Oldmandan

joined 1 year ago
[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Royal Tyrell is a great stop, I remember going there when I was about that age to visit my great grandmother. The Alberta badlands in general are neat, worth stoping by some hoodoos or other similar formations if you get the chance.

As far as other stuff goes:

The Fraser River and Hell's Gate in particular is worth a stop, when you get to BC. (Also a good menory from that trip.)

And while (as an Ontarian) I fully understand the desire to drive though the province as fast as possible, there are lots of great scenic spots in the western half of the province, along Huron and Superior. (As you get into the Sudbury>Thunder Bay stretch, in particular.) There are also some beautiful spots more in my neck of the woods (Thunder Bay>Manitoba border stretch) but by and large those are further from the highway and more of a trek to visit. :P

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

This would be super tempting, gear up my tanks and non-magic dps, grind out some manderville weapons, etc... but BG3 just came out. :P Maybe if I time it to get the free playtime right at the end of August. :P

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

"Responsible, targeted" ah yes, because cutting spending below projections in literally all sectors during economic turmoil and high inflation is either of those things.

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I told myself I wouldn't read unrelated papers at work, but here we are. :P Yeah, as expected, the actual paper is way more informative about the structural properties, and about the limitations. (Difficulty fabricating larger samples without voids, said voids resulting in much lower strengths and much less plasticity, uncertain tensile strength, etc.) Fascinatingly though, (at least to me, not having known the details about DNA based metamaterials :P) the details of the properties should be tunable by way of changing the DNA lattice structure. Which makes it a two-part engineering problem, figuring out how to manufacture it at scale, and determining optimal lattice structures for different applications. Definitely exciting, and will be big once we figure these things out.

But that's not really what I was talking about. While I get that this is an article geared to laymen/the general public, I do think we should be holding science communication to a higher standard. What was discovered is exciting, but we don't know how it can be used yet, or if it will ever be practical to do so. Overview is fine, I'd just like some more qualifiers and less speculation. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like some more care would do a lot to improve overall scientific literacy and trust in the scientific community. /shurg

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 29 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Always a little annoyed at articles like this; "strength" doesn't tell me anything. If this is 5x more resistant than steel to deformation, but then shatters catastrophically, that limits its use cases substantially. Likewise, compressive, tensile and shear strength are all different properties, only one of which is referenced at all. Still very cool, and I look forward to seeing how it develops and learning more details about its capabilities (when I have more time I'll read the paper), but vague terminology like this has a bad habit of making stuff sound way more revolutionary than it actually is. /shurg

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 year ago

Eh... it tracks well enough I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Right wing talking heads push so hard at young men, it's fucking exhausting. And the slightest attempt to engage with or learn about current events and politics tends to lead to social media algorithms jamming alt-right nonsense down your throat, because that reactionary, provocative/offensive content generates more engagement. And so much of it is trying to frame the normal struggles of growing up (sex and sexuality, responsibility and expectation, growing independence (fiscal and otherwise) etc, etc) as things being inflicted on them by others, things thay can be simply solved by stripping power from these groups. (Immigrants, women, people of colour, LGBTQIA+, etc.)

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think so, I think the damage buff is a flat 90 AR. Which isn't amazing, (Scholar's Armament, by comparison can give like 300+ on the right build), but given that it lets you double dip, to an extent (buffing a Flame Art or Fire weapon) it's still solid. Flame Art Erdsteel Daggers w/ Flaming Strike was a fun build when I messed around with it. (Stack Flame physic, FGMS, Vow, Fire Scorpion, Winged Curved Sword, Ritual Sword, etc, slap stuff with absurdly fast attacking ~1000 AR weapons.)

The attack portion of the AoW should scale with Faith (or Strength, depending whether it's set to Flame Art or Fire, I believe) though, IIRC.

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

IIRC, there is a bit more complexity than that to the Pirahã understanding of numeracy. Relative quantity is something they're just fine at understanding, (with words for single/less, plural/more and same) it's abstraction of quantities to tokenized values where they struggle. Which, I suppose, also interestingly lines up with the study results; the initial training period resulted in nodes associated with quantity, but those nodes were separate/unrelated to numeracy systems that developed with additional training.

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Doesn't help that a lot of this gets internalized, I think. Like, fuck, there are plenty of terms that seem reasonably descriptive of me (bi, demi, enby, etc.) but... I'm super straight passing, and not super driven by sex or romantic relationships, so it's like... I never really have to deal with these labels in my day-to-day? I stick he/they in stuff when people ask for pronouns, style myself somewhat androgynously, am well aware 90s David Boreanaz is objectively eye-candy, and I haven't gone on a date in... years, because I just don't really care. But claiming those labels feels improper, somehow. Both from a "born and raised christian, que toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia" perspective and a "I am in a position of extreme privilege where I haven't had to face many of the struggles common to the LGBTQIA+ community, claiming a place there seems insulting" perspective. /shurg

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is actually really cool. Kinda want a proper deck like this on good cardstock, TBH. Love the way you use the characters, referencing the themes of duality in the game, associating them with the card's meanings and inversions.

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With luck, maybe people will realize all the stink around the deal being audited (which is the auditor general's job, as much as Ford wants to pretend otherwise) is suspicious as hell, the audit will happen and he won't be able to. That's perhaps too optimistic, though.

[–] Oldmandan@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do something similar to Sprint, basically, you can move at double your speed for a round (so 4x total, dashing) but have to roll a Con save or take a level of Exhaustion. Each time you use this ability without resting, the DC goes up by 5. (Starts at 10.) Which feels about right, IMO. Lets a max-level Monk/Barbarian match (or exceed, with certain feats/races/subclasses) Usain Bolt for speed, but only for a short duration, even if they have a superhuman constitution.

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