Zonetrooper

joined 3 years ago
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[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

One could argue that “shock & awe” is a military strategy to specifically terrorize the enemy force, for example a military opponent.

Indeed, and that's why the definition hinges critically on the intended target (civilian vs. military). One could even argue that if you, as a civilian, see your nation's military forces march out and get torn to ribbons, and then the next night your city's sky is alive with enemy aircraft bombing military, government, or materiel targets, you have pretty good reason to be scared. But we wouldn't call this terrorism, even if there are some civilian casualties, because the primary targets are all legitimate ones intended to hamper your ability to wage war.

This strategy is one performed by an organized military that is ... bound by the rules of warfare ... Non-state actors (insurgents, terrorist groups) on the other hand are not beholden to any law. To me, this is another relevant distinction

This is another good point. We nominally expect that organized nations will adhere to the laws and customs of war. More critically, non-state actors also tend to not have uniforms, stash materiel among civilian populations (often even on sites protected under said laws and customs), and deliberately introduce ambiguity as to whether a target is military or civilian.

But this logic can also get murky when we consider states not recognizing other governments or arguing they are "occupied" by another, more ephemeral hostile force. It can be advantageous for a state to portray their enemy as an ephemeral, non-state actor, in part because it lets you portray the enemy as not adhering to laws and customs of war.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Nominally:

  • A terrorist attack is primarily intended to kill civilians or cause damage to civilian lives in order to cause fear of the attacking group, anger against the victims' own government, or otherwise cause a change of policy. The deaths of people with no relationship to any ongoing military operation or force is "a feature, not a bug". Military targets may also be hit, or the goal may even be to selectively target civilians to emphasize that their military cannot protect them.

  • A military strike is primarily intended to deteriorate an enemy force's ability to wage warfare: by killing soldiers or leadership, destroying materiel or supplies being used to fight, or destroying industry or logistics being used to support the war effort. Civilian deaths are an unavoidable side-effect of strikes primarily intended to hamper military warfighting capability.

That's the theoretical line.

In practice, of course, there are many points of disputation - how many degrees separated from a man holding a gun must a target be before it is "non-military"? If an organization which mainly targets civilians in terrorist attacks carries out an attack on a military target, that still might be referred to as a "terrorist attack", as in, "an attack by a terrorist organization". And of course, there's a degree of publicity shaping involved in this as well. But in concept, the above is your line.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's an interesting thought, but according to the article, it's not even clear that the fungus is absorbing radiation or befitting from radiation. Actual photosynthesis-via-radiation hasn't been demonstrated; it might simply be taking advantage of the absence of other species due to high radiation, or the radiation is triggering a stress response.

Beyond that, I'm not sure this fungus would have a better protection-per-ton rating than, say, water (which is an astoundingly good radiation shield). But, it might point us towards ways of developing plants which are radiation-tolerant, theoretically opening a path to growing food in orbital or lunar-surface environments.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hey! Thanks for the rep for !worldbuilding@lemmy.world . We are, admittedly, not as active as Reddit's equivalent due to Lemmy's fairly niche nature, but more are always welcome.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Like others, I can't actually see anything but the title.

So I'll just soapbox a moment and say that I think some circles get way over-invested in trying to super-hard delineate between one and the other. It doesn't reduce the value of a label if it has varying flavors within it; if anything, it's good to have some variety within a label.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

3 years aligns with the Great API Debacle and protests on Reddit. It's when the Fediverse first started being discussed on many other sites and people were urged to shift over; certainly that's when I came over.

For any number of reasons, however, not everyone stuck around. Some were hoping for a larger shift-over that never materialized. Some found the smaller population and lack of niche communities they had enjoyed. Some were turned off by the political extremism and hate speech coming from some communities.

I don't have any issue with the accounts being left up, but I do think there ought to be a formal ruleset for opening up a community to new mods if the moderators go MIA.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

This is really it. In some ways early CGI was actually more intensive than traditional setpiece, costume, and effects-making in that it had a very high technical skill floor. Not denigrating the skills of actual physical artists here, but you had to not just have an artistic sense, but be able to navigate (in some cases, program in the first place!) the tools behind it.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Yep. Their heroes, icons, leaders, family... and themselves.

Hell, they'd disbelieve if the glasses detected someone was telling the truth, but they didn't want to believe that!

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

People would very, very quickly start to rationalize why the detection couldn't possibly be right. Look at how many scientifically or historically proven things people already are willing to disregard because it conflicts with their worldview or beliefs!

So they detect "willful" deception? People would just fall back on the "...well, I didn't know" / "didn't think XYZ counted" / "didn't consider ABC" as their excuses. Or if it can be shown that 0.00-near-infinite-zeros-01% of the population has some quirk which makes them detect wrongly, suddenly there'd be most of the population claiming that.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Ooooh, now this is a good question!

I would say a recurring theme or element is the idea of individuality versus collectivism, and the relationship between them. Rather than just declaring one good / one bad, looking at how different cultures explore and implement them.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

On the one hand, to me, "mobile suits" should feel titanic and weighty, larger than life. So yet another Gundam zipping around like a demented chimpanzee on crack is... I dunno. Fighting space robot aliens is also a choice, since the man-vs-man and political background is a key part of what distinguishes Gundam.

On the other hand, a Gundam game in 2027, by Bandai-Namco, scored by Mick Gordon? That is such incredible levels of hype and I really, really hope that this is good.

[–] Zonetrooper@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Torties, man. They never stop looking gorgeous.

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Zonetrooper@lemmy.world to c/dnd@lemmy.world
 

Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment.

But guys, my party is in trouble.

They're consistently rolling terribly in combat across multiple sessions, classes, and dice types. And I mean terribly. Over time, you'd think their d20 rolls would average out to about unmodified 10, right? Plus or minus a bit. Hah. No. They're averaging about 7. Other rolls (damage, healing, etc) also often suffer from this. It's turning combat into a slog; anything with an AC of above 12-14 or so is proving awful to fight, and when attacks do hit they often do little damage.

We're all experienced players, and it's a digital platform - so I can both know they're not missing modifications to the raw d20 roll, and know it's not "bad dice". Unfortunately, they're also experienced enough to figure out ACs from misses/hits, so it's not like I can even give them "free passes" on attacks as anti-frustration measures.

It's at the point where I'm thinking the honest only way to "fix" this is to artificially nerf NPCs or vastly reduce the CR I'm used to them being able to handle. Is that really it, folks?

 

The good ol' fashioned "You all meet in a tavern, answering a poster offering gold for help..."? The action-scene, "You're all engaged in mutual mundane task, when suddenly a band of thugs/goblins/whatever bust in looking for the plot coupon and chaos breaks out"? The "Elder Scrolls classic" - all being prisoners thrown in together? Tie it in to a character's backstory and let them lead the other party members in?

What have you found interesting or successful, and why?

 

Most warships we see launch mobile suits "horizontally" (i.e., in the direction the suit would faces when standing).

I'm curious if we've ever seen a mobile suit launch "vertically" (i.e., 'head" or "feet" first)? Obviously this wouldn't work for any earth-bound warships, but for spacegoing ones it'd be fine. In theory, this would allow vulnerable catapult doors to be far smaller launching "face-forward".

 

For some people, it's a fictional technology that is detailed down to the very nuts and bolts. For others, a fictional culture that has all its elements seamlessly knit together to create a complex tapestry. A history that deftly tells the story of a person, nation, or planet, or an otherworldly species that feels real enough that it could exist, if only in another world.

What is it for you? What examples in fiction stood out for you? Why did they do; what about them spoke to you so strongly? It could be widely-known published fiction, or some niche project you ran into on the internet once.

 

After nearly a decade of unbelievable service, and with price increases likely on the horizon, it's finally come time to retire my old desktop.

After some analysis, here's what I've settled on:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 4.5 GHz 8-Core Processor $250.00
CPU Cooler Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler $39.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard Gigabyte B650 GAMING X AX V2 ATX AM5 Motherboard $179.99 @ Amazon
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws S5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory $189.99 @ Newegg
Storage Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive $0.00
Storage Western Digital Red Pro 2 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive $0.00
Video Card Gigabyte WINDFORCE OC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16 GB Video Card $799.99 @ Amazon
Case Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case $94.00 @ Newegg Sellers
Power Supply EVGA SuperNOVA 850 GT 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply $109.99 @ Amazon
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total $1663.86
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-13 19:11 EST-0500

Some quick explanations on decision making:

  • Primary usage is a mix of gaming and CAD / 3D modeling / rendering.

  • After Intel shit the bed one too many times, I'm definitely taking an AMD CPU. I could be convinced to go to the 7600X3D, but there seems to be a noticeable dropoff on non-gaming tasks, such as 3D modeling, and some debate about the viability of a 6-core CPU going forward.

  • The two hard drives are listed as $0 because I already own them, and will be transferring them into this unit.

  • 850W power supply should give me ample room for overclocking, adding future components, while still staying under that 80% load limit.

Open questions / things I'm uncertain on:

  • CPU Cooler: I've heard that Ryzens can run hot, but I'm unsure if I need such a beefy one. For a 7700X, is it too much?

  • RAM: Is 64GB a lot? Yes. RAM shortages plagued me until I brought my current machine up to 48GB. I thought 64 would carry me forward with room to spare. Is this silly?

  • Went with a 4070 Ti Super for the 16GB RAM. Is it too much GPU for the rest of this rig?

Now, here's my big question: Micro Center nearby me is running combo deals for a 7700X or 7600X3D, Gigabyte or Asus motherboard, and 32GB RAM. Looking at what I'm trying to build, does that make sense? Would upgrading to 64GB with 4 sticks later be a problem?

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