The Gaming Den

tussock wrote:There was a huge international long wave radio culture going back to the 50's, I had an old teacher in my high school show us, called up some dude in Russia and had a quick chat, which, yeah, hi to Russia, but was pretty damn cool in the late 80's.

Jesus Christ, you're in your late thirties?

All this time I've been assuming that your terminal revulsion to being correct was insulated by being twenty-something and still, like, involuntarily retaining access to your parent's insurance. What on earth do you do when you need to make actual survival decisions? Is the Den just the place you come to be wrong about everything and get it all out so that you can safely look under your laundry room sink without having ideas for a new beverage?

Eikre wrote:

tussock wrote:There was a huge international long wave radio culture going back to the 50's, I had an old teacher in my high school show us, called up some dude in Russia and had a quick chat, which, yeah, hi to Russia, but was pretty damn cool in the late 80's.

Jesus Christ, you're in your late thirties?

This is the Den, get your fucking math right when you are insulting people.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Eikre wrote:

tussock wrote:There was a huge international long wave radio culture going back to the 50's, I had an old teacher in my high school show us, called up some dude in Russia and had a quick chat, which, yeah, hi to Russia, but was pretty damn cool in the late 80's.

Jesus Christ, you're in your late thirties?

This is the Den, get your fucking math right when you are insulting people.

I was in high school in the late 90s and I'm now in my late 30s. Tussock would be pushing 50.

deaddmwalking wrote:

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Eikre wrote:
Jesus Christ, you're in your late thirties?

This is the Den, get your fucking math right when you are insulting people.

I was in high school in the late 90s and I'm now in my late 30s. Tussock would be pushing 50.

Right. Looks like he missed that it was High School, not birth, in the late 80's. Also, it should have been "early 30's" if the math wasn't based off a bad assumption, so he fucked up fucking up.

It's understandable being an Asshole, but at least put some fucking effort into math. Do you (Eikre) work for WOTC or something?

Yes, very well, I stand corrected.

I suppose it's the result of a cognitive block. Intuitively, it doesn't seem like you'd be spitting sick at a guy who is literally old enough to be your father.

I have, I stopped respecting my elders once I realized that most of them were dumbasses just like me.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I have, I stopped respecting my elders once I realized that most of them were dumbasses just like me.

Oh fuck yes. The internet has made me completely lose it when it comes to judging age. I was on a forum with people I guessed were teens by their outrageous antics, only to find out that they were in their 70s. It's a whole new world to them, so they start over at idiot.

And getting old has completely impaired by guessing age in real life. Sixteen to twenty-five looks all the same to me. I can't judge 25 - 50 at all, especially women with kids. And if you're older than 50, I don't even try to judge.

TL;DR - Age means nothing. How you behave is more important.

So what's the deal with de-acronymizing acronyms? I had to deal with "Fifa" for a month. Today, I saw "Cern". Why?

Because hitting shift on your phone keyboard is annoying and you have to do it for every letter. Better to just mash 4 keys instead of 8, and then sometimes your phone will cap the first one.

On my keyboard, if you hit shift twice, it goes caps lock.

If an acronym gets used commonly enough, it eventually becomes de-capped. Like laser, for example.

Maj wrote:On my keyboard, if you hit shift twice, it goes caps lock.

Mine too, but I have to hit it 2 more times to uncaps, so it's still 8 button presses for a 4 letter acronym whether I do it individually or twice at the beginning and twice at the end.

No, the newspapers are doing it. I assume articles aren't commonly edited on a phone, and their editorial guidelines supersede the inconvenience of caps lock.

Pronounceable acronyms are gunna enter the vocabulary as a regular word if people use them at all. English just devours everything, verbs the nouns, runs everything together and abbreviates whatever's left.

And keeps it all. LOL can be L-O-L or loll (rhymes with roll) an then spawns 'lulz'.

For what it's worth, I've always heard FIFA as 'feefah' and never as F-I-F-A. Likewise I've always heard 'sern'. I think if the acronym provides a name for an organization it is more likely to be treated as a name (capitalize thr first letter). I've never heard FUBAR spelled out, but I always see it in all caps.

Kaelik wrote:

Maj wrote:On my keyboard, if you hit shift twice, it goes caps lock.

Mine too, but I have to hit it 2 more times to uncaps, so it's still 8 button presses for a 4 letter acronym whether I do it individually or twice at the beginning and twice at the end.

I getcha. I work differently - for me it's about going back and forth over the buttons, not the presses. Regardless, it's a pain, and because it's a pain, it's changing the language.

Maj wrote:... Sixteen to twenty-five looks all the same to me. ...

I think this is why MILF porn is the most popular porn.

I like it because I prefer women closer to my age. I'm sure in 20 years I'll be all about the Gmilfs.

I'm sure in 20 years you'll have exhausted yourself on anything other people recognize as normal sex and have moved onto the really weird shit.

Well, me and one of my friends have a weekly "Netflix and Suffering" night.

Can anyone explain why the Distributed Defense 3D Printed guns thing is substantively different from the fact that people can already go to Lowes and pick up stuff to make an improvised gun?

You really don't need to be one tenth as competent to make a 3D printed gun using schematics and a 3D printer as you do to self assemble one from parts. Also the 3D printed one is most likely better crafted than anything you could hand make.

@Prak
No Serial Numbers on any parts you could buy, especially the receiver for example.

Also, no ferro metallic parts, all hardened resin and thus virtually impossible to detect by metal detectors.

Need to get rid of it? Melt it back down.

In addition to being easier to manufacture also vastly cheaper.

You can, given enough base stock, basically mass produce them as well.

AND NOBODY WOULD NOTICE.

A bit different than trying to aquire the needed Parts for dozends to hundreds of Guns.

That may be true, but hardware stores are more accessible than 3D printers. I mean, we have a lot of gun problems in this country, but one of the big ones is the accessibility of guns to rage-addled straight white cis men and this... doesn't really change that?

Well, ok, that's not entirely true, I guess. It occurs to me that straight, white, cis male teenagers just got better access to guns with this. Those who don't already have an arsenal of guns at their disposal due to negligent parents, can now fucking download a bunch of parts, and go to their nearest 3D printer, which might be anything from a machine at their school, to the local library, to their second-most expensive Christmas present last year.

But... iunno. I haven't paid a lot of attention to the whole thing, I just know that 3D Printed Guns have been a thing for awhile, and it's only just been ruled as a Freedom of Speech thing because... the GOP uses that for every terrible fucking thing they want to do. And I guess the Dems are fighting it because "OMG GUNS AND TECHNOLOGY?"

Trump said he talked to the NRA about it so this kind of thing is probably a threat to gun manufacturers as well.