When the project contains decades-old legacy code, but it still works in modern environments.

Selinux

Hey, let’s not get crazy. I still want to use it for practical things, too. /s

The fuck is going on with that organization?

My two-cents on the matter: The NFL’s relationship with problematic decisions and/or optics, have been a thing for a long time now.

• Military flyovers¹
• Strictly IMO: player “draft” process resembles an auction
• Predominantly black player base with white team ownership
• “Redskins” as a team name for far longer than the public felt it acceptable
• Entire league suffering from concussions², life-altering injuries after retirement
• History of team owners doing all kinds of problematic stuff, but keeping their jobs regardless

1. My problem here is that we’re talking commercial sports, an institution one could feasibly use as a refuge from politics. But we add rah-rah military back in, opening the door for nationalism, because screw all that.
2. There are lawsuits out regarding a possible cover-up (going back a long time) by the league in this area, as highlighted in recent news.

IMO, it is/was an advice and self-improvement trend that, like all such trends, ends leaving a vacuum for something else. Kind of like fad diets. So yes, I think that has been largely replaced by the alpha/guru influencer thing now.

That’s an extreme simplification, but yes, that’s the gist.

It’s also a very Paulie take on things: so close, yet so far.

IMO, peak Sopranos is Tony’s reaction to his voice while in a coma. We finally get an idea of how he really comes across after many seasons.

I’m on Tim Kaine’s mailing list.

Since last November, his entire office/campaign has been heavy on optics throughout the state, all with a heavy lean towards business as usual. Only recently (late October) did he write about “challenging trump’s reckless tariff policies”, which was little more than a statement of fact than any actual coherent plan to solve anything. Most shockingly, this communique had ZERO mention about DOGE, and the thousands out of work right now in his state, let alone the government shutdown and the hungry poor people out there right now. Or any of the other politically relevant horrors we have going right now. It was easily one of the best written, carefully crafted, barely educational, worthless, tone-deaf, rage-inducing pieces of literature to hit my inbox, and includes a bottomless cornucopia of spam mail.

There’s an old saying in politics: “never waste a good crisis.” Well, this is a big one, and opportunities to be a hero with accolades and job security for life can be had at minimal effort. I can only conclude that the man’s brain is located somewhere in the vicinity of his spine, both of which went missing back in 2024.

While I’m no longer a Virginian, I emplore those of you who are to vote this trash out.

The real tragedy is how stale that bread is; Subway^™ crust isn’t supposed to do that. Is it too late to rescue the lunchmeat and start over?

DOGE fired most of these people, or at least their friends, family, and neighbors. Read the room, donnie.

Dyed hair… ankh… fashion conscious business attire…

I for one welcome our new Goth representation in government. We need more of this.

No idea. Not even the most meta-gaming-est members of that party had a workaround.

If you haven’t read it, this is explored somewhat in “DM of the Rings”: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

… although, I myself cannot recall how they explained Gandalf’s resurrection.

Exactly. Pragmatism wins the day. Or at least it does at my table.

I’ll have to shop around for more and better tools. Thanks for reminding me that there’s a wider world out there.

But give me the nitty gritty so I can decide for myself.

This resonates with me. But I also have to give an obligatory nod to Palladium Games where the nit and grit is the entire point. If you’ve never had the pleasure, the RIFTS character sheet makes (American) taxes look easy to file by comparison. You practically need a session zero and a session zero-zero to get started.

The most important thing to keep in mind with celebrity actors is that they make a living pretending to be someone/something they’re not. And they’re damn good at it too.

Not to cast doubt on everyone in that profession. Rather, proceed with an abundance of skepticism when considering celebrity endorsements.

Considering that was probably penned in the late 1980’s, why isn’t that standard kit for every other system?

Still, as a DM, it’s far too tempting to give a little bit of this away and join in on the hijinks.

Me: You find yourselves in a hidden library. On one shelf you see a series of tomes named “How Not to be Seen”, volumes I-XX.

Newbie Fighter: Oh sweet, those look handy.

Seasoned Rogue: Aw fuck. NOBODY TOUCH NOTHIN’!

Ten minutes later:

It would sit well with my conscience that I likely prevented a worse fate for exponentially more people, and prevented another person from having to make a worse choice. Which they themselves would likely only make twice as worse, and so on. I could live with that.

What I’m not sure of is how I would handle being a deicision-maker N steps down the line. Being the first guy, sure. The 16th? I dunno.

2³² is roughly four billion. We’ll need one or two more doublings to get every last person alive on the tracks.

This introduces a new wrinkle in the experiment: all the switch operators are also tied to the track. Somewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Criticism

In 1934, Roosevelt defended himself against those critics in a “fireside chat”:

[Some] will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ‘Fascism’, sometimes ‘Communism’, sometimes ‘Regimentation’, sometimes ‘Socialism’. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical… Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Answer this question out of the facts of your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?[279]

At the same time, there was an actual (failed) attempt at a fascist coup on Roosevelt’s watch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

The Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch[1] and the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator.

So, yeah. Fascists hate this stuff and will do anything to fight it, from name-calling to revolution.

TL;DR: viable last-ditch option would resemble Highlander 2 in terms of putting one corporation in charge of “protecting” the planet.

Okay, so I was keeping the idea of using deliberate “global dimming” in my back-pocket just so it wouldn’t worm it’s way through the zeitgeist. It’s a viable last-ditch option, but it comes with steep drawbacks. But since we’re here now, fuck it.

We already know that, thanks to requiring shipping vessels to use low-sulfur fuel, cloud seeding can actually reduce solar gain. The problem is that it also blocks out a lot of the light needed for photosynthesis. So this approach punches down on the environment in a completely different way. As for people, while global warming will absolutely impact agriculture, so would less sunlight.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/

So we could just use airplanes and cloud-seeding. Or we could increase particulates in the atmosphere. Or, as Elon suggests, fly satellites to do the job. The tradeoffs here are awful: disrupt where rain happens, raise lung cancer risks globally, or catapult one man into multi-trilliionaire status while they charge every government on earth for the privilege. Plus, each of those options are more or less forever if we never get around to carbon sequestration that actually works.

We should seriously considering doing anything else first.

Edit: I know I didn’t invent this idea. Rather, I just didn’t want to add to any consensus around it.