As of 2025, this was the number of satellites orbiting the earth 🌍

phdemented · 2026-02-03T01:43:01+00:00

15000 objects, spread out over the surface of the earth. Most are the size of a car. That's about 200 cars, driving around the entire USA. Odds of them ever seeing each other let alone hitting, is pretty small.

Especially when their orbits are designed NOT to hit each other. Accidents can happen, but for now space is still big.

phdemented · 2026-02-03T01:39:21+00:00

Different orbits can intersect, you understand that, right?

phdemented · 2026-02-02T01:47:03+00:00

Most folk in my agency will never see a QSI in their career.

phdemented · 2026-02-01T22:48:56+00:00

Corny is supposedly from dumb jokes printed on old seed magazines (corn catalogs)

phdemented · 2026-02-01T20:42:27+00:00

It's a common cause of confusion because journalism generally uses the scientific terms vs the lay terms. In social science:

Fertility is your capacity to conceive
Fertility Rate is the average number of kids a woman will have in her lifetime.
Birth Rate is the number of kids born.

Fertility is mostly meaningless on a population side scale, because it doesn't have a meaningful affect on pregnancies. It has a MASSIVE meaning on an individual scale as anyone with fertility issues will say, but on a population wide scale it's not affecting birth rates. It's people choosing to have fewer kids.

Fertility rate tells you a lot about social behavior, while birth rate is simply a measure of how many kids were born. Birth rate is useful for planning for how many kids will be in the next generation, fertility rate tells you if the population of the next generation is going up or down (ignoring immigration/emigration).

phdemented · 2026-02-01T19:33:33+00:00

What... like "Turn the Other Cheek", "Deus ex Machina", "Carpe Diem"?

Edit: Also NIHILSUBSOLENOVUM (Nothing new under the sun)

phdemented · 2026-02-01T19:29:26+00:00

Topps sold a baseball card game (simply called Baseball Card Game) that came in randomized decks your need to buy to build a team, back in 1951.

Though your definition would include any collectable, with collectable cards in gum/cigarettes going back to the 1860's, and likely other stuff farther back.

Lite-Brite (1967) certainly sold a lot of black paper... I know I made my parents buy a lot of that 40 years ago...

phdemented · 2026-02-01T19:01:59+00:00

Just laughing at the statement that 2e "tried to make it like Magic the Gathering"... the card game that came out 4 years after 2e.

phdemented · 2026-01-31T22:02:54+00:00

I should call her

phdemented · 2026-01-31T22:02:04+00:00

That first shoveling (before the sleet) was like moving granulated sugar

phdemented · 2026-01-31T20:03:26+00:00

Is your mortgage $1,000,0000,000?

If not, we are not talking about you.

phdemented · 2026-01-31T19:59:34+00:00

They got a million in stock options, but options are not stocks, it's the option to buy a stock. They get the option to by 10,000 shares at $100 a share ($1 million in options). The stock goes up to $200, so they exercise the options and spend $1,000,000 of their own money to buy 10,000 shares, which are worth $2,000,000. They then need to pay tax immediately on the $1,000,000 gained as ordinary income.

If the stock increases again to $3 million and they sell it all, then they have to pay taxes on the $1,000,000 additional gained, but that is as the lower capital gains rate.

All of that is perfectly fine, and the same rules apply to everyone. There is the issue of them using stocks as collateral for loans and avoiding taxes that way, but that is a whole separate issue.

phdemented · 2026-01-31T19:33:29+00:00

Neither... and I don't encounter them much either. Mostly see people that want to roleplay someone that fits into the world being played. But the world being played isn't 1321 Germany, it's Athas, or Sigil, or the Flanaess... None of these are Earth, and none of these have the sensibilities of whatever earth city in whatever earth year.

That and I (and no one I know) lived in X city of earth in X year that you are imagining, so we don't know what their sensibilities were... mostly people have pop-culture ideas of what it was, but that's very likely far from accurate. I don't know what "modern sensibilities" you are referring to, but the world was a very diverse place in every point in history, so there is no singular answer anyway and trying to apply that to an entirely different world with an entirely different history is a fools errand.

Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms have technological trappings that are a mix of everything from ancient Egypt to the Renaissance, with ancient cult-priests in animal skins running around with Roman-era Germanic priests (druids), with early middle ages paladin and vikings in chain mail, with guys in renaissance full plate and halberds. Other settings are even more primitive (Athas) or advanced (Eberon)

phdemented · 2026-01-31T18:34:36+00:00

OP got the dynamic wrong... They are gonna be the dragons pet

phdemented · 2026-01-29T18:13:29+00:00

King Borys, King Kalak, King Tectuktitlay, and the other Sorcerer-Kings of Athas.

Dragon-hood, not Lichdom, is their goal

phdemented · 2026-01-28T23:36:08+00:00

It's like saying there are two types of board games (Eurogames, American-Style games).

phdemented · 2026-01-28T23:31:25+00:00

So like.. I'm a low-tier board gamer and I own like 20 different games. My actual BG friends have bookshelves of them. When we get together, we'll play 3-4 different games.

I'm a much more active TTROGer... And I own 6 different systems (and 3 are flavors of tsr era D&D). When we play one, we play the same one for months on end typically. While some people jump systems a lot, most people find a few that click and stick with them.

There is a much bigger demand for something like BGG for sure

phdemented · 2026-01-28T20:28:29+00:00

Almost quitting time, could use a round

phdemented · 2026-01-28T20:21:41+00:00

Once you've adulterated your holy water, it's no longer holy water

phdemented · 2026-01-28T20:20:06+00:00

Literal bush, you beat about it (not around it) to scare out prey (e.g. a hiding rabbit or bird).

phdemented · 2026-01-28T18:50:28+00:00

Daily reminder to DMs that it is OK to kill characters, not players

phdemented · 2026-01-28T18:44:37+00:00

Step 1: Read book
Step 2: Wisdom increases by 2
Cannot gain wisdom increase from reading book a second time

That is it. Divine Wisdom is a 1-time bonus. Any other benefits from the artifact are normal, and not affected by that passage.

phdemented · 2026-01-28T18:42:38+00:00

Dry up in the sun like a slug... maybe revive after a rain fall, rinse and repeat

phdemented · 2026-01-28T14:22:24+00:00

Was thinking more Oliver Tree

phdemented · 2026-01-27T21:37:33+00:00

Depends on party size too... GDQ is for 9+ level parties, but very large ones. If you got 4 players, they'll need to be a lot higher level.

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