i_drink_bleach [any, comrade/them]

It’s super cute. And the answer to your question is: You’re never too old.

So a liability.

I play FFXI. Our Paladins paladin. You tank like a beast or you GTFO. Damage comes from the Rangers and Samurai and Black Mages. Nobody expects the pally to do a god damn thing for DPS. The pally soaks damage and holds hate, the White Mages heal them. A good Paladin can keep hate off my Ranger. Good luck with that, BTW.

Of course Elmo would claim to be the top pally with the best DPS on the entire server. Y’know, because he’s full of shit.

“We’ll be on Mars by next year” 8 years ago. “Full self-driving next year!” 10 years ago. Sure bud. And I’m going to fart pixie dust tomorrow. YUP! Feckless removed. He is literally the most useless person that has ever lived. He is living proof that “meritocracy” is imaginary. Richest person on Earth and completely and utterly useless.

Edit: I accept that removal, despite it being used in the European context. Dude still sucks though.

Only when it’s convenient for them.

Late reply. My B.

I mean I could figure out how to buy a drone online (is it really that cheap?).

Yes. Drones are very cheap. Only the capability scales with cost. But in general drones are incredibly cheap compared to their capability.

Then I think I need to get a drone license to fly 'em around as practice

You do not need a license to practice flying drones. Neither the FCC nor FAA are going to come arrest you during the hour your battery lasts. Just don’t go fly over an airport or government building. You’ll be fine.

But I’d have no idea how to make the C4 nail-bomb or where to get the stuff for it.

Good. Keep it that way. I am absolutely not going to tell you, or anyone else, how to make explosives or weapons.

Nah… Exemption only applies to corpo scum. “We didn’t directly host it, our affiliate’s serve the ads through their own servers. We can’t possibly be held responsible for our affiliate links! That would be unfair!”

So here’s the thing about that: Those are expensive as fuck.

I can get an aerial drone off Alibaba, strap a bunch of C4 and nails on it for like $50 and we’re done and dusted. I don’t have to be a special forces operator. I just have to be able to fly a drone close enough to nail-bomb a bunch of dudes from a cozy remote control center. If I fuck up, well, there’s 10,000 more drones I can remote into. They’re cheap. No need to pay Boston Dynamics $300,000 per unit. I got that Alibaba hook-up.

Warfare is rapidly becoming pointless. What’s the ultimate end game? A bunch of drones versus a bunch of drones? What’s the point? I would like to think that this would make humanity realize the fruitlessness of warfare, but I’m not that naive. We’ll all go along with it. Why wouldn’t we? We’re all idiots.

Hoisted by their own petard. Poetic.

This. Why I use ad and script blockers religiously. You host the ads on your own site, it doesn’t get blocked. But you won’t. You know damn well that most of that shit is malware. None of these motherfuckers are going to host it on their own machines, not only because of the liability, but also because of the massive security risk. They’re fine serving it to you though.

No thanks.

“But we rely on serving you malicious software to survive!”

IDK. Get a better business model. Be a fucking communist. WTF do you want from me? I’m not letting you infect my hardware with your affiliate’s garbage. Not my problem.

Sorry… late reply (seems to be my MO). There was a fallout a long while ago between Ian (Forgotten Weapons) and Karl (InRange TV). It was a while back so I don’t really remember anymore. There was an arfcom thread that was absolutely dragging Karl for being queer inclusive that Ian refused to take part in. That’s your friend. You aren’t going to stand up for him? Which means he also doesn’t give a shit about queer people. Guess it would cost too much money.

Ian is fine, I guess. Not really. But it’s his job and all, and we’re all fucking mercenaries. He does “apolitical” gun content about historical arms. But he also takes being apolitical to an absolute fault. IDK. The whole thing just sucks.

So here’s my absolutely unsubstantiated hypothetical: Everyone was running black powder. Black powder is a slow-burn propellant that benefits enormously from a longer barrel. It also has a maximum velocity of around 1,200 FPS. Just under the speed of sound. How do you maximize that? Long barrels, and BIG bullets. If velocity is capped, make the biggest bullet you can, and make it go as fast as possible. F = M x V. If “V” is capped, then “M” is how you get more power. That’s how we got 4-bore hunting rifles. Capped at around 1,200 FPS? Then we’ll just shoot a fucking cannon shell. It’s a “stopping rifle” because even though it’s “slow” (by modern standards), you still got hit with a 1/2 pound of lead moving at 1,200 FPS.

However because black powder was so absolutely filthy, the idea of an auto-loader was preposterous. They still had cased cartridges. Revolvers (the cutting edge) could barely handle the fouling load of black powder. Then we developed double-base smokeless powder. That changed the game. Now it’s all about heat management. And big brass casings are excellent heat-sinks that get kicked out of the system.

I’m just rambling. Old guns are interesting. They were trying to approach some omega point, but they had no hope of getting there. Their entire “operational doctrine” was fucked to begin with. I mean, that C93: look at that thing. I’m sure it made sense at the time, but holy fuck. What a mess.

DAMN! Homey coming in with pics and everything. Props.

I still hate giving Ian views given his arfcom bullshit against Carl, but he’s still the best source of this information, unfortunately.

The thing that kind of blows my mind the most though is that for so long of a time the 19xx series was not a tilt-barrel Browning-action. It had a weird drop-barrel action contingent on a cross-bar, and if that bar failed, you were eating slide.

Yeah, the solo pics absolutely don’t do justice to how massive those pistols are. Still the hottest part of the slide to grip.

It’s wild that the originals were such absolute dogshit. Just terrible pistols. But after 100+ years of refinement they are one of the best pistols in the world (I said it; fight me XD).

Right? It’s such a weird UX choice. If you’re running right hand and rack the slide from the front to clear a jam, the jam is blocked from ejecting by your thumb chungus. If you’re running left hand, the port is blocked by your entire palm. I guess unless you daintily pinch the front of the slide with your thumb and two forefingers (while of course keeping your pinky raised like a proper gentleman). Also, that’s the hottest part of the slide. It’s just so odd.

“Hope this helps in the future when you try to gatekeep culture”

He says, as he gatekeeps culture. Fascinating specimen.

This also fascinates me. According to our definition of life viruses are not actually alive. But by that same definition, fire is as “alive” as a virus.

I tend to agree. Fire isn’t alive. It does technically slot into a lot of our requirements though. Viruses aren’t really alive either. Without a host they just sit dormant until they either decay from the environment or eventually find a host. Without a host body they are incapable of acting. But barring harsh environmental circumstances, they can technically lie dormant for eternity. Something “alive” things cannot do.

But we can’t just define it like porn: “I know it when I see it.” That’s not an acceptable definition. Without getting into solipsism, and p-zombies, and blah blah blah; I’m alive. You’re alive. Cats are alive (and also extremely cool).

I don’t think LLMs are alive. I don’t even think they are intelligent in any capacity. But at what point does an AI become “alive?” How do we define that? A Turing test? If it passes a Turing test, it still doesn’t meet several of the requirements for “life” as currently defined. What then? Do we redefine “life”, or do we relegate a new form of life as “non-life”, to be used and abused? That seems horrifying.

I have no answers. It’s just something I find really interesting to think about.

I miss the old internet. When everything was just fucking chaos. Search engines were absolute trash, and it was frustrating, but also it was great. Search something one day, completely different results tomorrow. You never knew what you were going to find. Fucking web rings. Websites with graphic and UX design that was a legitimate cognitohazard. Just some of the weirdest shit you ever saw. Better times…