Thank you for saving my time clicking through—I always check the comments on these kinds of articles to see if someone else has taken the bullet and decided to warn the rest of us. o7

Yeah that’s a good way to look at it—they’re the baseline with other stuff scaled up or down off of them.

Haha true, I should have said like an actual huge fortune, since a regular army still costs an insane amount for what amounts to molded plastic…

Right—exactly. Like yeah an ultramarine is more durable and lethal than a single gene stealer, but that’s why the tyranids roll in large packs, etc. if the space marines in tabletop mirrored the books “propaganda” the tabletop game wouldn’t really function very well. You’d have to have like a small fortune in enemy figurines to compete against them. Not saying tabletop is balanced well or anything, also haven’t played in years, just that there’s lore, and then there’s gameplay mechanics and balance, and sometimes you compromise on the lore to improve the gameplay, etc.

On the other hand—you could say the high point heros are closer to the lore vision of space marines, and that the characters in this game are closer to a hero character than a rank and file SM squad member…

Either way excited to see more gameplay, I remember liking the old one.

It kinda works both ways—in order to make 4 player coop functional, you’d require so many tyranids on screen that it would be unplayable, both hardware and for the players brain.

I know fanboys would scream if the marines were squishier, but what’s always confused me is that despite the legendary invincibility of space marines, in tabletop they still feel moderately squishy. Sure not like tyranids and orcs and such, but not like super human either. I suppose terminator squads with custom gear might feel closer to that mark.

All relative I guess.

This is it, I’m pretty sure. I had plenty of brushes with nettles as a kid, but I’m not super aware of them to be able to avoid them as an adult. However I spend less time in high grass and forests, since I need to be present in the spreadsheet factory, and when I do make it into the wild, I usually wear pants and the like to avoid scratches, ticks and poison ivy; so less likely to get nettles.

Side note: we bought some nettles from a local farm last year and made a couple dishes with them. Pretty tasty, if you already like tho ha like spinach or mustard greens (think saag paneer)

I saw possibly these same elephants a year ago during a visit to pilanesbirg, and they were majestic and gorgeous. Our guide was very experienced and was very clear with us that the elephants didn’t want trouble with us, but that they will knock over cars and charge people if they feel like their babies are under threat. We saw some tourists in private cars try and drive up close to a mother helping two babies (calves I guess?) across the road, and she turned on the jeep, stamped and made a very impressive trumpet blare (basically her being like FUCK YOU, BACK OFF) before walking back off.

I feel bad for the guy, and it’s a sad story, but having seen one of these herds, and seeing how incredibly large and powerful they were, I cannot imaging trying to walk up to them or approach them in any way.

Seeing animals like these elephants was a humbling experience for me that drove home that we are small, and probably not as special as we like to think. I locked eyes with one while they were eating a tree and I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt like looking at another human—my brain had no doubt that this was a highly intelligent sentient creature. I would rate this visit to pilanesburg as probably one of the most memorable and impactful experiences I’ve ever had.

I watched the video from the “creative scientist” has on YouTube and unless someone has further info, this looks like a completely speculative fiction project.

Everything about this screams fake. It also all sounds like a horrible idea. They’re basically discussing traumatizing inmates at 10x speed. Given that a lot of criminals come from a background of trauma, I’d wonder here if you’d be doing more harm than good. There’s claims in this article that are absurd, without some form of clarification. What the hell is a “creative scientist” as a title—I’m not familiar with that discipline. Also, let’s uhh say am that all this was real, and possible. This tech would be a net evil in the world. If you can use it to brainwash inmates into cringing when they think about doing crime, you can also use it to torture dissenters into conformists. Given that the tech is already aimed at an element of the state security apparatus, there’s like no chance this wouldn’t get used for much worse purposes. I think they’re also misunderstanding how prison is used in many places. In NA, prison does not seem to be about rehabilitation, but just punishment and getting free labor.

Yeeeaaaah baby

I mean I hear ya, but most of those folks look pretty old. A lot of cultures have elder traditions that don’t exactly include looking hot. No idea, but given how old the photo is, might be they’re important village elders, or people like priests/spiritual leaders, and they’re wearing ceremonial stuff also.

Oh yeah, I’ll bet. It hasn’t happened as far as I know, but that’s the kind of situation where things like really strong storm surge or tsunamis would be pretty rough to evacuate from. I assume there are some ferry’s, maybe the region could mobilize a personal craft flotilla for a evac rescue, like dunkirk…

“It’d be a real shame if something happened to your work file. If you pay us monthly, we can make sure your work is protected”

Yeah absolutely. This is one of the things that movies seem to get right. Also in post apocalyptic disaster type movies, you often see freeways with just huge empty traffic pileups.

I was leaving on a car trip a few years back, and unbeknownst to me, about 20miles up the road, a huge thunderstorm had brought down some trees and power lines, blocking one part of the northbound highway, during early rush hour. We got stuck for 3 hours trying to get past it. No matter which side road, turn, whatever we took, it was jammed. We waited for an hour on one small side road only to get sent back because a line was down at an intersection. This wasn’t a major natural disaster, things went back to normal in a couple hours. But it really drove home to me how pointless it would be relying on escaping/evacuating from a real disaster if you didn’t get out early. I don’t say this to suggest that people shouldn’t follow evacuation orders, they absolutely should; an evacuation order is early warning. I’m saying this to suggest that none of us should assume that we’ll just be able to get out in an emergency, particularly in a car. It just doesn’t take that many people on the road to completely seize the system.

Yeah that’s a good point. Also it’s the debrief, not like the New York Times, so that doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

I get the skepticism in the comments here, but having finished the article, the team seems as perplexed as the rest of us as to why/what is happening here, and seems very interested in getting outside scientists and companies to try and figure it out. Basically they don’t seem to be the standard vaporware sellers playbook, but of course, who knows, most things like this are total bullshit.

My fake conspiracy joke explanation: all those physics breaking lozenge ufos that have been making the rounds the last couple years are some lizard man tech we’ve had all along, and this is a half assed attempt to introduce the tech publicly without having to explain they had it already. OR similar vein, but the super-dimensional tic-tac operators (either aliens or multi-dimensional humans from the future like in interstellar) are trying to share this miracle tech with us and this is the avenue they chose.

Oh and I guess, potentially, the post about Micheal j fox could also be about prions, since it’s suggesting his Parkinson’s is the result of accidental ingestion of human remains (probably brain matter, like the how the kuru disease was spread). So maybe we’re up to 3 posts for prions!

Haha I just saw that—excellent. Prions definitely belong to the creepy/weird category of potential threats.

I can’t find the specific article, but it was basically arguing that prions are an unavoidable existential crisis that will eventually kill everything on the planet. The basis was the fact that they are virtually indestructible, can lie latent in our environment indefinitely and basically just always make more of themselves.

Mind you, the time frame for this particular apocalypse would be pretty big. It was still an eerie thought though, just like this inexorable accumulation of alien/bizarro world proteins that would eventually kill/convert everything. I guess it’s kinda like the grey goo planet theory.

Anyway, we’ll almost certainly kill ourselves via climate change or massive war first, so no need to worry too much about prions.