Troy Spiral

Everyone is born with 1-100 tally marks tattooed on their arm. The higher your number, the more valuable you are and the more successful you will be. You bully a kid because he is obviously hiding a low score. One day...

Wow. Good stuff. I'm big on detailed worldbuilding. I am working on a "constitution of house spiral" (of which DGN is a 'subsidiary' for lack of a better term) could I talk you into doing some proofreading/idea bouncing at some point?

Does this mean you guys are coming?

Damn it. I'd just pick you up myself if it wasn't so far away. I'd still do it but it's 4:20 am and I can pretty much guarantee I'll be too tired to drive that 4 times. RAWRRRRRR.

Good to hear from you. Glad you are working in a less egregious environment, although I'm sure underpaid and underappreciated like most government employees. 😞The way you describe it sounds similar to what I hear about all important government agencies... understaffed. Thus putting a lot of strain on people that work there, on top of making it harder and harder to have much empathy for people because the workload is so high. In your case, I'm sure it's especially hard knowing that your life might be at risk at almost any moment. People don't tend to thank officers for being officers but honestly, your work is appreciated, at least by me. The thread that runs through your whole post there about the correctional facility environment being far different than you would have thought is pretty eye-opening. The corporations own so many politicians and have so many people duped. Which 'inform' the judicial system that makes our country have the largest incarcerated population in the world is the start of the problem. The lying sack of garbage elected politicians and the various propaganda that keeps the myth that being "tough on crime" means "Throw the book at everyone you can as hard as you can and if they go to prison fuck em they deserve it" without taking any practical considerations on how to actually fix the problems so recidivism isn't so bad is just disgusting. The number of people that have no clue what they are talking about expressing the above opinion is embarrassing. But I don't fault any of them for it, that is after I calm down at how easily mislead we seem to be. We have a whole news organization (the most watched one in the country) consistently pushing that ideology. Its no wonder people are so misinformed. I try hard to draw a distinction between the liars and the lied-to. I do have a lot of respect for the people that have to work at correctional facilities though. It's not their fault the system is underfunded, misguided in its priorities and manipulated by the billionaire class via their political puppets to be a for-profit enterprise (even government-run correctional facilities have all sorts of corporate money funned through them making the situation worse) with no moral compass outside of profit. We luck out and get good people trying to do good and make the situation better but until we remove the corporations from the political process and thus remove them from using public systems for private gain we are stuck. I hope your mental and physical health is doing well.

Lol that's awesome. All that work is probably a solid 40 hours of work even for guys like this that know what they are doing. More like 200 for DIY type people that are less familiar. So for this kind of skilled labor that's $50 minimum an hour x 40hrs = $2000 + Probably $500 for materials. Totally worth it. !!

The hard part about this topic is that writing is virtually the same as thinking so as soon as I start typing I'm thinking what I'm typing. Maybe it should be read "what were you just recently thinking". I tried to play Beyblade the rules are just so shitty. Like they had no development time at all. I wanted to like it so I kept playing it long after I decided it wasn't even as well designed as Uno. Maybe there are some variant rules or some such but the one that came with the "starter set" I bought was laaaaame. 😞

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

Having said all that this here is perfect logic:

'80s post-punk new-wave is back! (That's a good thing.)

Not that you were thinking along these lines but for me, this is just more of a thought experiment: "You can't derive an ought from an is." Meaning, an ought (a.k.a "Should be") is a normative claim. "Is" as in 'this is a reality' being an empirical claim. It's apples to oranges. A Factual statement buttressing a value judgment is incongruent. Because something is a certain way gives no credibility to the idea that it should be that way. Everyone is doing it! Animals murder each other in a way that all humans would be punished for as examples. It is that way, but it doesn't follow that it ought to be that way. Maybe it should be that way, but that right there is not legitimate evidence. Just go ahead and disagree or in this case just sort of putting a different spin on things without a shortcut to pretend respect. 'Just saying' is dismissive, not supportive of our beliefs. I'm cool with all reasonable dissent and most people should be grateful for the opportunity to grow or honestly re-evaluate their current beliefs via reasonable criticism. If they aren't, it's on them (or in this case me) to grow a thicker skin. We need to be able to disagree or even just offer caveats without it feeling like a personal affront or a need to go into defense mode. Not that you were doing that, I'm just stating things that often go unsaid and then eventually become problems, when there was an easy way to avoid them in the first place. It's really hard to learn anything that way. Not that you were doing that exactly. It's just a pet peeve of mine when people say things like "with all due respect" (meaning "hey asshole I'm about to say something totally not respectful" lol. Or the one I love is "If I'm being honest" or "can we be honest" .... what? They mean "normally I bullshit you 24/7 but for this one moment I'm going, to tell the truth". 🤣 hah. Ok, that second part was way off topic. I can't seem to help myself. I say one thing, this sort of conversation NEVER happens on facebook. Fucking Facebook. GRRR. /chuckle

I should be there and am requesting a card... oh. I should be there, I'm in my "drag my ass there if at all possible" mode. Its rough but the benefits (usually) outweigh the health issues. I wish I could say I'd have Christmas stuff for everyone buts since I 1. have zero money and 2. don't even know what to get or who to get it for since my 100 x asking people to keep an Amazon wishlist updated works 1 in 50 times... *huff* lol. Mine IS updated (it always is, one of the things I do when the PTSD is kicking my ass is just try to hone that list down to stuff I would buy for myself if I had the money, helps get me out of my head). Even if I didn't get the thing I was going to buy for someone from Amazon, it's a helpful thing to get an idea of the kinds of things people want / need / like. No cards yet, the last sheet of cardstock got used last week and I'm waiting for the (charged on credit) new cards to get here. Looking forward to seeing my extended family again.

@NocteSpiritus Wow, my fail. Happy Birthday a month later! But, see I did do it. *shakes a fist at people that think its "too late" to send positive vibes* Also... sorry I know its horrible but *hugs*

Interesting. So Jinx is gone? (I used to live at the necto and before that when it was called the nectarine, was actually my introduction to 'goth stuff' before the factory. Then for years, I went to the Neco on Mondays. Haven't been back in ... damn... gotta be like 7 years. I keep thinking I'm going to go it just keeps not happening. Not due to the club, just I used to live in A2 and strangely no one around here ever seems to want to go out to A2 on a workday. Ah.. the good old days of college.

Magic The Gathering: Arena It's the closest thing to real MTG on a computer. Sanctus Reach The closest thing to tabletop Warhammer 40,000. (Which is the best Sci-Fi universe, its a fact. No argument possible) There are over 100 games set in the WH40k universe I just realized. Its such a compelling universe I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't stolen it yet . (It will and probably fail as they did with D&D and The Dark Tower) I'm trying to NOT play anything on the phone as it is such a huge time waster but the last thing I was actively playing is Clash Royale. Which I decided I'm not playing any damn phone games that don't have a social element to it, that is... I know zero people that actively play it so fuck it. I have enough time wastes. I'd play again in a second if I had some real life friends that did. I'd rather be playing both in real life. I really want to play more tabletop stuff but it requires energy time and people. I'm especially missing the new Game of Thrones games that came out that have stellar reviews. And weres my damn drone. Wait games...

I would celebrate but my situation doesn't really make it very easy. grr

Hope to see you.

He was not a saint. Stan Lee wrote and created the outline that would become Marvel. That is not disputable and is a big deal. But, that is not the whole story. Not the granddaddy of all that exists in the comicverse status he had even before he died. (Although it is more embarrassing calling Huge Jackman 'Wolverine' sorry they are actors, Hollywood can go jump) Steve Ditko, Jack Kerby, and Joe Simon did far more of the creative work than Lee ever did and never got the far more substantial credit than we will ever really know. Something Lee is on the wrong side of history for. He often either took credit or would not give credit where it was not or was due. As an example, people that know Kirby's work know that he and not Stan created the Fantastic Four despite Stan's assertions. Lee long talked about his bad memory so maybe we can give him the politician defence of "I just can't recall". Long after Stan had stopped doing much work the other (then) icons of the early marvel age kept working and kept creating and kept letting stan put his stamp on things for which he did little if any actual work on. Lee was also a company man when Ditko, Simon, Kirby and many others were all getting screwed by Marvel, Lee stuck with it. Many were forced out of self respect to leave and move to DC or other places. To this day Stan Lee has made orders of magnitude more money than the people that did the bulk of the work of creating what became Marvel. Lee got insane amounts of free positive press for backing the draconian practices of Marvel all the way up to the 90s. Lee created (or rather developed with many of the aforementioned pioneers that we don't even know) this bizarre "Marvel Way" of writing comics which is, the artist does most of the drawing then the writer fills in blanks and dialog on a comic that is largely already done. That worked fine when you had Jack Kirby doing it who was as good of a writer as he was artist and then lee would add a few ideas and change some dialog, all of the sudden he seems to be writing tons of books when really he was not nearly as prolific as the credits on the books would make it seem. (Makes no sense to actual humans) This same system was still in place when Chris Clairmont, who wrote what most people my age that were fans of X Men think of as "the X men" after spending half his life writing the X titles was told that artists like Jim Lee (no relation to stan) were more in charge of the comic he had been building for over a decade than he was. Lee would turn in almost totally completed (drawn) comics and expect Chris to come up with a storyline that fit the pictures. Soon after Image Comics was formed basically in protest to marvels dick-ness. Stan Lee was largely silent raking in his not-fully-earned credit and cash. The above is a bit harsher than is necessary but so much "Stan Lee is God" stuff has been written (especially since he almost totally stopped working and just rakes in movie cash and marvel trots him out as The Icon that created all) some reality needs to be overly stated as it won't be stated often.

Only a moron cannot see the connection between this, the seemingly never-ending hurricane season and oh the largest die of species since humans have been alive and climate change. Or as Trump says "I don't see the connection" bonus moron: "Its a hoax made up by the Chinese".

Just in case anyone might be confused there is no gathering due to Thanksgiving.