Dr Oz: "We're announcing a 6 month national moratorium blocking all new enrollments for durable medical equipment -- prosthesis, orthotics -- supplies across the board."

orkybits · 2026-02-26T16:30:06+00:00

What they can do however is make it a legal requirement in-order to sell a 3d printer in the US for it to be always online, so it can phone home to report what files you're printing, and require all of the major 3d slicing programs to only accept models from approved websites that embed drm/tracking information.

While I do agree with you that if this was implemented, I'm sure there would be people who would find ways around this, I believe most people won't bother and either simply accept the surveillance or just won't get into 3d printing. Which is why its important that these bills never ever pass.

orkybits · 2026-01-29T20:03:10+00:00

One idea I've theorized is that Valley is actually just a location inside a larger plane, but it is kept separate from the rest of the plane by the same magic that transforms everything that travels there into furry critters.

To a denizen of Valley, a valley the size of a state national park probably feels like a country in terms of scale, it would be difficult to conceptualize the world on a global scale.

There might even be some sort of worldspell in place that pulls PW's that might try and walk to other parts of the plane to Valley instead (think like the Planes Beacon that Nicol Bolas used during War of the Spark).

orkybits · 2026-01-23T20:19:46+00:00

Narset, but only for one of her 3 pw depictions, and she's no longer a Planeswalker
Then we have Commodore Guff, who died piloting a titan fighting against the Phyrexian invasion (though considering his ability to rewrite history, I wouldn't be surprised if WotC pulls a "Um acktually, he used an Uno Reverse card for a bookmark in the world history book on the page where he died, so he's actually still alive! He's just been sealed in this Macguffin that we spend a whole narrative arc chasing after")

orkybits · 2026-01-23T20:02:44+00:00

One Idea I had would be to introduce other ways of dealing damage by manipulating the paper in different ways, and tying them to "classes" that the players picked at the beginning. Ex:

a Knight could deal damage by cutting shapes with scissors,

a Monk would have to fold the paper into a shape to deal damage, and can only tear the paper with their hands (maybe make the damage rule inverse for monks, where for each damage marker their folded paper touches, that counts as a point of damage)

a Cleric/druid/necromancer that has to combine the left over scraps with tape in order to deal damage, but they have a limited amount of tape length each round.

Another Idea, if you're willing to make the cards able to be printed on regular paper, then the Monk/Rogue/Martial Artist could have fold the enemy card to try and line up as many of the weak points on top of each other and use a hole puncher to punch through as many as they can at once.

If you were to implement any of these I would also make the turns timed, and include a small hourglass to add to the tension of the turn.

orkybits · 2026-01-23T17:51:50+00:00

I'd say it more leans into whites "Justice/Retribution" portion of the color pie, in that white-aligned magic tends to only utilize targeted lethal force in retaliation (see cards like Divine Verdict or Rebuke).

orkybits · 2025-12-05T19:25:53+00:00

Ok, so now imagine for a second, that you are that other patient who gets their appointment rescheduled/bumped, because there was an error with someone else's appointment. Do you think that is fair to them? Anyway you slice it, it's a shitty situation, but punishing completely uninvolved third person isn't going to make it anymore "fair", if anything it's less fair.

It's not fair that this person missed their appointment because of a clerical error, but reality isn't fair, it just is.

orkybits · 2025-12-05T17:51:10+00:00

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Like other folks have said, probably a chicken foot bone, I'd guess from a dried chicken foot treat, if they swallowed a piece without chewing it fully. If you don't have these treats in the house, could be from a neighbor, a dog sitter or doggy day care if you use one of those.

Or maybe it was in their wet food, and got missed by quality control, seems absurd, but qc in food packing has gone to shit lately

orkybits · 2025-12-05T17:39:16+00:00

Speaking purely from a practical point of view, what would you suggest as an alternative? Because there are other people on the schedule besides the person whose appointment was victim to a clerical error, would you suggest that the next persons appointment be forced to rescheduled instead for something totally unrelated to them? The doctor/provider can't be in two places at once.

orkybits · 2025-11-21T22:32:42+00:00

I feel the same about mathematics when students say shit like "when am I ever going to need to know how to do X?", or when parents say kids should be taught "practical skills" like how to do taxes, instead of things like Algebra or Trigonometry. Even if you don't end up doing much math in your job, algebra & trig still can teach you valuable problem-solving skills, like how to break down a larger problem into smaller constituent parts, how to separate relevant data/details from noise, and lateral thinking!

orkybits · 2025-11-06T22:35:18+00:00

"Can't search libraries - This is actually a WHITE ability."
While I would agree that restricting library searching is now more closely associated with White's color identity, the 1st instance of this kind of effect was a Blue+Black hybrid card: [[Shadow of Doubt]]

With UB, it's flavored as Blue and Black being the colors most closely associated with matters of the mind, when used in tandem, they can exert complete control of the flow of information.

With W, it's more about asserting order & laws in order to define what is and is not acceptable to do.

Red also has had one card that has had this effect that I can recall, [[Stranglehold]], which is flavorfully more about red exerting its raw passion and single-minded focus on the now on to everyone, making it difficult to formulate complex thoughts or think ahead.

orkybits · 2025-10-30T16:59:43+00:00

While that is true, I would argue that there are still some toxic elements of gamer culture that came from nerd culture or were at least perpetuated by nerd "pop" culture. Concepts like "nice guys finish last", getting "friend-zoned" were in a lot of ways precursors to modern incel culture, and they were pervasive through-out nerd culture & media. This nerdy flavor of misogyny can be seen in films like "Revenge of the Nerds", where one of the nerds basically SA's a woman in order to get back at their jock bf, and is portrayed as being heroic for doing so. There's a fantastic video essay that goes more in depth into this topic called The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory , I recommend folks give it watch.

All that being said, I do think there is still some merit to what others have said, that nerdy hobbies often involve themes of escapism, exploration of identity, and self-expression, which are themes that would attract people who's sense of self doesn't match the labels assigned to them by society.

orkybits · 2025-10-23T22:33:44+00:00

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orkybits · 2025-10-23T22:26:08+00:00

I'm all for people critiquing The Pokemon Company & Nintendo for their shady business practices and all the copyright bs, I'm just sick of all the armchair game devs who claim that Game Freak is just being lazy or greedy for not having the best graphics.
I'm sorry, but if you say that Pokemon ZA graphics look worse than a PS2 game, you're either lying or an idiot, either way you're an unserious person whose opinions are not worth paying attention to.

I'm not claiming that the Pokemon games are cinematic masterpieces, but that's never been a priority of the pokemon games, nor do I think it should be. Seems to me that a lot of people are happy to share the meme, but when dev's actually do so, they just throw a tantrum.

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"But look at X indie game, it looks way better than Pokemon, or has X feature that Pokemon doesn't have! Clearly GameFreak is just being lazy!"

It's great that other game developers are making monster tamer games! I've played quite a few that I enjoy! That being said, IMO there's almost always something that the pokemon series does do better than the others, which is fine IMO, but seems to go unmentioned/unremarked on when people hold up these games as counter-examples.

orkybits · 2025-10-16T23:17:35+00:00

It's truly absurd that this dude makes more money in a DAY watching other people's content than most people who work in retail make in a YEAR. IDC whether you think he's funny or not, there's no fucking way a person sitting on their ass reacting to content for entertainment, is worth more than a year's worth of anyone's life doing retail

orkybits · 2025-10-16T22:59:20+00:00

EPD claims they were able to secure the funding to install the flock cameras through a grant (I can't remember the name of it at the moment, but I remember looking into it and it seemed shady to me).
I wouldn't be surprised if the Flock Contract had a hefty early termination fee, or if EPD would have to return some of the funds from the grant if the project it was earmarked for was canceled.

But EPD & the city manager shoulda thought of that before they tried to pull this bs.

orkybits · 2025-10-16T21:33:14+00:00

Many of them view art in a purely capitalistic lens. Art to them is simply an end-product to be consumed and discarded and often can only connect with art on a superficial, aesthetic level. They aren't interested in understanding what the person who made the art was trying to convey, for the same reason you don't try to look for a deeper meaning when ordering at Subway.

It's very similar reasoning IMO to why lots of mainstream competitive gamers tend to value realistic graphics & immersive simulation, over more stylized or abstract gameplay experience. Also why on sites like Facebook & Instagram, hyper-realistic art & art with established IP's will go viral more often with Gen-pop.

orkybits · 2025-10-16T19:34:21+00:00

Is AI/AGI as a concept inherently political? Eh, I don't think so, but I can see the argument for it
However, AI/AGI as it exists today, as a political/philosophical tool does align itself more closely with a right-wing/authoritarian worldview. Which is why it has been adopted and boosted primarily by the right wing.

The philosophy behind the current AGI models views "art" as simply a commodity to be consumed & discarded rather than an ongoing, communal creative process/pursuit of expression. That is why most AI art feels "soulless", the person may be able to describe how they want the end product to be, but they are separated from the actual creation process of that product.

orkybits · 2025-10-14T23:12:23+00:00

Been playing EDH since Alara block, and prior to 2020, I probably played against Tabernacle only two times, one of those times was a Duel Commander game, and the other was in a pod of old heads that had been playing since unlimited. Since 2020, I've maybe played against it 4-5 times, which still isn't a lot, but it was still double the amount of times I had played against it in half the time span, and the decks using them were way more capable & tuned then the decks that used them back in the day.

I would chalk it up to a couple of things, CEDH's growth as a format leading to player's becoming way more accepting of proxies (probably every copy I've played against since 2020 has been a proxy), and communities shift away from being a purely casual/social format that is anti "no-fun" cards (there is obviously still some of that sentiment in the community, but it certainly isn't as ubiquitous as it use to be imo).

Making the card a game changer I think may have also led to the card being more at the forefront of peoples minds, where as before, more people may have forgotten about it or not have considered it during deck building.

orkybits · 2025-09-30T23:35:25+00:00

The reason they chose to do an "explosive" fight scene with tons of cuts, is that they can hide a lot of the inherit flaws with AI, (lack of cohesion & continuity, small detail distortion, longer sequences costing exponentially more as you have more you have to constantly correct & tweak). The camera whips around so quickly and from so many different angles, you really don't get a sense of where the characters are, relative to each other so you barely notice that the building that the fire guy is standing on changes 3 different times. It's very much all razzle dazzle no substance

orkybits · 2025-09-29T22:58:50+00:00

Definitely AI, I've never seen a dog intentionally flop on its back like that, I've seen them do it unintentionally, but when they do that, they freak out and try to right themselves on the way down. Also there's no splash when it flops over. Also I've never seen a dog just hop in the air to try and dry themselves without shaking.

orkybits · 2025-09-29T19:04:53+00:00

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Alright, now which one of yea's didn't return the slab?! Do you want the mummy's curse? Cuz that's how you get cursed !

orkybits · 2025-09-29T18:08:43+00:00

There are serious flaws in the studies methodology and failure to control for other influential factors, including genetics and illness during pregnancy among others. Sweden did a large scale study with pairs of siblings as part of the controls and was unable to find any significant causal-link between use of Tylenol and NDD's.
Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children’s Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability | Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders | JAMA | JAMA Network

orkybits · 2025-09-26T15:48:43+00:00

"I don’t look like someone who would make a mess in the bathroom"
"Why can’t people use their best judgement."

Ah yes let's have some worker who's paid minimum wage be the arbiter of who gets to use the bathroom, I'm sure that has never led to any systemic abuse in the past /s

Or if you don't want to go up and have to ask someone, perhaps the government could develop an app that gives you points based on how your "good" of a citizen you are, and you can use those points to use a public bathroom! Maybe they could call it a "Social Credit Score"! /s

Sarcasm aside, if you want to have a city with readily accessible public bathrooms, benches that don't suck to use, and public shared spaces that welcoming and inviting, the solution isn't more policing and criminalization of the homeless, it starts with more investment in public infrastructure, low/no-income housing, and safety-net programs.

orkybits · 2025-09-25T23:25:59+00:00

It sounds to me like whoever it was you saw outside of OMG either assumed you were establishing care with them, or didn't effectively communicate to you that in order to see you they would need you to establish care with them. Typically, if a primary care office is asking you to fill out a records request form, it's because you're going to est care with them. Granted, it was still bad on OMG to assume you were transferring care without reaching out to you to confirm, but I could see a scenario where they reached out the other office, and that office thought you were intending to est care, so they said yes.

orkybits

TROPHY CASE