PF2, Kingmaker tonight. Minor spoilers re: names of potential companions and side-quest details.

Party, Level 3

• Marisiel, Elf Witch
• Nok-Nok, Goblin Rogue
• Linzi, Halfling Bard
• Amiri, Human Barbarian
• Titus, Human Fighter
• Valerie, Human Fighter
• Stik, Kobold Monk

Variants in Play: Ancestry Paragon, Free Archetype, Gradual Ability Boosts, Slow Leveling, Stamina. I also allow Hero Points to adjust the degree of success on a check by one step rather than re-roll; this primarily gets used to either mitigate a crit fail or turn a failure into a success.

The group had set out at the end of last session with the intention of picking some radishes and hunting two local monsters of some renown, a boar called Tuskgutter and some tatzlwyrms. Amiri was especially excited about going after Tuskgutter.

They arrive at the radish patch to find four kobolds suffering from The Itis™ that quickly scramble to protect their patch, but the monk eases tensions and ends up receiving an entire basket of the spicy radishes.

They spend a few days following the edge of the forest, crossing a rickety old bridge, disturbing some hunting spiders but dispatching them quickly. One evening, just after a meal, several of the Stag Lord's bandits had managed to sneak up on them, which turned out to be the last thing any of them did. Another afternoon saw Stik, Amiri, and Valerie attacked by thylacines while out foraging for ingredients, but by now they're used to that kind of thing.

They get into the general area of where they expect Tuskgutter's lair to be and spend the day searching for it. They eventually find it and have themselves their third proper Solo encounter since starting the game; I took the base profile for Tuskgutter and scaled it to be a Creature 7, so as to make the anticipation set up by the bounty poster and Amiri's vibrating in place worth it. With some good use of debuffing actions/spells and Hero Points, they take it down within a couple of rounds, albeit Titus did fall to an attack routine. One lesser healing potion and a soothe later, along with a short breather, and he's fine.

Trophy in hand, they make camp. As they're breaking camp in the morning, a hunter approaches the group to warn them of the dangers of Tuskgutter, only to be offered bacon.

Next stop, the tatzlwyrm lair.

Let me preface with this: I know this is a hot topic, I’m not looking to have a fight about guns; I’m interested in discussing the practical aspect of the question in the current context. I hope we can have a discussion without dragging politics or name calling into it.

I’m not from the US so I don’t have a dog in that race. I’m very curious however about the perspective of people living there: ever since I can remember, one of the most common argument for the right to bear arms is that it keeps the government in check: if it ever oversteps its powers or becomes fascist/dictatorial then the people will have the means to defend themselves against it and overthrow it.

From abroad, it looks like the trump administration is pushing the limits further almost weekly, behaving in ways that are not democratic, enriching themselves personally through their government position/power, and dismantling the people’s rights.

There are so many guns in the US, kept by people to presumably prevent the above.

So what gives? Why aren’t people using these guns to take back control of the country when the man in charge looks (from my perspective abroad) like he is abusing his power like a despot would and breaking the social contract (if not the law)? And if not, what does it mean for the right to bear arms if they’re not being used to safeguard the people’s freedom given all the collateral damage they cause (regular school shootings, murders, etc)?

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

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If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

First, I am emphatically not talking about LLMs.

Just a shower thought kinda question. For most people, the primary issue is anthropomorphizing too much. But I think programmers see it differently.

Let's say someone comes up with something that seems to walk and talk like a self-aware, sentient, AGI duck. It has a "memories" db, it learns and adapts, it seems to understand cause and effect, actions and consequences, truth v falsehood, it passes Turing tests like they're tic-tac-toe, it recognizes itself in the mirror, yada.

But as a developer, you can "look behind the curtain" and see exactly how it works. (For argument's sake, let's say it's a FOSS duck, so you can actually look at the source code.)

Does it ever "feel" like a real, sentient being? Does it ever pass your litmus test?

For me, I think the answer is, "yes, eventually" ... but only looong after other people are having relationships with them, getting married, voting for them, etc.

My understanding of how large language models work is rooted in my knowledge of statistics. However a significant number of people have never been to college and statistics is a required course only for some degree programs.

How should chatgpt etc be explained to the public at large to avoid the worst problems that are emerging from widespread use?

I'm a member of a hacker space. In the last few months two different people have came in desperate for help because they have a relentless hacker after them. In each case they are a completely mundane person who would have little reason to earn the focus of a dedicated expert in device infiltration. They claim that no matter what they do, what device they use (new phone, new laptop, hardened security OS, even their blueray players) it will get hacked as though they have an aura about them. When pressed for any kind of evidence they have none. The previous events they claim as evidence are always shaky. Often their claim is just that something didn't work right on their computer - thus it is hacked. It's never anything concrete like their bank account getting emptied.

One is a middle-aged woman who thinks that her upstairs neighbor is seeking revenge after she put in a noise complaint. Another is a woman in her 20s who has no understanding of what initiated it. The older woman is at the point where she believes every TV has a camera in it that can get hacked to watch her. When we look up the model numbers and see they have no camera in the specs she waves it off - to her those were just exceptions. In both cases they've turned to technological solutions they don't understand in a blind hope for refuge. Secure DNS (like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1), GrapheneOS, stateless Linux laptops, etc.

I don't feel like these people are schizophrenic. We've had such people show up before and their delusions are on a different level. One guy thinks a well known actor stole his UFO designs and is trying to get him put in jail. These other people feel more like they're in self-imposed conspiracy theories, not unlike what happened to that ChatGPT user. At first I felt like this was a technological form of FDIS (to be clear I have no training in psychology). But there have been no attempts from either person to factitiously create devices that appear compromised. So I suppose this is more of a delusion, perhaps founded on a desire to be more important than they really are.

Does anyone know more about this kind of situation? I don't think there's much I can do for them. But I'd love to understand more about this topic if anyone has seen stuff like this before or has formal training.

I have updated the Portuguese section of my blog with many posts that I scavenged from past blogs I've had since 2005. In order for everyone to be able to go through them chronologically, I gave them their original dates. In the end of each of these posts there is a link to the original publication, many of which came from the Internet Archive itself.

One of my oldest blogs was removed from blogspot decades ago either by a hacker or something obscure about blogspot. So I had to use the archived version to reconstruct my history. I was very surprised to find it there because it was seemingly archived a decade after blogspot removed it. I have no idea what happened but I was so glad to find it!

I have been trying to archive that page for days. The posts within that page are archived but not the page itself. The current August 2025 snapshot is not shown, and if I click on the link that they give me after the archiving process is done, I am directed to a snapshot I did back in May. I have no idea why this is happening, and the "help" section of Wayback Machine doesn't seem to have anyway for me to talk to someone.

Can someone help?

This is the page: https://daviramos.com/br/. It is also available at https://daviramos.bearblog.dev/br/, and yes, I tried archiving that one too.

Thanks!

I'm a big fan of IMDB's Advanced TItle Search but it is kinda useless for finding movies that are primarily comedies. By which I mean films with a main focus on producing laughter or comedic amusement. The problem is that the genre/tag "comedy", while often present, rarely means that a movie is a comedy first and foremost. For example: technically Marvel movies are comedies, but they are really more like action with jokes. There are also many comedy dramas and "dramedies" and that is not what I am look for at all.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is maybe one of the few "almost pure" comedies on TV today.

I miss watching movies that put comedy first even if they are a mix of different genres.

Any suggestions?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like artificial intelligence, bubbles.ai and den store havfrue. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was deep diving.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!