kingofterrors

[kingofterrors]

Queuing around the block with half an hour still to go. Some great cosplays happening out here!

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 live #dimension 20 London live show

[kingofterrors]

Well that feels pretty fucking definitive, huh?

I was expecting anything but not Bard

#guess I'm a cleric after all #my life as a priest #but seriously this is probably why i enjoy playing a rogue so much in actual dnd #getting to be someone i'm not in real life #although having said that i'm a cleric in my current dnd campaign #nothing like playing your first game in your own persona

[kingofterrors]

Off to see Dimension 20 live tomorrow night! Can't wait!

#d20 #dimension 20 live

[kingofterrors]

I've voted, but goddamn that was hard.

One little story about why I chose what I chose. I'm a child of the 80s. Born in 1980, which means I was paying attention to music in the early 90s. In my school class (very south coast British) we had one girl who was from America. I don't know where exactly, to my shame. I didn't know the right questions to ask about states etc. in those days. But she was called Charlie. I didn't even know Charlie was from America at first. I just knew she had an accent that emphasised the 'r's. I wondered if she was from Bristol.

But fuck me, Charlie could rap and sing Rhythm is a Dancer like nothing I'd ever seen or heard. At the start of the day she'd just kick off and we'd all sit back and enjoy. She was so fucking good. And it's such a jam.

So that's my vote. But less for SNAP and more for Charlie. Hope she's having a fantastic life out there now.

#music #1990s music #SNAP #let's reminisce

[kingofterrors]

#all of the above?! #good heavens don't make me choose #music

[kingofterrors]

“Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. Their flu vaccine will also likely be delivered in the form of a spray, as many people have an aversion to needles. “Respiratory infections move through the nose, so a spray might be an easier delivery system,” Hai said. Additionally, the researchers say there is little chance of a virus mutating to avoid this vaccination strategy. “Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this,” Hai said. Ultimately, the researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses. “There are several well-known human pathogens; dengue, SARS, COVID. They all have similar viral functions,” Ding said. “This should be applicable to these viruses in an easy transfer of knowledge.””

—

Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

This is HUGE. This will fundamentally change how we get inoculated.

#science #good news for once!

[kingofterrors]

I’m so pressed about how evil this company is that I’m reposting Alex’s gofundme over here. They’re trying to bury Alex under so many legal fees that they have no choice but to give up their ip… and they’re only one of many many people (and pets!) that have been harmed by this company.

[kingofterrors]

reblog for easter

#it's Maundy Thursday y'all #this close to Easter it's time to break out the classic #funny

[kingofterrors]

duality of man

#video games #manipulating the course of the history of nations #we crime big

[kingofterrors]

#i'm fully one of nature's spellcasters #int wis cha stats first in that order #good strength mid dex ABYSMAL con #like the glassiest of glass cannons #is it possible for me to get sick with something? #i'm gonna catch it!

[kingofterrors]

Just put this into place yesterday, and it’s wonderful. Highly, highly recommended. Easy as you like.

TL;DR: Steam just made library sharing so much fucking easier and so much fucking better. Instead of login-trading, it's just a simple goddamn invite.

Read this. Really. It's a good read. Because it shows that, full-stop, Valve isn't just doubling down on their stance to make sure that people can and should be able to share their copies of digital goods as easily as they can physical ones, but they're making it better and easier than ever.

But you know how Steam allowed you to, with either friends or family, link accounts with another person to be able to establish an ability to share game libraries with one another? The general gist of Steam Family Sharing was that, with a limit of five people plus you (six in total) on a limit of ten computers total could share account access to willingly mix your libraries. You could play theirs. They could play yours.

This was a huge boon. It was meant to emulate sharing a physical copy of a game. A way to allow children to play games their parents or siblings had bought without having to fork over double the cash to buy it a second game. But it had some major limitations and drawbacks, and was archaic to use.

If a person did not share the same computer, you had to manually log into that computer to give it and the accounts on it access. This wouldn't be a problem if both accounts were used on the same computer, but many households (and astronomically more family and friend groups) had multiple computers, all used by different people.

If that computer, at any point, was hard reset to any point before the sharing occurred, you lost access. And had to do the whole process again. This was also an issue with computer transfers. The whole kit and kaboodle needed to be redone on upgrades. On top of that, the old computer is now just dead weight that you may not realize you have to manually revoke access to.

Putting your account information on another person's computer opens up security issues. They could, intentionally or accidentally, land themselves on your account if the login information was stored. Which could easily lead to purchases or bans you did not want to happen.

If anyone was, at any point, playing any game on their own library, you had no access to their games. Even if it was a totally different game, you had to wait your turn as if waiting for their computer to be freed up to sit at. (Admittedly this is kind of like the "mom said it's my turn on the xbox" meme, but hey, kinda archaic.)

You could not choose whose library you accessed a game from. Not at all. It always prioritized the first library it gained access from, DLC access and multiplayer be damned. If another friend you were accepting games from had more DLC? Too bad.

And yet here we are. Steam Families Beta fixes EVERYTHING about the above issues. By just going through Settings > Interface > client Beta Participation and clicking onto Steam Families Beta? You get:

No more login sharing. No more computer links. You can now choose which person's library you borrowed from. And you can play any other game from someone's library, even while they're in-game. It just needs to be a different game than what they're playing.

Pick five people. Invite them to your family. And now everyone has access to everyone's library. My goddamn library went from 150-ish to almost a goddamn thousand in ten minutes of setup.

Account sharing and password sharing are dirty words that "lose" billions of dollars. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Max. They aren't game storefronts, but they still allow you to access massive libraries and scream like you murdered their firstborns for daring to share your password with your mother after you moved out.

Microsoft tried pushing to demonize and undercut used games sales and borrowed copies of physical games. Remember the first attempt to reveal the Xbox One? People forget, but these vultures tried to make an always online console that checked to see if you were the account that owned the game, even if you had a physical disc, and prevent access to the disc's contents if you weren't the original downloader.

Valve walked the fuck up. Valve tapped the mic. And Valve dropped the fucking thing right onto the ground with one feature's revamp.

About the only issues I can see with this are twofold:

If someone sharing your library gets banned from a game's servers... so do you. No one else in the family does, but the both of you do. This is... rather unpleasant, because banhammers can be dropped quite frequently by mistake. I'd urge Valve to rethink this one, but I see the logic: don't cheat and effectively bite the hand feeding you. Still making me side-eye that, though.

If you leave a family you've joined? You have to wait a YEAR to join a new one. It's to prevent people form jumping ship to another group and screwing over who's in the former one in the process, but a YEAR? OUCH.

Problems aside, though... it's probably the biggest fucking power move I have ever seen a media distributor make in the current economic climate. It's the kind of thing that would let so many new games be available in a way that's easier than ever. Just a few clicks to send or accept an invite, and bam. Permanent access to dozens or even hundreds of new games with so much more freedom than earlier drafts of the system.

It's the kind of thing that slaps you in the face with positivity after so many Ls from the games and media industries. And I'm all the fuck for a W like this.

#steam #valve #video games #steam games

[kingofterrors]

I saw this art out in the wild, and was like: Laerryn Coramar Seelie! And I’m so glad to see the same was felt at the very highest levels!

I mean…😶

#laerryn coramar seelie #DnD art #phb 2024 #gorgeous

[kingofterrors]

Happy farcille day ✨

#farcille #dungeon meshi #marcille donato #falin touden #just beautiful art #gorgeous

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I was trying to find out if Kermit was eligible to be pope and I found a blog that says he's the perfect example of a catholic priest

#kermit #sermon reference #you know i'm going to be bringing this up in my vocations advisor work #'do you see yourself as a kermit?'

[kingofterrors]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

#christianity #sometimes tumblr users are church too! #seriously i have a number of sermon references that come directly from tumblr #also there's a reason simeon says to mary at the presentation in the temple 'a sword will pierce your own soul too' #tough words to a woman presenting her 8 day old child at the temple #and you know it... #sermon reference #my life as a priest

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#macbeth #at gcse #measure for measure #at a level #measure for measure is fascinating - a play that feels intrinsically tragic and could easily have gone down that route being twisted into #an 'ish' comedy #saw a good performance of it at a converted swimming pool theatre in Oxford

[kingofterrors]

I low-key love the fact that sci-fi has so conditioned us to expect to be hanging out with a bunch of cool space aliens, that legitimate, actual scientists keep proposing the most bizarre, three-blunts-into-the-rotation "theories" to explain the fact we're not.

Some of my favourites include:

Zoo Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they're not talking to us because of the Prime Directive from Star Trek? (Or because they're doing experiments on us???)

Dark Forest Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they all hate us and each other so they're all just waiting with a shotgun pointed at the door, ready to open fire on anything that moves?

Planetarium Theory: What if there's at least one alien with mastery over light and matter that's just making it seem to us that the universe is empty to us as, like, a joke?

Berserker Theory: What if there were loads of aliens, but one of them made infinite killer robots that murdered everyone and are coming for us next?!!

Like, the universe is at least 13,700,000,000 years old and 46,000,000,000 light years big. We have had the ability to transmit and receive signals for, what, 100 years, and our signals have so far travelled 200 light years?

The fact is biological life almost certainly has, does, or will develop elsewhere in the universe, and it's not impossible that a tiny amount of it has, does, or will develop in a way that we would understand as "intelligent". But, like, we're realistically never going to know because of the scale of the things involved.

So I'm proposing my own hypothesis. I call it the "Fool in a Field" hypothesis. It goes like this:

Humanity is a guy standing in the middle of a field at midnight. It's pitch black, he can't move, and he's been standing there for ages. He's just had the thought to swing his arms. He swings one of his arms, once, and does not hit another person. "Oh no!" He says. "Robots have killed them all!"