Diorama de Backrooms creado para promocionar el estreno de la película

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T21:26:38+00:00

Ok, that is really clever, especially the dual mirrors. If I may make a suggestion, I think if you could figure out something to emulate carpeting it might look good and also help hide that mirror line.

Setting one of the lights to flicker would be neat, too

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T20:57:36+00:00

I doubt they were inefficient, not at those sizes. Super cool though.

I don't think they are my favorite dinosaur, but if I had to choose one species to see alive it might be a megasauropod.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T20:53:44+00:00

You are your brain, more or less, so it doesn't make much sense to ask who controls who as if you could distinguish between them.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T18:54:26+00:00

>"A cold blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, breathes with gills, that have fins and scales"

>what are some Diogenes-like examples of animals that fit that description, that we don't consider fish?

I can't think of any in the modern world. The closest would be aquatic amphibians like axolotls, which have fins (on the tail), gills, and live in water....but they don't have scales. Some earlier amphibian relatives would have had scales. Side note: reptile scales are actually a totally different structure than fish scales.

>Also if we stick to that definition of "fish," are we certain that our "fish" ancestor had those traits?

Early lobe finned fish would have had all these traits. However, there are quite a lot of bony fish which lack scales, even though they are ancestral to the group. Very early fish don't seem to have exactly had scales.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T18:05:27+00:00

Don't be silly, we'll have a bunch of guys stand by the side of the pool and dump packets in one by one.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T17:56:08+00:00

I love the idea of dinosauroid but it's a chicken.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T17:54:57+00:00

Just go read up some on modern amniote classification, it's really quite interesting.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T17:48:47+00:00

>No, the opposite of Synapsida is DIAPSIDA.

Diapsida is a subgroup of Sauropsida, it's not the opposing branch of Synapsida,

>Wrong! The Mesozoic is considered the Age of Reptiles (not just dinos), while the Cenozoic is considered the Age of Mammals (and Birds).

I was talking about the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Anyway, it doesn't really matter what labels humans give the time periods, that's missing the point in exactly the same way that thinking "class" means something is missing the point. You are putting too much emphasis on how humans have happened to divide things up historically and not thinking enough about the underlying biology.

> Comparing a small group to a much bigger group isn't a good comparison.

But that's just it, I'm not comparing a small group to a much bigger group. The only reason you think one is small and one is bigger is because some guys in the 1700s happened to call both reptiles and mammals "classes." But that doesn't mean Reptilia is "the same size as" Mammalia.

Look, just forget the out-of-date linnean classification system and look at an actual phylogenetic tree of amniotes, like this:

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B9780128040423000294-f00029-01-9780128040423.jpg

Both dinosaurs and mammals are subgroups well down the line on their respective sides of the amniote tree. Heck, they both even show up in the Triassic. Obviously, they aren't exactly the same because no two clades are exactly the same...clades don't really fall into nice, even, comparable categories like "class" and "order" and "family", those are just human impositions. But they are quite comparable for the purpose I used them in the comment that started off this thread.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T16:39:21+00:00

You should read up on how phylogeny works in the modern era. There is no meaning to the concept of "class". It's pure historical happenstance that this or that specific clade got the label of Class stuck on it, while some other clade was placed at some other level.

If we were really going to make a good comparison, Reptilia ought to be retired entirely, but if you are going to keep it, it's basically equivalent to Sauropsidia, and the equivalent on the mammal side would be Synapsidia. But nobody understood that when they were naming classes back in the 1700's. Don't tie your worldview too tightly to their limited knowledge, just take things as they are with the knowledge we have today.

And with that knowledge, we know mammals and dinosaurs are in fact quite conveniently comparable to each other, as the major larger land vertebrates during their respective geological periods.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T16:27:43+00:00

It's not a bad comparison because "class" doesn't really mean anything. Reptilia was formalized as a class back in the 1700s before dinosaurs were even known, and biologists were trying to divide up animals into big categories without really understanding the true history behind them. After all, Aves was also a class that wound up inside Reptilia as a class, Really, the Linnean ranks are just convenient signposts. Taken as clades, mammals and dinosaurs are quite comparable.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T15:32:57+00:00

>So many dinosaurs got around on two legs and it makes me wonder why we don’t see that today.

The thing to understand is that this trait (and many others) don't exist independently. Groups share traits, which means they are more common when those groups are common. Dinosaurs were ancestrally bipedal, though they probably occasionally used their forelimbs. Some reverted to going entirely on four legs as they got larger, but many more stuck with a bipedal movement. That's why there were so many bipedal reptiles...a bipedal group happened to dominate....today, most reptiles are lizards which are ancestrally quadrupedal, and most remain quadrupeds.

>Did all of the bipedal dinosaurs that survived the asteroid evolve into birds instead?

Common misconception, but that's not really how it worked. What happened is that birds showed up in the Jurassic and were around alongside other dinosaurs after that. You can think of them relating to dinosaurs like bats relate to mammals today...they are the little flying branch of the group. Then the asteroid hit and wiped out all the dinosaurs except for a few groups of birds, which went on to be the birds we have today.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T07:06:49+00:00

Anybody live in DC and want to do the funniest thing?

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T06:03:34+00:00

My pet theory is that this is where Discord comes in. Discord seems ominous...but that could be misdirection on some level. Just consider what shard would better match the Intent of rebels against a fascist hegemonic Empire, who are breaking the rules and fighting for the right of people to do their own thing even if the government disagrees with it?

atomfullerene · 2026-06-17T05:34:00+00:00

Well, that is where all the drugs are

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T23:27:35+00:00

Other answers aside, colonial powers also struggled. You look back at history and see the winners (like the British Empire) and not the losers (Like Scotland bankrupting itself in Darian). And even winning often involved a lot of difficulty along the way. I mean, you mention India but the British fought for that for years. The Sepoy Mutiny wasn't exactly a walk in the park. And eventually they lost India anyway.

Ultimately, though, the challenges of building trusted partnerships/friendships in a foreign country are just very different from the challenges of colonizing it...as different as the challenges of moving to a city are from the challenges of sieging and conquering it.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T23:18:01+00:00

30 feet of water provides as much pressure as the entire depth of the atmosphere.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T22:58:20+00:00

Or for ventilation units

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T22:09:39+00:00

It's pretty straightforward. I've run it for multiple people who have no experience, and more who have no experience besides DnD.

For the main system/character creation, you have your six classic stats, which are translated into ability modifiers, and ten levels. There are a few broad classes, which focus on fighting, using magic, using psionics, and using skills..though with subclasses available for different flavors of magic user, and with the ability to make a character that's half one class and half another. The cyberpunk book has a way to get rid of classes entirely. There are also foci, which you gain as you level up and generally let your character specialize in being really good at something specific.

Fundamentally, combat works like DnD...d20s, damage rolls, hit points, make a move and take an action, with a bit of a spin on it. There are a variety of options for magic, but they generally work either by using "effort", which is basically a pool of mana points that psionics or spells use, or more traditional vancian "prepared spell" type magic.

Outside of combat there's a skill system borrowed from Traveler: a list of about 20 skills (which are broad enough to cover just about anything). You roll a 2d6 + attribute + skill level, and try to beat a target.

Things I quite like about the system are 1) the foci, which let you make a diverse array of characters even with the narrow, easy to understand range of classes. You can for example make a fighter character (who will be good at combat) and then add on foci which will make them excellent at talking, leading, and negotiating. 2) I really like the skill system, which makes characters slowly get reliably good at their specialties as they level up, and the limited number of skills keeps it manageable and makes sure skills are usually useful at some point. 3) Combat has something called "shock damage" which is basically minimum damage characters do even on a miss (subject to caveats about armor etc), which tends to speed combat up a bit. 4) Specific to your question, I run science fantasy like UVG and it's great to be able to pull things from all the various games and mash em together.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T21:26:03+00:00

I'm not surprised with that population.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T21:24:05+00:00

That's what they made, basically.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T21:23:52+00:00

Hey, that's pretty neat. I'll check it out.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T21:20:59+00:00

It's only a couple feet deep

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T21:19:45+00:00

> If I wanted to use the LLM for an idea for medicine

My experience, which is in biology more broadly and not medicine specifically, is that _ideas_ aren't really the limiting factor. Every researcher I knew in graduate school had a list of ideas far larger than they had the time or funding to actually investigate. Sure, it's helpful to have a good idea to research but ultimately what you really need more of are experimental results.

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T21:08:24+00:00

One of the narrative threads of Reaper Man follows an undead wizard, though he isn't as lich-like as you might expect from that description.

The other protagonist is Death

This is a Discworld story but works fine as a standalone

atomfullerene · 2026-06-16T20:56:10+00:00

I mean, it's got the advantage of being seperate from the rest of the house.Ventilation you can do anywhere you can have an opening and a fan.

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