Nuke the Nuclear Kitty
efindel.bsky.social
Nuke the Nuclear Kitty
@efindel.bsky.social
Nuke the Amazing Nuclear Kitty, and his human, Travis Casey (all pronouns accepted). Together with Julian Stanley, we're Ebon Gryphon Games! TTRPG gamer/computer guy/writer.
This was in 1989. I was 19. My players were around the same age.

And these grown-ass men, 35 years later, think you can't have fun in a fantasy game without being able to treat the antagonists as sub-human.

Sheesh.
December 21, 2025 at 5:19 PM
* the PCs discovered the orcs were encroaching into dwarven lands because elves had pushed them out of their ancestral homelands
* the PCs found empty land on the other side of the dwarven lands, and negotiated passage for the orcs through the dwarven lands
December 21, 2025 at 5:17 PM
One of the first arcs I did when I started my first homebrew campaign went like this:

* orcs were invading dwarven lands
* the PCs managed to fight the invasion to a standstill
* the PCs were asked to negotiate a peace treaty
December 21, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Nuke the Nuclear Kitty
I chaired an IRB for years, and ran a gigantic human research protections program even longer. The unethical nature of this proposed research is clear. It would not pass muster when examined under the Common Rule, Subpart D, or FDA regulations. Safety and efficacy have been established. Unethical.
December 17, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Nuke the Nuclear Kitty
Worse than Tuskegee because at least at the start of that trial there wasn't already an effective therapy. Hit's all the other marks though - single blind, on a vulnerable population, white investigators, black patients etc. Just a big ol racist boondoggle.
December 17, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Nuke the Nuclear Kitty
This is just Tuskegee levels of malfeasance. Like the example you would put on a public health ethics 101 training and then scrap it because it's too obvious.
December 17, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Now, I personally love reading, and read something like two or three books a week all through junior high, high school, and college... but that was on my own, not assigned for English!
December 12, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Wait, did US kids *ever* read a lot of full books in school? I don't remember us reading more than "one or two a year" in high school, and I graduated in 1988. Mostly we did short stories and writing exercises... and I was in Honors and AP classes.
December 12, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Nuke the Nuclear Kitty
Not to mention a complete disassociation between healthcare and employment - which has massive positive impacts on the entire job market for both employers and employees at every scale (mom and pop businesses to huge corporations).
December 11, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Legally, it's the same principle used when Disney makes a copyright claim against someone who made their own drawing of Mickey Mouse and sells a t-shirt with it. The copyright on *that* image does not belong to Disney... but it's a "derivative work" of images they *do* own the copyright to. (4/4)
December 11, 2025 at 7:47 PM
So, while the videos the AI produces can't be copyrighted themselves, that doesn't mean they can't fall under *other* copyrights - the copyrights Disney holds on the images of their characters. (3/?)
December 11, 2025 at 7:45 PM
The studio that made it argued in court that while the copyright on the movie hadn't been renewed, the copyright on the *book* the movie was based on had been, so, as a derivative work of the book, the movie fell under the copyright on the book. The argument was successful; they won the case. (2/?)
December 11, 2025 at 7:42 PM
So here's a thing: something doesn't have to be copyrighted itself in order to be protected by copyright.

There was a case a few decades back of a movie that the copyright had not been renewed on. Small DVD makers were making DVDs of it and selling them. (1/?)
December 11, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Saw one of these lists (also from a doctor's office) posted a while back showing this... and the list snippet also included Elamite. A literal dead language, which has not even been fully deciphered yet!
December 9, 2025 at 2:00 PM
The one the group is most comfortable with that fits the campaign concept.

Comfort being equal, I'd make the same suggestion as for any group: a system that gives you what you want without the GM constantly having to fudge. This leads me to prefer systems with things like fate/destiny/etc. points
November 24, 2025 at 9:25 PM