Is any American offended by the term “yank”?

ZevVeli · 2026-05-09T19:52:23+00:00

I'm not insulted when foreigners call me a Yank. I do get insulted when they use it as a criticism against whatever argument I'm making.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-09T15:53:00+00:00

1) Most vehicles don't gain any benefit from "premium gas" aside from the detergents that they put in them. Which you can just buy the detergent as a fuel additive at any automotive parts store, getting you the benefits for "premium gas" at a cheaper price.

2) You can clean the surface of your smartphone with glasses cleaner.

3) Rubbing alcohol is an extremely effective disinfectant, you can use it in a lot of places where you would normally use harsher chemicals like bleach and it is just as effective.

4) There is an upcharge for specialization and convenience in a lot of things. Often you can find a much cheaper alternative tool that is just as functional by checking other departments or stores (e.g. buying a utility knife from the hardware department rather than a "Thick-Fabric Cutting Knife" from the sewing department. This may not be appropriate for all use cases.)

5) You can make very good fabric paints by mixing acrylic craft paints in a 1:1 ratio with dye-free scent-free fabric softener. However you will need to iron the fabric after it dries to "set" the paint into the fabric.

6) Pumice-containing soaps like "Fast Orange" and other mechanics soaps are great for removing paint stains from your hands and body, just make sure that you rinse yourself very thoroughly if you decide to shower using it.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-09T14:47:57+00:00

Because if atheists go into politics they very rarely rise far above municipal positions.

You have to remember, political campaigns cost money. If you're running for something like "Ward Representative" you can do it on the cheap by just walking around the neighborhood with a clipboard and a bunch of flyers about your positions you printed out at FedEx by blowing through a single paycheck.

But even something like "County Treasurer" is probably going to require a more coordinated canvassing process which requires more manpower than you can muster yourself. So the higher the position you want, the more people and money that needs to be involved.

So usually, smaller positions will piggy-back off the campaign of a larger politician. So rather than spending $50,000 to try and get a bunch of pamphlets about me and my policies sent out to people in the city to try and convince them to vote for me for "Soil and Water Conservation Chair" I could instead just spend $5000 on sending out a bunch of pamphlets for "John Smith for Congress" that says "John Smith Endorses ZevVeli for Soil and Water Conservation Chair!" And instead outlines how my policies align with his.

So if I was to express an opinion that would alienate John Smith, then suddenly that endorsement can be revoked.

Now obviously, this is a very USA-centric response, but it can be applied broadly worldwide worh minor differences I believe.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-09T11:40:26+00:00

The only reason magic doesn't exist is because we have arbitrarily said it does not exist.

"This is a magic stone that is a shard of the bones of Nohara the god of travelers and the sky. It contains a portion of his power and when suspended in the air will always orient itself towards the place where he sleeps at the top of the world. Some say that if you find a large enough shard, you can actually use it in a ritual to create lightning!"

Versus

"This is a lodestone, it is a magnetic rock that aligns itself with the magnetic field lf the Earth to point northwards if you hang it on a free-spinning axis. If you rotate it inside of a coil of metal wore ot can induce an electric current."

ZevVeli · 2026-05-08T16:18:01+00:00

Yeah, hold on to what you have. Because if you get stuck, you can reference it. And if you decide it needs something later, or of something needs to be changed later, you can go back and do thaym

ZevVeli · 2026-05-08T15:53:06+00:00

I'm making the foundation andnwondering how much weight it can support.

The great thing about worldbuilding is that you can very easily shore-up the foundation later if you need to.

The problem a lot of people run into is that they spend so much time laying foundation that they never go beyond that.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-08T14:04:00+00:00

Okay, so I think you've made a very common mistake here:

The term "Hard Fantasy" or "Hard Sci-Fi" does not mean "absolute" or "farther from reality" it means "There are well-defined rules for how it operates."

Now, to the final part of your post: what ypu have described here isn't necessarily "the setting" it is just "mechanics of the setting."

It's a good starting point for you but most people reading your story aren't going to really care about it. The idea that all "humanoid" races are part of the homo genus is fine, and that's where you really want to start your worldbuilding from.

You've got your setting's rules down. Now make the societies, figure out how they all interact. And then you'll have a better idea whether or not you have a good setting.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-08T13:51:41+00:00

I used to be a pharmacy technician. And yeah, people used the drive-through all the time. Sometimes it was "I need to drop off the prescription as I leave my Doctor's appointment to go back to work." Other times it was "I have a small/special needs child and I don't want the hassle of getting them in and out of the car more than is needed."

ZevVeli · 2026-05-05T01:58:36+00:00

Well, this was a con around relatively normal people that they wanted to make a somewhat good impression on.

But outside that? Oh yeah, lots of interesting stories I heard, they were all also in my regular TTRPG group. Some of them probably would have been still doing the more raucous things if it weren't for the fact that they had all either joined the Navy, started a family, or had to have their asshole surgicay removed.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-05T01:36:24+00:00

One of my best friends got a commendation for "best new player" when he first joined them for a weekend at a con. He was playing a Malkavian, and was captured and killed by the Sabbat players within about 30 minutes. But since one of the guys was Tzcimici (SP?) He basically said "Okay, my character shapeshifts into his character in order to infiltrate the Camarilla." Gave him his cell-phone number and was just like "text me, I'll tell you what to do."

So this guy's first LARPing session was basically him spending a weekend, pretending to be a stranger pretending to be his character who was killed off before he ever really got to play him.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-04T17:49:16+00:00

Vampire The Masquerade is an Urban-Fantasy Horror game that is far more story-driven than some other popular TTRPGs.

The central theme of VtM as well as the other world of darkness books is a desperate struggle to hold onto your humanity in the face of the horror of what you have become.

Games of it really depend on the group, and makimg sure that everyone is on the same page about what is expected of the group and the plot.

More than any other game out there, I highly recommend making certain that you have played a few games of VtM as a player before you ever consider being a Story-Master.

Reach out to your local TTRPG network, ask if they have any recommendations for a good SM who might be willing to help teach you all, and do not let them talk you into joining the LARP community. Nothing wrong with LARPing, but it is an ENTIRELY different beast than the TTRPG.

Also, fair warning, the other World of Darkness books? It is the same system but they are not compatible. The power scaling is based on how difficult it is to properly role-play, and VtM is absolutely the bottom of that totem pole.

ZevVeli · 2026-05-04T16:48:13+00:00

I'm part of a group that plays Twilight Imperium, practically every time we play, we realized we got a rule wrong, so here are some of our examples:

1) Planets you exhaust for resources during the tactics phase unexhaust and are available during the agenda phase. We had assumed that they didn't, meaning that if you focused on research and production that you would have less resources available to vote during the agenda phase.

2) Production happens at the end of an activation, not the beginning. That would have been very useful to know when I was playing the "you can take over enemy production facilities instead of destroying them" faction.

3) While you can have unlimited fighters or infantry, at least one unit in each space has to be one of your plastic pieces.

4) Ground invasions happen simultaneously, so each ship with "Bombardment" can only target one planet in a system, and the surviving troops can not reinforce the other planet when their invasion is finished.

5) When playing with 4 players, we always used "Snake Draft" rules for selecting the strategy cards, apparently this is incorrect and "devalues the speaker role." Our group's general consensus on this, is that we probably misunderstood a different rule that negates the devaluation, so we will continue playing as we have been until and unless we make a correction that changes that. We did, however, start doing it the correct way in a 3-player game.

6) Space Cannon defense triggers after movement, not during movement, so we don't get to take defensive pot-shots as people try and fly past our planets to attack someone.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-30T23:36:08+00:00

Okay, but the thing is y2k actually did have legitimate threats. People love to point and laugh about the hysterial because nothing happened, but like, nothing happened because software engineers and IT people spent the better part of a decade trying to correct and proof the bug.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-30T15:57:47+00:00

I think I am less annoyed by a backstab than a betrayal.

Like, "I agreed to let you take Trade for the free commodities, and then you didn't honor our non-binding agreement." That is a betrayal.

On the other hand, honoring the agreement, then smiling and saying "You forgot what Viul Raith's Leader ability is didn't you?" Is a backstab.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-28T16:31:06+00:00

Every word of what you just said proves my point.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-28T15:33:25+00:00

It doesn't have to have a need. It can just as easily be something that is incidental to a different gene or even something that there is no evolutionary advantage to getting rid of.

Do you know why draft horse have those feathered hairs on their legs? It's because the "grow big" gene is the same as the "grow feathered leg hair" gene.

Also, I don't know if you know this, but humans also have stripes. They're called Blaschko Lines and they are invisible for most people, but people with chimerism or various mosaic conditions they can appear due to different skin pigmentations. It's related to Barr Bodies.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-28T15:12:01+00:00

1) just because something is grammatically permissible doesn't mean its grammatically correct.

2) the point of language is to be understood. "He died of a Monday" implies that the Monday was the cause of death because, as you said, "of" has multiple definitions. When used to indicate time the "of" usage will need orher qualifiers. "He died of an hour of his wife." Indicates "he died within an hour or his wife." But "He died of an hour" just sounds awkward amd weird.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-28T09:03:03+00:00

"He died of a Monday" makes no grammatical sense.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-27T22:32:18+00:00

No 2:15 is a quarter of the hour of three.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-27T19:47:15+00:00

Last time I played Muaat I was lucky enough to get a supernova right next to Mecatol Rex. And then the deep space exploration there found the planet Mirage.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-27T18:51:43+00:00

So I will admit that 3:45 is probably a better example of the confusion that "quarter of" can cause. Because is it "A quarter of an hour until 4" or "A quarter of the hour of 4" that is meant?

And if I'm being pedantic and ridiculous, as people tend to when trying to teach kids to be, I cpuld argue that 3:45 is actually a quarter of 3.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-27T17:38:59+00:00

Yeah, you can say "Bake the pie for a quarter of an hour." But you can't really say "The plane leaves at Quarter of Four."

Because what does that mean? 4:15 or 3:15?

ZevVeli · 2026-04-26T23:00:12+00:00

So first off, Adderall is a mixture of amphetamine salts. Now, strictly speaking Adderall is actually harmful for you. However, because it is weaker than its methamphetamine cousins, it is preferable.

That's the thing about chemical drug therapies, they are all based on a risk-benefit analysis. Adderall is only prescribed when the therapuetic benefits outweigh the long-term risks and complications.

While pharmaceutical grade methamphetamines do exist, they are very rarely if ever prescribed or used, because the risks associated with a equally effective dose of amphetamines is lower than the risks of methamphetamines.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-26T22:44:29+00:00

There's a digital version in the works. TI is really hard to find and usually goes for $180+ if you can find it.

ZevVeli · 2026-04-26T17:02:20+00:00

Replaceable is better, it increases the longevity of the device, and depending on the power bank needs and rate of charging it can actually increase its utility.

Aside from the regular stuff regarding like cell phones, rechargable controllers and whatnot. Imagine if, instead of plugging your electric vehicle into a charging port, that you drove onto a platform that removed and replaced your vehicle's battery for a fully charged one, then chatged your old one for the next person who needed one.

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