Merry Christmas!

 A very merry Christmas wish to all!

To all you heathen Leftists:  There is still time to repent and mend your ways.  God offers grace to all, if you sincerely repent, open your heart to Him, and behave decently.  Jesus Christ is hope.

Linux distros

 I've been playing around with Linux distros lately.  I've had an interest for years.  In fact, I bought a copy of Suse Linux in Germany 20 years ago.  Yes, the man pages were in German.  But with the advent of Windows 11 and the increasingly abhorrent nature of Microsux Windows, I went back to Linux looking for an alternative.

Wow, have things changed over the years.  There are so many different players on the field these days!  And so many different desktops!  And mixing and matching of all sorts lets you customize your experience.  And so many versions made expressly to welcome newcomers from the Microsux gulag.  I tried several out as virtual machines, then dusted off some old hard drives and slotted them in the external holder and got to installing multiple versions.  Here are my experiences on my 7 year old all-in-one computer with 16GB of ram with a dual core 2600MHz processor.

Open Suse:  Slow and annoying.

Fedora (formerly Red Hat) KDE:  Broken.  Terrible installer.  After installation it went into an infinite loop of failure, involving negative 1770 MB of updates.

KDE Neon Plasma:  Really good, if a touch slow.  KDE is definitely my favorite desktop environment, because it is so customizable.  I like being in control of my computer, not vice-versa.

Mint Cinnamon:  Excellent.  The Cinnamon desktop is my runner-up to KDE.  The feel is similar, but Mint just runs a bit smoother.

Peppermint:  No.  Just no.  Errors while installing.  Doesn't show newly installed programs without a reboot.  Do they think this is Windows?

Zorin:  Amazing.  This distro is expressly made for newbies, and is remarkably helpful.  When you're trying to do something, if it doesn't have what you're looking for, it can often recommend an alternative.  It offers hints about what it thinks you really meant to do, that are actually helpful.  The desktop layouts are limited, but they are really good.  The default desktop is more or less what I work to recreate with KDE.

Feren OS:  A remarkable work by one man.  Really very good.  It uses the KDE desktop on a Ubuntu base, with a healthy inspiration from Mint.  He really is taking the best of what he finds, and sewing them together into a beautiful and functional tapestry.  Privacy and anonymity are baked into everything, down to the custom browser installer app.

Pop OS:  It's good, if it's the only OS you're running.  Does not play well with others.

Manjaro XCFE:  Fast and well done, but not to my taste.  Manjaro, based on Arch, is a solid base to work with.

Manjaro Deepin:  Broken.  Windows are meant to move.

Manjaro Budgie:  Works well, but I just don't like it.

Manjaro KDE:  Excellent.  I like everything about it.

Garuda KDE Dr460nized:  This is the way.  It's based on Arch, and feels a lot like Manjaro, but with attitude and humor built in.  When I mess up typing my password, it insults me with movie and TV show quotes.  I really like the desktop layout, even if some of the widgets are a bit buggy.  The event calendar works properly when relocated to the bottom dock, for example.  It's running really well on a 128GB USB 3.1 flash drive.  Even the Grub boot screen is attractive, although secure boot doesn't recognize it.

Tools only work when you use them

 

Fuzzy, hollow black holes (spacetime governs motion)

For the physics geeks - I really enjoyed the new PBS (hack, ptui!) Spacetime video about hollow, fuzzy black holes. But I have a much, much simpler way to get to the same result.

https://www

Assume Spacetime is a field with a large positive baseline and a specific elasticity (inverse square law & C), which governs motion. (Momentum/velocity is a localized wave.) All other fields withdraw energy from Spacetime, which cannot go below a zero value. Gravity and relativistic effects result from the slope of local gradients. (Motion = sine, proper time = cosine.) That's it. That's all there is to it. What follows (among other things) is that black holes are fuzzy, hollow shells.  

Incoming particles hit the zero energy barrier and bounce, but they can't go out because of the nearly vertical gradient which keeps pushing them back in, so they just sort of slide around.  Each incoming particle makes the black hole a tiny bit larger and adds to its overall momentum.  This allows black holes to move through space and spin.  This also preserves the kinetic energy of the particles, because total energy must be preserved.  It prevents absurdities like singularities, negative energy, and infinite imaginary velocity.

It amuses and reassures me that I keep finding confirmation of my simple theory in different places and different topics.  (Note that my previous post on this topic was almost a month before the Spacetime video was released.)  I just wish I could find somebody in academia who would take this seriously.  Since I don't have a degree in the subject, I must obviously know nothing, right?  I guess physics using basic trigonometry and algebra just isn't sexy and complicated enough, unlike the 40 year failure that is string theory.

Black holes are where spacetime = 0

 Spacetime has a constant positive energy level, plus or minus uncertainty, which I will label ST.  All other fields, including motion, draw their energy from spacetime.  The total energy at any point in space = ST ± uncertainty.  We will ignore the uncertainty, as it has little to do with what follows.

Mass is energy.  No particle with mass can move at the speed of light, because doing so would require more energy than is available (ST).  Photons do not have mass, and only travel at the speed of light.

Gravity is the gradient of ST.

A black hole is the place where total used energy = ST.  There is no energy left remaining.  There is no gravity inside a black hole, because the gradient is zero.  This makes a black hole not a singularity, but a sort of discontinuity.

Each particle in a black hole has mass and energy.  Their velocity cannot be entirely directed towards the center of mass, because black holes spin and move through space.  And remember that there is no gravity inside the black hole, because the gradient, by definition, has been reduced to zero.

They are either a very compact mass or a hollow shell.  It has been shown that all the energy/mass of a black hole can be contained in a shell at the event horizon.  Every bit of energy added to the black hole makes the shell/event horizon just a tiny bit larger.

Karma rule for RPGs

 Karma

Every time a d20 is rolled for combat, saving throws, or skill checks, roll a d12 Karma die alongside it. This includes monster/NPC attacks.  Regardless of the outcome of the d20, apply the Karma result to the player character.

12: Something good for the PC happens. This could be anything appropriate to the situation. DM fiat, but occasionally offering the player a choice can be entertaining. (Would you like advantage on your attack next turn, or advantage on the damage roll right now?)  (Monster hits, but falls prone.  You hit the monster, causing it to drop its weapon.  You unlock and open the door just in time to see the guard leave his post to go use the toilet.  The guard catches you sneaking into the store room, but just nods and mutters "A bottle of wine from the top shelf, and I didn't see anything.")

1: Something bad for the PC happens. This could be anything appropriate to the situation. DM fiat. (PC gets disadvantage, monster gets advantage, drop a weapon, armor or weapon is damaged, break a tool, jam a lock, attract unwanted attention, wandering monster arrives, monster attack cuts off coin purse, the seduction attempt works way too well and you gain a stalker or STD, your dagger gets stuck in the monster, etc.)

A Blessing can increase the "something good" to a roll of 11-12. Blessings can stack to a max of 9-12, but must be from separate sources. Blessings last until removed (however that may happen). Don't annoy the priest!
​
A Curse can increase the "something bad" to a roll of 1-2. Curses can stack to a max of 1-4, but must be from separate sources. Curses last until removed (however that may happen). Be careful striking down a witch - only she may know how to remove that curse!

A character can be both cursed and blessed. They do not offset each other.

Cursed or blessed magic items like a pet rock or lucky socks are entertaining. It's even more entertaining if the item has some condition (petting the rock for 5 minutes, not washing the socks) to enable the karmic increase. It's possible for an item to bestow either a blessing or a curse, depending on how the player/PC treats it. (A depressed or angry pet rock is a terrible burden, especially if you try to abandon it.)

As a further option for role playing, roll Karma at dawn each day. That is how the PC's day is going to go. Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of the bedroll. Some days, opportunities just seem to fall into your lap.

Never forget that they hate you, and want you dead

 Presented for your remembrance today.  It's been 20 years.

And on a related note, even though its 30th anniversary was on 9 November 2019.