Grey @hummingrain@wandering.shop

what are some good ttrpg systems that are good for like, modern to modernish environments? like dnd but completely missing most of the fantasy trappings but not necessarily the number crunching

“The Stone Weta” by Octavia Cade is a tiny ray of light in a looming dystopia that is more alluded to than described, very cleverly done and well written: The characters are woman scientists working on ecology and related subjects that directly observe the ongoing environmental catastrophe. They are spread all over the world, in a brave network to keep the data that shows the need to act available, true, and safe, sometimes at immense cost. Go, read/listen to it! http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/cade_08_17/

However Siri pronounced words is, by law, the *correct* way to pronounce them.

Huh! We might have made a breakthrough in understanding how the heck antidepressents work: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/19/how-antidepressants-work-at-last

I'm reading the theory and craft of digital Preservation, and even he's talking about clay tablets.

You're in The Web of the Latte.
The entire area is covered in shadow and loosely scattered boxes are floating around.

I've found a lot of cool little projects as I was poking around the Web the past few weeks.

One that I like is Splinterlands, a digital collectible trading card game. (Link below is my referral link)

https://splinterlands.com?ref=emsenn0

One thing that I really like about it, from a game designer perspective, is how its set itself up to minimize the number of communications needed between players, during match-making and gameplay.

This is the result of a technical constraint of how the game ensures which cards are owned by who and who wins what matches, so its interesting to see how it affects gameplay!

If you like Hearthstone, you might like this!

(You can play a demonstration match for free, but because cards have provable scarcity within the software, it costs ~$10USD to buy your "starter deck.")

unforgivable that blockchain blockheads have muscled the crypto abbreviation away from the cryptologists.

the cryptologists should cut a deal with the cryptozoologists and see if they can't get some support from a yeti army or something.

🦉 The economic value of birds to the state
Albany, J.B. Lyon Company, Printers, 1903.
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13393052

Finished the introduction. Just wanted to share a quick excerpt:

“Solidarity with queer, trans, and intersex people is non-negotiable when it comes to the international solidarity of the working class.”

It’s that’s simple.

in 1997, Professor Brian Harvey of UC Berkeley published a three-volume set of books that approached teaching computer science via the #Logo #programming language.

That three-volume set is out of print and costs almost a hundred bucks if you can find a paperback copy.

Professor Harvey, however, has supplied copies of all three volumes on his website for personal use, which has been lovingly archived by the Internet Archive.

Volume 1 starts here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130707051345/http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

Old videogame bootlegs are one of my special interests, and yet somehow I'd never run into this one until last night.

It's called SFIBM, and as that name suggests it's an IBM PC port of the arcade Street Fighter II. Programmed by a Korean group, Hotel Keitel, it was apparently one of the main inspirations for MUGEN due to its uncompressed assets that could be freely edited. Upon hearing that it also had bizarre graphics that looked like they'd been scanned in from a magazine, yet played better than the official PC port (admittedly not a difficult feat), I had to give it a try.

First, wow. They weren't kidding about the graphics. They look incredibly jpeg-artifacted, yet they're crisp pixels. Just crisp pixels in horrendously muddy colours, like someone faithfully traced over a deep-fried image. I can't quite explain it; you'll have to take a look yourself.

Also, you may wonder why Chun-Li is standing on nothing in the screenshot. I managed to find a glitch within the first minute of playing: as Chun-Li, if you hold back, then jump and spam kick while still holding back, you can hover. Check it out in the video. (Warning: LOUD audio! And yes, that is one of the devs saying "I'm the strongest woman in the world!")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2TEs5Sw08s

Little weirdnesses like this are what keep me fascinated with bootlegs, decade after decade. There's always something new and odd to figure out.

Registration #A91174 - 1935-10-10
Title: Standard specifications for highway bridges adopted by the American association of state highway officials.
Author: American association of state highway officials.
Claimants: The Association, Amer. assn. of state highway officials.
No renewal record found.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004512683

Giraffe: (gradually gets taller to cronch delicious leaves)
Trees: (get taller)
Giraffe: (becomes taller)
Tree: fuck ahh (grows thorns)
Giraffe: (develops thicker tongue and cheeks)
Tree: oh God oh God (becomes poisonous)
Giraffe: I think you underestimate how much I like leaf
Tree: ಠ_ಠ

Hey you, Pokefan! Does Pokemon Yellow have you feeling blue?
Is Pokemon Go\A or Silver making you see red? Snap out of it
and send us your puzzlers. We’re up to the challenge! Q: I read about the Pokerus a few issues ago, and now I’m
curious. How do you get the Pokerus? What is it?
A: Pokemon science hasn’t been able to uncover all of the secrets