Did you delete your response, or forget to post it?
Do you believe that D&D writers were racist in their language, or is it all a load of horse-hockey?
I’m with Colonel Potter on this one.

No. You have to copy and paste in bits and assemble in notepad, or keep two windows open at a time to do that.
What it doesn't do is allow a quite within a quote, like of DF.
You can't post a quote for example of me responding to someone else, because it filters out any quotes inside the original quote box.

One D&D to rule them all, One D&D to find them, One D&D to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
I attack the darkness... (8-Bit Theater reference).

ShaneG.

Has anyone been following the new fantasy series, House of the Dragon (already streaming) & Rings of Power (soon-to-be-streaming)? What do you think? Nothing will ever compare to 2000's D&D movie with Jeremy Irons & Marlon Wayans, but we can hope.

Plaag wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:Yes and I will. It's good but not sure if it will be as good as the Game of Thrones series. Also there will be a new D&D movie: Honor Among Thieves in 2023 that might make the original one weak in comparison.  :)
ShaneG.

There are many movies that will make the original one weak in comparison.    I'm looking forward to it, good or bad.  Even a bad movie likely brings D&D attention.  

What's going on with all the protests in Europe today? A year ago, they were committing to all these environmental reforms, but now they'll have to scrap their lofty plans in order to have enough fuel for the winter. How convenient - did they plan it that way?

sauromatian wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:What's going on with all the protests in Europe today? A year ago, they were committing to all these environmental reforms, but now they'll have to scrap their lofty plans in order to have enough fuel for the winter. How convenient - did they plan it that way?

Most of this is down to the vast majority of people choosing to live their lives in complete ignorance of basic maths.
I'm 50. I know that mortages have never been lower than 5% ever in history until the 2008/9 crash when they pushed the interest rates to near zero.
Most people buying a house at 2% never ask themselves, what does this mortgage look like at 7% or 12%. They don't give a shit. They believe that borrowing money should be free and should never have an interest rate applied to it that reflkects the value of the amount of money they are borrowing. So when the interest rates go up, they whine and wring their hands and say, well of course I was stupid but now I'll loose my house and my kids will have to live in social housing.
Most people have the memories of goldfish. They do not remember any of the financial fluctuations that have occurred over the past 30-40 years. They do not remember fuel prices going up in the past.
They also refuse to believe that money loses value over time. In the face of absolue perfect evidence, ie, no evidence whatsoever to the contrary, they still believe their GBP will continue to hold its value over time.
So when real things tangible things that require time and effort to produce are repriced in a depreciating currency, they cry and pretend they don't understand maths. It's not like this wasn't predicatble decades ago.

Three out of every Four GBPs today were created in the last two years. Ie two years ago we started to artificially inflate our money supply. We inflated our money supply by 300% over two years. We devalued the pound by 75%. And everyone felt rich and didnt have to get off their arse and produce value in exchange for all the free cash. Now they have to pay for their free lunch. That inflation ends up somewhere, usually spread across everything in society, but not evenly. So our food goes up in price, our energy goes up in price, our debt interest rates go up in price. And still people pretend they don't undersdtand maths. They whine on TV that they cant affort to liev, but they pay every month for their TV license, their mobile phones their satalite TVs, their car loans, their Netflix and Prime subscriptions. They dont believe in warm clothing.

An initial look at the USD would seem to indicate that the same is true for the US. You've devalued the USD by 75% over the past two years or so. So you're looking at a serious inflation as well, but it'll land in different sectors due to geography and the sheer size of your country. And the access you's have to natural resources if you choose to use them. And of course you have major political problems that most countries dont have.

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Of course, because no one cares or understands maths, they just want to make the problem worse. They want more free stuff. They want more free money. They want more handouts. They dont want to pay the piper for the last two decades of glutony.

And what does all the free money do? What happens when you print lots of free money and give it to energy companies to reduce people's bills, or give it to people to keep their pubs open, or give it to people to pay ther energy bills instead of telling them to buy jumpers and long underwear and buy hot water bottles?

The billions of GBPs you print devalues the pound. Real things then cost more to buy, and all the people do is whine and complain that all the free money just made the price of real things go up again. No-one cares that the value of sack of spuds is the same today as it was a decade ago, and that the value of the pound you are using to buy that sack of spuds is dropping. No one cares that a three bedroom house today is no more useful or valuable than a three bebdroom house was twenty years ago, and that it is the value of the GBP that you are using to buy the house that has dropped.

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Economists have been predicting this rebalancing of the world economy for forty years. The mechanism and the timing were fluid, but the fact that it has to happen in indiputable and has happened throughout history. Our standards of living are going to drop, substantially. The statndards of living in the East are going to rise, substantially. It'll take decades. It did when the US rose and the UK declined a century ago.

This is not temporary. Energy bills will be priced at over £5K a year in January. Probably close to £6K. By April they'll be priced at £7K or maybe £8K. At that point people will be begging to get the prices back down to £5K a year. Either that or the Govt will open the floodgates to infinate money printing and just print us into hyperinflation. And most people have no idea what that is. Most people do not know about Romania, Turkey, Argentina, Lebenon, or any of the countries that who are experiencing hyperinflation at the monent or have done so in the past. They only knoe about Germany and they put that down to something that happens because your leader is evil.

If they do not inflate the money supply and give out billions of free GBPs, a lot of small businesses will fail. Pubs, retaurants, takeaways, bakeries, salons, etc. will all fold and all those workers will join the cues of epople lining up to be delivery drivers. Delivery driving wages will drop as a result of supply and demand. Everyone in society will become poorer. And I'm sure they will all complain and make out that this was a big surprise.

Sir Kill Alot wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:They were sold a bill of goods

1) without caring about the price
or
2) lied to about the price.

Now the collector has come to claim what is his and they don't like it much.  The UK is going to be in a world of hurt this winter and all those people driving their shiny new 50k Teslas there will find out the cost to charge it will be more than gasoline/diesel.  Clean energy technologies just aren't there yet with regards to scale.

 

I dont think anyone was lies to. They were sold a product and they chose not to engage their brains. That is a deliberate choice to be ignorant and it is driven by greed.
How stupid do you have to be when you buy an EV to not ask yourself, how does this look at 50p/kWh? How does this look at £3.50/kWh? How does this look at £5/kWh?
You cannot legislate against stupid people. That's just the way they are. They watch their televisions, ignore common sense, and buy into the greed of free energy and heavily discounted cars. They should be left to explain to their kids why Mummy and Daddy are as dumb as fuck and they can't have treats because they don't have any money. They can move their votes to the left, move their jobs to the public purse, and take their country to war. But will they stop to think that far ahead? I doubt it. They want 'to live in the monent'. Will they do the math to work out what will happen to their kids if the country goes to war? Will they fuck. They will take no responsibility for any decisions they make, and will look for anyone other than themselves to blame for their own willful ignorance. It's overwhelmingly a generational thing. We never taught our kids about balls, backbones, integrity and common sence. We never explained to them about responsibility and maturity. We left them to 'be free' and trusted that they would 'learn their own truths', and this is what happens.

Sir Kill Alot wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:This is very similar to what politicians do here in the US.  Pass legislation with no-one having the care or time to read it or the consequences it may bring.
California mandating only EVs can be sold after 2035 all while not having a clue as to how they will charge all of them.

Double spacing. You're showing your age. Lol.
So, people in California have more than a decade warning in order to prepare for the changes coming to their environment. And the rest of the US has maybe two decades or more that the same may happen there. Likewise what happens in the US ends up happening here too. So we know what is going to happen here too.
Who will want to buy a petrol/deisel car 13 years from now? I will probably. My current car is more than 20 years old, and I don't think I can get more than another 10 years out of it. If you do, seeing as you know exactly what is happening to the money supply in your country right now, who, knowing they will want to buy a car in 13 years time, believes it will be cheaper to buy it then, than now? Who cannot learn or find people in their community that can repair or maintain petrol/deisils cars? It would seem like, with more than a decade to prepare, there in so excuse for people in 2035 to whine or complain that they didn't know how hard things were going to be.

That is the nature of socialism. There is no requirement to make any of it work, and no explanation for why none of it has every worked anywhere in The past. They believe in unicorns and fairies. The only difference between us and them is that we know that we are playing a game and that the unicorns are not real.

Why are socialist run cities complete shitholes? Is it because that is actually the way these people want to live their lives? Is it because they enjoy it? The love the crime rates and the violence and the garbage and the faeces. It’s what they live for. Cleaning up shit on their sidewalks and watching their friends’ businesses burn and their neighbours pack up and move into their car is what gives their lives meaning. It invigorates them and makes them feel alive. They create a problem and then pretend they are fighting to fix that problem and it makes them feel noble and righteous.

My take is it’s a free democratic society. They want to live in poverty and fear in amongst their neighbour’s filth. It’s their joy. What right do you or I have to deny them that choice or take away those dreams from them? It may not be fun for you or I, but it’s fun for them. They get to pretend they are victims, so let’s just leave them to it. The ones who get bored leave. It’ll be a dry state soon anyhow because none of them give a flying F about the environment. They pretend they do, but then they pretend they care about a lot of stuff that they dedicate their lives to destroying. I try to look at what they do, not what they say, and they do a lot of really evil stuff. National socialism has never been a good thing in any country where is has become entrenched. That seems to be where nationalist socialist movement in the US is right now. I’ve not watched the latest video yet with the leader in front of the red lighting and the marines standing to attention, with his clenched fists, but it’s very evocative and contains a lot of historic nationalist imagery.