This community is pretty quiet, mostly seeming to be a place for news articles to get posted. Sadly doesn't seem to have much in the way of discussion, but that also keeps it from being infected with a lot of the issues I see elsewhere on Lemmy.
I guess that's my roundabout way of saying you're doing alright! Only Monday Memes in particular seems like a pretty good call.
For reference, the first generation of IPhone actually preceded the IPod Touch, but the Touch reached my friend group first. Thus my reaction when I first heard of the IPhone was more or less,
"The IPod Touch is a gimmick, and now they want to make it your phone? Why the hell would anyone want a touchscreen phone in your pocket? Touchscreens are finnicky at the best of times, break at the slightest provocation, and a whole computer in your pocket would cost an absolute fortune. There's nothing wrong about just carrying an Mp3 player and phone separate in your pocket; this is just Apple selling an overpriced toy to their fanboys. Touch-screen computer-phones will never take off."
Boy do I feel like an idiot now.
Ah well, fair enough.
Waterdeep Dragon Heist is, I believe, intended to have a conflict between the Xanathar's Thieves Guild and Zhentarim. I know when we ran it, the DM noted that we had actually managed to avoid some campaign material by resisting getting associated with either guild. But I've only seen it from a player's perspective, so I'm not sure how deep or detailed it goes.
And this infuriates me because the market for those suites is so oppressively terrible.
Like, hell, I don't even need the full suite of simulation and modeling tools that they come with. Just give me a rock-solid parametric CAD engine, a decent rendering suite tacked on to it, and I'd really love it if anyone in this market could start investigating Linux compatibility! Hell, I'd even pay for that - just not the awful licensing regimes the current offerings operate under.
Never heard of this, but it does sound interesting. Is it remotely editable - as long as the host PC is on, can you sign in and edit it from anywhere? Or is it just an editing & organizing tool on the host machine?
Disclaimer, not a lawyer, etc...
In abstract, no. "Sailing under false colors" is considered a legally permissible act of deception under the laws of war, so long as the vessel clearly identifies itself as a military vessel belonging to its proper nation of origin prior to opening fire.
In practice, obviously this is a bit of the law that doesn't have a clear answer in modern, beyond-line-of-sight warfare. It worked reasonably through World War 2 (where, indeed, several nations used disguised warships for various purposes - my favorite being the time the British disguised an explosives-laden destroyer as a German warship, then rammed it into a drydock). But what would that look like in a modern scenario? Lifting a flag, even if no one can see it? A radio broadcast?
There's also the reverse side of it: That, if a nation is using warships disguised as civilian vessels, anyone fighting them would have wider defensible grounds to more aggressively engage any suspicious or uncertain vessels. This would, undoubtedly, eventually cause civilian casualties - but such is the risk (and sometimes, intent) of using a civilian disguise.
Yes, unfortunately. Or at least seems to.
This person was an eye-opener for me in terms of how deep political groupthink and unquestioning belief can go. He's an intelligent person in a highly technical position that requires plenty of reasoning and thought, but if the right political commentator says something, it is absolute truth.
The overwhelming thing I remember is a sense of "Huh, I guess this is it."
There was a possum in the middle of a busy road, acting oddly. Walking in slow circles, pausing to stare, wandering back and forth.... just generally acting odd. I was concerned it might be rabid, and nobody else had called 911 yet, so I did. Gave them the info, they connected me with the local dispatcher, and that was that. Didn't stick around to see what happened.
When I got home I found out that Possums are almost never rabid. Poor thing had probably been hit by a car. Animal control probably would've been a better option, but when I'd called I was actually worried for anyone else who stumbled into it.
Bonus points if it's, "He's childish because he's so emotional."
And then we wonder why men are closed off emotionally.
Huh. Today I learned. Neat!
Civilizations are big, and people are resilient - so we rarely find things like, "This plague/volcanic eruption/extinction of a species 100% wiped out this civilization and their culture". People tended to move away rather than just die, and their cultures tended to assimilate and combine rather than just vanish.
But there are placed where we reasonably believe that natural consequences resulted in the decline of civilizations:
The decline of the Sumerian nations is associated with increasing salinity of the fields in southern Sumeria, shifting populations north towards Akkad. I believe there's still uncertainty over whether this was driven by Sumerian irrigation practices or some other cause, but the fact that it happened is undeniable.
The Hittite Empire was a vast prehistoric empire which collapsed as part of a period of upheaval known as the Late Bronze Age collapse. The cause of the collapse is still disputed, but it is clear that there was some environmental shift involved. Warfare, plague, and economic changes may also have contributed.
In both these cases, we have only very fragmentary remnants of the surviving culture, often filtered through the lens of subsequent civilizations' recordings. The Hittites even were arguably "lost" for a time - until the mid-1800s, they were only known through Biblical references, rather than any relics or ruins.