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.

Laying down the truth

 Almost everything that the government has done in response to Cora-chan is wrong.  Not just wrong, but the opposite of what should have been done.  The only reason the "vaccines" have emergency authorization is because "there's no effective treatment."  Which is why they are denying so hard that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquin (quinine) (along with zinc and vitamin D) work in almost all cases to prevent serious illness.

This is a video of a doctor laying the facts out to a school board.

https://rumble.com/vkxedl-medical-experts-methodical-deconstruction-of-cdcs-botched-covid-response.html

So there I was compilation 2

 More stories.  Most of these actually happened to me.  Some of them I witnessed.  Some of them I was told by the participants.

• Being young, healthy men, we all wanted sex.  As did quite a few young women our age, who were quarantined in a distant land (one of the companies of the battalion, with their own wing of the building).  But nature... finds a way.

• One of our guys was caught screwing a girl in the chow hall dumpster one evening.  You had to be desperate to even think of that.  It's full of uneaten food.  Granted, it was winter, but still...  I hope the two weeks of extra Fire Drill was worth it.

• One of our guys was married, and had a wife smarter than average.  They had a pickup with a camper back.  Once we got to white phase, we had phone privileges every Sunday.  (This was before cell phones.  Yes, that was in my lifetime.)  The phones were on the ground floor, near the parking lot.  So every Sunday morning, he checked out to go "use the phone", and spent a happy 45 minutes with his wife in the back of their truck.  Lucky bastard.  😁

• Fire Drill.  For those not used to the military, somebody always has to be on duty.  The Army teaches young recruits this by imposing fire watch.  This used to be really important, back when we stayed in tents and used fires to heat with.  (Fires are now banned, as they draw attention and mortar fire.)  Anyways, two recruits in each platoon bay (you never do anything alone) stay up and... make sure the barracks don't float away or something.  You have shift for an hour or two (depending on your unit), and then wake up the next pair of guys to relieve you.  It's also the Fire Guards duty to be on guard, and to challenge anybody showing up in the middle of the night.  (People showing up in the middle of the day must obviously belong, right?)  Heaven help you if you don't challenge your Drill Sergeant when they try to sneak in.  And Heaven won't help you when you do, and they smoke you for not being sufficiently obsequious.

• We had a wide variety of people in my platoon.  (Yes, there were three other platoon in the company, and a total of five companies (plus headquarters) in the battalion.  So what?  They might as well have been on a different continent for all that we interacted with them most days.)  Black, White, Asian, Latino.  Our three troublemakers were white, black, and Puerto Rican.  We hated them all equally, while trying to help out all the other guys who were temporarily our brothers in adversity.

• There was one black guy who was mildly retarded.  A nice guy, but dumb as a post.  He was going to be a cook, if I remember correctly.  He got us smoked almost as much as the three troublemakers, but he never did it deliberately.  (Unlike those three assholes.)  We all eventually worked together to teach him how to do everything, from tying his boots (yes, really), to knowing which foot was his left and which hand was his right, to putting on his protective mask in 5 seconds or less.

• There were three Vietnamese guys.  They remembered escaping from South Vietnam with their parents.  One spoke not a word of English, but seemed to understand directions well enough most of the time.  He did his best, and never asked anybody for extra help.  One spoke broken English and wasn't overly bright, but he had a Bachelor degree in something or other and his daddy was a Viet general, so he was headed to Officer Candidate School right after Basic.  He wore glasses thicker than mine (and that's saying something as I was 20/800), and had buck teeth like the Japs in one of the old WWII cartoons.  The other guy spoke Californian like a native, but acted like a decent person.

• At the beginning of Basic, we all promised our drills that we would work together and not fight each other.  The point is to team up and fight everybody else, you see.  So we did nothing directly to the three assholes who went out of their way each day to make our lives more miserable than necessary.  (This was a valuable lesson that some people are evil, and some are just fuckups.)  We kept our promise, too.  We didn't beat the shit out of them with soap-in-a-sock during a blanket party (you use folded blankets to blind them, hold them down and quiet their screams) until the night after we graduated.  They fell down in the shower, you see.

• I mostly enjoyed Basic.  Marching was almost trivial and boring after three years of marching band in high school.  Basic Rifle Marksmanship was, well, boring.  (The Army makes almost everything boring.)  Except the part where I and another guy accidentally swapped rifles during sighting-in day, and I spent the next two weeks slowly and surreptitiously re-zeroing my rifle.  My drills thought I couldn't shoot at first, but then were amazed when I shot 38 out of 40 on the qualification range.  (I bought the video the unit produced of our time in Basic.  You can clearly hear me ask the previous guy in the foxhole at the shooting range if he had any spare rounds.  "If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin!")

• The rifle range was a 300 meter pop-up range.  They have humanish silhouettes that pop up at ranges of 50 (3 seconds, half silhouette), 100 (4 seconds, half silhouette), 150 (5 seconds), 200, 250 (6 seconds), and 300 (7 seconds) meters.  The silhouettes are olive drab. The firing range is either mud (red in South Carolina - the stains never come out) or grass (if you're lucky, mowed sometime in the previous two weeks), or overgrown bushes (that are a year or two past trimming.  You have to aim a bit low at the 50 and 100 meter head-and-shoulders targets, and aim for the shoulders at the 300 meter target.  I shot Expert every time I ever went to the range, with the sole exception of my first time using an M16A2 on a 25 meter paper target range.  They have these weird sights and a complicated zeroing system that was never explained to me.

• In Basic Training, my assigned rifle was an M16.  Not an A1.  I had the only one in the company, I think.  My rifle had a 5 digit serial number (the first digit was 1), and was made by Colt.  It didn't have a forward assist, but it did have the birdcage flash hider.  The important thing to me was that it didn't have the ledge under the dust cover, so I had a hell of a time getting my fingers under it to close it during "Inspection Arms" in drill and ceremony.
  
  (Picture from Wikipedia)
  
  

• We had a blast (literally!) on the Night Assault Course.  It's a simulation of goin over the top from the trenches, like in WWI.  It's done at night (duh), and features machine guns firing above you r heads and star shells exploding in the air an illuminating the "battlefield" as you low crawl across 100 meters or so of open ground to the objective on the other side.  There are sandbagged pits scattered about.  These contain artillery simulators, which are basically a quarter stick of dynamite that emits a shrieking, descending whistle just before they detonate.  I got pick up and thrown several feet when one went off near me.  Oh, and I got kicked in the face by the guy ahead of me, because I was a bit too close to him when we went over the top of the concrete trench wall.  My face was a bloody mess when I got to the other side of the field, and I scared the hell out of the other guys because I was grinning ear to ear.  It was great.

• When we finally go to the live fire assault course near the end, I got yelled out because I ran out of ammo just before I assaulted the final bunker.  They only gave us 60 rounds, and the team ahead of us was really going slow, so the targets just kept popping back up, so I just kept knocking them back down.  I even found a "misplaced" full magazine along the way, but I still ran out of rounds before the finish.  So when I assaulted the bunker, I just stuck the muzzle in and yelled "Bang!  Bang!  Bang!"  I was hilariously stupid.  At least I got the grenade simulator into the bunker on the first try.  (Against all odds, I was an Expert on the grenade range.  I can't throw for shit, but grenade technique is really weird, so it all evened out, I guess.)

• We didn't get to throw live grenades in Basic.  A couple days before our turn on the range, some other unit found out the hard way that we had a batch of zero second fuses.  People die in training.  It just happens.  We didn't get to use the rappelling tower, either, because of an ice storm.

So there I was compilation 1

 A friend wanted story snippets to make his upcoming novel feel more realistic.  He's welcome to use some, none, or all of these.  By the way, they're from my first enlistment, way back when Communists strode the earth with boots of nuclear steel.

So there I was...

• The low grade moron going through induction next to me was too dumb to be infantry (yes, that's a thing), and too weak (couldn't lift 40 pounds) to be anything useful.  They assigned him to be a dockworker, on the theory that he could get stronger without needing to be smart to move crates.

• During inprocessing, you basically wait around with very little to do.  So one of the idiots who would shortly become the bane of my platoon's existence decided it would be hilarious to poop in a paper bag, take it into the next bay (large, open barracks room for about 60), set it on fire, and run.

• There was another guy who went crazy during inprocessing.  I mean seriously nuts.  Screaming, crying, bouncing off the walls, tearing out his hair (this was even before the buzz cuts).  He couldn't handle the stress of, well... Waiting around with not much to do?

• We finally got assigned a task one beautiful winter's day!  Something to do!  We had to clear a bunch of old, decrepit, disgusting mattresses out of an unused bay.  This bay happened to be on the third floor, next to a passage to the next building over, which created a breezeway.  So I, the intelligent and mature one (at age 19), told them it would be easier to toss them out an open window (there was no glass in the passage) than to carry them down the stairs.  But I then said that we needed to post somebody as a guard on the sidewalk, to keep us from dropping a mold-streaked mattress onto some poor, unsuspecting, higher ranking (basically anybody) person's head.  Blank stares of incomprehension.  So I told them to wait for me to get down there, then toss down the mattresses once I said it was OK.  I hustled down the hall, down the stairs, then around to the breezeway, where of course the morons had already started tossing mattresses.  Luckily, nobody else was there.  The idiots had a great time trying to hit me with dirty mattresses.  The Lieutenant who ambled by a few minutes later was a little less enthused about the experience.

•  Basic training does weird things to people.  So many young people somehow aren't used to obeying arbitrary orders and working hard all day.  These people didn't grow up in my family.  To me, Basic was some sort of minor paradise.  Compared to life at home, I got less sleep, but I also got a lot more to eat, and the food was the best I'd ever had.  (Army chow halls are, in general, really not bad places to eat.)  I also got my own boots (two pairs!) and, for the first time in my life, I got to wear clothes that were new, not hand-me-downs!  Best of all, I got yelled at less, and the insults were hilarious!

• You're a waste of a good fuck. The better part of you ran down the crack of yo mama's ass!

• Your daddy would have been better off jacking off in the woods!

• If the Chaplain (military priest) asks, "Does you Drill Sergeant curse at you?" tell him the truth.  Look him straight in the eye, and say, "Fuck no, sir!"

• You have to pay for the buzz cut.  They take it (and several other things) out of your pay, automatically.  You aren't expected to leave a tip for it, though.

• After what felt like a year or two of inprocessing (two weeks), we finally shipped out to Basic Training.  They do this late at night, so you're tired and confused when you get there.  I remember the yellow footprints painted on the cement, and the drills yelling at everybody.  We were sorted out into platoons, given initial orders, and escorted up to our barracks.  Open, 60 man platoon bays, with little nooks for four man teams separated from each other by wall lockers.  The bunks were doubles, and being slightly taller, I got the top one.  Right under the air vent.  Which was blowing cold air.  In January.  These were the "starfish" barracks, and were new at the time.  Heat pumps may be energy efficient, but they still blow cool air at you all winter.

(Picture from icthomasson.com)

(Picture from Woolpert.com)

• We didn't have gun racks in the barracks back then.  Rifles were kept locked in the arms room.  And rounds were counted somewhat carefully.  And you weren't allowed to take your rifle into the porta-john with you, lest you shoot yourself in privacy.  Yes, the drills really did keep loaded rifles in the control towers at the range, and would shoot you if you turned around with a loaded rifle.

(Picture from pinterist.com)  (Note the line of death on the floor.  "Toes on line!")

• Basic is separated into three phases - red (drill & ceremony), white (basic rifle marksmanship), and blue (common skill training).  The color of your platoon's guidon (small, triangular flag) shows what phase you are in.  To us, the victims, it indicated a slight lessening in the hostility of the drill sergeants.  Oh, yeah, the guidon bearer is the tallest guy in the platoon.  Until he fucks up sufficiently to get fired, jsut like the recruit platoon sergeant and squad leaders.  We rotated through those fairly rapidly.  I was lucky/clever enough to never get volunteered into any of these positions.  My goal in Basic was to have a good time and be invisible.  The trick to that is to, like Forrest Gump, do whatever the drill sergeants tell you to do, when they tell you to do it, to the best of your ability.  I knew I achieved my goal when, on almost the last day of Basic, while inspecting our dress uniforms for graduation parade, my senior drill sergeant stopped in front of me, got a puzzled look, and asked me, "Who the fuck are you?"

• We had three drill sergeants - an old (38?) black Sergeant First Class, who was on his last rotation as a DI before retirement, a middle-aged (27?) white lady Staff Sergeant, and a young (22?) black Buck Sergeant.  (Buck Sergeant is slang for Sergeant (E5), to all the leftist morons looking for an excuse to unperson me.)  The Sergeant went away on TDY (temporary duty) for five weeks in the middle of basic, so we didn't see much of him.  (He came back from Master Fitness Trainer school with the most inventively unpleasant exercises, and a plethora of truly obscene Jody calls.)  The SFC spent most of his time in his office, doing paperwork or something.  He came out for mail call, special occasions, ass-chewings, and smoke sessions.  (Smoke session - physical exercise as punishment until the sweat steams off your bodies and pools on the floor under you.  Then you have to mop it up and clean the floor.)  That left our poor, miserable female SSG to handle us all day, every day, without breaks.  After the first week of that, she made some sort of deal with the other platoons of our company, and they handled us for PT and morning chow.  She didn't show up until 0800 (8:00 AM), four hours into our daily routine.  Oh, how she grew to hate us.

• Jody calls - anytime you march, you have to keep in step.  You do this by chanting (one, two three four...) or singing.  These little ditties are collectively "Jody calls".  Some of them are about Jody, the asshole back home who is driving your car and banging your girlfriend, Suzy Rottencrotch.

• Near the end of red phase, my bunkmate apparently decided that enough was enough, and went AWOL one night.  He was caught in the swamp, a quarter mile from the fence line.  He didn't have any rank to take, but the Article-15 (nonjudicial punishment, routinely done in lieu of a Court Martial) didn't leave much of his meager pay for the rest of Basic.

• Payday!  Oh, how awful it was.  We got paid cash back then, direct deposit being almost a thing.  Well, not cash, precisely.  We got paid in traveler's checks, because Basic Training is full of morons and assholes who will try to steal anything and everything.  There was a whole ceremony to this process, which we practiced, money being (of course) handled by officers.  We had to sign each check right there at the table, and then record all the check numbers and amounts to use against whatever asshole decided to try to steal some of them.

• Pay - Recruits back then really didn't get paid much, about $630 per month.  On the other hand, your total expenses for the month amounted to less than $20, so essentially all your pay was gravy (unless you were married, you poor, deluded fool).  Except that there was nothing to spend it on, not that you had time or the privilege to go shopping for anything other than soap, shampoo, and shaving gear.

• I had to be taught how to shave.  (My stepdad always used an electric razor, which I didn't have, and they don't work on me anyways.  The steel wool that grows out of my face destroys them in just a couple of weeks.)  I had no idea that a razor blade was only good for a few days.  I was still using the same disposable razor after being there and shaving every day for two months.  My face was a bloody mess every morning, and I had no idea why.  Being me, with a ridiculously heavy and fast-growing beard, my drills thought I wasn't shaving until they watched me the next morning.  That day, the Sergeant took pity on me, took me (alone!) to the shoppette while everybody else was doing something boring, helped me pick out a blade set and handle, and explained to me how to use them properly.  Wow, DIs are people!  Whoda thunkit!?

To be continued...

Is it still a conspiracy theory?

 Is it still a conspiracy theory when the conspirators wrote a book about it over 50 years ago?

Boosting the signal

You've probably seen this before, but it's worth reposting.  Note that the original was a series of tweets by Darryl Cooper.

-----------

I think I've had discussions with enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 

Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they'll defend those positions with info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they're not particularly attached to them. 

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 

At first, many Trump people were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. 

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of government as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate people who don't stand for the Anthem. 

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. 

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories out of whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump people expected shenanigans by now. 

Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate with the DOJ regarding Biden's financial activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares? 

Goes without saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned. 

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 

The reaction of Trump people to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by people who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 

Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc. - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in Direct Messages!). 

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere with them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say,  with good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system.

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct.

Let's do a final review:

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1 

b) The press is part of the operation, 

c) Election rules were changed, 

d) Big Tech censors opposition,

e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged,

f) Trump is banned from social media. 

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their government is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation and will observe no limits to keep them from getting it. 

Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. 

Capitol "Insurrection"

 A picture may be worth a thousand words, but logic is still foreign to our court system.

What he said, sideways, with barbed wire wrapped around it.

 The inestimable John Wilder said:

The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden

“It’s perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another.” – Battlestar Galactica.

Bill Murray wasn’t cast as Thor by Marvel®.  They figured that no one likes an electricity Bill.

I had an utterly different post planned.  It was so funny that the laughing that it would induce would have caused your ribs to exit your body.  It was a post so funny, it was dangerous.  Comedy, as they say, is not always pretty.  I try to do those posts on Fridays.  Why?

I had a boss that gave sage advice:  never give your boss bad news on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning.  I figure that people need a palate cleanser going into the weekend, and try to provide a bit of fun.  And this post that I had planned?  It would have been banned by the Geneva Convention as a Weapon of Mass Hilarity.

Sadly, that post might now be lost to history, since I have to replace it with this one.  Normally, my posts are created weeks in advance and focus tested against a cross-section of laboratory badgers who have no spleens.  Why no spleens?  They tell me that’s important, something about we don’t need no spleenin’ badgers.

But no, the Occupant-in-Chief decided to make the single most irresponsible statement ever made by someone who was sworn in as President since Richard Nixon said, “What’s the worst that they can do to me?”

I don’t want to be accused of taking Biden out of context (not that there’s much of a chance of that) but here’s his quote, to the most accurate degree I can find:

“Those who say the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government, if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

First, Biden is as articulate as a fourth-grader with fetal alcohol syndrome who’s just smoked a bowl of Hunter Biden’s crack.  And, yes, his Fraudulency has a son who smokes crack with hookers and takes videos of it.  This is a thing that really happens.  Of course, the response from the Left is to say Putin is corrupt.

Sorry.  I’ll try to stick to the topic.

Second, that’s also the same logic as a fourth-grader with an extra chromosome or three who’s just huffed a can of sparkly gold spray paint.  Abraham Lincoln made the obvious response fairly well:

“All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things.  He was right about a lot of things, too.  He is correct about this:

“As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Joe Biden could have the armies of the united States get him a drink by force from any river in this land.  But Joe Biden and all the armies of the united States couldn’t hold the length of the Missouri or the Mississippi for a single day by force.

The armies of the united States number some 1.3 million men oh, wait people oh, wait, xim/xers.  Add in the Reserves?  Let’s round WAY UP and call it three million.  Total.

There are three million males in Missouri.  I pick Missouri only because they recently decided they’re going to tell the Feds to attempt to compact a very large object into a very small space when it comes to firearm laws.

Go Missouri.

Not all of the three million males in Missouri would be on the side of freedom, since there are always some disgusting gelatinous slugs of humanity that will side with Evil over Truth.  But there are enough.  And don’t tell me that neighboring states wouldn’t flow in.

No, Mr. Biden.  The only one who needs F-15s and nuclear weapons for control is you, you disgusting pile of fake hair, fake teeth, Alzheimer’s degraded brain, who gets his only Father’s Day card encrusted in cocaine dust and whore DNA.

The united States governs only, let me make this clear, only by consent of the governed.  As citizens, we’re generally pretty good.  But we are horrible, horrible at taking instruction from tyrants.  It’s in our DNA.

No, literally.  This is not an exaggeration.  My family line came across an ocean to tame a continent.  That was their resume.  That was their job description as they rocked back and forth on little wooden boats in the midst of Atlantic storms.  We didn’t come here because we were weak.  We came here to fight and die and bleed and make this land our own.

We came here because we were strong.

We came here because we yearned for freedom.

Mr. Biden, your butt-sniffing and shoe-licking parents and your degenerate sons and personal weaknesses are abhorrent to every fiber of my body.  Mr. Biden, you are disgusting.  Mr. Biden, your forefathers were horrible.  Mr. Biden, you and your weaknesses represent everything wrong with this country, and everything that has led to where we are today.

How dare you threaten me?

• To threaten me is to threaten Duncan MacWilder of the Clan MacWilder, who came here before this was a country. (Yes, the MacLeod Clan is a subsidiary clan of the MacWilder Clan for you Highlander)
• It is to threaten Hans Wilder, who came here to leave tyrants behind in Europe before World War I.
• It is to threaten my forefathers who died hewing a civilization out of this continent with their blood and sweat and toil and dead babies so lazy writers like me could exist.

The deal we made in 1776 is the same one we have today, Bucko.  We are here because we have certain inalienable rights.

Mr. Biden, you want to threaten me with jet fighters?  Mr. Biden, you want to threaten to use nuclear weapons against your own citizens?

We didn’t come here for that.  We didn’t die here for that.  We didn’t bury our sons and daughters on dusty plains and hills and hallows for that across this country, building it with our blood for that.

Reparations?  We paid for that in blood in places you have long forgotten, like Manassas Junction.  Everyone I’ve ever been able to research on any part of my family has been someone who made the united States better.

Every.

Single.

One.

We taught Eisenhower (really).  We built farms.  We built bridges 150 years ago that still exist today.  We built infrastructure that serves tens of millions of people – this is not an exaggeration.  We built railroads across mountains that mountain goats couldn’t cross.  We took trains up those mountains when the snow was 20 feet deep.  With our kids.

Just for fun.

We raised and nurtured children and taught them freedom.

Our blood is in this soil.  Our children are buried here as payment from sea to sea.

My blood is in this soil.  My forefathers weren’t evil.  They were Big Damn Heroes.  Odin and Thor and Jesus would be proud of them for their courage.

Did other people build this land as well?  Sure.  But Wilder blood is spread here from the Mayflower to today.

• I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Duncan MacWilder would have said:
• I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Patrick Henry would have said (he is related to me, according to my great aunt who did genealogy stuff):
• I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Hans Wilder would have said:

No.

And, to mark the first time I have ever used this word on this blog?  Each and every one of them would have added:

Fuck you, Mr. Biden.

Bring your jets.  Bring your nukes.  The only way you have to dislodge us off this continent we conquered with our blood and sweat and buried kin is to kill us all.  We will never give up.  We will never surrender.  This will not die with me.  Or my children.

You will never defeat us.  Never.  Our blood is here.  Here we make our stand.  We can go to no other country for freedom.  We can go no further to a distant frontier.  Despite what you will try to do with us, despite the injustices you will visit on us, we will win.  We will mock you, and your grave will be pulled up and your bones used by our children for their amusement.

We will smile, and nod.

We did not choose this.  We do not want this.

You spiked the ball too soon.  Maybe two generations into the future, they would go gentle onto that goodnight.

Too soon, Bucko.

Fuck you.

In war, 4 = 0, because everything old is new again

Fourth generation war is zeroth generation tribal war with high tech accoutrements. It is raids and terror propagandized by 24/7 media, organized via internet and smart phones.

We must regain our understanding of what war is. The purpose of war is not armies fighting each other. The opposing field forces are an obstacle to achieving your goals, not the goal itself. There are three purposes to war, all of which intertwine to various degrees:

1. Regime change. The game of princes, where provinces change hands or leadership in a sort of blood sport for the nobility. Neither side really cares about the opinions or welfare of the peasants, but they may pretend to as a valuable propaganda tool.  (The Norman conquest of England.)

2. Conquest. Terrorize the enemy population into submission to your will. This may be related to purpose #1, if the population cares about what the rules are and who makes them, or if the conqueror is a totalitarian or religious zealot, or if the culture of the conquered differs significantly from the conqueror.  (The Viking conquest of England.)

3. Extermination. Slaughter the enemy population, generally (but not always) so you can colonize their lands and take their women. Purposes #1 and #2 may come into play to make it easier.  (The Anglo-Saxon conquest of England.)

To paraphrase Heinlein, nobody cares about the death of the 5th spear carrier from the left on some far-flung battlefield.  They care when they see the mayor, the police chief, and the high school principal stung up from lampposts.

Biden fundamentally misunderstands America

 "We don't derive our rights from the government. We possess them because we're born. Period. And we yield them to a government."  -  Joe Biden

Here is the video.

Here is another version of it.

Believe the science!

 Found this on the interwebs, and had to repost it.

COVID vaccine effectiveness

COVID vaccinations have already been rendered mostly useless, where not actively harmful. The rate of infection for the vaccinated is on par with the unvaccinated, and their death rate appears to be higher. (The death rate disparity may be due to the elderly and infirm being given preferential status for vaccinations. Time will tell.) Corona (SARS) is a cold virus, which has a mutation half-life of about 90 days. There are dozens of variants already, and the vaccines are based on DNA samples taken over a year ago.

Do the math. There is a reason why nobody bothered to develop a cold vaccine before. Follow the money and the power.

How many deaths and permanent injuries will it take to show that a mostly-useless vaccine causes more harm then good?

Update - 

This just in from the Salk Institute.

https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/

The SARS/COVID spike proteins damage blood wall cells all by themselves, no virus needed.  SARS is primarily a vascular disease, that transmits through the lungs.  Huh - damaging the alveoli and causing pneumonia is exactly what a virus like this would do.  Go figure.

And they wonder why so many otherwise healthy young people drop dead of blood clots hours or days after getting the "vaccine".  You know, the Pfizer and Moderna RNA vaccines that force your own cells to mass produce spike proteins forever, and the J&J vaccine that is mostly a giant mass of spike proteins.

And they call the people on my side "science deniers".

They said this monster wasn't invented in a Chinese lab, too.

Masks cause much more harm than good

 OK, so masks don't do any good at all.  They do nothing to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.

Mr. Briggs knocks it out of the park again.

Learn the truth.  Speak the truth.  Live the truth.

Weekly all-causes death rates, by week.  Notice that Covid mostly killed off those likely to die soon of other causes.

Happy Easter!

 HE is risen!

There is new light in the world.  Be strong.  Be brave.  Keep the faith.  

There is always hope.

Vaccine (in)effectiveness

 First, read this.  "Over 100 fully vaccinated people in Washington State test positive for COVID-19."

There is a reason why nobody every bothered to make a vaccine for a cold before.  They mutate so quickly that by the time the vaccine is developed, tested, approved, and produced, the virus it treats has already mutated into dozens of variants.

President Elect

 Annoy your Leftist enemies.

Bash & Slash v2 update 2

 Been doing a little more fiddling with this rules set.  I'm still happy with the basic way it works.  I redefined the stone to be 8 pounds ("butcher's stone") to get rid of most of the 1/4 weights, and put coinage back on the decimal scale.

Bash & Slash v2

Attribute or Skill (Level):
None(0).  Unskilled.  Roll with Disadvantage (roll twice and take lowest).
d2(1):  Inept (half a d4 or one third of a d6)
d3(1½):  Novice (half a d6)
d4(2):  Layman
d6(3):  Apprentice
d8(4):  Journeyman
d10(5):  Craftsman
d12(6):  Master

Attributes: When referred to as the first letter or name#, use the (number) value.  When referred to by name, use the die type.  A standard human has a d4 in all attributes.  A grimdark adventurer starts with 1(d2), 2(d3), and 2(d4).  A standard adventurer starts with 1(d3), 3(d4), and 1(d6).  A heroic adventurer starts with 2(d4), 2(d6), and 1(d8).

Skills:  If your characters had useful skills, they wouldn’t be exploring dangerous caves for pennies.  Begin with 4(0), 2(d2), 2(d3), 1(d4), and 1(d6).  Skills can’t be raised higher than two levels above their associated attribute.  An unskilled attempt rolls Attribute with disadvantage (roll twice and take the lowest).  (The combat skills are Fight, Throw, Shoot, and Dodge.  The magic skills are Mana and Moxie.  Grit aids survival.  Strong lets you carry more and hit harder.  Fiddle and Sneak are useful for getting through or avoiding obstacles.)

Attribute (hit on):  Skills:
Agility (1):  Fight, Dodge
Brawn (2-3):  Throw, Strong
Cunning (4):  Shoot, Mana
Deviousness (5):  Fiddle, Sneak
Endurance (6):  Grit, Moxie

Stamina:  B+E+Grit#  (round halves down)

Carry Capacity is by weight in stones.  (A gallon of water = 1,000 coins =  one stone.)  Your carry capacity is 2+B+E+Strong#.  Every stone more that you carry increases your Burden by one, which effectively decreases your Stamina by one.  Most items are carried on your belt or in your pack.  It takes d4 rounds to find something in your pack.  The smallest unit is ¼ stone.

Sweat is how much effort you can make (or how many hits you can avoid) before you start taking real injuries.  When sweat equals (Stamina-Burden), you are exhausted.  Each hit while exhausted is applied randomly to your attributes with a d6 roll (hit on).

 

Test:  Roll Attribute and Skill, take higher, opposed by difficulty (a target number, or the highest result of a die roll).  If player rolls equal to or higher than the difficulty, the test succeeds.  If you beat it with both dice, it is a double success.  If you beat the difficulty by 6 or more, it is an extra success.  If you beat the target by 12 or more, it counts as three extra successes instead of one.

Combat applies successes (hits) to Sweat, or an Attribute (roll randomly for each) if exhausted.  Each time an attribute is reduced, roll the attribute’s new (lower) die – on a one, you forfeit the next round (take no action and make all rolls at Disadvantage).  When an attribute reaches zero, you forfeit your next d3 rounds, and thereafter all its skill tests are made with disadvantage (and no attribute die, of course).  When any attribute goes below zero, roll Grit & Moxie against a difficulty of 4.  If both succeed, character stays on his feet, forfeits the next d6 rounds, and all rolls are at disadvantage until healed.  If one succeeds, character passes out. If both die rolls fail, character dies.  A passed out character dies if he receives any further injury.  At the end of each hour that a character remains passed out, roll a d6:  on 1-2, they die; on 3-5 they remain passed out; on 6, they wake up and will survive, but are exhausted until healed.

Melee Weapon:  Agility & Fight vs/ Fight & Shield, then weapon & Strong vs/ armor
Thrown Weapon:  Brawn & Throw vs/ Dodge & Shield, then weapon vs/ armor
Missile Weapon:  Cunning & Shoot vs/ Shield & Shield, then weapon vs/ armor
Brawl:  Brawn & Strong vs/ Brawn & Strong
Magic:  Cunning & Mana vs/ Mana & Moxie, then check wand and spell effects
Social:  Cunning & Devious vs/ Cunning & Devious, then check Sneak vs/ Moxie

Boosts:  When you really need to succeed, you can sacrifice one level of an attribute or skill to replace its die roll (after the fact) with the roll of a d20.  The level loss remains until the character takes a full rest.  (Only in the room after winning a Boss fight.  Everywhere else is subject to wandering monsters.)  You can also voluntarily damage your weapon, armor, shield, or other item to replace their roll with a d20.  Different items have different amounts of durability before they become useless or break.

Attribute Improvement:  After defeating a boss, the Dungeon will grant both treasure and the chance to improve one attribute.  (Why else would people voluntarily enter trap laden, monster infested dungeons?)  Pick the attribute that you wish to increase, and roll the next higher sized die.  If the result is the highest number of that die, your attribute increases one level.  If not, too bad, better luck next time.  Attributes can at most be raised to a number level equal to the dungeon level plus two.  So, the first dungeon level cannot raise any attribute higher than a d6.

 

Heroic Sacrifice:  If you have a skill or attribute at 0, you can still boost it, even though doing so will probably kill you.  If your skill was reduced to zero, you roll a d12 instead of the usual d20.  If you are untrained in that skill, you roll a d6.  Your fellow adventurers will thank you as they loot your corpse.  ½  ¼  ¾

Armor (weight): Protection                           Shield (weight): Protection
None (-): Roll weapon with advantage.
Improvised (1): d2                                          Bracers (½): d2
Cloth (½): d3                                                  Improvised (1): d3
Leather (1): d4                                                            Buckler (½): d4
Chain Shirt (2): d6                                          Small (1): d6
Mail (4): d8                                                     Medium (1½): d8
Scale/Brigandine (5): d10                               Large (2): d10
Plate (6): d12                                                  Tower (3): d12

Weapon (weight)[durability]:  Damage         underlined may be thrown
None (-):                                                          Roll Strong with disadvantage
Improvised (-)[1]: d2                                      rock, bottle, stick
Light weapons, 1 hand (3/ ¼)[2]: d3              knife, throwing knife, club, dart
Light weapons, 1 hand (¼)[3]:  d4                 dagger, hand axe, hammer, javelin, war club, staff
Medium weapons, 1 hand (½)[5]:  d6                        sword, war hammer, battle axe, mace, spear[3]
Light weapons, 2 hands (½)[3]: d6                 axe, flail, war club, staff
Medium weapons, 2 hands (½)[5]:  d8           long sword, war hammer, battle axe, mace, spear[3]
Heavy weapons, 2 hands (1)[3]:  d10             great sword[4], pole axe, maul(1½), pike
Heavy weapons, 2 hands (1)[3]: d12              halberd
Missile weapons, 2 hands (1)[2]: d4               sling (missile weapon weights include ammunition)
Missile weapons, 2 hands (1)[3]: d6               short bow, staff sling (also counts as a staff)
Missile weapons, 2 hands (1)[3]: d8               long bow, light crossbow (takes one round to load)
Missile weapons, 2 hands (1½)[3]: d10          heavy crossbow (takes two rounds to load)

A poor item rolls two die types lower.  An inferior item rolls one die lower.  A superior weapon rolls one die type higher.  An excellent item rolls two die levels higher.  Anything lower than a d2 grants disadvantage.  Anything higher than a d12 grants advantage.  Yes, an excellent halberd would roll three d12 (four against an unarmored opponent) and take the highest.

If the weapon rolls at least six higher than the armor, the armor takes one point of damage.  If the armor rolls at least six higher than the weapon, the weapon takes one point of damage.  If the difference is 12 or more, the item takes 3 damage instead of just one.  This includes missile weapons, which have strings that fray and break.  An item reduced to 0 durability is useless, but can be repaired.  An item reduced below 0 durability is broken and cannot be repaired.

 

Coinage:  10 copper Copeks (commonly called a penny, plural pence) equal one silver Shilling.  10 shillings equal one gold Guinea.  10 guineas equal one platinum Pound.  10 pounds equal one mithril Mark.  Each coin is scored to be broken into halves or quarters.  A quarter copek is a farthing, and will purchase a half-dozen fresh eggs or a piece of cheese.  A quarter shilling is a groat.  A quarter guinea is a florin.

Learning Skills:  Skills are taught by the Adventurers Guild, for a fee.  Training takes one week.  At the end of the week, roll Cunning.  If the result is anything but a one, you successfully learned the new or higher level of skill.  If you rolled a one, better luck next week.  No refunds.  Note that the Guild will not teach anyone without a prestige at least equal to the skill#.  (1½ (d3) counts as 1 for this purpose.)  You cannot skip skill levels.  You cannot train in more than one skill per week.  You cannot advance a skill# higher than its attribute# plus two.  Example:  You must have a Cunning of 1½(d3) to learn Mana at 3(d6), but cannot yet learn it at 4(d8).

Skill level:        1(d2)   1½(d3)              2(d4) 3(d6)  4(d8)   5(d10)   6(d12)
Cost:                1c        5c          1s       5s        1g        1p          1m

 

Enemies are divided into generic types:  Vermin, Minions, Champions, Bosses, and Villains.  Vermin and minions pass out when exhausted.  Champions take damage to Brawn only.  Bosses have full attributes, but do not use boosts.  Villains are treated as characters.

Goblin:  A(d4) B(d3) C(d3) D(d4) E(d3)  Fight(d4), Throw(d6), Dodge(d4), Strong(d2), Fiddle(d3), Sneak(d4)

Hobgoblin:  A(d3) B(d4) C(d3) D(d4) E(d4)  Fight(d6), Throw(d6), Dodge(d4), Strong (d3), Grit(d2)

Bugbear:  A(d3) B(d6) C(d3) D(d4) E(d6)  Fight(d6), Throw(d4), Dodge(d4), Strong (d6), Grit(d4)

Orc:  A(d4) B(d6) C(d3) D(d3) E(d4)  Fight(d6), Throw(d4), Shoot(d4), Strong(d4), Grit(d6)

Kobold:  A(d6) B(d2) C(d2) D(d3) E(d2)  Fight(d3), Throw(d4), Dodge(d6), Sneak(d6)