Seattleite

WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE?

Damn straight. Now do you know where I can buy an electronic thumb? I need to flag down a passing spaceship.

At least if Iraq splits in three, the fighting can finally fucking STOP. Not right away, of course, but some time after.

Of course, we do have the possibility of Iranian airstrikes as well. That would probably cause uncertain politicians in the Gulf monarchies to fully support ISIS. And then shit would fly. Yes, but that possibility already existed.

My God. You exposed everything wrong with the Republicans. You're my hero! Seriously though, I can't decide if politicians that hide or flaunt their corruption are better than one or the other, but when you've got enough issues like the Tea Party, you almost vote on the other side all the time, just in case they ever get any power. Oh, it doesn't matter if you vote democrat. Not the slightest goddamn bit. They're all bought and paid for, both parties are composed of NOTHING but corporate shills at the federal level. Except maybe Elizabeth Warren. Ignore the federal level, focus on the state level, and try to get your state councils to call for a convention to amend the constitution and get money out of politics. (If 34 of them do, it's enough to overrule the federal government, and in fact the federal government can't do a damned thing to stop it. Not legally, at least.) Two states already have. If you want to fix anything, there's where you go. EDIT: On a different note, I would like to retract my earlier complaint about babysitting violent toddlers. They've calmed down and are being pleasant. EDIT 2: On a different different note, fuck cops. I'm 21. I'm a young man, fairly large and in decent shape. Every week or so I get harassed by the police for one thing or another, and I KNOW it's because I'm a young man. It doesn't matter if I'm buying drinks, crossing the street, or just walking down the road minding my own business, I WILL get harassed. They WILL stop me, they WILL demand to see my ID, they WILL insist my ID is fake, and they WILL waste anywhere from a couple minutes to several hours of my precious time for no fucking reason other than me being in my early twenties and having a penis. At least today it was only about ten minutes of bullshit before they found something different to do. I can't say "better", they just went from harassing me to harassing a black kid. If anything, that means they only stopped to go do something even worse. (Racists.) Now I'm going to go play Doom or something until I feel better.

Instead of run, the "new" (but not improved) Iraqi Army are so sectarian and indoctrinated that they'll shoot Sunni civilians, or allow their Iranian allies to do so. Oh, and what that article doesn't mention is that those Russian planes are also getting Russian PILOTS. It keeps getting better, doesn't it? Actually, as much as I hate Russia, I feel better knowing they won't have Iraqi pilots in them. Russian pilots may not be the best choice, but at least they're professional and unlikely to intentionally commit major war crimes than Iraqis, or even Americans.

On a new note: I am bored out of my fucking mind. I have over a hundred weapon entries to rewrite for a tabletop. I'm maybe twenty through, and I want to beat my head through a wall. EDIT: Oh, and there come three new words to make my mood even worse. "Baby bitch slap." Can't I just sit here and pretend babies are sweet and innocent and don't hit eachother? No? Well, fuck. Now I need to go help my girlfriend babysit a trio of three-year olds that have gotten violent. Normally I like babies, but... Yeah, this is going to suck.

Well, that's just what the region needed. MORE WEAPONS. Because apparently they didn't have ENOUGH death yet. Are they going to run away and leave those to the fucking rebels, too? Like they did all those humvees, and a couple of TANKS and HELICOPTERS? Because that'd just make this whole bloody mess even bloodier, wouldn't it? You know, there's somebody with a death fetish out there getting off on this, right? But for everybody who's not like Dick Cheney and Colonel North, this fucking SUCKS. No, I'm not in a very nice mood. Nobody says I have to be.

Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't look. We'd spent the whole page discussing US politics, so I'd thought it a safe assumption.

No idea about Canada, actually. I didn't notice that you were Canadian.

It's all a waste of time at the federal level. Save your research and strategic voting for the state level and below, where they aren't all bought and paid for.

Listening to music, working on a tabletop system. Recently overhauled how weapon skill works, which means changing over 100 weapon entries... Yeah, going to be here a while.

Think we should stop talking about this, before it gets out of control and the mods get involved?

_YE4ZOAcjo8 Skip the Use. It's a French band. Been listening to them a lot lately.

The entire group was founded with the money of billionaire oil tycoons, goes to great lengths to hide it and claims to be a "grassroots" movement. That's three red flags in a row. Then they go to great lengths to further the political and ideological beliefs of the Koch brothers, they're heavily supported by Fox News, all the Tea Party candidates are bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, and their bullshit agenda fits the business interests of the Koch brothers. That's four more red flags. Then the police don't intervene with Tea Party "protests" no matter what they do, even when they come armed to the teeth, when the police have proven time and time again that any REAL protest is violently shut down even if nothing happens. The Tea party isn't just "protesting", they're bringing WBC-grade hate speech and guns, (for the record, I don't mind guns, but the cops ALWAYS do) but the police just sit back and go "Well, we certainly don't have any problem with that. Even if that lady up front did just attack Obama by comparing his entire race to wild animals, nope, hands tied. They've got freedom of speech, even though we've NEVER, EVER, ON A SINGLE INSTANCE given a FLYING FUCK about that before." That's a red flag so huge I can't even decide how many it's worth. You should ALWAYS research a group before you call yourself a member of it. Political party, religion, it doesn't matter. And when it comes to political parties and religions, if you did the research, NONE of them would be worth joining. (At the very least, none of the ones I have ever looked into. But that's a pretty big sample size.)

Swing damage: 1d4 bludgeon Swipe damage: 1 bludgeon Swing and swipe advancement: 1W at 0 skill, 2W at 25, 3W at 50, 4W at 75 and 5W at 100 Thrust damage: 4 bludgeon Jab damage: 1d4 bludgeon Thrust and jab penetration: 0 at 0 skill, STRMOD at 25, STR at 50, 1.5STR at 75, 2STR at 100 (I do believe this is part of the weapon listing for "fist" in the tabletop RPG my friend and I are working on.)

Thermoelectric cooling generates more heat than it absorbs. Get in touch with reality, BTG. Ion thrusters still put out a LOT of heat. You don't get how computers work, do you? Even if they use binary computers like ours, they are NOT going to be compatible. They would need to reverse-engineer all our programming languages and create new equipment that can directly interface with ours. That would take a LOT of time. That's not true. Blooming is an ongoing process that happens with *all* lasers. And if you've got enough power to penetrate the atmosphere with any clarity, it *will* be significant. Even so, directed transmissions are difficult to direct and require a longer exposure time to make sure the message gets through. You have to *hit* the receiver with the beam, after dealing with atmospheric refraction, and whether we've talking about frequency or amplitude modulation you still need time to transmit large amounts of data. Unless they are sending very short, simple messages, this WILL be a detectable transmission because of the heat absorbed by the atmosphere. Every satellite and ground installation in our missile net anywhere near them will pick up the heat. They can't exactly read the message from that, no, but they will know something is there and is giving off heat, and where it's going. Also, X-rays and gamma rays cannot be focused into a laser. Even higher-wavelength ultraviolet is difficult. Even if you could, ionizing radiation will massively increase blooming, and is readily absorbed by the atmosphere. Seriously, do some research.

You are telling me that the military would spend more money to decrease the stopping power of an anti-tank round. That makes no sense. Find a source.

That goes against everything I know about US military practices. Source or it's not true.

I said nothing of that nature. But given just how many people there are on this planet, and just how visible such a transmission would be due to blooming, it's unlikely to stay hidden very long. You're severely underestimating the power of the crowd here. You wanted probes on the ground. These probes WILL be discovered, no matter how far out they are, by somebody. There is no way to hide probes close enough to observe humanity without humans eventually discovering at least some of them. It is SO much more likely that at least *some* people know they're here. It would take so many less assumptions, and so much less effort, and get so much more reward for them to just use local resources, and you know as well as I do how many governments would jump at the opportunity to cover up their existence and give them information in exchange for just about anything. Do you have any idea how many infrared sensors we have on this planet pointed towards space, or what many of them are for? Because most of them are there as part of our missile defence net, which picks up a rocket launch within minutes from across the planet. These are transient targets both smaller and less energetic than a space ship, and they pick them up even with the atmosphere in the way. Alien spaceships would stand NO CHANCE of evading detection by our missile net. Earth, that's why. This planet changes temperature frequently, has a corrosive atmosphere and a lot of moisture, strong winds and magnetic fields, natural disasters and violent inhabitants. Everything breaks down on Earth if given time. Nothing allows stealth in space. Nothing ever has, nothing ever will. The best-case scenario is faster than light travel, which only makes you invisible until you've passed an observer and likely VERY visible once you have. This tap would be VERY noticeable. You're also making the "independence day" mistake and assuming alien computers would be in any way compatible with terrestrial computers. Which is nonsense. Now, if it were me, I'd keep it strictly off the grid and get the information delivered by subverted locals. Like, you know, the NSA. Why bother tapping the NSA and getting caught when you can just have the NSA do the work for you? The trade would be HEAVILY in the alien's favour if they did, and there's much less risk. The government would ever cover up your mistakes (and gladly). "Cloaking" is nonsense. You can't stop infrared emissions through your hull. Funny you should mention SciFi. I happen to be a writer of both science fiction and fantasy myself. Haven't written anything lately, though. I have a LOT of projects going on, like working on making a tabletop game with my friend. Convection. Heat itself is not infrared radiation and does not transmit solely through infrared. The heat in the ship will transmit directly to the material around it, then through it to other material, and then eventually out to the hull where it will *then* radiate off through infrared. There WILL be heat escaping through the hull. No amount of technological wizardry will change that. This is not something that can be changed.

Go on. I'll wait for 4-5 numbers before I guess.

OK. If I were them I would place autonomous probes *on the surface* near the most interesting targets. The probes would gather the data and directionally burst-transmit it at regular intervals to listening posts in the asteroid belt. There I would, in addition, place some *large* passive sensors which will collect long range sigint and register and track anything leaving out of or arriving anywhere on to an Earth orbit. From the Asteroid belt I would directionally burst-transmit the data to a relay station in Kuiper belt. None of my assets will use any form of propulsion, except in emergencies. One word retort: Blooming. Expansion: Undetectable transmissions are impossible in-atmosphere due to the atmosphere not being totally transparent. Some refraction and absorption will always remain. If these transmissions are frequent, they'll get worse with each shot due to this. Not to mention you're trusting unmaintained machines to do this. That might be okay on mars, with its thin, dry atmosphere, but on Earth corrosion makes that untenable. They'd need maintainance on the ground. In all circumstances, personnel need supplies, as do equipment, so they need constant, visible shipments. Semantics. A few years ago you'd be right. We're finding terrestrial planets with this all the time. We're also finding them very, very, very quickly now. Keep up. Your scenario is untenable. The machines would break down and personnel to maintain them would die without supplies, they'd need supply shipments. Unless they're scavaging on-world, which is even MORE visible. They'd need help from people who can move around freely to manage this. That means locals. Not to mention meteor impacts are already investigated and those that actually impact at all are rarities. If they're falling in the wilderness to avoid it, a crater with nothing in it is suspicious, and they'd need to move to observe anything and that's clearly detectable. Add on the difficulty of transporting personnel or fragile equipment like this and this plan looks like swiss cheese. *Somebody* would know. Lots of somebodies. They'd need local help to cover it up. Optical pumping doesn't work like you seem to think. You can't just collect all your waste heat and turn it into a laser. Even if you could, it would NOT be completely efficient and you'd get visible heat buildup in the laser itself. This will not make a warm ship look cold. This is untenable.

Some classic Duke Nukem? He's pretty all-American. I somehow doubt Ross is reviewing Duke Nukem. Also, he's not as all american as you think. For example, his hair is based off the hair of the extremely offensive Russian stereotype Rocky fights in his fourth racially-charged propaganda film. In fact, all of Duke's "character" is based off 80's action stars in general with no regard for their affiliation or how little sense it makes. Even his most overly-quoted line is stolen from They Live. He's not a super patriot, he's a 90's celebration of everything bad about 80's action films.

Well, the ratio, called the golden ratio, is a coincidence. It's the Fibonacci sequence. Each number is the sum of the two previous. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, etcetera. Now I need a new pattern.