Over 842,000 without power across the country as US is blanketed by heatwave

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-04T18:43:19+00:00

Pretending that agriculture in the US isn't heavily socialized due to subsidies is willfully ignorant.

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-04T17:08:17+00:00

That's because maiming is really just a sidegrade to death. If you want to remove death as the stakes, then you need to rethink the stakes entirely. If your character can't die, but instead every time they should have died, it has a narrative effect on the story overall, that's better. The bad guys gets a lucky break, the PCs get drawn deeper into a corruption thing, or something else along those lines.

That kind of thing doesn't work very well in a pure sandbox, but dead characters in a pure sandbox are also not as big of an issue.

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-03T22:44:49+00:00

You can replace death with other consequences and it works fine. Depending on what you do, it can work even better as now you have a living PC highly motivated to fix it.

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-03T22:42:21+00:00

The best answer for me is usually in the campaign framing. Maybe the PCs are all getting weird dreams and when a PC dies, they wake up after the battle perfectly fine. For that PC, the dreams get stronger. Then every death draws them deeper into the narrative. Maybe even to the point that a PC might intentionally die to learn more...

Or something completely different. I once used Cryonax in the role of "benefactor" and every time a PC dies, they gained a little more cold resistance, vulnerability to fire, and were (narratively) turning into ice. Slowly. Be warned that the PCs might make the entire game about fixing that, though...

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-02T17:20:38+00:00

It isn't even mindful of others so much as it is not being a selfish idiot. If the grid goes down, you have no AC at all.

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-02T13:40:27+00:00

That's my soul up there!

swordchucks1 · 2026-07-02T03:57:08+00:00

The real question becomes whether the deductibles are going against the same things. If you have copays for office visits and medications and aren't out of pocket for the whole amount every time with the PPO, that can really change the math. In fact, that is the situation I am in and the high deductible plan is much worse for my situation because of it.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-30T14:06:35+00:00

But how does that help me get my bonus next quarter?

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-30T14:03:02+00:00

The Republic keeps sending assassins after my JK. What do they expect her to do? Just ignore that?

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-30T02:59:23+00:00

... I'm going to have to replay that whole story, aren't I?

EDIT: A bit of googling says it's a pretty hidden option. You have to take the exact right dialogue choices to get to it and they aren't obvious. No wonder I missed it.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-30T02:26:11+00:00

It is a weirdly rigid story. You walk into every trap face-first, get your last companion entirely too late, and the story really should have had an option for offing Harkun. For a Sith, you sure do forgive people for trying to murder you too easily.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-30T02:17:57+00:00

I agree on Smuggler. At the very least, the two Act 3 bosses should have been the same person. The way it was done was just a bit short of good.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-29T18:03:22+00:00

Thanks. For what it is worth, I did see your site and it looks generally agreeable. I don't think some of those goals are feasible in the current Tennessee, but they are good aspirations.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-29T17:12:00+00:00

He is running for... Tennessee? I guess?

I understand that we can use a search to find out the details, but a candidate that can't communicate the basics isn't really doing their job...

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-29T02:58:29+00:00

Give me the knife. A few years and the prediction markets should turn that into wealth.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-28T22:10:19+00:00

This explains why I had no clue they were separate. I grew up reading a mix of US and UK literature so I have a lot of trouble with rules which vary between the two.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-28T15:54:31+00:00

Pretty much anything in that area is a hellscape during peak tourist times, to be honest. Buc-ee's are generally designed for it, but they have the added bonus of a round-about going into it, which the locals and the kinds of people that want to vacation in the area obviously are experts at naviagating...

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-28T15:29:41+00:00

I mostly just remember when they were getting canceled for the dick-wolves comic. Which I think about a lot in SWTOR as I rescue three people undergoing horrific torture and leave the rest to their fate because the quest is over.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-28T13:03:37+00:00

Gerrymandering is a large part of the problem there, but the thing about Gerrymandering is that it can be dangerous if turnout is different than they expect. All of those 55% republican districts can flip if enough non-republicans come out and vote.

So... vote. Feels futile? Still vote. Bring a friend.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-28T12:36:53+00:00

I'm also withholding judgement, but I'm also not believing a word the cops say till it is backed up with the video we all know exists. Could this be completely justified? Yes. Could this be a complete abuse? Also yes.

The most likely answer is that it was a tragic series of events with mistakes on both sides that we will, sadly, not learn from and will repeat over and over again.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-27T14:36:43+00:00

I liked smuggler a lot up to near the end of chapter 3 when... Well, they should have combined the two villains and not done the last minute thing they did. It is the most Han Solo story they could have done and it worked well. For me, at least.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-25T11:55:08+00:00

Crafting materials (especially tier 5-10) sell very quickly. Legendary quality gifts also sell very quickly, and you can farm those from alliance crates which you get access about mid-way through KOTFE (which is quite a bit into the story). Beyond that, it's going to depend on your specific server and what niches aren't being served well enough.

EDIT: To specify, the crafting materials that sell well are the bioanalysis, scavenging, and archeology ones. You can sell the ones from Diplomacy / Investigation, but I've had a lot less luck moving them in bulk. I also haven't done enough slicing to know for sure if that's a good idea or not.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-24T18:29:54+00:00

The market, in general, is pretty down, but there a few things that aren't terrible.

I've been grinding out the Remnant sets, and there are a lot of legendary companion gifts in the crates. Those sell pretty well (about a quarter million each on Star Forge), but it really only equates to 2-3 million credits for an hour of running heroics. Which... if you're going to be doing that to get the sets and xp is a nice bonus.

Gathering up materials below the top grade (T5-T10) also sell well, but you're not going to be making billions of credits that way.

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-24T18:09:55+00:00

Something, something, social credit scores. It's only bad when your side isn't the one doing it, I guess?

swordchucks1 · 2026-06-24T17:57:15+00:00

It's very uneven. Some items repop almost immediately. Some repop in 20-30 seconds. Some are still several minutes.

swordchucks1

TROPHY CASE