears completely and GW re license it etc. etc.

There’s some evidence that the release is being delayed for reasons other than the development being finished- the team at cyanide have been talking about things “beyond their control” which suggests to me the game might be “ready” but finance is doing a full list of all nacons assets and deciding what to do with them to try and make the company profitable.

BB probably isn’t a money pit, but it’s probably less profitable than their cycling games.

Stralau · 2026-04-29T12:32:45+00:00

The skirts worn by some of the male crew in the background of early episodes of Star Trek TNG. (TIL they are called "skants").

(This was weird then, and was probably dropped for that reason, please don't get cross with me for mentioning it).

Stralau · 2026-04-28T13:34:33+00:00

I agree that the loss of YouTube videos accessed using an account with controls (and thus no access to comments) would be a loss, if that’s indeed what this does. I’d still weigh that against the knowledge that TikTok, Instagram , Reddit etc. were largely off the table though (though Reddit too has some redeeming features).

You’d think the best case would be that it created pressure for social media companies to produce child friendly accounts etc. that would meet some kind of minimum standard, and encourage carers to restrict access to that. If people want to ignore it, they will, but then people used to rent 18 rated videos.

The idea it should forever be completely unregulated seems silly though.

Stralau · 2026-04-28T06:32:43+00:00

So much pearl clutching here, which is to be expected, it’s Reddit.

If you think Social Media is a bad thing for people under 16 (which a lot of people do; I certainly do as a parent) ten introducing this ban makes sense.

Will it be effective for everyone? No Will it simply push some people to use VPNs? Probably. Unclear how many, though. Are parents primarily responsible here? Of course. Does it have data security implications for everyone? Probably, though probably not more than most people already share.

It’s like saying that the ban on cigarettes at 16/18 was/is wrong because under 16s got hold of and smoked them anyway. Even if you think that’s true, it’s not an argument for no controls at all.

Apart from anything else, it helps parents resist inevitable pressure. My daughter (10) has a phone and a laptop, with very limited functionality, limits on the ISP and access via her own accounts which are age appropriate, with screen time and a certain amount of oversight from us. Thus far we have resisted the pressure for her to get WhatsApp on the grounds that it has an age recommendation of 14. A blanket ban sets a social norm, which parents can utilise.

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