The Factory Floor

12:05 AM

@Shalvenay What confuses me is what exactly he was supposed to be obstructing if there wasn't any collusion? He was (maybe) obstructing an investigation into something that didn't exist?

Shalvenay

@Gryphon what happened is the FBI saw things that looked odd and started a counterintelligence probe into them

Trump panic'd, forgot rule 1 of being a defendant (aka "SHUT UP"), and started throwing his weight around in rather ill-advised ways, I guess because he was afraid his other skeletons would be dragged out of the closet?

basically, he reacted like a mob boss, not a leader

Gryphon

Trump is really, really bad at keeping his mouth shut. Like, really bad.

Shalvenay

@Gryphon yes, he is every lawyer's worst nightmare

Mithrandir24601

Lemme guess what happened? They found out that Trump isn't colluding with the Russian government? And conveniently forgot about all the other stuff that's a bit worse than conspiring with a foreign government? Like um, racism, white supremacy, sexism...

Gryphon

If he'd just shut up, he'd be one of my favourite presidents of the last few decades.

Shalvenay

12:09 AM

@Mithrandir24601 that stuff isn't getting forgotten about, it's just not in scope of this particular piece of work

Mithrandir24601

@Shalvenay Aah, OK, that's fair

Shalvenay

@Gryphon I personally don't like a fair few of his policy choices, but those are more party-line policies than Trump-specific ones

if not for his big mouth, and his issues with norms of integrity, he'd be more or less an average Republican president

Gryphon

@Shalvenay I'm conservative, so I probably agree with a fair few of the ones you don't like, but that's a more general political disagreement.

Mithrandir24601

@Gryphon It's not just about him shutting up - someone can be physically quiet about something and still have the same viewpoints, which directly affect their policies. Of course, I don't actually know anything about Trump's policies, so can't comment on that bit

Oh wait, I know of one, which I completely and utterly thoroughly disagree with

Shalvenay

@Gryphon I find myself in this odd progressive-libertarian corner of the political worldview space XD so there are plenty of things I disagree with both parties on

Mithrandir24601

12:12 AM

America is a country of extremes, from what I've gathered... There seems to be very little middle ground

Gryphon

@Mithrandir24601 Which one specifically? I don't agree with everything he's done, so I may agree with you.

Shalvenay

@Mithrandir24601 there is a middle ground, but it tends to be a country not-so-heard-from

Mithrandir24601

Oh Canada

:)

Gryphon

@Mithrandir24601 Our anthem has been changed.

(That actually fits the next line, too).

Shalvenay

@Gryphon what speaks to me about Trump though is a line attributed to John Boyd: "If your boss demands loyalty, give him integrity; but if he demands integrity, then give him loyalty."

what Trump saw in his interactions with the DoJ, by and large, was that in action

his mob-boss style loyalty demands backfired on him hard

Mithrandir24601

12:17 AM

@Gryphon I think it was this one specifically that was pointed out to me that I was thinking of: " The Justice Department released a memo instructing Department of Justice attorneys to take the legal position that federal law does not protect transgender workers from discrimination." but now I've found it, everything that I've bothered to read on this page

Gryphon

@Mithrandir24601 I'll take a moment to read through that, but before I do, I'll point out that, just looking at the headline, it's going to have a pretty major slant. That said, gimme a second to read it and see what the actual content is.

Mithrandir24601

To be honest, it's not a great start, considering it's a fairly long list and this is really my introduction to a chunk of stuff Trump has actually done

(as opposed to someone going, oh Trump did/said [thing] the other day)

Oh wait, here's another one I completely and utterly disagree with

Shalvenay

@Mithrandir24601 even within the US :)

@Mithrandir24601 yeah, that was pretty daft

Mithrandir24601

@Shalvenay Yeah - I miss Canada

Shalvenay

nobody seems to acknowledge the elephant in the room that the fossil-fuel gravy-train is going to come to an end sooner or later, and I for one would really rather the world economy not crash into a brick wall when that happens

that, and conservation of mass means that CO2 emissions serve as a useful first-order knob for fuels consumption

@Gryphon code7700.com/1993_integrity.htm << a good article expanding on the quote I mentioned, by the way

Gryphon

12:25 AM

OK, I've read about halfway through, and I've got to note that: 1) not much of this is actually done by Trump, although some of the rest could be Trump appointees. 2) a lot of the rest is based on religious freedom stuff I agree with (a la the wedding cake stuff). 3) A lot of this says stuff like "suggested" or "supported", meaning a lot of that legislation probably didn't get through, or they would have said it did. 4) The prison system thing I completely agree with the new stance on.

That was a response to the first page Mithrandir linked to.

@Shalvenay My issue with most anti-fossil-fuels positions is that they frequently (not always, but frequently, including the Green New Deal thing supported by a large fraction of the Democrats) also don't like nuclear power. Which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Shalvenay

@Gryphon I agree -- throwing away energy sources is a daft mistake, and that's what the anti-nuclear advocates are gunning for right now

their worst was them shutting down EBR-II and the IFR program during the Clinton admin

Gryphon

@Shalvenay I mean, we've had exactly one major nuclear disaster, and the reason for that is horrifyingly bad Soviet safety rules, not any inherent dangers. The only other issue with nuclear power is what to do with spent fuel, and burying them in mountians seems to be a good solution at this point.

Shalvenay

we basically had the key to high-performance, inherently-safe, proliferation-resistant, low-long-term-waste nuclear power

and then we round-filed it because of a bunch of scaredy-cats

@Gryphon well, horrifyingly bad safety at several levels (design, rulemaking, operations culture)

Gryphon

@Shalvenay I must admit I'm not familiar with those programs, probably due to being born shortly after the end of the Clinton administration.

Shalvenay

Experimental Breeder Reactor II

Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) is a sodium-cooled fast reactor designed, built and operated by Argonne National Laboratory at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. It was shut down in 1994. Custody of the reactor was transferred to Idaho National Laboratory after its founding in 2005. Initial operations began in July 1964 and it achieved criticality in 1965 at a total cost of more than US$32 million. The original emphasis in the design and operation of EBR-II was to demonstrate a complete breeder-reactor power plant with on-site reprocessing of solid metallic fuel. Fuel elements...

Gryphon

12:35 AM

@Shalvenay "Total cost of more than $32 million" and they shut this down? That's dirt cheap as nuclear plants go. Heck, that's probably cheaper than your average fossil fuel plant.

Shalvenay

12:55 AM

@Gryphon yeah -- it was entirely the anti-nuclear scaredy-cat faction that drove this to shutdown

Gryphon

@Shalvenay Just on the price side... before fuel costs, the price of a coal-fueled plant with that sort of energy production could easily be twice that high.

Shalvenay

@Gryphon yeah, it'll be interesting to see if any of the Gen IV concepts can gain traction

Secret

3:50 AM

0

Q: Physics breaking down - is it logically consistent?

I was just reading a sci-fi novel where physics "breaks down". While of course fiction is fiction and I don't expect this to happen in real life, when I tired to contemplate the concept I find that I cannot even imagine what it would mean for physics to break down. Is my imagination too limited o...

Very interesting question that probes the boundary between physics and magic

filed into the Theory of Magic

bilbo_pingouin

6:38 AM

No message in a day? oO

AndyD273

12:29 PM

In science, what do you call a theory that is non-falsifiable?

Like, you can't prove a negative, or something...

Gryphon

12:43 PM

@AndyD273 I mean, you can prove a negative. For example, it's not difficult for me to prove there are no squares with twelve sides. It's also not difficult for me to prove (beyond reasonable doubt anyway) that there are no elephants in the room I am in.

But to answer your actual question, I don't think there's a specific term. I doubt it comes up enough to need something shorter than "non-falsifiable theory".

AndyD273

@Gryphon You gotta be careful about those ninja elephants. They can hide in any shadow.

2

Gryphon

@AndyD273 I did qualify the statement with "beyond reasonable doubt".

Hosch250

@AndyD273 You might be looking for "axiom".

AndyD273

I've heard a lot of stuff about Trump being a racist or white supremist, but no one bothers to follow through with evidence. From what I can tell, those are code words for "I don't really have any real arguments so I'm going to spout off BS that is hard to defend against." It's basically a five year old attacking a grown up with silly string.

Gryphon

12:59 PM

@AndyD273 I've got to agree with you there. I haven't actually seen anything (besides really, really, really circumstantial stuff like his response to various instances of racially charged violence) to back up claims of Trump's racism either.

Hosch250

One of the most substantial arguments I've seen is that he supports Israel, and you can't support Israel without being racist against Palestinians.

AndyD273

@Hosch250 That's more main stream lies. Pro-Israel is not anti-Palestinian. Israel want's them to govern themselves, and has tried to make a way to let them be their own country quite a few times. The problem is that their offers keep getting rejected, and then Hamas fires rockets at them.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 Yeah, someone's going to have to explain to me how supporting Israel is racist, but supporting the Palestinians isn't anti-Semitic.

AndyD273

Why Isn't There a Palestinian State?

►

Hosch250

@Gryphon Same.

Gryphon

1:09 PM

I mean, the same people who constantly call Trump racist also defended Ilhan Omar when she said things that were not just anti-Israel, but legitimately anti-Semitic.

James

2:23 PM

@AndyD273 As a student of political science this is vastly over simplified and there is plenty of blame to go around both on the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

AndyD273

@James Oh, I'm sure. But that doesn't mean it's wrong either. They keep trying to set up a two state solution, and every time the arab world rejects it, often very violently. They don't want Israel to give the palestinians their own state, because that means that Israel would have it's own state too, and they would have to stop holding the Palestinians up as their reason to keep attacking israel. But of course there is tons of nuance, and neither side has clean hands.

Nex Terren

Good morning builders!

How's everyone doing?

Hosch250

2:41 PM

Good. And you?

Gryphon

3:06 PM

Good morning, Nex. I'm doing pretty well, got a test postponed till tomorrow, which is nice.

Nex Terren

@Hosch250 Good to hear, and can't complain.

James

@NexTerren Pretty good, played DnD last night. Shot a necromancer/archmage in the face with an arrow through a window. Assassination is fun.

Nex Terren

@Gryphon What's the test in?

@James Assassin, intellectual, and shadow-magic-related characters are, in that order, my favorite in high fantasy.

@James But wait. How min maxed is your guy that you can one-hit kill an important NPC like that? What I've played of DnD, NPCs tend to be more... spongy than that.

James

@NexTerren My character is a Rouge/Assassin, Warlock hybrid. He can create magical darkness, turn invisible and fly. He's also a decent pirate.

Gryphon

@NexTerren Calculus.

James

3:19 PM

@NexTerren So the assassin path for rogues in 5e allows you to automatically critical when you surprise someone, we also have a house rule that when you roll a natural 20 you get to double your damage. So my sneak attack is 5d6 but with the crit and the double damage it was 20d6, I added 4d6 for my bow, plus I used some 12d6 poison on the arrow. All together it was 48d6 damage. It came out to 190 something damage.

The DM was not amused...well he was but I totally screwed up his plans.

Nex Terren

@James Youch.

Gryphon

Umm, I've never actually played D&D but I have looked at rulebooks. That seems like excessive quantities of damage. What level are you?

Nex Terren

@Gryphon Critical damage tends to be high, and if they have a houserule that doubles damage... well doubling tends to screw up the math something royal. Not hating on the houserule, though, since I actually prefer more deadly combat.

I'm actually trying to start up another tabletop. I have one guy in person and two people remotely interested. We're trying to decide between D&D 4e or Shadowrun 5e. If we go Shadowrun I was thinking about putting it in a hybrid Altered Carbon/Bladerunner world.

James

@Gryphon 14. It was a fluke, but critical attacks (natural 1 and natural 20) are rare enough that we have house rules to make them really awesome (20) or really hurt (1).

Nex Terren

If we went D&D 4e, I was actually going to try something new with the world building.

James

3:24 PM

@NexTerren Yeah it was pretty spectacular.

Nex Terren

Okay, thoughts on a system of world building. Fun, or dumpster fire?

1. Each player comes up with three somethings for the world. Can be a few words, or up to a paragraph. Write each on a seperate piece of paper.
2. We shuffle papers. You take the 3 you now have and modify/change it as you see fit.
3. Each person vetos one idea of the 3 they have. The remaining two ideas are read out loud.
4. Players vote the ideas down to half (so if there's 5 players + 1 GM, now there's 6 ideas floating around)

Gryphon

@NexTerren That sounds kinda neat. Although you kinda gotta agree on a basic premise first (genre and probably the main conflict in the world) beforehand. But yeah, that sounds like a neat way to get input from everyone, without making anyone too unhappy.

AndyD273

3:44 PM

@Gryphon How much does Genre matter, so long as the three somethings are basic enough? I mean, you combine "space setting" with "sword hand to hand combat" and you get Star Wars.

@NexTerren I really like it.

What would be the end? For a RPG? Story?

James

4:00 PM

@NexTerren Interesting idea...probably not how I'd do it but certainly a way to do it. When I DM I usually have a world with an overarching conflict brewing, that is revealed over time, then I use the character's class/race choices to help fuel the narrative that gets things moving along.

@NexTerren If you like the sci-fi setting I'd recommend checking out Alternity. Its a cool system.

Nex Terren

@AndyD273 Tabletop RPG, hopefully. Was going to do this for my fantasy RPG setting if we went that direction. If it ends up happening. As we only have 3 players atm.

@James That's more or less how I've done over the... I dunno... dozen or so stories I've done in tabletops?

@James As opposed to Shadowrun 5e?

AndyD273

@NexTerren I think it would be an interesting story prompt system too. But I've never tabletop RPG'd, and have done some writing.

Nex Terren

@AndyD273 It's never too late to start. :D <Insert invitation here>

AndyD273

4:37 PM

@NexTerren Heh, I don't know how I'd schedule the time. I remember it was a pain getting the Monkey Lords thing scheduled. I'm not opposed to the idea

Nex Terren

@AndyD273 If you're interested, I can invite you to the Hangouts group. No pressure, and you can back out if it doesn't work out.

AndyD273

Sure. Even if I don't have the time to play, it might be interesting to observe

James

5:50 PM

@NexTerren I haven't actually played shadowrun, just an alternative if you're interested in one.

Nex Terren

6:02 PM

@James Fair. What's Alternity like?

James

It's an inverse d20 system, so you actually want low rolls to do well. Their are also tiers of success, Amazing, Good, Ordinary. So based on your skills, be it with weapons or computers or a whole bunch of other stuff, you can just succeed or succeed really well, for attacks this means more attacks and/or more damage on an amazing.

So for example if you have a high dex and a bunch of skill points in pistols. you could have 15/10/5. So a roll of 5 or less is amazing, 6-10, good, 11-15 ordinary and the rest are failures.

Each round has 3 phases, the amazing phase, the good phase and an ordinary phase, so if you get an amazing on initiative you get to act three times in the round.

Hrmm...what else...oh right, there are no hitpoints.

You have stun, wound and mortal damage types. You get a number of boxes in each based on your race/stats. Filling up damage types results in penalties to attacking and actions.

Nex Terren

Hm. The "health" reminds me of Fate, but besides that it sound fairly unique.

And you've enjoyed it, I presume?

James

Yeah, we played it for quite a while, by the end I was basically a robot (started as a robot human hybrid) I carried a modified ship based mass cannon/sniper rifle and had optics so good that I could hang outside of our spaceship in orbit (without protective gear) and snipe targets on the ground planet-side.

Gryphon

6:33 PM

@James Umm, I'm 99.9% sure that's entirely impossible, for standard definitions of "sniping". But it's a game, so whatever.

Nex Terren

@Gryphon So I don't want to see you're wrong but I don't follow. It's an extreme take requiring extreme capabilities, but I don't see how it's fundamentally unique.

James

@Gryphon One thing you can do in the game is augment your character with cyber parts...most races can only handle so much or risk going insane. But my android could handle alot. So I had optics installed that could zoom, do thermal, IR etc. I had nano repair bots and a computer so I could do all the calculations etc.

Oh and I had a weapon mount in my forearm...I could hold up my palm and blast someone with a hidden shotgun.

When we started playing we didn't really plan to play long, we were just trying it out, so our dm leveled us up at an accelerated rate so we were really powerful.

Nex Terren

@James GM: Uh... and... you guys take over the universe or something? Whosupforstartinganewgame? Anyone? Please?

Mephistopheles

7:46 PM

Though I'm still 200% MAD at you, here, have this sexy new all-solid-state battery:

phys.org/news/…

James

@NexTerren Actually we were a bit...sociopathic and angered all the major galactic powers so when the campaign died off the DM said we sort of wandered off to the fringes of space and each set up our own little spheres of influence.

AndyD273

8:04 PM

@Mephistopheles There are sooo many different battery formulas that are '5 years away' that it's kinda crazy. Some look super promising, but with that kind of energy density, you gotta be super careful and test a lot of stuff. I'm holding out for the nuclear diamond batteries that last 20-30 years.

Diamond Nuclear Batteries Are Forever… Sort Of

►

Mephistopheles

8:43 PM

@AndyD273 What's the power output? If I can outdo it with a hamster, a copper coil and a magnet, then nothankyou.

Nex Terren

@Mephistopheles 1. Break into popular Twitch streamer's house. 2. Display hamster during live stream. 3. Threaten to poke hamster with copper coil until death if the viewers don't produce enough power. 4. Magnets are cool, just hold onto that thing.

AndyD273

@Mephistopheles It's low right now, but in 5 years™ it'll have the output to power your phone, and then it'll last until your phone dies of old age. Also, try hooking your hamster up to to your phone, but better finish that round of candy crush before it tires out.

Mephistopheles

@NexTerren Unless they're the disciplines of Tamás Tihanyi, they wouldn't be able to send it. My contraption was just a crude way of converting glucose and proteins to AC.

@AndyD273 It's still better suited for charging up denser batteries.

Nex Terren

@Mephistopheles Hey, that's their problem to sort out. If they can't deliver, I'm using the coil on the hamster and nobody wants that.

Mephistopheles

@NexTerren Hamsters have the ability to come back from the dead as revenants and blackmail the russian maffia into assassinating you.

Hamster Looks at Camera [10 HOURS]

►

James

9:04 PM

@AndyD273 How freaking hot would this thing get?

AndyD273

@James Wouldn't have to get hot at all (that I know of) it operates on beta particle decay (or some words like that) from carbon 14 atoms pressed into a diamond, and then that beta radiation can be harnessed directly without being converted into heat first.

The video explains it better than I can

John Locke

10:41 PM

A technology that is '20 years away' will be 20 years away indefinitely.

John Locke

11:12 PM

Finished reading all of Erfworld

Transcript for