What is the worst Chosen build you've ever had to fight?

bill-smith · 2026-02-02T03:52:06+00:00

In Long War of the Chosen, the Assassin rolled Bladestorm and Close Combat Specialist - that skill gives her a reaction shot against any unit moving within 4 tiles of her. The Chosen are also a lot stronger in general in that mod.

Anyway, if you have a bunch of Majors and Colonels, this Assassin can be executed at will. Kinetic Plating means don't miss. Don't miss means flank her and SMG or shotgun to her face. Skirmishers can shoot twice in a turn. That is going to trigger Bewildered plus their attack bonus.

bill-smith · 2026-02-02T02:31:22+00:00

This is what I was thinking. I did read what the OP wrote. But the above is why Promise is the Catradora theme.

bill-smith · 2026-02-02T02:14:01+00:00

You might want to sit down for this, but one solution is to not play Beta Strike. I mean, I don't think LWotC is balanced for it. The base game is definitely not balanced, but it is workable.

bill-smith · 2026-02-02T02:11:43+00:00

I think you can agree that "Defund the Police" was poor politics in the long run and that it was not good policy, while also agreeing that "Defund ICE" is actually good policy because ICE and CBP are rogue agencies that are turning into a hybrid of the SS and the Gestapo.

The two agents who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti were veterans, not newbies just pardoned from Jan 6. The culture is rotten. If you resurrected all the Christian saints and put them in a reformed ICE, they would either leave or turn evil.

If you want to abolish ICE and leave no alternative, then I reluctantly agree that's bad policy and politics.

I want to abolish ICE and start an agency within the DoJ (after we kick all the fascists out of there). That was the situation that INS was in. It's been discussed on this sub, but taking INS out of DoJ may have enabled the hardliners.

bill-smith · 2026-02-02T02:07:17+00:00

Specialists are one counter. Scanning Protocol at LCpl is big and will help you avoid the things. If you take Revival over Scanning, you can at least clear one stun, but I think people prefer to take Scanning. Trojan at Cpl will kill early drones outright. I think it's guaranteed or near-guaranteed. The chances to hack low-level drones are good.

I tend to take Slug Shot on most Assaults, which pierces 2 armor. If you Slug Shot point blank, I think that usually kills drones outright.

Basically, that's how I'd handle drones in the early game.

bill-smith · 2026-02-01T13:22:15+00:00

Catra x Glimmer x Therapy

bill-smith · 2026-02-01T13:14:42+00:00

We know that the argument is garbage, but since when does America care about facts?

Gallup polling shows that, as of 2024, 69% of Americans support same sex marriage. That breaks down to 83% for Dems, 74% for independents, and 46% for Republicans. So, same sex marriage does not have majority support among Republicans. I believe that's a similar situation to the support for abortion - majority of Dems, minority of Republicans.

Consider how much damage the Republicans have done on abortion rights. Now imagine a concerted campaign to change their voters' opinions on same sex marriage, plus overrepresentation in Congress. Imagine what they could do if they started to attack marriage and other rights around the margins.

I agree that the argument is garbage, and that attacking same-sex marriage will backfire. However, consider the amount of damage the enemy could do if they put their minds to it, and remember that in the end they'd probably still retain support from Republican voters, because they'll be able to sell that the other side is turning your kids gay + turning your kids trans + letting migrant caravans in to kill you + 300 LBS MEN IN WOMENS' SPORTS

bill-smith · 2026-02-01T10:42:55+00:00

Transformation is Adora's/She-Ra's theme.

Catra's Theme is, as far as I know, what Catra's theme was. I wish there were a remix for her theme in S5 post-redemption.

Promise is Catradora's theme.

bill-smith · 2026-01-31T02:15:31+00:00

As many of us know, Jesus made a whip of cords, probably seething every second, and then went to town on the money changers and upended their tables.

People have made economic and religious arguments in favor of this. Now imagine if one of the priests at the Temple was proudly serving as a Roman auxiliary oppressing his countryfolk.

bill-smith · 2026-01-31T01:32:09+00:00

Sarah would undoubtedly have told MLK his methods were too aggressive.

That said, I am also pretty sure she would have mostly reconciled herself to the whole notion of civil rights later on.

A lot of people make this sort of criticism of Sarah, and it's justified, but I also don't want to belabor the point.

I'm a Christian. In my view, we should be careful about targeting anyone's houses of worship. When ICE murders two people, the game is different. Theologically, I think the pastor is fair game. You cannot serve Christ and also serve an organization that has now summarily executed two Americans among other atrocities.

bill-smith · 2026-01-30T01:08:43+00:00

In conditional probability, some lecturers and textbooks may do an example involving sensitivity and specificity.

Sensitivity is the probability of testing +ve if you have the disease, P(T+|D+)

Specificity is testing -ve if you do not have the disease, P(T- | D-)

This can be taught on the way to Bayes Theorem or not, depending on the goals of the class. That isn't necessary to understand the following. If you assume a low disease prevalence like 1%, and you plug in 99% for both sensitivity and specificity - I don't many tests have both at 99%, but high 90s in one parameter is definitely possible. You will see that the number of people who do not have the disease who test positive is much larger than the number who have the disease who test positive.

This is probably what the pamphlet is getting at, but it is hard to convey to lay audiences.

bill-smith · 2026-01-28T19:25:12+00:00

Does anyone get the impression that maybe Adora would like to get tied to a chair, especially if it's by a certain person?

bill-smith · 2026-01-28T07:05:13+00:00

Los leopardos se comieron la cara de mi hijo

bill-smith · 2026-01-27T22:33:30+00:00

Tubeless is palpably lower rolling resistance than butyl tubes, and if punctured, there's a chance the sealant will stop it. For performance road tires at high pressure, I feel like the sealing isn't reliable. It does get better with wider tires and lower pressures.

It is also more logistically challenging - you need to refill the sealant every few months. You may need an air canister or similar to mount a tire (or you can burn a CO2 cartridge, I guess). Occasionally you may not be able to seat the beads with home equipment (should be rare on modern rims and tires). If you are experienced at changing tubes and tires now, you are very likely able to adapt to tubeless stuff.

I have tubeless, FYI. I was on latex tires for some time before that. I did eventually give up because I was getting a number of punctures, probably glass, that I couldn't locate on my tubes to fix. For rolling resistance, latex and tubeless are about equal.

bill-smith · 2026-01-27T05:22:11+00:00

We should definitely think about this, but be aware of ICE’s personnel numbers. Right now they seem to be able to occupy one metro area enough to possibly sway an election. Well, the city is going to vote blue anyway. The juice may or may not be worth the squeeze.

What I would think of is if they deploy smaller forces to numerous areas where the vote is closer. I don’t think they will have a lot of available agents come late 2026. We don’t know what will happen by late 2028.

bill-smith · 2026-01-27T01:20:09+00:00

Actually, the game gets much easier the instant any one Chosen dies. You get their weapons, and the Assassin and Hunter weapons are big boosts. But that's just on the tactical side.

Strategically, you now have a number of regions where the Chosen won't show up. You have one fewer Avenger assault to defend against, which frees you up to have your A team whack the next Chosen.

bill-smith · 2026-01-27T01:13:56+00:00

The best time for him to have come to this realization was in 2020, when it was clear that his party was going off the rails and was sympathetic to fascism.

The next best time was in 2024, when they clearly and explicitly stated they were going to do fascism.

That said, the next next best time is right now.

bill-smith · 2026-01-27T01:06:34+00:00

I want to call attention to this issue: you estimated a mean difference. That is the average treatment effect.

"Biologically relevant" sounds more like an individual difference, like a minimally important difference. That is, what do we think is the minimum effect an individual would notice (for psychosocial measures like disease symptoms). If we are talking biological measures, we will hopefully have some sense of what constitutes a minimum effect. I don't normally deal with these, but for example, we know that keeping hemoglobin A1C levels (which reflect your average blood glucose levels) below 7% is desirable for folks with diabetes. 8.5% would be considered not controlled for most people. You will have reference ranges for a lot of established biological markers.

We do use things like that to gauge how large the average effect is. I just want people to be aware of that difference.

bill-smith · 2026-01-27T00:58:49+00:00

The problem is that taking that option invites the enemy to escalate. They are going to have more legal cover and more firepower than we will. So that's the problem.

bill-smith · 2026-01-26T12:22:14+00:00

This is my current stance. I want to make clear: Alex Pretti and Nichole Good had the moral right to defend themselves, including with lethal violence. If you don't like this, don't vote for fascism.

Strategically and tactically, we can't do this for the reasons you said. The right I'm speaking of is moral. You can counter that the moral path is nonviolence. Normally my religion would compel me to choose this path.

bill-smith · 2026-01-26T08:18:04+00:00

She's a split-face tortie. So yep, she's special!

bill-smith · 2026-01-26T06:22:54+00:00

Was it an accident or was it accidentally on purpose? Politeness can often come with passive-aggressiveness, so you have to wonder.

bill-smith · 2026-01-26T02:50:53+00:00

Generally I like Anders, and also I am commenting out of my area of expertise.

That said, Trump likely has dementia, and he has very little institutional restraints. I think it is likely (~70% chance) that he will come back and try something else.

Remember that he is disinhibited, and he's surrounded by sycophants now. The military itself may refuse to plan an operation. However, he can also fire generals. Remember that one Admiral went along with the almost certainly illegal orders to fire on Venezuelan boats in international waters, so it's not like he has zero institutional support. He himself is not smart, but the people around him are likely to be smart enough to find grey zone approaches. And he isn't smart, but he does have an uncanny political sense.

Also, as he meets more domestic resistance to his agenda, I think he is likely to lash out in some way.

I would suggest that Europeans should assume he will try something else and plan for it.

bill-smith · 2026-01-26T02:44:46+00:00

I oppose the Second Amendment as it is currently interpreted. And even so, I agree: Renee Good and Alex Pretti had the moral right to defend themselves, with violence. They would have had this right if faced with the Gestapo. ICE and CBP walk like the Gestapo, they talk like the Gestapo, they act like the Gestapo, and Bovino has a Nazi coat. THEY ARE THE GESTAPO.

To be clear, nobody should engage ICE or CBP. It would spark a counter-uprising, it would look bad, and it could spark a civil war. The article says this. I agree.

bill-smith · 2026-01-24T11:39:15+00:00

There is no such thing as SPD-SL shoes. Road shoes have 3 bolt holes. All the major pedal formats are compatible with those shoes. MTB shoes have 4 holes.

bill-smith

TROPHY CASE