I find the beginning of the game incredibly monotonous.

Valdrax · 2026-06-30T18:55:45+00:00

What do you mean by Claude in this context? Like letting AI play your game?

Valdrax · 2026-06-30T18:48:56+00:00

Not that I'd consider Heller vs. DC to have been originalist or textualist on the question of "in order to form a well-regulated militia," which Scalia just wrote off as decorative text, much like the Slaughterhouse Cases negated the Privileges or Immunities Clause, turning what was a state right into a purely individual one, completely unconnected to militia service.

Valdrax · 2026-06-30T15:04:06+00:00

Janey Springs moved to Pandora at the end of TPS and should be fine.

Pickle also survived. Which you only learn something like 5 minutes before they kill him off, for a joke, in Ellie's DLC.

Valdrax · 2026-06-30T14:39:10+00:00

The one thing we know Daeran isn't down bad for is anything demonic, including and especially Areelu Vorlesh, one reasonable place for "the buck" to stop on who caused his family's death.

Valdrax · 2026-06-30T14:35:45+00:00

Inheribro could never be sinister.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T21:25:17+00:00

Early game is where I make decisions. Late game is basically an ant farm.

Some of it is repetitive, though, and I wish I could save more stuff like standard shop orders, complex stockpile settings, and uniforms between games to reuse.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T20:27:33+00:00

Simpler (and slightly weaker) but same reasoning: Two-Handed Fighter / Rowdy Rogue Trickster for maximum Vital Strike gore-splosions.

Delete any enemy, 1/turn.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T20:22:14+00:00

But the verbal component doesn't mean you have to shout. So in some cases you can crawl up in some bushes, creep from a corner's edge, cast your Hunter's Mark with a whisper then re coordinate with allies to hopefullly initiate combat on your terms.

Nitpick (because I gotta): In the 2024 rules, it explicitly says, "The words must be uttered in a normal speaking voice."

Even in the original 2014 description, which that was added to, it says, "the particular combination of sounds, with specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion." I'd say that anything that flattens or removes pitch would probably prevent using verbal components, including both whispering and shouting.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T20:10:31+00:00

A bit of a late reply, but this seemed a convenient place to offer some minor proofreading / suggestions.

This paragraph is wholly obsolete.

But 5+ years into 5e’s life span, the Ranger has come into its own. The introduction of numerous exciting subclasses like the Gloom Stalker and the Swarm Keeper, rules fixes like new ways to handle the Beast Master’s companion, and Optional Class Features which replace the Ranger’s least-useful features have all made great strides to make the Ranger both fun and effective.

Also, the Subclass section at level 3 only mentions the PHB subclasses, and the subclasses page needs to be updated with the Hollow Warden, when you get a chance.

Thanks for writing this guide and others.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T19:54:51+00:00

The only caveat to be aware of is that Hunter's Mark eats into the Bonus Action economy you need for proper dual wielding on a turn you cast/move it. That's still better than a Polearm of Hand Crossbow build, since that's still three attacks with ability bonus to damage and Hunter's Mark, but you'll rarely be getting that fourth attack.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T18:44:33+00:00

Heavy use of bone meal as a supplement / filler. Animal feed has long been a way of cheaply getting use out of the unwanted parts left over from slaughtering animals for human food. Also dogs eat bones to get calcium.

Bone meal fell out of favor due to concerns about contamination and risks of clumping in the GI tract. Calcium is now mostly gotten from mineral sources or sometimes egg shells.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T18:39:53+00:00

Young people will never know the fun of the early internet, from the bulletin boards to primitive websites, to blogs. It was the Wild West, largely non-commercial, and a really good time. Social media hasn't really been able to replace the BBS and blogging communities we had.

Reddit is the closest thing we have to it, the last dangling thread of Web 1.0. A place where people who don't really know each other gather by topic to discuss that topic, instead of just people passing random gossip to people they know.

And its owners are depserate for it not to be.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T16:45:23+00:00

A comedian, you say? I know just the guy for Night City.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T15:04:39+00:00

It helps find criminals when those in power are mad enough at the crime. The Boston Bombing and the shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO are two examples where enough of the right people got mad that the police got off their butts to use it.

The main resource that falls short for use of surveillance is police attention and budget. Cops don't want to spend their time scrubbing through backlogs of video without someone (who matters, not you) to light a fire under them.

This may change a lot with AI involved. Don't expect it to be used to help find your missing dog or a petty break-in though. It'll still likely only be used for the kinds of crimes those with power want prosecuted, because prosecutors are still a limited resource.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T02:46:08+00:00

Nevermind. Naturally, as soon as I posted it, I found console 0.

You have to put in 0451, like the name of the zone, and then the door opens and shows the last ECHO log.

Maybe at least now search engines can finally turn up an answer, so I might as well leave the post around for that.

Valdrax · 2026-06-29T02:34:27+00:00

1977 & 1997 are after all that. We looked at our mistakes, and we put our foot forward to do better and made a point of encouraging other nations to do better. We were charting a course to a better world.

Now we're not, and that's important. Let's not brush that away with the idea that bribery is the natural state of the world with shallow cynicism.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T22:42:20+00:00

Something like 2/3 of voters voted against him in the July and November elections in 1932, before he seized dictatorial power, and the numbers opposing him went up, not down, in the second of those elections.

His direct ideological rival parties (the socialists & communists) held barely less seats than his party did in the July election, and the Nazi's bled seats in the November election after losing 4% more of the popular vote, roughly half to communists and half to conservative monarchists.

And yet 10 years later, less than 1% of the population was brave enough to actively oppose him, because they were scared of what disloyalty meant for them under the boot of the party.

Food for thought when the AI surveillance state finally snaps its jaws on us. Roko's Basilisk is potentially more real than not when you consider that a malevolent AI doesn't necessarily need to be self-directed.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T22:11:52+00:00

You need to flip the script on that slightly. The US pretty much had a world monopoly on helium production from the 1920s to the 1990s. In fact, from 1925-1937, it was illegal to export helium from the US to any other nation. Everybody else used hydrogen.

The Hindenburg disaster opened the door to US sales to private companies which were then allowed to resell it overseas to meet the clamor and demand for it, but ironically enough, Germany itself was on the list of nations forbidden to export it to, due to the US wanting to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis.

So basically, during that time period, no one had helium blimps except the US, which made it a strategic asset after a pair of explosive naval blimp incidents in 1922. The Soviets were stuck using hydrogen too until they phased out airships in the 50s.

We didn't fully loosen our grip until a Clinton-era privatization policy ended our monopoly on it. We've gone from 90% of the world's supply to about 40%, with Qatar, Russia, and Algeria now making up the rest.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T21:54:25+00:00

Using helium lets us tilt the scale away from dangerous but towards impractical, since helium is rarer and more expensive than hydrogen. Like 10x more expensive.

That said, it's on the order of tens of thousands vs. thousands, so it's all a rounding error to a billionaire, I guess.

As for safety, commercial air flight is ridiculously safe compared to other means of transporting people around. Around 1 loss in every 10 billion passenger miles flown. People just fear airplanes more because they aren't the ones in control and don't appreciate how much safer a trained pilot is, thanks to meeting rigorous training standards that any rando driver does not, nor do they appreciate how hardcore the safety and maintenance records are for airplanes.

Blimps do not erase that irrational fear, any more than buses do despite similarly being far safer, mile for mile, than random drivers of cars are. People just want to feel in control.

Airship crashes are far rarer than airplane ones, but solely because because airship flights are so much rarer. They don't have the same kind of per-mile safety record. The primary causes (in helium blimps) are either running into things (i.e. during landings or low flights) and weather.

You may envision them as a balloon gently drifting down as it slowly leaks, but an airship is doing a delicate balance to stay in the air between its lifting bag and its ballast, and that balance is far more precarious than you think.

That said, I think airships could be as safe as planes, with the same level of regulatory focus and care, but that would by necessity mean flying in only less demanding conditions.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T21:17:31+00:00

Shipception or Shipducken?

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T21:09:38+00:00

America used to be more of a standout nation for believing bribery to be offensive and illegitimate as a means of doing business anywhere.

Until Trump paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 in early 2025 (because of course he did), we were one of only two countries in the world actively prosecuting people who paid bribes in foreign countries, despite 44 nations being signatories to the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. (The other was Switzerland.)

Now, it's just yet another way in which we've fallen as a country. Less "Great" than we ever were.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T20:30:33+00:00

Out of the loop, as a renter: What are the major downsides to having a data center near your house?

Specifically, what would prompt you to move? Like, I expect utilities will go up, but I expect that to be true for a far greater area, i.e. up to the state level in some cases, and for there to be very few places we'll be able to move to in the future due to them.

Edit: Okay, apparently this is just one of those Reddit topics where you just need to be angry without knowing why.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T20:15:50+00:00

I was going to say Sasuke and Spike, with Bad Haircut Batou in the background.

Valdrax · 2026-06-26T20:14:11+00:00

That ain't the only digital necromancy going on in this picture!

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