You may be right. A few other comment here have remarked at his neckerchief being not quite right. That also doesn’t exclude the possibility for a digital touch-up, or a photoshoot as a dedicated training model for AI.

Not to come off as a musk fan-boy (I am most certainly not), but that’s a damn good photograph. Absolutely a professional photoshoot with hilariously high-end wardrobe.

Time to refer to the checklist:

[x] Hat
[ ] Cattle

Maybe it’s filled with the same stuff as Happy Fun Ball?

Personally, I’m a fan of the rumble notification feature. Pair it with your phone and it’ll rumble in response to a random notification on your phone at least once a day. Best part is: it kinda shakes the whole house and will sometimes shuffle itself into the floor so you can’t ignore it! Yeah, I’ve had to replace some tile, but it’s totally worth it.

Could be worse. You can get a cozy for these things which makes it even more pointless.

Considering the downward trend of quality in home appliances, it makes even more sense that it’s not even solid metal.

That’s a smart player. You wouldn’t believe what a parking space costs in Waterdeep.

Exactly. I was asked by my players at campaign start what the rules were for food, encumbrance, etc. I basically said that as long as nothing was going on that was out of whack with reality, we’re not bothering with any of that. The only exception would be to avoid being game-breaking. Like traversing a desert on foot, I’d shift gears to track food and water. Or if they find a dragon’s treasure horde, we’re absolutely tracking encumbrance.

I attempt to negotiate with the pack of kobolds.

Parleley, parlelellyleloooo, par le nee, partner, par… snip, parsley… parlay?

Eh, I stick to “video game rules” for the most part in my campaigns. This lets the party focus on the more game-y aspects of DnD instead of the simulation-like elements. Otherwise, it devolves into a game of “simon says”.

You didn’t mention anything about putting your armor back on before breakfast. You’ve been ambushed, you’re in your pajamas, and you’re not getting to those eggs before they get cold. Roll initiative.

I now endorse my idealogical rival.

I’m confused. Who is endorsing Trump? Clearly you don’t mean wishing the man well or condemning this attempt on his life?

Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.

During the early pandemic, I was 100% convinced he was going to declare a national state of emergency as a pretense for a kind of coup. It would have been easy to have disproportionate military occupation of population centers like NYC, enforcing curfews, enforcing distancing and masking, while generally fomenting unrest through non-military groups. Throw in some old-fashioned resource scarcity by restricting shipping in the name of quarantine and, baby, you have a stew going. Once people are incited to riot, martial law is easy to justify.

Instead, the Republican party doubled-down on the dumbest plan possible - literally betting on the stupidity of their base - to secure political power. The sheer greed, ego, and narcissism in the upper echelon of their leadership has them stepping on their own feet half the time, and I’m convinced we’re lucky for that.

also libs: I stand with trump after this appalling act

Hard disagree. From what I’m reading, politicians are condemning an attempt at homicide, nothing more. Voters are following suit.

THE FISH-MAST-ER!

You’re exactly right. And if the retrocomputing and retrogaming communities have taught us anything, it’s that good emulation can make such systems last for a very long time.

TL;DR: it’s probably not that hard to pick up compared to the complex and deep stacks we use today. Someone will give it a shot.

COBOL is in a special place in our computing legacy. It’s too new to require intimate knowledge of the electronics that drive it (older systems and machine-code did), and is too old to be all that complicated (target machines were much smaller and slower). I would wager it’s actually not that hard to learn, and is probably a dream to code with modern equipment. You won’t be slowed down by punchcards, tape drives, time sharing, etc., and can probably use VSCode and an emulator to cover a ton of ground. The computing model is likely a straight line (storage -> compute -> storage), with little to no UI. In other words: simple by today’s standards.

The idea that a job req could actually ask for “50+ years experience” in a given piece of computing technology just gives me goosebumps. Like someone did a really good job 50 years ago, or a really bad one. Either way, it’s astonishing that any one thing could be in production use that long or longer.

stack of blank character sheets?

/me produces a stack of Bard character sheets.

Sorry to hear about your friend. While I’m no doctor, that seems to fit the bill to me. I’ve known people that had other trauma when young, and yeah, maintaining healthy relationships seems to be the hardest thing for them. Your story reminded me of a lot.