Russia would never threaten China with nukes, because 1) China ALSO has nukes, and 2) China has been the only thing keeping Russia afloat recently.

But it would have to be a scorched earth kind of invasion. The kind that pisses off basically everyone, because it leaves every single Russian, military, or citizen, dead. They’d have to come in, take everything, and kill everything. Take the land.

First of all, if you’re being invaded by an army planning to genocide your entire population, then you have no reason not to use every weapon in your arsenal. If the options are A: China kills 100% of your populace or B: Launch nukes and even 1% of your populace survives whatever follows, then B is the most rational choice.

Secondly, there’s no reason to assume that states will make rational decisions to begin with. I’d say the current state of affairs in Ukraine is a very good example of that in action. So even if China wasn’t planning to genocide all of Russia, even if it was some kind of “benevolent” invasion where they were going to tiptoe around the flower beds, gently pry Putin out of the Kremlin, and basically leave everything the same except that now Russians pay for groceries with renminbi instead of rubles… there’s still every reason to imagine that Putin and his top brass would still launch nukes on the mere principle of the thing.

So no, let’s not glibly plan for a fast forward on nuclear Armageddon, thank you very much.

I grew up near Calais, Barre, and Charlotte, and none of them are pronounced how you’d think.

For cooling purposes, is nitrogen not as good?

I’ve got an Anbernic 353p and I LOVE it for handheld, but trying to use it as a console has proven tricky. I just want a device that I can plug into my TV and play games on with a minimum of tinkering. I shouldn’t need to remap controllers every time I turn the thing on. I don’t care to follow along with a three+ hour long tutorial to get all the settingsjust right. Plug into TV. Turn on. Play game.

This is where original hardware, or even those SNES Mini or Playstation Classic devices have appeal, because they aren’t tinkering hobby devices, they’re game systems first, last, and only. Everything above and beyond that should be very optional.

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway—might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.

The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn’t want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doo-hickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn’t get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.

We’re cavemen on the Moon, we carry bone harpoons! But there ain’t no whales so we tell caveman tales and sing a whaling tune!

Slightly less than one boob and one testicle. Just like the average person has slightly less than two legs.

Or the fighter jets are piloted by teenaged schoolgirls.

Or the fighter jets are teenaged schoolgirls.

Even if they don’t have a nuke (and we assume they haven’t otherwise acquired one), does Iran have the materials to make a dirty bomb?

In all honesty, it seems like they’ve been trying to make 3D happen every ten to fifteen years since the 1950s. And they tried making VR a thing in the 80s and 90s, too until it went to sleep for a little while.

Think about the ways that information tech has revolutionized our ability to do things. It’s allowed us to do math, produce and distribute news and entertainment, communicate with each other, make our voices heard, organize movements, and create and access pornography at rates and in ways that humanity could only have dreamed of only a few decades ago.

Now consider that AI is first and foremost a technology predicated on reappropriating and stealing credit for another person’s legitimate creative work.

Now imagine how much of humanity’s history has had that kind of exploitation at the forefront of its worst moments, and consider what might lie ahead with those kind of impulses being given the rocket fuel of advanced information technology.

Here’s the thing:

How is the couch co-op for Titan Quest? My SO and I spent a ton of time on Diablo 3 together and I might consider trying that again.

Public housing shouldn’t be any more of a dirty word than public education.

You never actually need to use as much toothpaste as is commonly depicted. A fraction of that will more than get the job done.

Spherical cartoon bombs… kinda existed, but went out of style in the 19th century.

I suppose there might be rare instances at livestock shows where you might see fluffy white cloud sheep, but most sheep I’ve ever seen in person are about as filthy as any other outdoor dwelling livestock, which is to say, fairly.

Nice

Goddammit, when did this shit become the default?!

games like Blood

Hot damn, but I loved Blood. Duke Nukem for H. P. Lovecraft dorks!

That looks… a lot… like the Greendale Community College flag.

It helped me understand what the hell was going on with Batman Forever when I realized that the whole thing was riddled with tributes to the Adam West Batman.

Once Jim Carrey gets up a head of steam, he is doing a full on impersonation of Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. Look at Gorshin in this scene. Carrey is doing an incredible Gorshin act.

Now I don’t want that and I don’t appreciate it, but once I understood where all of the camp in Forever came from it didn’t make me quite so angry.