It Breaks Down

When I was researching a couple of military campaigns for use in GURPS I was struck by how long it would take to get fire or air support.

Minutes.

In a game that is famous for resolving combat in seconds.

I think that says a lot that, in the real world, that real troops in contact were able to fight for five to twenty minutes waiting for support to arrive.  Sometimes even more minutes while the aviators got themselves aligned with the situation.

I think I know how to make it work, but it will impact the player's expectations about modern combat.

I bumped into it before when trying to explain that the 3e rules let far too many hits happen unless you tossed in some of the, unpopular, optional rules.

They'd become accustomed to the world acting like a shooting range and the bad-guys being the paper targets.

Extending the ranges that contact begins at would go a long ways towards making the entire battle last longer in game time rather than table time.

I see running it in combat turns in small spurts to simulate the pulse of the battle.

I don't see a chance to test my idea any time soon, but...

Wanna Don't Wanna

My tank of deal with it energy is a bit low.

I have my choice of three events that friends have invited me to and it means choosing between friends and...

I'm feeling all or nothing about it.

First event will be, essentially, hanging out by myself because those friends are super social and will be flitting around like butterflies chatting with everyone else the whole time because this socialization shit is easy for them.

Second event is a bit of a haul and although I've been invited, I'm an outsider to this group now.  I put myself there, and it's been difficult to summon the energy to get back inside.

Third is a celebration of a business friends put back together after a partnership exploded.  It's got much the same trouble as the first event for me.

Normally things don't line up like this and two of the friend groups attend the same event and that means not either being alone or feeling like I'm intruding.

And I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm intruding and unwelcome.

That follows naturally from watching group after group continuing on as if I'd never existed when I depart.

You want to really feel like you don't matter?  Check up on a social group you left behind and see if they were more than mildly affected.

Better not.  You may discover that they were relieved and happy you finally stopped showing up.

At least I know I did one thing good for them.

Fuck You Bob

The Florida Sheriff's Association owns the Florida Senate.

They don't like us unwashed citizens carrying guns, and therefore nothing ever comes to a vote.

The sheriff to the south says, "[I am a] staunch opponent of open carry. We don’t need open carry in Florida."

Yet he and his deputies open carry.

It's not open carry he opposes, it's US doing it.

Fuck you Bob.

Also, The Florida Sheriff's Association claims 73,566 members against 22,537,160 citizens.

0.327% of the population is dictating what the other 99.673% gets to do.

That smacks me wrong.

Our new senate president, Ben Albritton, says, "“Let me be clear about this: I’ve supported law enforcement my entire life. It’s the way I was raised. And I’ve been super consistent as a legislator to support law enforcement in Florida, and I encourage you to check that record. And I stand with them today in opposition.  They oppose it. And I trust my law enforcement officials. And that’s where I stand.”

Fuck the voters as long as the Kings Men are happy.

I'm getting sick of this state of affairs.

AN-94

I love how the internet keeps expanding our knowledge of obscure firearms.

Part One:

I'll add part two when they post it.

"Substantial" Financial Compensation

Because I actually hit the FCC "report this caller" web page, a while ago I got a letter and an email from a law firm suing a robocaller.

I gave my assent to join the class by checking the box and returning their self-addressed stamped envelope.

Then I promptly forgot about it after joking about where I'd spend the whole dollar I'd get from the, estimated, $100 per member.

Today I got a check for just over $50.

This breaks the record for class settlements for me.  The previous record holder was Remington and the $20 I got because of something about 870 shotgun barrels.  I got that check because excluding myself from the class was not an insignificant effort.  I spent it on a hat from Remington that I have since lost.

Scared Them Off

The people I was exchanging emails with from Operation Blazing Sword have gone silent.

This has happened before.

I sometimes suspect that once they learn that I am not actually gay they decide they'd rather not learn about guns.

I've fired off a, "hey, you still interested?" message.  If I don't get a reply...

I'll Let Krusty Take This One

Have you seen the new Jaguar ad?

Here it is:

 Krusty says it best:

All I can think is, "Do you still sell cars?"

Compliance

It just occurred to me that if SJGames isn't going to do more GURPS and Steve is someone I don't want to have any of my filthy, deplorable, garbage lucre:

My rules interpretations and house rules are now the official rules.

I'm the only person I am in contact with who games who even tries to do GURPS anymore.

Pathfinder is what the group who discovered they were happy to be rid of me is playing now.

So if they were to allow me to come back in some form, they'd be playing my interpretation of GURPS because I'd be the GM and my word would be law.

All things considered, I am not even certain that GURPS would be better than Pathfinder for traditional fantasy settings.

I trend to non-traditional stuff, so...

Hell, from what I've read of the newer versions of AD&D, I'd pick 2nd edition.  It's stripped down AD&D and if I'm going simple, I'm gonna go all the way.

SJGames, in the process of abandoning GURPS resurrected The Fantasy Trip.  If they wanted my filthy, deplorable, garbage lucre it's just $35 to get the rules in pdf form.  I remember playing Melee back in the day.  Pity.

Put The KoolAid Down

I went looking for GURPS 5e rumors and encountered several links to this from just before election day.

Steve.

Remember when you got raided by the Secret Service?  I recall you being displeased by that.

What you are advocating for is a more powerful Secret Service and a weaker court to extricate you from your alleged criminal activities.

Yes you are.

I'm posting his tirade below in case he decides to memory hole it:

Dunno Why

I keep goofing around with GURPS shit and I never get to play.

If I am very lucky, I get one or two sessions when FuzzyGeff makes his annual pilgrimage to Florida to visit Marv and I.

I loved tabletop role playing games once.

It was my main social activity at one time.

Now?

I do some reality checks and make characters that will never be played.

I polish the cannonball of converting Twilight: 2000 to GURPS 4e.

And...?

It's a little depressing.

Especially when I learn how woke and TDS the people who make and sell the games I still love are.

Last Time This Happened We Got A New Edition

According to the Tech Level and Starting Wealth timeline in GURPS: Basic Set (Characters) 4e on p.27 in 2004:

TL9 begins in 2025.

That moves us from the digital age to the microtech age.

I'm not seeing it.

Back in 1996 and 3eR TL7 (modern) ran from 1951 to 2000 and TL 8 (Spacefaring) ran from 2001 to 2050.

I've heard rumors that GURPS 5e is under consideration.  It might even find a footing with Wizards of the Coast being so entirely too woke now.

SJGames is pretty woke too, so...  Steve's post about Roe v Wade made me stop looking to see what's new at SJGames.  I expressed my concerns back then too.  Might not be a viable alternative.

Especially since 5th editions are often massive clusterfucks.  Both Hero and Traveller have massive tomes of dross masquerading as their 5th editions.

In Traveller's case, so much so that Mongoose made what is effectively a LBB 2e that's far better than the game that Marc W Miller published.

Cleanish Bill Of Health

I'm not a prisoner, I'm a free cat!

Mist had her follow-up appointment today.

Her ear infection is all better!

It's confirmed that she's deaf.  The vet says that this will not bother her much as she's already very visual to compensate.

Her cocked head and slightly wobbly gait are likely from an illness her mother was carrying while she was in the womb.  Again, this shouldn't bother her much and she will adapt.

We can spend a shit-ton of money to find out exactly why she's got that cocked head, but it won't cure it so we're opting to skip it.

Nothing about being deaf or having this mild neuro problem really affects how happy and full her life will be.

Just to prove that point, she spent the entire day chasing, first, Shadow and, then, Beeper.

There was much scampering and everyone involved seemed to be having fun.

If only Beeper and Shadow could interact so.  They still hate each other for no apparent reason.

Are You A Space Fan?

Pretty neat stuff.

Things I Learned Today

Australia has alps.

I learned this because a trivia list about Australia mentioned that the Australian Alps get more snow than the Swiss Alps.

The image that we get of Australia here in the USA is not a place that has green growing things or snow.

I blame Hollyweird.

Distribution

Technology does not advance evenly.

For example: Afghanistan lacks almost all of the infrastructure we take for granted in the US and their manufacturing base is, maybe, GURPS TL4.  TL5 tops.

Yet TL8 electronics abound.

This made me rethink a lot of things in a Traveller campaign.  The TL3 non-industrial agricultural world with a feudal government is going to have state of the art consumer goods because some free-trader is going stop off and trade a load of the stuff in exchange for whatever the they can get.

Free traders are experts at arbitrage.

A non-industrial agricultural world might (almost certainly) have the wealth to purchase modern farming equipment even if they cannot be manufactured or serviced with local know-how.  The Imperial equivalent to Allis-Chalmers will also send teams of people to do that service post-sale for a fee.  It might even be appealing to these people to live in a pastoral, low pressure, low-tech environment between jobs.  They won't really be giving up much in comforts, consumer stuff is widely available!

Compact, self-contained, fusion generators are going to be prime trade-goods.

I don't think there's a good real-world model for the kind of trade that operates on the fringes and free-traders serve.

It also hits me that someone from that TL3 world, as a citizen of the Imperium, has the right to enlist in the Imperial military.  That heavily implies that the Imperial military has a remedial program that brings these volunteers up to speed on modern technology.

Linothorax

YouTube disagrees with GURPS.

It happens.

I've watched several videos where cloth and linen armor does better than expected.

There's a bit of an explanation in an optional rule...  I'll get to that.

But one claim that comes up, over and over, is that the linothorax was lighter than a similar level of protection from bronze.

In GURPS a linothorax is either reinforced medium layered cloth, DR 3 with DR 4 vs cutting; G$437.50, 25 lb. or reinforced heavy layered cloth, DR 4 with DR 5 vs cutting; G$750, 35 lb.

DR 4 bronze is medium segmented plate for G$3,600, 24 lb.  Very similar in protection and weight with the medium reinforced cloth!

DR 3 bronze light plate is G$4,000, 8 lb.  No bonus against cutting, but MUCH lighter than reinforced medium cloth.

DR 6 bronze medium plate for G$10,000, 20 lb.  Lighter and better protection than reinforced heavy cloth.

Linothorax is much CHEAPER than bronze armor and probably a lot more comfortable.

Now, that optional rule:  On Low Tech p.102 under Blunt Trauma and Edged Weapons you need to get a hit that punches more than twice the DR to get the bonus from cutting weapons.

So reinforced medium cloth would need a hit of 9 or better to cause actual cutting damage.  A hit of 5-8 is just crushing; it will also fail to reach the skin so no effects from poison and the like.

This optional rule helps explain why cloth armors are performing better in youtube tests than we expected.

DR 2 light layered cloth prevents a cut from up to 4 points of damage, even if the wearer took 2 points of crushing damage from it.  The testing media almost never has a way to measure the impact under the armor and would rule that a no-penetration hit is complete protection.

A ST 12 person swinging a short-sword will do 1d+2 cutting damage and that averages 5 points of damage, so most of the time they're penetrating the light layered cloth and getting the cutting bonus and doing 4 points of damage.  That same hit against reinforced medium cloth will just get one point of crushing damage through (and be ruled as didn't hurt on YouTube).

He's Right You Know

Silicon Graybeard pointed out that the goal isn't delegislation, but deregulation.

There's a lot of stuff going on that's black letter law and most of that is working for us, because we get to vote on the cocksuckers that pass law.

Regulation, on the other hand, is created and implemented by people we never get a voice in whether they are hired or fired.

Nuking nearly all the regulations and retaining the laws, in most cases, leaves us a best case scenario.  In the places where it doesn't there's an opportunity for a congresscreature to make law to address the lack created by killing a good regulation.  Odds are they'd have the backing of the populace.

Deregulation, also, has a much smaller and much slower effect on all the jobs that exist because you need specialists to navigate the minefield of regulation.

Utopia Means Nowhere

You can't make utopia because it cannot be made.

Impossible.

Socialists don't understand this while they also fail to account for human nature.

Libertarians don't understand this while they also fail to account for human nature.

They just head opposite directions in misunderstanding people and allow evils of similar stature.

It was L. Niel Smith's rants about anarchy that convinced me that the libertarians were off the reservation and never coming back.  They were a stopped clock that used the fact that they were right twice a day to pitch that they were never wrong.

There was one group in America that had figured out human nature.

The Founding Fathers.

Ever notice they didn't do democracy?  They did a republic.

They didn't seek unfettered liberty in what they'd done.  They sought to maximize liberty, knowing that it needed some restriction to truly flourish.  The tree of liberty needs to be pruned carefully, as it were.

Without such care, it kills itself.

This is why libertarians and globalists don't understand tariffs.

The lowest price is meaningless to a consumer who doesn't have a job.

International Socialism, Libertarianism, and Globalism all reject the nation-state model.

Yet the nation-state is the only proven model running.  Yes, it's the worst way to do things; except for all the others.  Just like republican government.

You Need Congress To Cooperate

Deleting entire cabinet agencies might be a worthy goal, but...

You need Congress to play ball and the margins don't support that mandate.

Especially when you consider the reality of making thousands of normal citizens unemployed from their decidedly non-government jobs.

Those folks are going to be on the phone to their congress creatures.

Making government smaller is never as simple as it seems.

I, for one, am getting fed up with unintended consequences from do-gooders who don't really understand the problem.

Killing a government department might do good, but doing it all at once will produced a kick-back that guarantees that department will be back with gusto.

Never mind that doing it all at once would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Libertarians and globalists are really bad at people.

Complications

The TV aerial is up.

It's not, yet, connected to any TV.

The coax cable we'd intended to use turns out to be the feed for the Wi-Fi router.

So we need to run a second coax cable down to the living room TV, and we're hoping we can utilize the existing cable in the bedroom.

Cultural TL

I've been thinking about the Tollense valley battle of late.

It really looks like a native TL0 area had some imported TL1 weapons, but that's not what stands out.

TL0 is stone age.

Cavemen.

American Indians.

My research into Neanderthals and the Sioux put some blinders on with regards to another aspect implicated in Tollense.

Culture.

It appears that the culture of the area was more similar to what would later be called Gauls.

More emphasis on agriculture and domesticated animals than the two stone-age cultures I've been dealing with.

In the real world, the tech level doesn't just change one night.  Some things advance faster than others and wool is a TL0 fabric.  Lacking domesticated sheep, the Sioux never developed wool clothing.  Prehistoric Germany did.

It's really made me want to make a TL0+1 fantasy setting where the native TL is 0 but TL 1 equipment is available at double price.

Stone Knives And Bearskins

We are embarking on putting up a broadcast television aerial.

Turns out there's lots still being transmitted over the air and the inlaws want to watch it.

They cut the cord and find they miss a couple of shows from the "local programming" section of cable.

All Cats All The Time

Mist had a rough morning yesterday.  After a night blasting out both ends, she looked like she'd slipped back to as bad as when we took her to the vet on the 7th.  We cleaned a bunch of gunk out of her ears and have been making sure the ear drops are going in, rather than AT her ear canal.

It seems to have a had a positive effect and she flat REFUSED to be contained in the carrier for the evening.  She might be deaf, but she can meow and howl.  So she spent the night on a nest of blankets in one of the stools at the dining room table.

As you can see, she's still looking contented at being distributed to our door.

We have no footage of her and Shadow tearing around the house playing because they're moving too fast.

Beeper, on the other hand, has no idea what to do about an intruder that's not intimidated by her in the slightest.  I think it scares her a little.

But she will allow herself to be consoled and chill between my legs on the recliner when I read.

Bear just hides in the linen closet.  He's like The Dude.  He abides.

Machines To Make The Machines

There was an old BBC show called "Connections" and it was fascinating.

They'd tell you how two, seemingly, unrelated items or events led from one to another with lots of steps in between.

It really colored how I looked at technology and it's why I notice some things that some people don't or I question things that others don't examine.

Today's connection:  Are the meson gun and nuke damper related?

Yes.

It's explicitly stated in GURPS: Traveller.

It isn't in LBB Traveller, but I'd speculated that they had to be related because the meson gun is keeping the mesons from decaying until they're at the desired distance; and that implies we're manipulating shit like a nuke damper does.

Smush Smush Boom

The Traveller nuclear damper works by weakening the strong nuclear force and causing the nuclei of the warhead to, kinda, fall apart at a molecular level.

It stops fission from the shed of neutrons, that prevents the chain reaction.

It stops fusion by keeping the two hydrogen nuclei from sticking together well enough to form a helium atom and that prevents the release of energy normally associated with it.

In a real world nuke, that'd keep it from working because all of our fusion weapons use a fission explosion to get the heat/pressure up far enough to force the fusion reaction.

In Traveller, many warheads dispense with the fission stage and use the insanely miraculous gravity manipulation technology to say to two H atoms, "now kiss!"

Under a damper, they bump into each other and...

Well the grav pinch is still happening, but where's the kaboom?

Since the grav pinch is designed to happen once and briefly, I speculate that you end up with a warhead with dead capacitors and burned out grav plates with a capsule of tritium in the center.

Iowa You're In Iowa

"On a long lonesome highway, East of Omaha," is in Iowa.

Probably Iowa Route 92.

Though, Bob Seger said it was in Dubuque, that's on US20.

Inefficient By Design

Considering that the US government is designed for grid-lock, making it efficient is probably unconstitutional.

Something you can say about actual fascism is that it's efficient.  Tyrannies do trend that way.

One of the warts of liberty is inefficiency in government, but letting the invisible hand loose to find what efficiency the people want for themselves.

I am holding my breath here.

Exciting And New

The sharp eyed might notice that I changed the font at the top of the page and the post titles.

I'm whimsical that way.

Every time I make a font choice I am reminded of a couple of acquaintances who were VERY judgemental about fonts.

Papyrus and Comic Sans drove them absolutely insane for no reason that I could ever discern.  But I think those people were hipsters and secretly wanted to use them, but they were popular and therefore beyond the pale.

Can't do anything that everyone else does... unless it's toe the liberal line in a college town.

Ever notice that about hipsters?  They're joiners, but they're hypocrites about it.

May Contain What?

Costco is recalling, and destroying, 79,000 pounds of butter because someone forgot to mention that butter might contain milk on the label.

MIGHT?

Bear in mind that the ingredients list says "cream," already.

This is why we're fucked.

The morons with food allergies can't fucking read and need to be told, special, that something made with something they're allergic to is something they're allergic to.

I say this as someone with a food allergy!

I'm allergic to mushrooms.  I've made it MY job to find out what has mushrooms in it and avoid those things.  I read the ingredients, I know the fungus byproduct names.

It's my ass on the line.

But for fuck's sake.

Butter is dairy.  If you have a fucking milk allergy, you're allergic to dairy!

DON'T BUY BUTTER REGARDLESS OF THE SAFETY WARNING!!! 

We need to restore some common fucking sense to food and cut off the FDA's nuts.

Smashing The Box

Crispy IV is the result of an older hard drive starting to fail.

For me, that brings not importing problems from the older machine by copy-pasting it and installing everything from base principles.

That means that years of accumulated gurfle are discarded and some things need recreated.

Today's struggle was fonts.

I use a couple that aren't normally included with Ubuntu and I needed to remember how I'd gotten them installed when I first installed 20.04.

I managed to figure it out, but I'm not certain I did it the same way with 24.04 as I did back then.

Who knows?

Next mission is to figure out how to get the keyboard shortcuts for things like "Ö".  Again, I remember it being simple, but I also remember FuzzyGeff hand holding me through it.