And why is it that people don’t want to see any ads at all? Some people argue that ads can help you discover products and services you might want to buy? Well, I tried that.

Got a separate computer just for this experiment. Installed Chrome, used online services that have ads etc. I exposed myself to tracking and ads for a while, and the ads I saw on that computer are still completely irrelevant. I’ve even told some sites exactly what I like, and the ad targeting still sucks.

Nobody benefits from this, except for the ad companies. Advertisers loose their money, and they get no sales in return (at least not from mme). Ad companies and related platforms get the money for showing me stuff I will never buy, while the ads infuriate me at every turn.

Even in the best case scenario where the ad companies have all of my data, they still can’t figure out what I might want to buy. The whole idea of ads is just completely broken. On my other computers where I actually do more serious stuff, I use every tool in my arsenal to block all of this digital cancer.

Energy is a peculiar word, because it’s used by new-age loonies (and scammer), sci-fi authors and even real scientists. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a scientist use the longer term “energy field”, but the first groups certainly seem to love it. When scientists speak of fields, they prefer to specify exactly what kind of field it is (e.g. magnetic or electric).

If I ever get to own a (farming) field of my own, I’m going to name it “Energy Field”, just to mess with everyone. Maybe I should set up a solar panel there, so that the name actually made sense.

That article says it’s 32 768 Hz, which is strangely close to some of the figures you can find on wikipedia.

I don’t even need to come up with my own BS, when I can just copy some crazy nonsense written by other people. Here’s a sample:

UNDERSTANDING CRYSTAL VIBRATIONAL FREQUENCIES

Every crystal on Earth possesses its own energetic signature, measured in Hertz (Hz) or megahertz (MHz). These frequencies interact with our body’s energy field, creating resonance that can promote healing and balance.

As if sources even matter when traversing this deep in Crazy Town, but there you go anyway.

I asked GPT and Copilot some pride related questions, and they were both pretty supportive. GPT went into more detail, while Copilot used more rainbow emojis. Either way, I didn’t see any right-wing rhetoric.

I can see that fedora was very popular back in the day.

That’s a common problem with these titles. If you want to make them short and snappy, you’ll either end up with something vague or straight up incorrect.

I see an angry space kraken.

Before clicking, I already knew it was standupmaths. Seems like there are lots of like-minded people here.

Too good to be true. Looks awesome, but the perfection of it looks really suspicious. Still could be true anyway. We see all sorts of funny patterns in clouds all the time, so why not in aurora as well.

“Fungal zombie spiders“ check almost all the boxes. Just add some demonic black magic, and you’re all set.

Sounds like in this case you need to switch a magnetic field on and off. That could be the bottle neck.

You can mitigate that issue to some extent by making the videos short. As long as the user count remains relatively small, the storage and bandwidth costs aren’t going to spiral out of control. Eventually you’ll have so many millions of active users that you’ll also need to figure out a way to get a steady source of revenue. I wonder how Loops will tackle that issues. Some mastodon instances already have a small yearly fee, so I guess video instances could do that as well.

Well, bullets are pretty small, but that’s not going to help when they travel so fast. Same applies to flying rocks too.

Most meteors that reach all the way to the surface are really small. Bigger impacts are rare, buy not impossible.

Sounds like a fun (and terrifying) idea for homebrew rules. I asked Mistral to write suitable rules, and here’s what what I ended up with.

–

When a character contracts COVID-19, they must make a Constitution saving throw (DC 15). On a failed save, the character develops Long COVID. The effects of Long COVID are varied and can include fatigue, shortness of breath, and other physical ailments. However, the most feared complication is brain injury.

Brain Injury

Brain injury from Long COVID reduces a character’s Intelligence score. To determine the extent of the damage, the character must make a roll based on their current Intelligence score:

Roll a d20: The result of this roll will determine the severity of the brain injury. Modify the Roll: Subtract the character’s Intelligence modifier from the roll. For example, if the character has an Intelligence score of 14 (modifier +2), subtract 2 from the d20 roll. Determine Intelligence Loss:

• 1-5: Minor brain injury. The character loses 1 point of Intelligence.
• 6-10: Moderate brain injury. The character loses 2 points of Intelligence.
• 11-15: Severe brain injury. The character loses 3 points of Intelligence.
• 16-20: Critical brain injury. The character loses 4 points of Intelligence.

New Hard Maximum

Once the Intelligence loss is determined, the character’s new Intelligence score becomes their hard maximum for the rest of the game. This means that even with magical healing, potions, or other means of restoring Intelligence, the character cannot exceed this new maximum.

Oh, wait. That means that if you do drop to zero, you’ll be in permanent coma for the rest of the game without any hope of recovery. I guess I should add some exception, that allows to you recover back to 1 point, but no higher than that.

Indeed! Too bad facts don’t work when talking to conspiracy theorists. Regardless, that’s an interesting observation to the rest of us.

I guess I should have been more specific. People who actively choose not to get vaccinated, and get terribly ill as a direct result of their delusional thinking, can blame themselves.

If you took all the sensible precautions, like getting vaccinated, but ended up with long covid regardless, that’s not your fault. You did what you could, but some times even that isn’t enough.

Even lower intelligence score? As far as D&D rules are concerned, you would get knocked unconscious if your intelligence drops to zero.

Oh, that makes sense.

Many instances allow much longer messages, but it depends on the admin and how they see it. Could even be thousands of characters in some cases.

Anyway, mastodon integration is nice, but there are some serious issues too.