I’ve ordered the ring because I have the watch, but I don’t like wearing the watch at home. Sometimes I put it on at home, but instinctively I find myself taking it off within a few hours. I especially don’t like wearing the watch while I sleep. However I have no problem wearing a ring all day. The form factor itself is more advantageous for me, because it’s the difference between wearing it or not. When I leave the house, I have no problem putting my watch on and keeping it on. Same way I don’t have a problem putting on shoes and keeping them on. But like the watch, I don’t like wearing shoes at home.

Yeah, that’s fair. I think the main reasoning is that shooting something out of the air can cause it to crash on people or light stuff on fire. I also don’t like the “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws, so I think both shooting people and shooting drones should be illegal.

New drones being sold in the USA are equipped with something called remote ID. In theory, it enables law enforcement to wirelessly identity the drone, who it’s registered with, and where the pilot is standing. This is very new though, and very few, if any, police departments have the tools needed to make use of it. It’s also possible to read remote ID from phones, but without the database, it only gives you so much info. Owners of older drones are supposed to attach a remote ID module to them in order to maintain legal flying, but someone being voyeuristic with their older drone probably isn’t following the rules.

Not in the US. You can report it to the police and the FAA, but it’s a federal felony offense to shoot down any aircraft, regardless of whether it’s a $100 drone or multi-million dollar full on airplane. But like the other poster said, voyeurism and harassment laws still apply. And also, if the pilot is out of sight of the drone, that’s a hefty FAA violation (assuming they don’t have a specific FAA waiver that’s hard to get) and something you can report.

FAA Certified drone pilot in the USA here. That’s wild. In the US it’s illegal to shoot down an aircraft of any sort no matter the type or who is flying it. And also, the Federal Aviation Administration is the only authority in the US when it comes to airspace, and as long as you have authorization from the FAA or are in uncontrolled space, you can fly over anyone’s property. However, that doesn’t give you the right to voyeurism or harassment. If you are intentionally spying on things that are normally considered private (peeking in a window, for instance) or repeatedly or specifically bugging a specific individual or family, then you can still be charged with those crimes. Also, unless you have a specific waiver that’s rather hard to get, you have to be within line of sight of your drone. If the drone pilot is not following the rules, they can be hit with hefty fines. Even though drones can be bought easily, there’s still strict rules that the FAA has for both recreational and professional flying, and anyone operating a drone outside those can and should be reported.

Mostly just freeways. I don’t think it’s heavily enforced. The idea is that cars traveling at drastically different speeds on the same road are more likely to cause an accident. It’s best to drive “the speed of traffic” because that’s what is predictable. Roads should be designed in such a way to make the target speed limit the fastest speed at which most people feel comfortable anyways, rather than just obeying a sign. So a 20mph road should be skinny and not straight. A 70mph highway should be wide and straight. Back to the point, though, in a traffic jam, all the cars are slow and therefore the speed differential is small already and therefore no reason to ticket anyone.

Right. Like, my use case for SD cards is for my cameras. I want to take pictures and bring them home across international borders. And a 4TB card would be amazing, though probably not fast enough. I simply don’t put files that I don’t want people to find onto my SD cards in the first place.

I loved the Winamp channels. That’s where I learned about the existence of anime. I had no concept that things like Cardcaptors, Dragonball, Pokemon, etc were actually anime because I just saw them in English. But I found dubs through Winamp streaming and it sent me down the rabbit hole to buying DVDs and manga and learning to torrent fansubs. The good old days of my blazing fast 3mbps cable connection. It blew my mind coming from dial up.

SMS doesn’t handle pictures, videos, gifs, reactions, or group conversations. Things I use all the time. MMS handles some of that, but implementation varies greatly by carrier and device. If you want consistency of that functionality, you have to go with an app. Apple and Google have created replacements for SMS and MMS that could be the next version of “texting” but Apple refuses to let anyone else use theirs (iMessage) and Google has only half opened up theirs (RCS), so those don’t really fix much.

When Meta bought Oculus, I boxed up my OG Quest and threw it in the basement,

Meta (at the time it was still just named Facebook) bought Oculus before they ever released a retail product. Facebook bought them between the release of the original dev kit on Kickstarter and the dk2 in 2014. They had already been owned by Facebook for 2 years when the first Retail Rift came out in 2016. The first Quest didn’t come out until 2019, 5 years after Facebook/Meta bought Oculus.

An average EV consumes .32 kilowatt hours of electricity per mile. If you are driving 60 miles per hour, that means you are spending 19.2 kilowatt hours of electricity every hour. So you need a generator that’s at least 19.2 kilowatt. Tack on some more because you are now towing the extra weight of a generator and because you are probably wanting to go 70mph and let’s just say you need 25 kilowatts. This is what a towable 25kw generator looks like. It costs $22k. I’m sure cheaper ones could be made, but even at $10k, is it worth it? Just buy some plane tickets or rent a gas car for a week or take a train.

https://herogenerators.com/products/25-kw-caterpillar-towable-diesel-generator

For much of the country in terms of land maybe, but not in terms of people. Most people live in or near high population areas where using an EV is fine. The person in question saying that fear mongering needs to stop was the governor of Connecticut. Connecticut is not Oklahoma. There is zero reason to fear monger range anxiety in Connecticut.

But even for people in places like Oklahoma, there’s a couple things you should consider. First is, don’t rush out and buy an EV just because you feel like you’re being told to. Only buy an EV once your existing vehicle is no longer viable. Buying a new car when your old one still works is not very green. But definitely consider an EV when the time comes, even if you have range anxiety. Why? For one, the money you will save on gas can allow you to rent a gas car for those long trips you need to make and then you don’t have to put those extra miles on your own car. Remember, tires are expensive and wear down with miles driven. Or, with the money saved from gas, you could take a bus, a train, or possibly even an airplane. Or if you really don’t want to do any of that, you could probably find a buddy who still has a gas car and trade for the week. Just because you buy an electric vehicle, doesn’t mean you are now locked out of ever using a different kind of transportation. But number 2? Over the coming years, EV infrastructure will be constantly increasing. Yeah, some states are being regressive at the moment, but they will turn around. So even in places were range anxiety is legitimate, it won’t be a problem for much longer, except in those edge cases where even a gas car currently has issues, but since even a gas car has issues, it doesn’t make a difference. And third? There are so many companies working on battery tech right now, it’s crazy. Some are working on higher energy density so we can get longer range, others are working on better materials so we can stop using unethically acquired minerals, some are working on making batteries that function better in the cold. None of this helps the car you buy today, but it will help the car you buy in 5 years.

One of my favorite stories was from a D20 modern campaign we were playing. This is a setting where it’s modern time, but some supernatural stuff still exists. There was a cave system under the city that we were exploring and we found a mummy and a bunch of skeletons. I rolled a 1 on an attack roll and my DM said I dropped my sword, so for my 2nd attack I said I was going to headbutt the skeleton and I rolled a 20 so my DM ruled that I headbutted this skeleton so hard my head just went down his spine as all the bones just exploded apart. Next turn I was like, that went pretty well, who needs a sword. I tried to headbutt the next one, and rolled another 1. He then ruled that this time I killed the skeleton but it’s spine impaled my head and I died. It was the most swingly battle ever, and kinda outside the actual rules, but it’s something I’ll never forget (this was 10 years ago) and all because we made an effort to ham up critical successes and failures.

I second the world of darkness suggestion, though learning a whole new game can be intimidating. But I like the relative simplicity of the dice pool concept. Everything is a 10 sided die. 7 or higher is a success. So for example, you have 6 strength die. If you want to break down a door that takes 7 successes, well good luck. Pretty hard to roll 7 successes on 6 die (though not impossible because 10s get a bonus roll). And then overall I feel like the lore is easier to roleplay because I feel like it’s easier to picture yourself as a pack of werewolves or a coven of vampires or whatever version you’re playing.

Body language. It’s way easier to “read the room” and figure out what the players enjoy and what they don’t when you are physically sitting around a table and can monitor players reactions both actively and in your peripheral vision.

Sorry in advance for random stream of consciousness.

There’s definitely a learning curve to being a DM. And some people, like myself, just aren’t cut out for it. If you want to keep playing with these people, I would suggest being honest with your feedback. Talk to the group about how you’d like to incorporate more roleplaying and cut back on combat. It might be a good idea to try running a pre-built campaign if you aren’t already. But even those can be kinda dry without the right DM.

I haven’t really played in years, but my DM got to the point where basically, the rules were just guidelines. If a player wanted to try something, the DM would just roll with it. They’d try to come up with a reasonable check for you to roll and then just see what happens. Most of the “funny” moments come from massive failures or critical successes. Ham those up. Instead of saying, “nope, you fail”, make up a consequence. “You tried to mount the giant moth, but you couldn’t get a grip and it flung you up to an outcropping” or “you missed so bad you hit the column and it comes crumbling down, you and the enemy both take 2 points of bludgeoning.”

The rules are great for combat simulation, but if combat was all you wanted, you’d be better off playing Warhammer. The best advice I can give is just loosen up. And again, like Jack Sparrow says, it’s more like guidelines. We eventually got to the point where we said, no opening the books during the session. If you don’t know a rule, make it up. The goal is to have fun, not to follow the book.

So yeah, it’s about mindset and teamwork and cooperation and communication. Being honest in what you want out of a session is the most important thing, because nobody knows what you want unless you say so. They may be able to tell when you aren’t having fun, but they may not know why or how to fix it and may just throw more monsters at it because that’s what they think will fix it.

As for player death. We embraced it. If we really liked our character, we’d just come back as MyGuy the 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th, and when we got tired of that character we’d move on to something else rolling a new character at the level everyone else was at and picking a few items to keep (assuming someone else made it out alive).