Also, whatever you do don't ever call a Verrisir a feminist, unless you want to get your face slashed off!

@SCPilot mind unpacking that a bit more for me?

Well, Verrisirs believe in gender equality (it's part of their faith and culture), but to them a feminist is a type of bigot who despises men and wishes to lord over males. Also, people wanting abortion are just plain stupid. To them, it makes no sense why someone who fights for equality would want to fight for abortion which to them is heretical belief. This is one of the sticking points in the rising tensions between the United Terran Federation and the Verrisir Stellar Confederacy.

One instance is when a Terran woman wants an abortion while visiting a Verrisiran colony, but is told that they don't perform abortions. She is then arrested several days later for trying to find a black market abortion doctor (she went around asking people). She is later forced to give birth to the baby (a healthy baby boy). She then tries to sue the Verrisiran doctors for refusing to give her an abortion. Long story short, she loses. And the baby is adopted by a Verrisir couple.

heheheh, that's a darn good one :D

Please note that I know that not all feminists want to lord over men, but to the Verrisirs all feminists do! I was trying to go into detail the cultural differences we would encounter if we even met aliens in real life.

Also, what happened on Election Day 2016, would never happen in Verrisiran society. Because:

an interesting structure to say the least

They're not religious fanatics, although they are some who are borderline religious fanatics. They're, thankfully, in the minority.

Indeed. The Verrisirs also are greatly horrified by what Terrans do to their own psionics. As where in Verrisiran society, psionics are embraced and trained how to use their god-given powers, humans actually....well, they do stuff similar to how psionics were treated in Babylon 5's Earth Government Psi-corp and Starcraft's Terran societies.

starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Ghost_Program#Limiters

To the Verrisirs, these are unacceptable and horrific blasphemies towards something they see as gifts from the gods. They believe that what humanity is doing is an affront to the human god (actually, the Verrisirs believe that God created the universe and the various other deities). So, that's another tension builder between the two species.

Hello nightowls

Then, there's neural rehabilitation. It's similar to Starcraft's Neural Resocialization starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Neural_resocialization

Hello @dot_Sp0T and good evening!

yeah -- that's definitely a goodly heap of first-contact headscratchers to work with

and hey there @dot_Sp0T

I admit I am mostly here because it's 0241 here and I need to tell at least someone that I just squished a nasty bug that I made due to copy pasting a few lines without thinking twice...

Ah I see.

You're all doing great!

Also thanks for mentioning me in a personal hello @SCPilot and @Shalvenay :)

You're welcome!

@SCPilot -- considering I've been on the topic of first-contact with my own E.T. lately (he's a stationside-born capsuleer, if you're at all familiar with EVE Online and its 'verse)...

okay...go on.

it makes me wonder what would happen if the Verrisirs found themselves connected to New Eden allofasudden

Hm....I see. And the New Eden?

@SCPilot that's the star cluster that forms the main body of the EVE Online world

@SCPilot yeah -- it could be very sparky indeed, especially considering there are parts of that world where getting shot at does not necessarily mean "we hate you, go away and never come back"

I suspect that bonding over exploded hardware isn't exactly something the Verrisirs would understand well at first

Well, the Verrisirs aren't big on AIs. In fact, they are a bit unnerved by droids and sentient robots.

@SCPilot yeah -- CONCORD strictly regulates AIs because well...capsuleers know what out-of-hand AI is like to deal with, firsthand. (see: Rogue Drones)

I'm not sure if the whole cloning business would be more or less unnerving to them, though!

(my E.T. has lost count of how many clones he's gone through)

Actually, that would greatly shocked them. They're not sure what to make of cloning, although a few military factions have conducted limited cloning experiments (overseen by high-ranking members of the priesthood). Although these aren't true clones, since these clones were created by mixing several DNA samples together to create a unique individual.

They're mainly strictly special units, pretty much clone commandos.

Majority of the cloning projects were shut down after it was noticed that Verrisir clones tend to be a bit...eccentric, doing things like collecting dolls or bits of debris without any explanation to why.

yeah...then cloning as reincarnation would be a monstrous shock for them...atop that, we're talking crewed hardware that this is being done with

Ouch. Yeah, the Verrisirs would not be very happy.

They would also see something like how the Spartan IIs were created as blasphemous and just plain wrong.

oh...they'd be steaming mad the first time the Goons threw MiniLuv at 'em

people sacrificing ships to the police to go after a valuable enough target?

Yep.

(my ET has been on the sending end of more suicide ganks than he's been on the receiving end of)

the whole nullsec thing would be a headscratcher too

"These folks are crazy! And they dare let them own space?!"

In fact, the UTF does something similar to how the Spartan IIs were created, but this was prior to the Terran-Verrisir Conflict. However, the UTF realized how ineffective their super-soldiers were to psionic soldiers. The UTF had a border conflict with another alien race the Kevarians, and the Verrisirs came in to help get their citizens off the planet. However, one of the Verrisiran soldiers saw a Kevarian friend of his about to be killed by a terran super-soldier, the Verrisir slash the

terran's head off with a psi-blade, destroying the morale of the terran soldiers and doing on TerranFedNews!

Ah that reminds me a bit of the Serenity movie in regards to the Reavers.

Firefly was an excellent show. A shame it was cancelled.

yeah. well -- without native psionics -- it's all tech out here. quite a bit of stuff can be emulated though through implants and high-speed datalinks. mindlinking, telepresence, remote C&C are all possible that way

one thing I should have thought of sooner -- where do the Verrisirs peg on an extended Kardashev scale?

my estimates for New Eden peg the whole society at around 1.5 or so

Hm....Probably around 1.9. They're not big on Dyson Spheres. Of course, they did fight against a technocratic civilization prior to meeting humanity.

Of course, a lot of alien civilizations soon join the Verrisirs in fighting the humans when it becomes apparent at how corrupt the Terran government has become. In fact, it was discovered that the UTF has often sacrificed its border colonies and fringe worlds to build up their fleets. This revelation eventually causes a massive splintering of the UTF, and open rebellion erupts, spreading all the way to Earth.

so yeah -- they'd probably actually be able to impress my E.T. with a tour of one of their ships.

Eventually, the anti-UTF alien coalition assists the moderate Terran factions in overthrowing the far-left and far-right factions.

Cool. What are your ETs like?

My ET (only one) is an explorer/part-time space merc

spent the majority of his career living out in the gateless unknown

Ah cool.

he's human, too (Matari to be precise) -- the reason he's an ET is because he was born stationside vs planetside

Ah so, depending if you're born on a planet or in space, means you might be considered an alien then correct?

@SCPilot it's a play on the technical meaning of the word "extraterrestrial" ;)

I know that. But yeah, good idea.

hey there @BSteinhurst

I am taking a good bit of inspiration from Starcraft which in my opinion is one of the best scifi games out there.

ah. I'm not a RTS guy (tried a wee bit of Tib Sun but that's it)

for me, EVE Online fills that hole

Ah I see. Comparing the two which do you think has more depth in their stories: Starcraft or EVE Online?

Starcraft probably has deeper backstory but EVE has the player-driven story aspect

something that just about no other game can match

Hm...That's true. Player-driven stories tend to be better enjoyable, in my opinion that is. But yeah, Starcraft has deeper backstory. I do like the Terran units.

Although I will admit that I was surprised that people would smoke with their visors down. Wouldn't it be hard to see if the inside of your helmet is filled with cigarette smoke?

Monica’s “pointer to meta” comment needs a few ▲’s so it shows without expanding the comment section.

@SCPilot o.o

Yeah, I never figured that out. I mean what do y'all think?

Darn. It's late. Well, I enjoyed talking with y'all. Y'all have a good night!

@HDE226868, I found this excellent paper on the topic of atmospheric banding as a function of rotational speed. It's an excellent read and may offer some useful insights to you. The author is Isaac Held who's done some landmark papers on atmospheric modeling. Also, he's a good writer.

gfdl.noaa.gov/blog_held/28-the-fruit-fly-of-climate-models

I just reviewed results in my Lesson question.

Gosh I’m good ☺.

@JDługosz self-praise ain't no commendation. But I guess you're really doing well.

Hello fellow humans (and @Green)

I wonder if this will be the next big thing in writing?

amazon.com/gp/product/B0713XG522

The comments are amusing at least

If it's anything like Chuck Tingle's work I'm sure it will be an entertaining, if extremely NSFW, read.

Doesn't sound like it's that NSFW. From one of the comments: Was expecting tender breasts and juicy thighs. Perhaps a bit of finger licking goodness. Instead got a tough, dry read lacking spice.

Sounds like KFC to me.

If you're looking for a short, clean romance, this is the book for you. It had the feel of the old bodice ripper without the ripping and only a vague mentioning of sex.

Just goes to show that there is a market for anything.

My guess is that since it looks like it is officially branded, they weren't going for erotica so much

I wonder if Mc Donalds will try to get in on this... "Smiling on the outside: Romancing the clown."

There has been a lot of fast food mascot fan art showing up on my social networks.

@sphennings you mean Wendy's ?

@dot_Sp0T among others.

The young Wendy's mascot they've had is cute... I can see that

Apparently she does voice work for Mass Effect Andromida

has anyone here played Andromeda? I've heard it's terrible

@DaaaahWhoosh I haven't played mass effect 3 yet... I beat the first one on xbox, and I picked up 1 and 2 on PC, but I want to play though 1 again so I can migrate my character into 2, and I just haven't done it.

yeah, some day I want to play through the trilogy as FemShep, just to see if things are any different. But that's like, dozens of hours of commitment

the weird thing is that the main reason I want to get Andromeda is for the co-op missions. Those were fun in 3

I've still a ME3 run going on :/

@DaaaahWhoosh From what I can tell, a lot of the hate Andromeda got was because of the bad facial animations of the characters, and IIRC they patched it to fix that.

I've also heard that the writing is bad, but meh, maybe I'll see for myself once it goes on sale

Why I rarely buy games new

Also the price

and the backlog I already have

Though I do really want to pick up Prey

you are racing against time to save humanity -- now please stop and pick up 45 alien mushrooms

@SerbanTanasa is there a constant clock you're working again, or is it more along the lines of how they did it in ME2?

dunno, never picked it up

I have never managed to finish a computer game in 3 years

Too busy at work and at home

@DaaaahWhoosh The dialogue is really bad. Especially for a game with so much of it. Unlike previous games where I would excitedly check to see if I unlocked any new dialogue with my companions after every mission, I found myself wanting to skip through the chats to get back to the mediocre combat loop.

@Green Ooh, interesting. I'll take a look.

@HDE226868 Please someone with more physics knowledge than me take a look at it.

@sphennings That's a shame, I have been replaying Inquisition and the dialogue is amazing. Excellent characters that actually evolve and are mulit-dimensional.

I also don't like the main character as much. They're much more of a child with daddy issues than Sheppard was.

@sphennings that definitely sounds like a turn-off

or should I say, a turian-off

@DaaaahWhoosh NO! Bad Whoosh!

If you want characters and development and dialogue go play Inquisition...seriously. The characters are fantastic.

@dot_Sp0T oh, I thought you liked puns. I'm a-sari

@DaaaahWhoosh You're a bad liar.

@DaaaahWhoosh vorcha sayin' there mate?!

I'm gonna spend the rest of the day trying to come up with Mass Effect puns now

@SerbanTanasa Greetings Serban!

@DaaaahWhoosh That sounds like a really good use of time. You are a model to be followed sir.

@James honestly if I come up with something better than the asari one, it'll be time well spent

but I rachni brain, looking for better puns, and just nothing comes to mind

@DaaaahWhoosh you what?

I used 'rachni' instead of 'rack my'

oh dear

yeah, see, the path ahead is perilous

Oddly, I never played mass effect...

if I can't Mako a good pun this quest will consume me

I am not entirely sure how it happened...

@DaaaahWhoosh oh, I geth that one!

lol you know what, that's going to beat anything I come up with

@DaaaahWhoosh idk, your very first one was glorious

@green

howdy

@SerbanTanasa How's it going?

@Green @DaaaahWhoosh is trying to be punny today...

Doin' well, just not much time to really participate on the site

might change in a couple of months -- will see

@SerbanTanasa ...aren't you a mod?

slacker.

@James well it seems we now know why we needed another one

Doing mod duties only -- have not posted a real question in months

@SerbanTanasa I might have a change of job coming soon that will definitely cut down my time on WB (well, I hope it does. I'll be disapointed if it doesn't soak up all my day time.)

@SerbanTanasa Just screwing with you man.

@Green You have some messed up priorities.

Might switch again -- recruiters are buzzing around me like flies to carrio n

@James Perhaps. But if the new job is where I want to take my career in general, I'll be disappointed if I'm not spending my time moving in that chosen direction.

@SerbanTanasa Be careful. You move too much and people will start wondering why and not trust you to stick around. (unless you're a contractor, in which case nevermind)

@James, have had 4 jobs in 4 years -- question hasn't even come up last 2 times.

why are you moving jobs? well, cause your internal company recruiter promised me a ton more money

Thing is, I land in a place, soak up everything in 6 months, double my value to the company, company obv/ won't pay me double. Other company sees all skills, offers significant pay upgrade ... what would you do?

I just saved my employer $600k yesterday -- and won't get a cent extra pay for it

@SerbanTanasa I totally get it, just saying that I have seen people be passed over in interviews/hiring because they move too much.

well, in 2 or 3 more years I'll probably get bored of having bosses and just set up shop on my own or with a few partners.

then the only bosses are the clients

@SerbanTanasa The most terrifying kind.

literally, question hasn't come up in the past few years

where are you based in the world?

What do you do, if you don't mind sharing...

@SerbanTanasa Midwest, US

machine learning/ data science/ sums/averages/counts

Heh...I PM the data quality teams in my current role.

unless you're an interviewer, in which case I'll tell you about convoluted neural networks

I'm in a big metro -- DC -- a LOT more demand than skilled labor w/ green cards

in reality, I mostly walk around the office with a giant coffee mug and talk to people. then get the minions and interns to do the work.

i only occasionally step in and do actual work to help solve more complex problems

Gotta love interns. We just got a fresh new crop. We are teaching them to identify fields use in extracts so we can prioritize some standardization work, poor bastards.

I just do a basic busywork/learn the systems week then paradrop them into interesting, medium-priority problems.

explaining to them how the work would be worth millions of dollars to the company if done right

but then again, a 5% efficiency gain would win the company millions, so plenty of low hanging fruit

Its amazing how hard it can be to get managers/VPs/etc to appreciate the value of IT work sometimes...

I make it clear that IT/data-science is a cost center.

THIS WILL SAVE US 6 MILLION DOLLARS... just say yes

it's pretty simple: PMs and managers that make available good clean high quality data and ask for even basic analysis do spectacularly better than those that do not.

Human gut and intuition are often horrible ways of making decisions. Trusting the experts on a field is often a mistake, as experts often have no idea how systems actually work.

@SerbanTanasa Plus they just spout standards from books and never have familiarity in local systems.

Forensic analysis on data allows a deep understanding of how systems work, where the true bottlenecks are, and where the low hanging fruit sits

^true

we had a pricing expert who made a comprehensive list of 6 modalities something could work, dismissing my concerns w/ a hand-wave. I could not resist it, and in the following meeting I produced a mapping of the 26 modalities that existed in reality.

@SerbanTanasa Nice!

What did they have to say about that?

Haha, they got fired.

Well, "chose to pursue other opportunities"

Yeah, I get people fired. A fair bit. Then things started working.

@SerbanTanasa Was the pricing expert a contractor or employee?

FTE. When I arrived here, data pipes were so clogged up it took 9 hours to analyze 1 hour of our incoming data stream

fast forward 4 months and 2 firings

analyzing a month of data takes <2 minutes

This answer states an eccentric orbit can't be tidally locked., in bold. Who upvotes these things?!

yikes

maybe they mean 1:1 lock

spin-orbit wise

How about this ditty from physics, where he claims (in the comments) «Additionally some planets have geostationary orbits within the planet itself due to the speed in which it rotates» and defends that rather than addressing my issue with it.

@SerbanTanasa do you do much work with infrastructure architects?

IT infrastructure architects.

@JDługosz it would be cool to live on a planet like that. Assuming you bolted everything down

@Green, I meet with them regularly, nod and proceed to ignore everything they say. Might as well have a recording of my mom reading from Kimball sitting on the chair instead

@DaaaahWhoosh you might have to drell down pretty deep to bolt it down

@SerbanTanasa In what ways are they usually wrong? I'm asking since I think that's where I want to go and would like to be not wrong as much as possible.

@SerbanTanasa :D It would definitely be Mordin a simple task

@DaaaahWhoosh Yeah, you wouldn't want things flying about hanari direction.

@DaaaahWhoosh more than... took me about 10 times reading that to geth it

@Green, lemme think about that for a second

@SerbanTanasa I appreciate that, thank you.

@dot_Sp0T you gadda haf da right accent, mahn

plus, you used that one already

@DaaaahWhoosh it still wrex yours

admit it, when it comes to good Mass Effect puns, you ain't got Jack

Udina just do that, did you?

You know, someone will read through the chat eventually and just star. every. god. damn. pun.

I keep a running Tali

You probably found a list somewhere you liar-a!

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite chatroom on the Internet

Actually @DaaaahWhoosh, who did you kill: Ashley or the Blockhead?

@dot_Sp0T I killed Ashley. She was religious, so I figured she'd be more okay with it.

Dunno, I liked that she did a fantastic job on the front line -- never had to Traynor.

o-Kaiden. I guess we know who you killed.

Vorcha problem with it?

@Green, I guess my problem is too little skin the the game -- they are so far removed from the real work, they end up being overly theoretical and impractical in their suggestions. It's an easy thing to say -- make a table where every single f...ing column is a slowly changing dimension and then walk away, it's another thing to build and then actually run analytics on such an abomination.

@SerbanTanasa I just think it's batarian you save the biotic, but maybe that's just because I played a soldier.

@SerbanTanasa Gotcha. I'm aware of how quick someone can lose touch with reality when they don't have to implement. I prefer to build proof-of-concepts to make sure I'm not crazy.

Vanguard since ME1

Favorite moment in Mass Effect Series was playing as Joker in ME2 during the collector ship invasion, and hearing EDI say: "I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees ...(long pause)...That is a joke."

lol yeah those two were made for each other

I guess I'm into the Figher/Mage class since BG2 -- Vanguard was about as close as you get

Was a real devastator by the end, my team-mates in ME2/3 were just running to catch up most of the time.

That's what really got me to quit with ME3 for the moment. Most of the time I'm just making sure the others don't die :/

@SerbanTanasa For some reason I had to read this with a stereotypical Jamaican accent...

@DaaaahWhoosh that would be an interesting story. Avoids the graviry well problem but lets you get close to a huge chunk of physical resources.

it'd make for an interesting terraforming process. Restart a dead planet by ramming asteroids into it, and plan the impacts to speed up the planet's spin so that once you do start sending colonists, the ships have an easier time of it

then you've got a resource-rich planet that's easy to take off from, seems like the colonists could set themselves up as miners

would "what are the downsides to a rapidly rotating planet" be a too-broad question to ask on the main site?

@DaaaahWhoosh Would you have enough KE from the asteroid impacts to reheat the planet's core?

@DaaaahWhoosh That'd be sarus-ly too broad

Also, if you drop that much mass on a planet from orbit, doesn't that basically wipe the planet's surface clean?

@Green would you call that a Mass Effect ?

@dot_Sp0T Only if the planet is in Andromeda.

@Green yeah, but if it's not much of a surface to begin with, you got nowhere to go but up

@DaaaahWhoosh Fair enough. Would you drop the ice comets after the planet crust has cooled down a bit?

yeah, that's probably a good idea. I wonder what the timescales would be like

@DaaaahWhoosh Also, are you working with a planet without an atmosphere because of no magnetosphere or for some other reason?

@Green oh, right, do you need a magnetosphere for an atmosphere?

'cause if it's something like Mars without a magnetic core, you'll have to drop enough iron/nickel to get a significant magnetosphere.

has Kim Stanley Robinson been lying to me about that part?

@DaaaahWhoosh Generally. Earth and Venus have one but by different mechanisms.

Heh, that's cool. Venus has an induced magnetosphere. The wikipedia article doesn't say how the mechanism works.

actually, I have been considering an idea for, like, a filter in space between the planet and the sun

so, say you don't have a magnetosphere. Would it be possible to just put something in the way so that the radiation from the sun doesn't get to your planet?

but somehow there's still enough light/heat for life?

@DaaaahWhoosh Like some sort of Dyson sphere?..

well no, I'm thinking more along the lines of a Dyson Thumb

which is a term I just invented

like how you can block out the light from the moon by placing your thumb over it

I assume the closer you get to the sun, the smaller the object would have to be to completely block out the sun

but I'm assuming that I'm missing some important detail that would make such an idea impossible

maybe I'll ask that on the main site

@DaaaahWhoosh I depends more on the proportion of the distance from you to it and it to the sun - if you move closer without it moving, then yes, it could be smaller

(think about the angles)

I am thinking about the angles, the part that I'm somehow getting confused on is how to treat the sun, since it's larger than this theoretical planet, but I'm thinking of it like a point particle

oh, wait. It is a point particle. The radius doesn't matter

I think I'm going to ask about this on the main site

You could always induce your own radiation protection like we are already accidentally doing smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/….

@DaaaahWhoosh How well would you say you know Video Cards?

@James slightly better than I know Hallmark cards

that is, not much

I haven't looked at anything in like 3 years and I am a little rusty...

Why'd you need a new one?

@James When I was working retail I'd always tell my customers to "Buy the one with the larger numbers".

Mine is getting tired.

I am just trying to remember which was a big deal like 3 years ago...

@sphennings which gets them to buy the 15 year old cards because they have 4 digit numbers

I remember wanting to buy a particular card but decided against it because money.

when getting my video card, I went to pcpartpicker.com and just picked the card that fit my build and price range

Hmm, I wonder how many vampires are astronomers? Great career where you are expected to be nocturnal.

@James here you go, the 2017 benchmarks aren't out yet :/ anandtech.com/bench/GPU16/1489

@dot_Sp0T I didn't get commission, wasn't my problem.

@JDługosz That's a really good question.

@dot_Sp0T Gracias. Now I just need to remember what card is in my machine currently...

@James win + r > type "dxdiag" > press enter

Also the benchmark is rather more useful for deciding what to buy by checking card performance against any games you'd like to play :)

@James Hmm, how might I make that a good WB Question? Needs some twist, or some specific aspect to focus on.

Good afternoon y'all! How's everyone doing today?

@dot_Sp0T Im at work still...

@James well you can train at work so you don't mess it up at home? :D

Ah okay. Just got off work actually. Watching some Starcraft Music Videos.

@SCPilot Star Craft Music Videos? I would never had thought to ever read or hear these 4 words in that specific order.

Why is that?

I think pretty much anything can be turned into a music video, given enough time and practice to do it.

hey there @SCPilot

Hi @Shalvenay. How's it going to day?

alright here, as for you?

Same here. As I was telling the others, I was just watching some Starcraft Music Videos.

ah

Here's a question for all of you: in terms of realism, which power armor would be the most feasible for us to invent (if we didn't have to worry about power source problems): Starcraft's Terran Marine armor or the Halo's Spartan armor?

Okay, let's try another question: how impractical is it for armor to have...ahem...breasts for female characters? To me, it depends on the setting: fantasy settings, it is extremely impractical due to how armor is designed, and creating the....um...breasts for the breastplate creates a weak point for the armor.

For scifi settings, this can offset by the fact that armor is usually made of some sort of fictional alloy or metal and thus therefore the only thing for scifi armor having...breasts (man, that's is extremely awkward to say) is for the fanservice, which while having its place in science fiction...wait a moment....does science fiction even need fanservice?

@SCPilot here you go: tor.com/2013/05/06/boob-plate-armor-would-kill-you

Hm....I see. That makes sense. For fantasy settings, but I guess the same logic can be applied to scifi settings right?

If your armor is to have function then the breast mould will definitely work against it in most if not all cases

Please try referring to them as breasts. Which would be the biologically correct term as far as I know.

Ah okay. That's the usual term for armor with breasts in fandom these days actually. But yes, you are correct. Not sure where the term 'boobs' can from, and I'm not actually wanting to find out either! Laughs

yeah -- I don't like the fanservice-armor look myself

at least not for someone who's intended to be a srsbsns fighter

Srsbsns fighter? That sounds familiar, but my brain is mush from work. XP

@SCPilot ah. well, it's short for "serious business" :)

someone who lives by their weapon and armor IOW.