KaHavaVe🔌🐰

I've actually sometimes used external devices for non secure stuff and I find that its like 1/3rd chance I get an alert for that.

That's the sort of stuff I SHOULD be getting an alert for.

Probably the best explanation I've found for why technology is so reliably ass backward in 40k. Taken from The Coffin Of Roboute and his 20 sisters by Seat Admiral

"Now. Do you know what a Hermes Array is?" She shook her head in denial. The Magos nodded, expecting such an answer, and continued. "A Hermes Array is a large machine that can connect two points in material space, allowing for information to be sent across while the points are connected. This allows Faster-Than-Light communications without the use of psychic technologies. Do you know how it connects two points in material space?" She shook her head no again, and he nodded. "None alive do." "What?" She furrowed her brow. "You just told me how it works." "I told you what the priesthood of Gryphonne knows of the device and its function. We know of it from scattered recordings found in destroyed facilities, and the half-destroyed complex on one of our vassal worlds. It is non-functional. We do not know how to repair it, for we have none to teach us the truths required to reach it any longer. It is a Mystery, and we have no path to it." "A higher truth is in-between a Mystery and a basic truth. We know how to keep the machine functional. We know how to repair it, and in optimal scenarios we can even build more of the machine. But the basic truths required to comprehend it are lost to us. We can only perform the rituals handed down to us, preserved by our forebears, established truths that have long been mapped." "But a higher truth cannot become a basic truth until enough requisite basic truths are known to us. Truth is a ladder we seek to ascend, for comprehension is divinity, but too much was lost in the Age of Strife. We may never truly comprehend again, so we must perform the rituals, we must have faith in the machine." "The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all. We perform rituals, and await his arrival. For he will lead us to understanding again. That is all we can do anymore." "Why not try to understand again? It was done before." She questioned, staring at the skull in her hands. "We cannot afford to." Calculatus shook his head sadly. "The Age of Technology was long ago, and too much of the galaxy has been ravaged already. We can pray for a golden age to come, in which understanding can be reached again, in which we can afford to learn once more. But we cannot plan for it to arrive, for we do not know. To seek understanding in the destructive manner required may waste resources needed to survive, something we cannot afford in such a dangerous age. All we can do is perform the preserved rituals, and keep faith that the machines will endure for another day."

What he's leaving out is that the AdMech usually kill the people who *do* try and do new scientific research as "hereteks", on the grounds that anything but holy ancient technology might be corrupted or otherwise dangerous. And when they aren't doing that, as with the Tau or Belisarius Cawl, we see that progress is very much possible. It's the AdMech stranglehold that's causing Imperial scientific knowledge to slowly decay rather than rebound, not so much material conditions.

No, that's another part of the material conditions. Because this also leaves out the primary reason innovation is dangerous - because AI and scrapcode are hiding everywhere in old poorly-understood tech, and experimentation is likely to release one or both, with catastrophic results up to and including loss of the planet.

As with most things in 40k, they're trapped in a terrible equilibrium by hostile forces, lack of ability to coordinate on anything but maintaining the status quo, and resource constraints. The system is an effective trap and they can't just wish their way out of the trap. (So they try to pray their way out, with the understanding that this won't work.)

Cawl is a Mary Sue and got an unlimited budget, no supervision, and 10,000 years, and the advances he made were still not that large. The T'au are already starting to have problems from AI and have only just barely begun to interact with the Warp enough for that to cause them problems, and therefore are still idealists who haven't had to make compromises with the fundamentally sapience-hostile nature of the universe. Both of them are pictures of what humanity looked like long ago before the universe had its way with them.

Those are are all big risks, but they're risks the Imperium mostly still has to deal with anyway. I'm inclined to read them using the times scientific innovation goes wrong as proof they must stick to the old ways, while ignoring the times their own ways go equally wrong, as mostly just standard hypocrisy.

Of course, people who are inclined to ignore the AdMech's excessive conservatism may also be inclined to throw out actual important safety tips like "don't make bargains with Chaos" out with the bathwater. Some things the AdMech view as blasphemous are genuinely dangerous. But "doing basic science/engineering" isn't one of them.

My read is that the AdMech mostly are the status quo the AdMech is caught in. No individual AdMech can just decide to be sane, but that's mostly because if they did they would be executed for blasphemy, not because everything they consider blasphemy would cause disaster. It's a classic "non-punishers get punished" dictatorless dystopia setup, with a layer of self-defeating paranoia brought on by the constant random disasters of a hostile universe.

Cawl and the T'au aren't the only examples of paths not taken, just particularly prominent ones. Sure, the T'au (and DAoT humans, people working with the Great Crusade era Emperor, etc) are/were relatively sheltered from Chaos compared to the Imperium,* but I don't think you can attribute their success solely to that. The Interex, for a more obscure example, did pretty well while existing in the same universe facing the same threats as the early Imperium, and are clearly intended as a "no, it doesn't have to be this way" moment. (And Chaos actively encouraged/tricked the Imperium into destroying them... make of that what you will.)

On the gripping hand, there are hints that the AdMech are a product of the Void Dragon's influence leaking out of its prison on Mars. So they might be better thought of as a slow Xenos corruption eating away at humanity than as one of humanity's own failures.

*(The Imperium also contributes significantly to their own Chaos problems by creating tons of negative emotions, oppressing people so they're desperate for an alternative, not training their psykers properly, etc. - there's a reason most Chaos units are human - but it'd definitely still be a huge issue even if the Imperium were perfect saints.)

I've heard it pointed out that alot of the AdMech's more dogmatic traits aren't that bad in a long term survival on an uninhabitable planet(you know like Mars during the age of strife) situation.

Knowing how the machine keeps the air in isn't as important as making sure it keeps doing so. Risking breaking something by taking it apart to learn how it works could kill people on the wrong systems. Innovating takes resources, resources that could be better allocated to maintaining already existing systems that do their job good enough. Ect ect ect

The issue is that by the time the martian people didn't need to follow these survival guidelines, they'd been practicing them so long it had become a religion, something not to be questioned, and anyone who did was putting everyone else at risk.

Essentially emergency protocols that weren't stopped once the emergency was over because they did them so long they don't even realize they were only emergency protocols

I don't think we can really comprehend how badly the Men of Iron traumatized the human race with their rebellion. We know that Age of Technology era humans had stuff that was practically magic, they were the masters of the material universe and all things bowed to them. And then they didn't. Ignoring the awakening of so many Psykers and the Warp storms that followed, the Men of Iron became the ultimate boogy man. Humans forgot about demons and replaced them with the Men of Iron. It fundamentally altered the way humans thing to the point that the very idea of a thinking machine was so terrifying, that everyone agreed that the nightmare factory that spits out Servitors was a better alternative.

That's why the AdMech is so terrified. They don't hate the concept of innovation. That's how new patterns are built. As long as you do all the paperwork, you can probably avoid being turned into Corpse Starch. Although some more dogmatic Priests will do it out of principle. They are pants shittingly terrified that they might make something that won't obey them.

That's just my 2 cents, anyway.

They actually do hate the concept of innovation. It is against their dogma. They rather firmly believe that everything which needs to be known is from the DAOT (which, to be fair, would cover most problems) and trying to innovate outside of the limited context of trying to get back to what was lost is tech-heresy.

There's a reason that innovations are pretty much always couched under the statement of "We found a new STC fragment! What? No, you can't see it, just take the equipment and stop asking questions."

They don't USUALLY have to yell at kids for doing cocaine off the urinal.

Hate when the subway leaves right in front of you 😠

THE WORST

for a sec I just imagined a whole sandwich restaurant sprouting legs and leaving before I realized you meant the train 

i had to draw this… subway

Thank you for your efforts everyone this is a fabulous post

Wh… Why did you use Weiss in this?

more important question, who the fuck brought this post back i am going to attack

I always say this! Those children had to be killed

one of romanovs legit joined SS battalion. and the rest of romanov clan which escaped abroad was cushy with spanish fascists. the decision to kill the main line was done by local bolshevik worker soviet to prevent them from being potentially taken away by the white army as their forces approached the place of romanovs home imprisonment. so yeah, lol, the tweet makes sense.

Hard to tell why he night have joined the SS battalion. After the communists killed his whole family you'd have thought he'd have simply moved on.

Dowager Empress escaped to england, moved back to Denmark for the rest of her life

Xenia (Nicholas' sister) did basically the same thing as her mother.

Olga (other sister) eventually emigrated to America.

Nicholas (Nicholas' cousin) eventually moved to France after the Russian Whites basically said that they didn't want to alienate the liberal Whites by keeping him around.

Elisabeth (cousin by marriage, her husband having died a few years prior) ended up moving to Sweden with her children who scattered afterwords, most moving to either America or England and some to France. One of them, Princess Vera, lived in Germany where she was eventually imprisoned due to her family connections; she was originally assigned as a translator but removed from the post for helping her follow prisoners (aka, russians since thats who she'd be translating for).

Olga, a cousin, moved to Greece then Switzerland.

One of the primary claimant branches comes from Dmitri, a cousin, who left to England, then went France. His oldest son moved to America and became mayor of Palm Beach.

Andrei moved to france, settled in England.

Nikita moved between France and England, and during WW2 moved around central europe presumably trying to find the place least likely to throw him in jail for being a slavic royal, moved to America after the war where he spent most of his remaining life, and moved back to paris for the last four years.

Dmitri moved between England and France, and during ww2 served in the British Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and spent most of his life there.

Rostislav jumped between England and France, settled in France.

Vasili went to England, emigrated to America in the late 20s, settled in california.

Kirill was probably the most fascist friendly major Romanov, and he was known as the Soviet Tsar because he thought certain aspects of the soviet system were useful; he even tried to defect to the reds for personal protection. Good golly, how odd is that that the fascist romanov thought the soviets had some neat ideas.

Doubtless there are minor relatives who found support in a monarchist friendly regime and were willing to act as mouthpieces for a comfortable life. But out of the entire major list of potential claimants, including the ones with very little direct claim and mostly only a rough relation, only Kirill showed fascist tendencies. Given that the position of monarchy in a fascist state was to be the mouthpiece of whatever dictator was really in control, this is to be expected.

Demons are stored in bladder

Imagine picking up up a pint of ice cream for $5 and when you get to the register it's $6. This is going to be a nightmare for everyone who works there.

If you catch them raising prices on you in the store, complain. Get a manager. Make a scene. Show them time-stamped photos of prices: "I put a $5 item in my cart and that's how much I intend to pay for it." Do it every day. Give them 1 star reviews.

Consumer backlash is how we stop this. It's the only way. Especially with companies like Walmart that have established themselves as the only option in rural communities. It's not "being a Karen" if you're making legitimate complaints and being exploited.

That’s just straight up bait-and-switch

The only way that particular form would be legal would be if they go the automated store route and have every item scanned as its pulled off the shelf to ensure the automated pricing is always accurate. I think Amazon tried that and they ended up having to have most individual items verified. Or it might have been someone else.

Otherwise it would probably be used for day to day pricing. Even supermarkets require around 60-80 hours a week just for tagging and signing. I'd imagine it would require a full team at a department store just for weekly price maintenance let alone day to day or proper surge pricing.

I'm glad someone else is finally saying this: even when I was 100% on his "side", I never found him funny. In some ways, he was the forerunner of all the Democrat-shilling stand-up "comedians" and talk-show hosts of today, whose audience clap to agree with what is being said, rather than belly laugh out of any natural surprise or delight.

At best, he made some thoughtful points, like in his famous "7 words you can't say on TV" bit, but even then it feels like a lifeless scripted lecture from a trying-to-be-hip university professor, rather than a genuinely funny human being interacting with a crowd. I've never been able to grasp why he is so often listed with the all-time greats like Bill Hicks, Bill Burr, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Norm MacDonald, Ricky Gervais, or the great-grandfather of them all, Lenny Bruce.

I definitely found him very funny when I was young, but I think my gradual disliking has more to do with a combination of him being a big influence on my edgy internet atheist phase and him being so influential the modern comedians you mentioned that can't even try to make a joke.

I can still see the mechanical parts where he's making a joke and its better done than the people he's influenced, but... he's sort of like Radiohead. He was influential and good for his time but he's been copied and reused so much and so directly that there's nothing really appealing in relistening to him.

speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don't say numbers. don't give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it's secondhand.

the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.

you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it's no fun anymore.

YOU GET IT

Alternatively you can give blatantly wrong numbers and insist that math works differently in your setting. Though that's more specifically to fuck with them.

It's so fascinating when culture war weirdos get to the point where they can't express their enjoyment of something without first making up a guy who's sooooo mad at them for it and seething and coping soooo hard about it

Yeah sure Mr Trad West all the betas are SOOOO mad at you for enjoying nature, you're owning them sooooo hard.

It's usually people on the left that get stereotyped as "tree huggers". So...way to not be stereotypical, I guess?

They do that because 9 times out of 10 there IS some freak who actually said that to them at some point.

My man there is a whole ass post with people saying it’s ableist or “white” to enjoy nature or go outside on this very hellsite.

I once talked to an urbanite on here who thought that small towns were terrible and everyone should live in cities.

And some smooth brain said that my thinking it was stupid meant I thought I was a back to nature settler.

There are genuinely and honestly people who don't want you to be happy about trees.