Don't Roll a One!

Introducing the new gonzo role playing system, "Don't roll a one!" (DROne)

Seriously, that's the rule. Players roll a die type (d4-d20) based on their PC's attributes, class, and level. When they want to do something, they roll the appropriate die. If it's not a one, they succeed. The PC is good at most things, but has some skill they are comically terrible at. When attempting that, any roll except a one fails. Mooks flip a coin, pass (2) / fail (1).

Because there is always a need for comedy (like Drunken Master or Kung Fu Hustle), there is an alternate PC - the Plague Carrier. The plague carrier fails on any roll except a one. Except for the one skill the PC is comically good at. When attempting that, the Plague Carrier succeeds at any roll except a one.

Opposed rolls are won by the highest roll, unless everybody fails. A tie is won by the highest die type, or the side who initiated the action. Help actions have everybody roll, take the highest, and add one for each other person helping - but if anybody fails, they all fail.

I stopped caring 20 years ago this month

I was an Army Counterintelligence NCO. My team did CI/HUMINT in Iraq way back when. At the end of the year, our replacements showed up. They were National Guard linguists (not Arabic) who had been involuntarily reclassified to CI and given a three week crash course. Three of them, that is. The fourth team member, their driver, was a mechanic. Sounds great, yes? The mechanic had no security clearance. Every mission, every meeting, was at least Secret. See the problem here?

And then, on our first joint mission outside the wire (an easy one), their team lead totally freaked out and drew his pistol on me. I was a lot faster with my rifle, and talked him down. Oh, and they openly disdained our/their interpreter. Being a classified unit, our ‘terp was an American, with a Top Secret clearance. (He asked if we could take him back home with us. Unfortunately, he was on a separate contract.) That’s the quality of people we left as our replacements. (History - different time and place, had a US citizen 'terp stolen from us by an SF unit, then abandoned in-country the next day when they didn't need him any more. That guy walked over 50 miles back to the base on his own.)

What really broke me was the day a US convoy was ambushed on the highway outside the base. We could hear the shooting and explosions, and see the dust cloud raised. When I ran into the operations center to see if they knew, the officer in charge said they were listening to it on the radio, isn’t it great? I asked when they were going to send out the quick reaction force to help. He looked totally confused, and asked why would they do that? When I explained in small words that the primary purpose of the unit and the base was to support and protect friendly convoys transiting that highway, the response was, “We can’t do that. Somebody might get hurt!”

I broke that day, rather than than start shooting officers, because I had a family to take care of, and they wouldn’t appreciate me being the subject of a “60 Minutes” special report.  So I simply stopped caring.  A couple weeks later, I pissed off the base commander enough he PNG'd (Persona Non Grata) me off his base.  I spent months, as a senior NCO, with nothing to do but be a spare body on missions outside the wire.  The team sergeants were ordered to ignore me.  The best of them didn't of course.  They came to me quietly for advice.  The worst actually did ignore me, and blew mission after mission due to their incompetence.

But I no longer cared, so that was okay.  None of what we did really mattered in the long run, anyways.  There was never any attempt to actually pacify Iraq, because that's not what the politicians wanted.

And then the unintelligible (and I mean that) Nigerian lieutenant (who came to the USA by way of Russia and France), whom somebody thought would be a good idea to make a counterintelligence officer, started sexually harassing our (happily married) female NCO.  We also found out he was physically abusing detainees.  As we gathered and documented the evidence against him, one of his junior enlisted buddies (yet another bad thing) found out and snitched.  So he accused all three team leaders, the best NCOs in that platoon, of EO violations.  Of course our company commander believed a fellow officer, no matter how unintelligible, over mere enlisted pukes.  So he sent those three Staff Sergeants back home early for courts-martial.

And then the Battalion sent me home with the first wave to return.  That gave me two weeks to save those NCOs.  Since we got home the night of Christmas Eve (Thanks, Ed!), I had the space between Christmas and New Years Day to testify to the Court officers.  (It was really handy that the Court was only a few yards from our office.)  I put it all in writing, along with the written and signed reports (which the captain thought had all been destroyed) I had squirreled away.  My testimony matched the three NCO's exactly, and they were quietly released, all charges dropped, and discharged with full back (forward?) pay "for the good of the service".

The idiotic (and I mean that) lieutenant never made captain, and the captain, who already had orders for reassignment and promotion to major, had a damning letter placed in his file.  It's not great, but it wasn't nothing.

And they wondered why I resigned my non-commission.

Photons are simple

Oh, how I detest the "woo-hoo" in modern physics.  They claim that nothing is real, nothing is physical.  Bull!  I am not alone in this.  The Aetherczar is writing an entire book about how the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, particularly electromagnetism, is bunk.  Waves exist, and energy is directed by those waves.  They are two related but distinct concepts.  It really is that simple.

What is a photon?  It is an energy packet being directed by the magnetic and electric fields.  How big is a photon?  Oddly, modern physics says it doesn't have a size.  I say it does, and its size is well known.

A photon, like any wave, has a wavelength (or frequency, the inverse of the wavelength) and an amplitude.  The amplitude of a sine wave is the diameter of an equivalent circle, or more practically the zero to peak amplitude is its radius.  In other words, a photon is a tiny conceptual object spinning at a certain rate with a certain radius, moving along at the speed of light.  What is the wavelength/frequency/rate of spin?  That varies enormously, and is not quantized whatsoever.  The rate of spin is a smooth function over the real numbers, but with a set minimum and maximum (which are very, very small and very, very large).  The amplitude (radius), however, is fixed.  It is identical for every photon created in the history of the universe.  This is the true meaning of "quantum", as in quantized, as in of a fixed size.

What is this amplitude (radius)?  It is h-bar, the reduced Planck constant, which is the Planck constant h divided by twice pi.  You may recognize two pi as part of the formula for the circumference of a circle.  This is no coincidence.  The Planck constant h is the energy of a photon - its frequency (or speed of rotation) multiplied by its amplitude (or radius).  In other words, its momentum.

It really is that simple.

M-Day +55

55 years ago last night, the evening of 20 July 1969, we achieved peak Western Civilization.

Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot upon the moon, while Michael Collins fretted overhead.

photo from NASA via Wikipedia

What Windows crash?

 So, Windows and CrowdStrike apparently crashed the world.

I support D. E. I.

Our company:

D. E. I.

Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated

Our Dictator:

Some things never change

It’s reassuring to see how caring and compassionate the Leftists remain. How devoted to a civil society and the rule of law they are. How they continue to renounce violence in the political process. How deeply they care for the victims of violence.

So far, every single assassination attempt in the USA has been committed by a Democrat or other breed of Leftist.  Every.  Single.  One.

The new poster for the Trump campaign

Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt yesterday.  The Secret Service once again proved itself to be massively incompetent as not one but two overwatch snipers failed to spot the shooter, and then failed to return fire for several seconds, allowing the shooter to fire at least five shots at President Trump.  Then the Secret Service "best counter-snipers in the world" finally returned fire, killing the shooter, who was less than 150 yards away.

Video on X/Twitter shows the SS overwatch being incredibly unprofessional.  A two man team, tasked to watch that specific direction, failed to notice the guy with a rifle on a metal rooftop until he began firing.

Today, the comments are full of Leftists despairing about how the shooter missed.  How predictable.  No comments from them about the one dead and several injured in the crowd.  I guess we "Deplorables" don't count as people any more.