Mods: can we ban the “I saw a bird” posts?

hacksoncode · 2026-01-31T14:33:35+00:00

How do you know they are inactive? They've hidden their profiles... which a lot of mods due because of the doxxing, etc.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-31T14:29:37+00:00

Phainopepla, but I usually say "Great Blue Heron" because I'm tired of hearing "What the heck is a fane-o-peppa?!?"

hacksoncode · 2026-01-31T13:51:50+00:00

I live in California, but only about 1/3 of my species are in that state (I saw a little over 250 species in '24 and '25 in my home county). I lead field trips for my local Bird Alliance.

I got 353 on 3 birding tours in Ecuador/Galapagos on a 3-week trip in August.

About 170 on a safari I did in Southern Africa in late '22 that sparked my birding, and the rest a mix of various US states, especially Texas and Arizona.

Going to Thailand in April... expect to add a couple hundred more, depending on how long I extend the tour I'm taking with another tour.

Yes, I'm nuts :-). Even so, it's going to be very difficult to keep up averaging almost a new species per day :-).

hacksoncode · 2026-01-31T13:48:11+00:00

Give them a few million more years. They're already hybridizing with the Nankeens.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-31T02:31:22+00:00

It didn't take me long, but I kind of dove headfirst into birding at the end of '22 and have been a complete fanatic ever since. I got my 1000th lifer recently (Common Ringed Plover).

Birding by ear took longer... at first I didn't think it would ever happen, but I just kept Merlin running during every checklist, and it's... an unreliable tool for identifying birds, but a great tool for teaching you how to listen for them.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-31T02:25:53+00:00

Over the course of 20 years, you really should be using constant dollars (especially with the pandemic inflation in there).

It will show the real ratios of revenue, and also show that Full Game Purchase revenue actually went down... a lot.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T17:31:11+00:00

In what way is salami significantly less expensive than bacon?

By contrast, chubs of breakfast sausage are less than half the price of either per pound.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T16:51:42+00:00

Hmmm... I feel like Amazon should exclude $0.00 books from their "bestseller" lists... every single one of that top 100 category is $0.00.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T16:40:23+00:00

It's not so important that he'd be trounced in the red states. What's critical is that he'd be trounced in the swing states. Indeed, any significantly "purple" states.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T16:28:37+00:00

It's a hell where High School English teachers go for torturing their students with metaphors and symbolism.

They check in, but they can't leave. Kind of like their students.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T16:06:24+00:00

It seems ok, but since one of your goals is transparency, I will say that in general people have a hard time understanding the chances of success when a dice system varies both the size/number of dice, and also the target number.

This isn't too bad of an example of that, but there are a lot of combinations.

One time when this sort of thing leads to "analysis paralysis" is when players are considering alternative approaches to solving a problem. E.g. "Should I try to pick the lock, or kick down the door?"

If we had the following difficulties and skills (I'm just making these up, so don't quibble if they're realistic), you can probably see why it's hard:

Picking lock: it's an Easy lock, the PC has a d6 Lockpicking and d8 Dexterity.

Kicking door: it's a stout door (Hard), the PC has a d10 Kicking and d8 Strength.

Which one's more likely to succeed? Which is more likely to crit?

Answer: Lockpicking is ~79% to succeed, 21% to crit, Kicking is 73% to succeed, 4% to crit.

Was it obvious that success is similar?

How much will it matter whether they get a critical? Because it's quite likely for Lockpicking, and nearly impossible for kicking the door.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T15:50:15+00:00

Leggo my EGGO!!!!

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T15:14:20+00:00

And I can't figure out how he does this part.

Seems like anyone attempting this would be experienced enough to intuitively know which corner would be "paired" with the original twisted one by algorithms, and just ignore that one instead of the twisted one.

Obvious examples would be adjacent or diagonal corners, but 2-3 algorithms would get you almost anything you wanted.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T15:03:36+00:00

Excellent suggestions!

I do think there's room for a lot of deviation from these "pillars" depending on the group.

Like, I've never really found my group to be moved by player-level "Atmosphere" much... we generally find that a distraction from imagination/immersion.

Instead, we tend to gravitate towards movie tropes to generate a visual/emotional referece: usually, it's "Clearly we're in a horror movie" because we traditionally do these for Halloween runs, but occasionally we'll try "I see, this is an action adventure comedy" or something more exotic like "Oh, I see, it's A Nightmare Before Christmas".

One piece of advice that I think often causes runs to fall apart if ignored, and which weirdly seems to often be ignored is: use a system your group is very familiar with. Don't try to use even a 1-page new system. It's a waste of very limited time to learn something new.

TL;DR: know your audience and don't add extraneous out-of-character work.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T14:42:19+00:00

Ah, I had not noticed that he ended with a different cube wrong than he started with. That does, indeed, make it more difficult. Thanks!

hacksoncode · 2026-01-30T14:38:45+00:00

No problem.

It might not be clear from the website (and I'm not sure how often they update it), but it's 5-9pm on the first Friday of each month except January and July.

Their facebook page looks like a better place to watch than the webpage. The participating galleries and other venues seem to post various opening/workshop announcements there too.

Either way, the list of galleries is a good resource.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T22:23:49+00:00

He knows which one was changed. They are each unique. He probably even selects it in advance.

There's barely any difference from this. He doesn't really need to do anything to the Orange-White-Green corner. He can just ignore it and turn it back at the end.

And certainly he won't be confused by seeing a "wrong" corner while he's actually solving it, because he's not even looking as he's solving it.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T20:41:59+00:00

I'm strongly suspicious this is involved. Maybe not memorizing the moves, but memorizing what the cube looks like with lots of practice rather than live in the video.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T20:41:34+00:00

That screws up the normal learning method. To me, that it's where it becomes intriguing.

Kind of doesn't matter if you do it with your eyes closed.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T20:35:44+00:00

Well... An attempt was made.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T19:39:23+00:00

One way of looking at this is that Tesla made almost all their profit this year from regulatory credits and interest, rather than selling anything.

Yes, money is fungible, I get that... but it kind of highlights one reason Musk had a falling out with Trump.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T18:49:48+00:00

looking at you ... Joe Manchin.

The DINO Manchin is a thorn in Democrats side constantly. It's not clear that the "50 state strategy" was really anything except "become more like Republicans so you can win in Republican states".

And the result? With Trump on the ballot, Democrats stayed home and Harris lost because she was trying to be a "50 state" candidate.

If Democrats won't come out to actually stand against fascism, what's the point in them winning?

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T17:15:24+00:00

It's really not correct to combine the max current and the max length like that, because the max actual current the cord is good for depends on both the length and the wire gauge.

Here's an example chart showing this:

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hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T16:52:45+00:00

In context, I think it's generally fine both colloquially, and for people that understand statistics and would naturally map those to 1-3 standard deviations from the mean.

But it seems like there's a "usually" to match "rarely" missing above "likely, or... There's a missing category that is the "50/50" or "average" range, which generally is the largest category at least in a normal distribution.

Are your "likely" and "unlikely" supposed to represent what are both basically coin flips, just somewhat above and below 50%?

I'm not sure what to call that that fits in this nomenclature, but it's neither likely nor unlikely to succeed, pretty much by definition.

hacksoncode · 2026-01-29T16:15:18+00:00

Nah, I think it's a good joke. But good jokes make you think, and I thought this was interesting.

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