If you think about it, Herculaneum was technically a village frozen in time.

There are still a few dozen active persistent worlds. They all have different flavors. Some are role-play focused and some more hack-and-slash. Some are high magic and some low. You kinda just have to try a bunch out and see which shoe fits.

If you’re logged in as the DM, you basically have a cheat menu that allows you to spawn monsters, items, placeables, etc. It’s pretty darn cool.

Hey OP, you wanna go ahead and go to any neighborhood that’s been raided by ICE and tell them how the Dems are exactly just as bad as the GOP?

I’ll tell you.

This shit was already happening. Yes, it’s taken another step under Trump, but the incrementalism occurred with Democratic fascists as well. What Trump is able to do now would be impossible if Democrats hadn’t seized on the illegal powers dreamed up by Clinton and Dubya and ran with them.

Clinton, while fucking his interns, invented ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ and did nothing about persecution of gay people, and in fact, he was the one who signed DOMA. He invented “peacekeeping actions” so he could make war without calling it that, and he did just that. He cut the social safety net wholesale, making Americans poorer, and doubled down on poverty with his ‘free trade’ policies that helped usher in the era of companies moving offshore and killing US jobs. Oh, and he was a regular on Epstein’s island and the Lolita Express.

Obama let police run roughshod in Ferguson and New York City, brutalizing victims of police violence and people who lost their homes and decided to participate in Occupy. He appointed Tom Homan and put kids in cages. He made torture explicitly extra-legal. He walked into Flint and performatively drank a glass of water. He dropped 26,000 bombs in the last year of his presidency and left office with American wars brewing in seven countries. We also learned under Obama that police departments in the US have black sites and his presidency was kidnapping renditioning people to black sites in foreign countries. He also ordered drone bombings that killed American citizens.

We knew Biden was going to be shit when, in a time people wanted federal police reform, he mocked the change people wanted in his State of the Union address by calling for greater police militarization, and his presidency gave rise to ‘cop cities’. Even worse, it’s now possible for cops to hang out in a school that’s getting shot up, on camera, with zero consequences. After January 6 he did nothing meaningful to slow the evident rise of domestic fascism, showing a greater interest in keeping his scumbag son out of prison. He deported undocumented immigrants by the millions and continued the policy of caging kids. Biden earned the moniker ‘Genocide Joe’ for aiding and abetting the genocide in Israel, even when Israel escalated it into a manufactured famine, which is a war crime. Then he ran for president knowing he had dementia, paving the way for Trump’s second term, prioritizing his own ego over the country’s well-being.

This isn’t a ‘Democrats are better’ scenario. Most people just haven’t really paid attention to what Democrats do or have the short-term memory of a goldfish.

And before you try to argue they were powerless, consider that all three of these men had the presidency and control of Congress, just like Trump. They had all the power they needed to make real change. They just didn’t care.

And yet, still true.

I run a weekly campaign on Neverwinter Nights and this week was the annual Halloween event. After closing the evil portal I introduced the players to ‘Gertie’, basically a character I made that’s an amalgamation of all the weird grandmas you all met when trick-or-treating as kids (using the game’s Sea Hag model), and she asked each adventurer: “Now what are YOU supposed to be, little boy/girl?” and made one of them kiss her on the cheek because he was “so adorable”.

And then she gave them bags of candy.

That turned out pretty funny with how the various party members reacted and played along with the gag.

Yeah, it’s interesting having lived in the time when friendships actually just poofed.

I run an online D&D game with people I don’t know IRL, and I just kinda accept that one day I’m probably going to have a heart attack and disappear, and that’s okay.

These are not the people who raised me or the values they raised me with.

Agreed. The version of my parents that I loved is already dead and gone.

Anytime they bring up politics, I just tell them we can’t discuss it.

If they press the matter, I say the same thing, except the second time I add: “…because it’s going to make me hate you.”

They’ve been borrowing my car to drive for DoorDash since April 2024 and still haven’t figured out that this government they voted for is really fucking shitty.

Not sure it’s provable, really, but the idea for T-Rex having movement-based vision is (if I’m remembering correctly, forgive me as it’s been a while) something that came from the Jurassic Park story, and more specifically how frog vision works, since they used frog DNA to birth their dinosaurs.

I could be wrong, and if I am, it’s just an opportunity to learn a new thing. I put what I’ve read elsewhere in the thread.

Have a great day.

I can think of a few.

• That T-Rex’ vision wasn’t actually based on movement. (Probably)
• Feathered dinosaurs are a thing.
• What we were taught as the ‘reservation’ system more closely resembled concentration camps, and indigenous people were given a ‘choice’ between death marches and war.
• That the US military was actually on the wrong side of nearly every civilian movement for greater rights, from suffrage, to labor, and now freedom of speech and immigration.

I’m saving and investing every dollar I possibly can, and when I hit my number, I will retire.

It is just a job. I’m lucky to have a good one that I don’t dread doing every day, but I will quit the moment I hit my number and I don’t understand people who fetishize work when they could be retired in peace.

Bioshock

Yeah, the closet conservatives centrists probably didn’t enjoy being reminded of the reality of the political governance here in North America.

Yes, I am against tariffs, because we can look at history and observe that they are a stupid policy.

I’m particularly opposed to Trump’s method of tariff policy, because it’s chaotic, undisciplined, and doesn’t function within the safeguards outlined by federal law. It’s actually illegal for a president to declare tariffs, but Congress is controlled by Republicans who are resolute in their opinion that Donald will be allowed to rule by fiat.

In 12-18 months when the new international trade deals materialize that undercut US trade, I wonder if you will finally stop making excuses for this demented man.

LOL

Told you so: Inflation accelerates in June as investors eye tariff-related price increases

Another proven lie by our demented president that you swallowed hook, line, and sinker. Multinational corporations aren’t just going to be commanded to swallow a new tax on Donald’s orders when they have shareholders to answer to.

I don’t care what every other country does.

I get that, but it’s a stupid notion, especially when we can observe that every other major country pays less for health care and gets better health outcomes. It costs less to fly to Europe and get an MRI than it does to drive to the doctor up the street and get one here in the US. In most countries medical bankruptcy doesn’t even exist.

It’s absolutely silly that you think it’s a good thing that we do health care differently than the rest of the world. Taking pride in doing things differently than the rest of the world, and also in a way that’s observably stupid, is unreasonable.

Tax their rich less. Tax their middle class more.

LOLOLOLOLOL, now you’re just being absurd. Every other major country provides far more to the middle class for the taxes they pay, whereas here in the US, we don’t adequately tax the wealthy AND do not provide value to taxpayers for the taxes they pay. In return for our generosity we get a few hundred billionaires and war in seven countries at once.

I guess you have GoFundMe when you can’t afford your insulin, so there’s that.

You’re right, inflation hasn’t increased yet, but it will. Trump knows this, which is why he’s demanding that companies simply eat the increased cost. (Link and Link)

This is the other problem with how you’re trying to argue this. You’re simply denying the inevitable long-term effects because they haven’t yet fully materialized, but one can look at the trade deals happening outside the US to see the writing on the wall. (Link)

This is also the same reason that the negative effects of the BBB aren’t scheduled to kick in until after the mid-term elections.

To take advantage of misinformed people like yourself.

As for health care, again, you’re wrong. Every other major country on earth pays less and has better outcomes than we do, so monetarily and in terms of public health, what we can’t afford is the disastrous public-private partnership that currently exists, because all it’s accomplishing is killing people and fattening up CEO’s.

Your comment is a tad hysterical.

The critique here is how disorganized he is, changing tariff policy by the day, which is a notoriously stupid thing to do. The effects of this are felt in the market, the supply chain, and harm our international economic prospects as the rest of the world reconfigures the supply chain around the fact that the US is no longer a reliable trading partner. Tariffs also have a negative effect on inflation, as it constitutes a tax that is passed on to consumers.

Also, you’re wrong on health care. We should be spending more, not less. We’re the only major country in the world that doesn’t use people’s own tax dollars to provide for their health care, and it’s self-evident what a bad policy that is. We 100% shouldn’t be cutting health care spending just to hand tax breaks to billionaires, as billionaires are not stimulative to the economy. All they’re going to do is park it in a tax haven and do nothing with it.