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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca »

Stahlseele wrote:You know . . all those people who make such a hullaballoo about Shotguns and the like for Home defence right?
Why do you never see / hear any of them affixing a bayonett to their boomsticks?
Because it isn't the seventeenth century and they aren't fighting in infantry squares.

Seriously.

The bayonet was invented because it turns your long single-shot musket into a half-decent spear and thus greatly increased the firepower f the then-standard standard shot-and-pike squares at the cost of a slightly longer musket and a slightly shorter spear.

Modern bayonets just turn your perfectly good rifle into a very shitty spear, while you're better off just, you know, shooting your targets. With modern multi-shot magazines, it just makes your weapon longer and heavier without giving you any advantage. It's negative utility in most cases.
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Post by Meikle641 »

hyzmarca wrote: Modern bayonets just turn your perfectly good rifle into a very shitty spear, while you're better off just, you know, shooting your targets. With modern multi-shot magazines, it just makes your weapon longer and heavier without giving you any advantage. It's negative utility in most cases.
Plus a bayonet can add a lot of length to a firearm, a downside for HD. Halls can be narrow at times, and most rifles and shotguns are a good 36 inches or so long, and a bayonet might add 6+ inches to that.

That's partly why the M4 is used so often these days, since room to room fighting is more common. On a semi-related note, I've been finding articles and studies that are saying that .223 penetrates less panels of drywall than the popular 00 buckshot round. That kinda surprised me.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Yeah, there's two things to keep in mind with this sort of thing:

1. Joe Home Defense Guru is often full of shit, and is virtually always full of shit when talking about shotguns.

2. Shotguns always end up looking totally sweet in any test that involves light barriers and is well within their effective range. That's because shotguns are an extreme example of firearm design, using beefy projectiles and subjecting them to relatively low speeds, so your shotgun slugs or pellets stay fairly intact as they plow through barriers that are too wimpy to stop them completely in the first place. Shotguns put big cool holes in things, but that belies the fact that there's lots of ranges where rifles beat them virtually by default.

So, yeah, when people talk about "limiting penetration" by using shotguns, they're talking out of their ass and need to communicate better. Shotguns might reduce risk to bystanders by virtue of being unlikely to hit someone standing in the next county over, but they punch through brush, barn doors and studio apartments just fine when used at average civvie fight ranges.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sat Dec 28, 2013 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by fectin »

Also, many gun enthusiasts do like bayonets. You just don't hear them talk about it as much, because they're not really useful and because there isn't really a big call to regulate knife ownership. So unless you get into a lot of "guns are cool" conversations with actual gunowners, the topic just won't come up, just like Jack Thompson probably doesn't hear a lot of detailed analyses of which aftermarket controllers are best.

Essentially, they occupy the same thought-space as silencers, but without silencers' extensive and stupid regulation.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
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Post by fectin »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:From a political perspective, why did modern YEC decided to center what little science there is in their movement around Noah's Ark? That's just a baffling decision, because from a strict scientific perspective it's probably the most mockable and indefensible part of the Bible. Why not, oh, the plagues of Egypt or biblical longevity?
You're coming at this backwards. First, take let's their interpretation of the bible timeline as fact (everything from here on assumes that). Now, take carbon dating as also correct observations. How do you reconcile the two?

Obviously, something must be off in our carbon dating model. And since everything up to about 6000 years ago tends to match up, and everything before that doesn't, something must have happened 6000 years ago. Conveniently though, we know of a global event 6000 years ago which profoundly altered the world: the flood.

So, in proper scientific form, we want to test that theory. One way to do so might be to find an artifact which we know is pre-flood, and show that it also tests as millions of years old. Again conveniently, we have records of something just like that, along with a location for it: the Ark. Which is why YECs are very keen on actually finding it.

So, in answer to your question: they aren't doing this because it's an easy sell, They're doing this because it's a good-faith effort to explain what they see as a significant discrepancy. Like Joseph Priestly, they are actually incorrect, but that doesn't make their methods wrong.

Of course, there are also a bunch of loudmouths who don't understand that, and think that just yelling "Noah's Ark!" will somehow prove that science is all a lie. They are bad people who should feel bad, and you should look down on their willful idiocy. (There are also some people like that with real science too, and that they happen to support something correct should not excuse them from the same scorn.)
Last edited by fectin on Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
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Post by talozin »

fectin wrote:Also, many gun enthusiasts do like bayonets.
This guy, for instance, obviously really, really likes bayonets. Which, joke aside, is kind of ironic, because a break-action shotgun is probably one of the few remaining use cases for a bayonet that might occasionally make a tiny degree of sense.

Also, one more reason why no one except a few idiot mall ninjas wants a bayonet on a home defense weapon: because when you're awakened in the middle of the night by a loud noise, cutting yourself while trying to grab your shotgun is a thing that's nice to not have to worry about.
TheFlatline wrote:This is like arguing that blowjobs have to be terrible, pain-inflicting endeavors so that when you get a chick who *doesn't* draw blood everyone can high-five and feel good about it.
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Post by fectin »

I like how he thinks little plastic clips are a good way to make a structural attachment. The specific attachment method is silly, even if the Picitinny system were good for that (which, AFAIK, it is not).

But yeah, this is what a real modern bayonet looks like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bayon ... ompany.jpg

Aside from the funny hole in the guard, you could very easily not notice that this is anything different from a KA-BAR.
Last edited by fectin on Sun Dec 29, 2013 7:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Prak »

I've taken to typing up longer game design posts in word and then copying over here, just so I have a local copy of the stuff. The problem with this is I either have to write in BBCode, or go through and put it in.

Does anyone know of some plugin or program or such which will convert word formatting into bbcode?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Meikle641 »

I wish I knew. That's why I've been linking to mediafire lately; fuck making two versions of a document.
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Post by radthemad4 »

Ever get that feeling where you realize there's just too many things to experience in the world and not enough time to experience even just the stuff you really like? Or the feeling where you get some free time and there are so many choices that you're not really sure of what you want to actually do with it?

On one hand I'm glad there'll always be something to do, but these feelings have been nagging at me recently and I'm wondering if you guys know how to deal with them.
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Post by Stahlseele »

i am lazy as fuck. i don't ever get that feeling . .
dealing with it?
make a list, work the list from top to bottom, cross off what you have done and take the list out next time you get that feeling again.
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Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by DSMatticus »

I sort my leisure activities into a neat and manageable categorized hierarchy, then ignore it and dick around on the internet.
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Post by Stahlseele »

*snickers*
ah, yes, the master slackers method ^^
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.

Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

DSMatticus wrote:I sort my leisure activities into a neat and manageable categorized hierarchy, then ignore it and dick around on the internet.
Mind if I sig this? It describes me perfectly.
DSMatticus wrote:I sort my leisure activities into a neat and manageable categorized hierarchy, then ignore it and dick around on the internet.
My deviantArt account, in case anyone cares.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Sig away, attribution optional.
Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

DSMatticus is extremely quotable. I think he's been in my signature rotation 3 times and I see him pop up in peoples' sigs even more than Frank.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by radthemad4 »

DSMatticus wrote:I sort my leisure activities into a neat and manageable categorized hierarchy, then ignore it and dick around on the internet.
Yes, that's a leisure activity too and possibly the one I partake in the most. I've got a media to do list in bookmark folders by medium (e.g. games, anime, webcomics, etc). TVTropes keeps it growing.

New question: What's the best way to find the original post of a sig? Googling it tends to just bring up tons of posts from whoever's sig it's in.
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Post by Prak »

Search by the line and author.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by JonSetanta »

I'd like to know why I still get depersonalizing panic attacks three months after my last Valium pill.

Granted I was on benzos of all kinds for a whole year, but I was also being medicated for the same result of the pill; it was the meds causing the panic. I'm in the 5% of users that gets an adverse effect from it and I actually believed my doctor when he said "you are an anxious person".
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Post by radthemad4 »

Prak_Anima wrote:Search by the line and author.
At first I tried messing around with google and wondering what you meant, and then I found this on top of the screen. Thanks.
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Post by radthemad4 »

When addressing or referring to people with small caps usernames, should they be capitalized?
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

radthemad4 wrote:When addressing or referring to people with small caps usernames, should they be capitalized?
Basic rule of thumb here is to address people as they wish to be called.

If you are writing a paper for a class or new article or somewhere that more formal English usage is expected, ask the professor or refer to the style guide. Or if you have to wing it, then use the name as is, but inside quotes:.
example wrote: On one forum, a user named, "lowercaseusername" asserts that blah blah blah
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Blasted
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Post by Blasted »

You know, that's not a topic that's ever been discussed in any of the style guides I have. As it's a proper noun, you'd expect it to be capitalised, but because of case sensitivity you may actually be referring to another person. I think the name in quotes is definitely the way to go.
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erik
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Post by erik »

As for myself I don't really care if it is erik or Erik. They are both appropriate.

Exact name inside quotes seems a solid default if you are trying to be formally proper.
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Cynic
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Post by Cynic »

Practically, I don't really see it being an issue for sourcing because most databases don't really differentiate between lower case and upper case in user names.

There might be something to how it's actually capitalized within a name.

for example 'aXXo' is most definitely a user name/group that is defined by the different capitalization.
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