Amarok's recent activity

  1. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    Good point about Bin laden, I'd missed that. In this situation the claim was that involving congress would have tipped of Maduro, which is why they weren't told until it was happening. I'm not...

    Good point about Bin laden, I'd missed that. In this situation the claim was that involving congress would have tipped of Maduro, which is why they weren't told until it was happening. I'm not sure if I believe that or not, if our legislators are that leaky with information we're got other problems too. :/

    2 votes

  2. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    All I can say to that is one small point - Maduro lost the election. He was not a president of anything, legally, under international and Venezuelan laws. He was a wanted fugitive with a twenty...

    All I can say to that is one small point - Maduro lost the election. He was not a president of anything, legally, under international and Venezuelan laws. He was a wanted fugitive with a twenty five million dollar bounty on his head placed there by Obama I think, then increased by Biden. That's probably going to be the legal loophole that saves Trump's ass, this time. If he'd done this to anyone else this would be a very different conversation.

    You're right about the courts. The USA doesn't recognize any authority above its own... well, other than 'God' according to the money and (briefly) the pledge of allegiance. Lip service is usually where God stops in this government. Sometimes I wonder if America is God's greatest regret. Seems like a love / hate relationship to me. :p

    1 vote

  3. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    Obama bagged Bin Laden and Reagan bagged Noriega the same way. They walked. Trump hasn't done anything (yet) worse than they did in this situation. At least Bush had congress authorize his...

    Obama bagged Bin Laden and Reagan bagged Noriega the same way. They walked. Trump hasn't done anything (yet) worse than they did in this situation. At least Bush had congress authorize his invasion, though now we know they were lying through their teeth about all of the justifications for that war so I'm left questioning what value that authorization has in the first place. Congress happily approved a mountain of bullshit with a smile, there's no trust to be found there either.

    Trump's not going to get impeached (for this, anyway - Epstein is another matter) and I doubt the US government is going to stop doing this stuff. In this particular case it seems like the people who would be angry are instead quite happy with the outcome, that's less of a mess than Noriega. I don't think anyone was making a stink about Bin Laden, everyone hated him.

    We'll see how everyone feels in a couple weeks after Trump does this again in Iran. That man loves to push his luck. If he helps oust the Ayatollah and the Iranians are celebrating like the Venezuelans are now, I think I'm going to go resign from society and live in a hut in the Caribbean or something. This world line is giving me too many headaches. :p

    2 votes

  4. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    I think he's making a big mistake there. At a minimum I'd put her in power as the interim leader and then get elections going again. If Trump tries to appoint someone by fiat that's going to...

    I think he's making a big mistake there. At a minimum I'd put her in power as the interim leader and then get elections going again. If Trump tries to appoint someone by fiat that's going to vaporize any goodwill we've earned. It's got to be a popular vote to mean anything at all, otherwise we're just playing dictator-swap and I'm truly sick of that behavior. The CIA should know better by now, they've fucked up enough regime changes over the years. I think the total might even be into the triple digits by now, and the good outcomes are probably in the single digits. This is not a track record to be proud of. :p

    3 votes

  5. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    I'll give them credit when anything they build lasts for more than a decade without falling down, rotting from the inside, shorting out to make fires (like those electric vehicles are famous for)...

    I'll give them credit when anything they build lasts for more than a decade without falling down, rotting from the inside, shorting out to make fires (like those electric vehicles are famous for) or sinking to the bottom of the harbor on first launch like their subs and boats have done. Granted, that's happened to US ships before too but we don't make a habit out of it like they do. :p They have a real problem with durability and longevity in a lot of the things they build.

    They have no regulations on quality or enforced engineering standards like we do on public works, everyone cuts every corner even in their military production. Every scrap of concrete poured in that country will be dust within fifty years. Sure, they can make a two bit transistor that does the job for a while, but comparing their engineering to US defense standards and they aren't even in the same galaxy.

    That's ok, they spend billions on bot farms and celebrity youtube tourism to convince everyone that people in China live in the future, but covering everything in LEDs so it looks good at night and painting the leaves of dead trees green doesn't magically fix your infrastructure problems. It just sweeps it under the rug until the rot collapses your roads on your daily commute. If you think I'm even remotely kidding about any of this, I can supply you with an archive of video evidence of the problems.

  6. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    Yeah, it's not looking very good to me right now. T says we're 'taking over' but we... already left. Not quite sure how that works. There's no enforcing this without people there to do it. Perhaps...

    Yeah, it's not looking very good to me right now. T says we're 'taking over' but we... already left. Not quite sure how that works. There's no enforcing this without people there to do it. Perhaps the CIA has assets and resources in play to back whichever faction comes together for Machado. Or perhaps Trump's just hoping a miracle happens. He does have a habit of pantsing his way through things until some kind of win pops up that he can glom onto. Call me crazy but I don't think flying blind is a viable regime change strategy. I'm curious to watch how this plays out over the next week.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    Game theory is at the heart of geopolitics. The ultimate never-ending all consuming prisoner's dilemma. For my money, the only good response here is to place María Corina Machado into power...

    Game theory is at the heart of geopolitics. The ultimate never-ending all consuming prisoner's dilemma.

    For my money, the only good response here is to place María Corina Machado into power immediately, since she won the last election. That's good, it saves us a ton of time where things usually go sideways running up to elections that are unnecessary in this particular case as they've already happened. All we need to do is reconstitute her government and put the security forces back together, tag in a big fat IMF reconstruction loan, then get the hell out. People will be a lot more forgiving of this 'intervention' if the USA walks away rather than meddling for years on end.

    Trouble is apparently Trump's strike missed the minister of defense and some other problematic members of the older regime, who are now trying to take power. We can't let that fester, it'll end badly. We're not done decapitating yet. Couple more snakes to scratch off the list - there will be another strike to deal with the leftovers.

    4 votes

  8. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    Bingo. Time for bread and circuses, until everyone forgets the name 'Epstein.'

    we're entering the show trial phase of authoritarianism

    Bingo. Time for bread and circuses, until everyone forgets the name 'Epstein.'

    4 votes

  9. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    State governments take over until they reconstitute the fed, it's already on the books - we can operate just fine without a federal government for some time. No attack can get all the 'government'...

    Imagine how we'd feel

    State governments take over until they reconstitute the fed, it's already on the books - we can operate just fine without a federal government for some time. No attack can get all the 'government' in the USA, it's redundant by design - and maybe the only good thing to come out of paying for so much government.

    We'd hold elections, possibly even put in a new constitution (real progress at last), then glass whoever made the attack, and build some really tacky monuments about it that our kids would tear down because they don't like learning about history. :p

    3 votes

  10. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    I'd like to point out that Taiwan has been armed with Ukraine's best submersible drone technology - and that was about 18 months ago, I'm sure they are producing their own by now with all sorts of...

    I'd like to point out that Taiwan has been armed with Ukraine's best submersible drone technology - and that was about 18 months ago, I'm sure they are producing their own by now with all sorts of high tech upgrades and help from American defense contractors who want their own drone fleets.

    China's navy is a joke from an engineering standpoint like everything they build - frankly it's amazing it floats at all, most of it will sink on its own soon enough - and they will all end up on the bottom of the sea if they ever try a real invasion. They fly in, they get shot down by superior air defense tech, they boat over they get sunk by hundreds of underwater torpedoes that loiter silently for weeks using onboard AI. Taiwan will (with US/NATO help) bleed China into collapse exactly like Ukraine is doing to Russia. That's the play, everyone is just waiting to see if Xi is stupid enough to try it.

    I'll wager he is, since he kills anyone who tells him anything he doesn't like to hear. Dude hasn't lived in reality for at least a decade. If you explained the economic shipping risks to him he'd have you decapitated for bringing down his vibe. How is he going to react when his entire invasion fleet goes down in the open water in one day with a one hundred percent casualty rate? No saving face from that disaster, it'll end him.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    I wouldn't be trusting people in halls of power even if they hadn't done that. :p I'd wager Trump was trying to use that circus as a signal of what our military is capable of doing. Play up the...

    I wouldn't be trusting people in halls of power even if they hadn't done that. :p

    I'd wager Trump was trying to use that circus as a signal of what our military is capable of doing. Play up the fear because that fear leads to mistakes on the other side and if it is enough fear it can even prevent conflicts from starting. Same reason they chose such a fast, effective strategy for wave one - well, that and apparently we had a CIA mole in Maduro's inner circle. Makes it pretty easy to hang the other party out to dry.

    It's a very old play, I'm sure if I looked it up in The Art of War I'd find it written down from two thousand years ago. It wasn't for Venezuela either, that show was for Russia, Iran, and China. Trump's media showmanship has developed a dark side, not so surprising that he's opting to choose these strategies though given what we know about him.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    I'm certain it's on the menu of intentions, but the talk about deals with Russia were the spark that guaranteed this would happen. That was the 'justification' that broke any opposition to it...

    I'm certain it's on the menu of intentions, but the talk about deals with Russia were the spark that guaranteed this would happen. That was the 'justification' that broke any opposition to it within the government, far as I can see anyway. This new piece of history rhymes with Cuban Missile Crisis, but they decided to get ahead of it this time instead of waiting until the missiles were on the move.

    4 votes

  13. Comment on US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country in ~society

    Amarok
    Link
    The only thing surprising about this was how well it was executed. Coup in thirty minutes flat with a bare minimum of collateral damage. It's been coming for months and I was watching it live...
    • Exemplary

    The only thing surprising about this was how well it was executed. Coup in thirty minutes flat with a bare minimum of collateral damage. It's been coming for months and I was watching it live listening to the radio chatter.

    Maduro is a bad guy with multiple priors, good riddance. If he wanted to stay in power he should have avoided giving US intelligence the impression that he would be bringing in weapons and troops and resources from Russia and China. That's the only reason this happened - the USA will never allow hostile foreign powers any toeholds in the Americas, and no amount of laws, conventions, treaties, congressional actions, or hand wringing will ever make even the slightest difference to that cold hard geopolitical reality. Welcome to the real world kids.

    I would've expected them to bug out, not take over though. I didn't think Trump had the brains to stick around and guarantee that we didn't just get another tinpot dictator or military group taking over Venezuela. The smart play is just this - to make the transition work. This is not Afghanistan, Venezuela was fully westernized not so long ago and doing very well until their government became corrupt and Maduro ran it into the ground. We don't have to 'teach' anyone democracy there, just restore it to them. We broke it, we bought it as the saying goes. Money is no issue as Venezuela is very, very rich once the oil is flowing again. Let's get them democratic elections immediately and then get the hell out of there. Judging by what I've seen of people celebrating in the streets, nobody over there is shedding tears for Maduro or his generals, and their reaction is the only reaction I assign any weight or value to in this analysis - it's their country.

    I'd worry a lot more about Iran though, because they are next (within two weeks tops I'd guess). Trump tweeted we're ready to go at a moment's notice to do the exact same thing as soon as they start shooting at peaceful protestors. In case you missed it, the country is in full blown riot mode since new years and the government it had is already toast. Short version is they couldn't keep the water on and the people of Iran have had enough of theocracy. They too were once democratic, so just like in Venezuela I think the odds of democracy sticking are better than we're used to seeing. Would you like to start the new year with two new democratic governments on the board, or complain about justifications?

    Of course, the pessimist in me expects to see our government and corporations go into full on loot mode, plunder these countries, and lock them into fifty year deals that bleed them dry for their resources. That's usually how this ends up despite any good intentions. I'm going to keep a happy thought that maybe, just maybe, one day we'll get the kinds of wins we once did with Japan and Germany more often. I'd love nothing more than to see Iran and Venezuela get it together and join the democratic government club.

    Putin and the BRICS bloc have lost two key allies since the year started. 2026 is certainly getting off the ground with a bang. In other news, there's chatter about a major Russian false flag coming up in the near future (according to Ukrainian intelligence and our own) that involves killing large numbers of Europeans somewhere. Are we ready for the fallout from that when NATO takes the gloves off with Russia?

    18 votes

  14. Comment on Buying a lotta RAM now, as an investment ... thoughts? in ~tech

    Amarok
    (edited )
    Link
    Generally if you want to get into investing for a profit it's better to buy shares in the companies that make the thing rather than the thing itself. Don't buy RAM, buy stock in companies that...

    Generally if you want to get into investing for a profit it's better to buy shares in the companies that make the thing rather than the thing itself. Don't buy RAM, buy stock in companies that produce quality RAM. If demand goes up big time, they make a killing and so do you. Don't buy gold, buy stock in companies that mine the gold. Don't buy US bonds, invest in US defense contractors, etc. Also be ready to drop any investments the moment they aren't returning value to you - don't get attached to things.

    It's faster and easier to get back out of these investments again this way since you don't have to resell the product yourself. Always set a stop loss, and just keep moving it up slowly as the investment makes money. Eventually it'll stop making money and crash, which is when the stop triggers and auto-sells all of your shares. That's your profit. Never bother trying to get in at the bottom or top of anything - nobody can predict where the top and bottom are going to be.

    Frankly I'd expect RAM to normalize pricing by summer. As chips go it is the easiest to produce, not like processor fabs for example. Supply will bounce back fast, chip makers know this game well, they've been here before.

    The AI data centers are on borrowed time, this is the gnarliest tech bubble we've ever seen and it's overdue for a reckoning. Only reason it hasn't happened yet is because five tech companies are propping up US GDP by themselves right now and none of the investors want to accept the reality that AI is not working out as advertised.

    They are still buying the line of bullshit coming from the tech bros about it. Those data centers are unnecessary, AI is going to live in a card in your PC not in the 'cloud' infrastructure. I'm sure they'd all love to lock AI up in data centers so they can meter access, bu that's not going to work for too much longer.

    9 votes

  15. Comment on How do you design your campaigns? in ~games.tabletop

    Amarok
    Link
    Surprised to see no mention of the Session Zero method. That's where I get the players to do most of my planning for me. First step is talking to the players and finding out what kind of game they...

    Surprised to see no mention of the Session Zero method. That's where I get the players to do most of my planning for me. First step is talking to the players and finding out what kind of game they want to play. Are we doing an all rouges thieves guild run? Or is this an epic planar adventure? Is everyone from the same small town, or coming together for some major event that puts the players in competition? Perhaps everyone is on a prison galley or is the crew of a pirate ship, possibly even a spelljamming ship - I've got no real preferences. I usually leave it up to them.

    Once that's out of the way we roll up the characters and I give them their homework assignment - a couple of pages (5ish) of character history. I'll break rules with impunity here and allow them just about anything they can reasonably justify with useful story bits in the character's history - you want a +3 flaming rapier? That'd better be welded into the story like Inigo Montoya and then I'm good with it. This gets them invested into the characters more and they'll always take the time because free loots - I find it the most devious and useful bribe a GM can make in any tabletop game.

    They like it less around level twelve when some faction one of the characters mentioned in their history as part of a family blood feud shows up as one of the main villains. I'll take every single little detail of their histories and use all of that to do the world building. Once you've got that you'll know what kind of campaign to build around it. I rarely do any heavy planning unless I know I've got the characters on a railroad - such as a dungeon or fortress they have to visit. Then I'll get down to the maps and traps level.

    Another handy tool is the lost art of the Hex Crawl. I'll do some of my world building this way and fill in only the hexes the players might reasonably end up visiting. It's fun because you don't have to do it all at once, you can build your world one hex at a time just ahead of the players themselves. There are even self-generating hexcrawl variants which auto-populate the content for you to riff on. This helps with both writer's block (let the players drive plot which drives discovery) and the world builder's disease (don't fill in more hexes than you need for the current session). There are plenty of free tools to make this easy.

    Mostly I find I concentrate on location and factions. Weather, terrain, settlements, a handful of notable NPCs or Patrons perhaps... and then it's time to sketch out every group in the area that has 'power' and what their machinations are. Who are the lords, bandits, various clans or tribes, secret societies etc. I don't even need to know where they are yet, just which groups exist out there so I can pair them to plot hooks as they happen, and which ones to hook into the threads they gave me in their character histories.

    This creates a kind of self-driving story web that farms the players for story generation. I am one spectacularly lazy GM so this works well for me. ;) I find it to be a better way to make sure all the work I'm doing is going to make it into the game rather than get lost at the bottom of a pile of notes.

    2 votes

  16. Comment on Tweaks to state laws mean many Americans will be able to benefit from small, simple plug-in solar panels in ~enviro

    Amarok
    Link
    I'm very, very interested in this tech. I've got one small 200w panel that can charge up a pair of 350w/h batteries in about five hours. Doesn't even have to be strong/direct sunlight either, that...

    I'm very, very interested in this tech.

    I've got one small 200w panel that can charge up a pair of 350w/h batteries in about five hours. Doesn't even have to be strong/direct sunlight either, that panel makes juice on low light just fine. Handy for when power goes out as those batteries can run a fridge, the water pump, the furnace, and the pellet stove for several hours at a time. They can also recharge lanterns, flash lights, phones, and run lights or fans or other smallish appliances. I just picked these up because they were on clearance and I wanted to play with the tech. It's kinda cool carrying around electricity like water.

    The two batteries are light and small enough to fit right in a backpack, which is great for running small electrical power tools like a leaf blower or weed eater. I'd love to ditch the gasoline power tools for an electric set, they last longer and are lighter overall, plus I don't have to worry about making sure all my batteries are compatible with the power tools. Most of the companies do vendor lock in - no thanks, this way it's universal and I don't get fleeced buying low quality power tool batteries. The tools cost far less if they are just simple electric outlets with no battery tech built in. The money is better spent on a big battery pack and some extension cords.

    I'd need a 1200w portable battery to run the chainsaw (for one hour's operation time total). At that size the word 'portable' is debatable, however with lithium-sulphur batteries coming, a ten pound battery that can manage 3000w could cost under three hundred bucks in a couple of years time. That would really put the nail in the coffin for gas power tools (which are a far greater polluter than automobiles - gas power tools have no catalytic converters).

    I have a big roof (about 1800 sq ft) that's in direct sunlight from about an hour after sunrise all the way through sunset. If I covered that thing in solar panels, even on an overcast winter day it would still get enough light to produce a couple thousand watts of charging power. All that's missing is a big base load battery like this 50kw model or perhaps something even more aggressive.

    I've got a great generator that runs on gas, natural gas, or propane. Quiet as a person talking plus puts out clean inverted power too, won't fry any electronics. The circuit panel has a pair of 50A breakers (from 1962, still working) and is wired to be fed from a proper 4-prong generator hookup in the garage. All I have to do is flip the master switch to keep it disconnected from the grid so I don't blow some poor electrician off of a pole further up the road. Then it can power all the outlets, no fussing with extension cords.

    Put all this together and I'd have a steady flow of power coming into the big battery from solar all the time, and the ability to switch over to generator power to run the entire house (even big ticket items like the dryer or oven or water heater simultaneously). Anything extra the generator is making (it idles around 3000w) gets dumped back into the battery. If grid power goes down, I can coast for ages on the solar and solar storage. The water heater (115gal westinghouse) keeps the water hot almost an entire week so I wouldn't even need the generator to shower.

    I prefer smaller portable propane tanks but with this system I could go in for a larger one. They aren't that expensive. The propane and natural gas are super cheap fuel sources in the USA - we make so much of it as fracking byproducts that they regularly burn it off into the air in their rush to get oil. We've had to pass laws to get companies to ban flaring the wells and stop them wasting natural gas. :p

    I also need to invest in heat pumps. They don't do so well in winter under sub-freezing temperatures, but they are killer air conditioner replacements at a fraction of the power consumed.

    That setup means I don't have to care about the power grid, since I've got everything I need to roll my own. Our electric prices have tripled over the last five years (>$500/mo) so I am not a fan of the power company. I am going to invest in building out something like this just to get them off my back. If they want to change state laws to make that easier then great, I'm all for it.

    Ditch the idea of a unified power grid completely, focus on micro-grids instead. It's not exactly solar punk living yet but it's a step in the right direction for sure. It'll do until I can get a fridge-sized small modular nuclear reactor to step in for the generator. :)

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Alton Brown is back! Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 1: The Big Bird in ~food

  18. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    I'm nearsighted - anything past arm's length is blurred to the point of not being able to read letters unless they are huge on a billboard. I probably did that to myself reading books. I was in a...

    I'm nearsighted - anything past arm's length is blurred to the point of not being able to read letters unless they are huge on a billboard. I probably did that to myself reading books. I was in a local library reading program and reading before I ever set foot in a school. It's also what I spent most of my time in school doing to escape the boredom. That meant I spent most of my time focusing my vision at arm's length and that seems to be where I permanently parked it. Then screens came along at the same distance and I work in tech so I'm always in front of one. :P Can't read lettering on typical street signs at all at any distance. I can't even read the numbers on a wall clock that's in the room with me without squinting.

    Got my first eyeglasses at 14, cleared it up perfectly. Just got a new prescription last month, vision is still great even at distance though I now need bifocals to read very close. I do have some floaters but nothing unusual for someone of my age.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on Alton Brown is back! Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 1: The Big Bird in ~food

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    Are you kidding? There can't be a safer bet than that... though at the rate he's drinking, maybe True Brew V: Whiskey Business is the safest bet. I'd guess he's been drinking since he went on Heat...

    if this new YouTube series of his actually takes off

    Are you kidding? There can't be a safer bet than that... though at the rate he's drinking, maybe True Brew V: Whiskey Business is the safest bet. I'd guess he's been drinking since he went on Heat Eaters, still trying to put out the fire.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental

    Amarok
    Link Parent
    That is exactly how it worked for me when I was trying to visualize things. I'd have a blank piece of paper with something small on it (like a thumbnail-sized bird) and stare at it, then try to...

    That is exactly how it worked for me when I was trying to visualize things. I'd have a blank piece of paper with something small on it (like a thumbnail-sized bird) and stare at it, then try to retain it after I closed my eyes. I could pick it up and hold it for a bit, I'd lose it after a minute or so unless I dipped back out onto the page to refresh it. I figure if I practiced at this a lot every day I could perhaps open up a wallet-at-arms-length size area where I could place a visual image that would persist, perhaps even with some control.

    The 'cloud-rorschach' trick is much, much harder to pin down and control. My visual snow looks an awful lot like this but mine is calm - all the images people make to show how it looks are running at 60Hz compared to my 2Hz speed. My snow drifts around, changes colors, and shifts more lazily than falling snow on a still day. Mine's also more transparent than that, it's hard to even notice it if my eyes are open unless I'm looking at a bright solid color background.

    If I close my eyes, I get what's more like HPPD static but again, vastly more calm than that image implies. If I try to focus on a scene, sometimes the snow will swirl over and around what I'm trying to imagine in waves that flow from the edge of my vision to the center. It's as if you took the pixels on a video you were watching and set them free to flow around all over the screen, but they have to follow the slopes and shapes of things even though they've now lost texture and all turned into shifting rainbow colored sand. Then they rebel and abandon the forms they were briefly following and I lose the image. It's really quite pretty but not useful. :P

    I can't pin down a size for the individual snowflakes/pixels either, which I've always thought was peculiar. It's as if they shrink when I try or are somehow infinitely small to begin with, like I'm looking at plank-length flecks of light. Pixels on a monitor are gargantuan compared to the ones making up my static.

    3 votes