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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • You could start as a ranch hand, especially if you know how to ride. You can work on both a regular ranch or on a “resort ranch” that focuses on tourism. You just have to find a ranch that has around that 20ish employees.

    But then it would fit all of your points. You are spending your whole day with the same group of people.

    Drifting between groups will depend a bit on your exact duties but no matter what you are going to get to know everyone and work with others occasionally.

    New things are constantly coming up to do. Your duties also change with the season. And even if there is “nothing” to do you will still hang out with the other farm hands.

    You have that authority over you in form of the ranch manager/owner.

    Pay isn’t great but it might come with free lodging, then it isn’t that bad.


  • It’s not a legitimate competition, that’s the entirely point. The claim is AI models rely on stealing content and changing it slightly or not all. And if a “regular” journalist does this, they would get into trouble. Just because the entity switches to an AI company doesn’t make this business model legitimate.

    A few years ago there was a big plagiarism scandal on IGN because one of their “journalists” mostly took reviews of other people, changed a few words, and published it. Obviously that’s not fine.



  • YouTube doesn’t have a say in this, it’s up to the copyright holder of each individual song. YouTube just detects if a song is copyrighted or not then gives the owner the option what to do. The three common ones are

    • Disable the Video.
    • Claim Monetization of it.
    • Do nothing.

    So whoever holds the rights to Phil Collins song is the one responsible for your video being disabled. While whoever holds the rights to the song Joe Schmo decided to go with option 2 or 3.

    This process has mostly been automated. So it feels like YouTube is doing it but they are just following the orders of the copyright holder.

    The system is a bit overzealous in some cases and even fair use gets flagged.That’s on YouTube. But to be fair, it’s very hard to have an automated system detect the difference between fair use and not. YouTube should just implement a better way to dispute false copyright claims.




  • Bush was the worse president, Trump is the worse person.

    I can see a lot of potential presidents in 2001 act the same way as Bush did, especially any other Republican. Even Gore would have gone to war in Afghanistan. Unless of course we go down the rabbit hole of could he have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Iraq war probably would have been avoided under Gore.

    But I don’t see any other president doing the same damages that Trump did. While the current status of the Republican Party has many people just as bad as Trump, I don’t think they would have the same traction today without Trump.

    And let’s not forget the worst of Trump was prevented. If his coup would have succeeded, he would even be the worse president.


  • I have to admit I underestimated the damage a bit. I imagined it to be around 40 in most scenarios.

    But I think streamlining the range wouldn’t hurt. Instead of making it optional by expending exhaustion give it a longer base range and cause a fixed amount of exhaustion. Or perhaps make the user fall in a magical coma for X-time instead. Because I would say exhaustion rules are often ignored and I personally didn’t even know how many levels there are and what they do.


  • The first issue is Death Ward. It basically negates a big downside of the item.

    The item also doesn’t seem that good for a desperation self sacrifice scenario. Most likely in any scenario where such a move is necessary the user won’t be anywhere near full hp. Reducing the value of the item. The small range also severely limits the use of the item.

    I would say in a lot of scenarios casting any aoe spell centered on the person would achieve more. A simple fireball is around 28 damage with much higher aoe.

    The item requires a lot of planning and preparation to be useful rather than being an emergency item to get out of a tricky situation. Which isn’t necessarily bad but goes against your inteded usage.


  • Faking your death should have a really dire reason for it. Just disappearing is much easier and safer. But I suppose the steps aren’t that different.

    Find a country with relaxed visa requirements. Anything where you can get married easily and obtain permanent residency will work. Solo travel to a nearby country. Find some kind of remote tourist attraction where getting lost seems plausible. Tell your friends or family you will go there. But instead of actually going there you take a land route to your final destination. Once you entered the country find someone to get married to to get permanent residency and working rights. Take their name. This step sounds harder than it is, plenty of people are willing to marry someone they just met. Don’t forget you are only doing this for the visa not to actually have a fulfilled family life. So you don’t have to love or even like them,

    You are now in a country no one even thinks about looking for you with a new name. It wouldn’t work if you are running from certain government agencies that are acively searching for you but for most other cases this should be easy enough.

    You can take this step even further. For example Argentina offers you a second nationality/passport as soon as you have a Argentinian spouse. So you could repeat the steps with your new Argentinian name/passport. I am sure you will find some Argentinian willing to marry you and then let you disappear for a couple of thousands USD.




  • Fully agree with this. People just have a lower tolerance for mediocre content. YouTube is a great example for that. Long form content is as popular as ever, it’s just the demand of quality has risen. A few years ago Let’s Plays still did very well. Today Let’s Plays are generally falling in viewership. But that’s because Let’s Plays are mediocre quality at best. Many content creators shifted away from Let’s Plays and provide different content. But the actual video length hasn’t changed.

    Ppeople always found stuff to distract themselves with if a task is boring. As kids we would just play with pens, erasers, or anything else in our reach while studying. Today, kids just look on their smartphone instead. Re-reading the same passage over and over in boring book happens just as much today as it did 20 years ago. But today I am more likely to just not continue reading.


  • Monk 1/ Druid 11 works and is probably stronger than Druid 12. You gain Unarmored Defense and get to add your Wis modifier to your AC. That’s the only way the combo really works. And it basically plays like a full Druid. Obviously doesn’t work if you go down the Heavy Armor route.

    Ranger 3 / Monk 9 works. You would take Gloomstalker and Way of the Shadow for some strong turn 1 shenanigans. If you go weapon Monk you even get to use Ensnaring Strike and Hunter’s Mark otherwise you have a few support spells. But doesn’t sound like the way you want to play.


  • Non of your suggestions have any real synergy. You are mostly just giving up things and don’t gain much of value in return.

    For example Cleric/Druid makes no sense. You will have the same caster level as a single class Cleric or Druid but just won’t have any known 6th level spells. You just gain a few additional known 1st and 2nd level spells. But considering Cleric and Druid spells overlap a fair bit, it won’t even be that many.

    Cleric 7/ Ranger 5 might be the best option. You still get the extra attack from the Ranger and get the Domain Spells Guardian of Faith + Death Ward. Your caster level would be 10. So still a lot of spell slots available. For leveling it kinda depends on the rest of your party but I would say the first 5 level go into Cleric, then you use Withers to respecc 5 into Ranger to gain the extra attack. Then put the rest in Cleric again. Any Bow build with a single attack will feel rather underwhelming. Yes you lose out on a feat but you are basically trading a feat for a 2nd bow attack. Cleric 8 for Radiant Strike would be pointless anyhow since it’s melee only.

    Druid 7/ Ranger 5 might work in a similar way. Espeically if you like Moonbeam you can still have a single 5th level Moonbeam. Going higher in Ranger would hurt your Caster level too much.

    But again, you don’t really gain any real advantage. For example Wizard 1/Cleric 11 is the same as Cleric 12 but you have access to all Wizard spells you can learn from scrolls including 6th level wizard spells. Or if you Mutliclass Ranger with Rogue to gain sneak attack, or with Fighter to gain action surge. That would give you some actual advantages.


  • You can host your own instance on the fediverse and not censor/moderate it. Other instances will most likely defederate yours but you can still build your own place.

    Anything that doesn’t censor and moderate only works as long as the user base is fairly small. So you won’t find people advertising it to random strangers. Otherwise it starts having to deal with things most people don’t want on their platform like illegal sexual content.


  • I would say Machinima simply filled the needs and there was no need for these kind of games to be developed on top of it. Just using existing game engines with a decent editor would always be cheaper and more popular since people are familiar with the assets. Just take a look at how many Team Fortress “movies” are out there.

    And even without editor using games was fine. World of Warcraft had a ton of videos as well.

    Tools for Machinima also saw the gradual advancements you talked about. While the initial movies produced had a lot of workarounds to get a decent end product there is now dedicated software for it. NVIDIA recently released their own version.

    On top of that with smartphones having cameras now, kids can always shoot their own movies.


  • The big clubs are all an organized crime syndicate. How bad the situation will be mostly depend on your exact location. Especially with the Hell’s Angels the involvement in organized crime depends a lot on the exact charter. Some just do illegal gambling, some light narcotics and gun trades while others are also involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution.

    In most of the western world organized crime usually stays away from regular citizens. That’s why many people here say if you don’t approach them they will leave you be. But crime always affects regular people. And there is basically nothing you can do. It’s just up to luck whether you specifically get affected or not.

    When the Hell’s Angels started to move into Europe most politicians just ignored it. But a war between locals clubs, the Hell’s Angles and then the Banditos (who also moved into Europe) broke out almost immediately. Some people even got killed. But politicians only stepped in when a civilian got killed or severely injured because some gang member shot a rocket into a rivaling gang’s bar. Then shit moved back into the shadows.