Erik Schmidt

Sometimes nothing beats a nice cool glass of water.

Quote this with your reaction to getting left behind during the rapture...

No matter how useful, or at the very least informative a post might be, there's always someone ready to use it as a springboard to share whatever negativity is rolling around in their brainpan. That filtering it out requires so much effort is proof of how primitive our social media tools still are.

Current mental state: Full Igorrr. open.spotify.com/album/3Z3jBK...

YouTube video by BlondieVEVO Blondie - Rapture (Official Music Video)

I personally can't wait for the rapture. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCd...

In the early 80s, me and my teenage buddies used to joke that in the future, the world would be dominated by two corporations: Coca-Cola and Disney. At the time we figured Disney was the long shot of the two.

In original RuneQuest (1978), an Intelligence score of 13+ helped you with most skills. Not just Perception and Knowledge but also Manipulation, Stealth, Defense, and even Attack. It was as useful as Dexterity and better for Attack skills than Strength was. I think about that a lot.

A man heading a wall because it was simply looking it. Probably Irish

It is a little known fact that before any armour system is implemented in a RPG it is legally required that it is tested in real life for accuracy. Here for example is the BRP head location being certified.

#ttrpg

A publicly-traded company exists to make money for shareholders. A CEO that fights Trump is a CEO that likely gets canned by its board. The only way to influence a public company in any meaningful way is by affecting its revenue.

Sounds different in a good way.

My wife is looking at me like I'm a total loon, because I can't stop laughing at this.

This is invaluable advice. I've learned over the years that I know less than I thought I did about most things, but time has proven that the effort I've put into real life (as opposed to parasocial) relationships really has paid off tremendously.

YouTube video by Setting First - Tabletop Roleplaying Foundational Setting: Glorantha

Speaking of a fantasy #ttrpg setting that can serve as the foundation for years of engaging campaign play, has magic baked into every nook and cranny, and feels lived in and vibrant, here's a little intro to #Glorantha (and by extension, #RuneQuest). youtu.be/K8R7Zhqsd5k

I can't even tell you how many times my friends and I played "Butch & Sundance" as kids. I also remember my dad's take – he appreciated Redford's desire to be known as a real actor, when he could have just cashed in on his looks.

I agree with you. When soldiers aren't griping (which always involves swearing), you know their morale is truly low. In 2025 we're all in the trenches. To not have a lowered swearing threshold would be an acquiescence, a pretending that everything is OK when it absolutely isn't.

Ars Technica home page showing me a 403. Now that's not something you see every day.

Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019) ⭐ 6.8 | Documentary, Biography, History 1h 35m | Not Rated

Stumbled across Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019) and I'm glad I did. Really fascinating stuff about how the movie came together and how the minds of its creators meshed. www.imdb.com/title/tt8974...

Looked at my data collections for state-backed activity. If the report were a picture:

I guess this means instead of having access to All The World's Knowledge™, this means LLMs actually have access to All The World's Digitized And Made Available On Crawlable Sites Knowledge That Hasn't Already Rotted Away™.

A detailed research summary for an Eclipse Phase NPC named Cyrene. This writeup includes information about the NPC, with each chunk of information assigned a reliability rating. For my Eclipse Phase campaign, I assumed that constant information warfare would mean that even sophisticated muse systems wouldn't be able to completely confirm the validity of most information.

Why OpenAI’s solution to AI hallucinations would kill ChatGPT tomorrow The cure is likely to be worse than the disease.

In 2011 I gave Eclipse Phase players handouts like these whenever PCs used a muse to get info. I figured constant info warfare would mean automated info-gathering would have to include accuracy estimates. Nope, bad for business. theconversation.com/why-openais-...

We’re no longer using the term “lone wolf gunman” and are now using the term “lone loser gunman.” Thank you for your attention on this matter.

That last sentence is evergreen.

I have no musical capability whatsoever. That said, if the owner of this would have let me, I'd have spent the entire weekend just goofing off with this thing. It's so freakin' cool.

I just asked my wife, “What’s a show that should have gone on longer than it did?” She asked which platform it had been on, I told her, and she said, “Oh, Carnivale, for sure.” So yeah, thanks to you, it’s on our watch list. 😄

Amazing show. Dammit, now I am getting a hankerin' to rewatch it.

Had a great time hanging out with a dozen other TTRPG folks, just talking about games and gaming for a couple of hours. There's this weird thing in online spaces where it's not cool to point out that in-person interaction is better, but it is.

Climate action can feel slow – but the fastest energy leap in history has begun Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels is glacially slow – isn’t it? This pessimistic narrative doesn’t stack up against evidence of very rapid change in the real world.

“We’re living through the fastest energy transformation in human history. Every previous large-scale shift in energy—from muscle power to wood to coal to oil—has taken decades or even longer. But the ‘renewable revolution’ is happening far faster.”

Well, you know how it is with the First Amendment. It's something worth dying to defend, unless someone you disagree with is using it as a shield.