majestic

I'm not that familiar with the lore of Warhammer 40k to properly know all the ins and outs, but these events are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The Age of Technology lead to a great conflict that almost destroyed humanity (the war against AI, hence the AI ban in the Imperium), while the excesses of the Eldar led to the birth of the Prince of Darkness, heralded by intense warp storms, isolating clusters of systems and leading to the Age of Strife.

Well, not quite the same, but similar, yes. Warp storms, dimensional barriers, the effect is the same, I suppose.

That depends heavily on what you would consider a happy ending. You can avert a galactic crisis and foil the plan of an insane fascist, so if that qualifies, then yes, the game does have one. If by happy ending you mean creating a better place in the Warhammer 40k universe, then that is actually also possible, albeit after a fashiohn, if you follow a certain conviction and achieve its secret ending, but (warning, spoilers): Hey, it's Warhammer 40k, there's got to be some grim and dark even in the happiest of endings.

I thought it an appropriate reply to the question of having a hopeful story set in the Warhammer 40000 universe. One might as well ask for warm ice cream or dry water. Edit: For clarification, I am aware that it is possible to create hot "ice", i.e. solid water at room temperatures or well above that.

Yeah, Imma gonna go have some nightmares now.

Default font size is a bit tiny, at least on actual computer monitors. It works better on mobile, but for a mole like me, eh...

If it is fundamental enough, then of course it can be. See, for instance, I would never vote for a libertarian, even if I would agree with every other stance that person had. On the other hand, if there would be a candidate who realizes that class warfare is not magically over just because the Soviet Union dissolved, but who would be to oppose legalization of cannabis, then that would be an issue I could live without. It is just not important enough.

A combination of economic lobbyism and European Union law. Only a handful of religious minorities (including our 4% protestant population) had Good Friday as a public holiday in Austria, meaning that roughly five percent of the population had an extra public holiday, i.e. basically one day of paid vacation more than everyone else, as long as they are members of their congregation. Which the European Court of Justice found to be a discriminatory practice, and it is hard to argue with that finding. Faced with the decision to either take away Good Friday as a public holiday for religious minorities or granting it as a public holiday for all residents, the choice was easy: economic lobby groups said that the economy would collapse if everyone had one more paid day of leave, and thus it was taken away. Needless to say that we had a right wing government at the time, headed by the People's Party with their supposed Catholtic roots. One would think that good Catholics would be amenable to add such an important day of Christian belief to the roster of public holidays, but, well, when the party donors do not want to deal with a work time reduction of 0.0038% (I calculated this based on the average work time of Austrian employees, based on official statistics for 2023), then they do not want to deal with it. There's a certain irony in some of the same lobby groups insisting on a 3.75% decrease in overall work time just four years later during negotiations for our collective agreements. To make working full time more attractive.

The tithe is tax deductible, but only up to 400€ per year. As for the "benefits", well, you can have a proper Christian burial, receive the sacraments, have a church wedding and participate in communion. That is for non-orthodox Christians Churches, and I have no experience with congregations of other faiths. All for the tiny price of 1% of your yearly base income before income tax (your yearly gross income after all prior deductions, i.e. social social security, tax free income and payments specifically exempted from income tax, like our variants of a 401k). You have to calculate your tithe yourself, but if you don't, then the church will collect an estimate based on sex, age and education. Whether or not it is benefitial to let the church estimate your tithe depends on how much you earn above or below average. I have let the church estimate my tithe for years now, as they were generally way off the mark (to my benefit, obviously). How very Christian of me, huh? That is the same, you can just visit any mass, funerals or baptisms, you are just not allowed to participate in communion. Theoretically, that is, it is not like anyone actually checks your congregation membership when you partake. Data protection is just an excuse. Your parents sign you up via baptism, and at age fourteen you are supposed to confirm your membership through ritual, which I suppose is the same for the US offshoot of the Catholic Church, although I have to admit that I have not put in the effort to check. When you do, the moment you start earning an income that is not from any apprenticeship, the church will send you a letter, demanding money. The data your congregation has on you is simply your birthday, sex and place of residence. How much this is just a silly hurdle designed to prevent people from readily leaving congregations they joined is seen in the inverse: if I were to sign up for another congregation, that can be done directly with them. Joining? Easy. Leaving? Oh no, please go to your district administration and tell them that you want to leave and they will inform your congregation for you. Just to make sure nothing goes wrong. There is full separation between church and state here (in theory, at least), but the first couple of elected governments after World War 2 were lead by the People's Party (or, as it was called at the time, the Christian party) and had deeply Catholic roots, and thus decided to reinstate Austro-Hungarian Empire laws passed in 1868, but conveniently keeping the church tax law from Nazi Germany.

I just sent my declaration of my intent to leave my congregation to the responsible district administration. It is a silly bureaucratic hurdle the churches demanded which requires certain documents to "prove" that you are indeed a part of the congretation you want to leave. The official justification is data protection, because leaving your congretation requires the disclosure of personal information to said congregation. And we would not want to disclose any personal information to the wrong congregation, would we? Yes, that justification is about as silly as it sounds. You cannot just leave your congretation by talking to them directly for no other reason than to introduce extra bureaucratic hoops to jump through in order to deter as many people as possible from leaving a certain Church with a proclivity for child abuse. At the end of the day, this is about money, as both major Christian Churches in Austria and Germany can (legally) collect money from their congregation members, colloquially known as church tax, it is a required tithe that goes back to laws made by the good shepard, The Führer (no, really, the church tax really goes back to laws passed by the Nazis). With the government removing Good Friday for us Protestants as public holiday a while back and the Church now wanting a membership fee in excess of what is tax deductible, it no longer makes sense to be a part of the Protestant Church.

I have an anecdote to share here, although it is, of course, only directly applicable to the media in Austria, and it was over a decade ago. Back then, the company I worked at, was robbed. Goods worth five million Euro were stolen in a matter of hours. The robbers brutalized the workers of the night shift, bound them with gaffer tape and threatened to shoot them if they made any sudden moves. They grabbed their access badges to unlock the fenced off section of the warehouse where the exact goods they were looking for were stored, loaded the pallets they wanted onto their truck, and left. Perfectly orchestrated, it was fairly evident that it was an inside job, particularily since they took nothing else. The media reporting was fraught with errors. All of it. Not a single one that I read, and I checked a lot, seem to have put in the effort to do some fact checking. The most egregiously wrong accounts came, as expected, from the yellow press, but our public broadcasting company (ORF) made massive mistake in their reporting: they filmed a camera overlooking the entrance of the warehouse and wondered why nobody checked who rang at the door late at night. The cameras at the warehouse were part of the CCTV surveillance system in place, and labour law clearly states that the captured footage is only to be accessed by specially designated people and only in case of initial suspicion. It would be downright illegal to check the CCTV surveillance footage with no good reason, and they should really know that. One yellow press article wondered how the truck managed to move past the security checkpoint at the entrance to the warehouse. Why and how was the gate opened for the truck? Indeed, how? Oh, right, that was because that particular warehouse had no security checkpoint and they simply looked at a different branch of the company. How utterly detestable can you be to not even go to the right address for your footage to generate more buzz/clicks? It is really hard to believe that this was a simple mistake, the two locations are not even in the same vicinity (entirely different cities, even). Articles from outlets with better reputation got most of it right, but still openly wondered how and why the night shift workers could be overwhelmed and how nobody noticed it for hours, and why they even opened the door when someone rang at 02:00. Yes, why indeed. They could have just asked, you know. The entire night shift consisted of only two workers, both of which were beaten up and bound. They opened the door because of regular nighttime deliveries for a special project of one of our largest customers, who, at the time, due to irregular shipping schedules, could not properly advise of inbound shipments ahead of their arrival. It was the perfect moment for the robbery, and the robbers, who were later actually caught, turned out to actually be the very same people who made the deliveries. Conlcusion: for at least this one instance, it was shown that our public broadcaster does not know or does not care to check labor laws, the yellow press outright lies for effect and even quality media outlets rush to get their headlines out without due diligence. Ah, sign of the times, I suppose.

Treated myself to a Dragon Roll at our local Asian place. As far as I know, Dragon Rolls are usually made with either ebi tempura or grilled unagi. They just went ahead and used both, and added a little Terriyaki sauce on top, which makes their dragon roll an exposion of taste that goes from perfectly soft and sweet to crunchy fried shrimp when chewing.

Ah, yes. That... Sorry, could not resist.

There's one other thing, the AI models are only going to get better. Still waiting for a model that takes modern, icky digital coloring and makes it look like actual painted cels from the heyday of animation. Where's my "make K-On! look good" AI?

Somehow, even when expecting a terrible film, Sony comes along and proves that indeed, it can always get much, much worse.

Female streamers creating content in the Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches category are more often hypersexualized than those streaming video games. I am currently looking for funds, I am planning a study to see if water is wet. PM me if you want to contribute, or know someone who wants to.

In case anyone's interested in just how bad performance can get: Reminds me a bit of the good old times in Lagforge. It's been a while.

https://www.techpowerup.com/320693/apple-m-series-cpus-affected-by-gofetch-unpatchable-cryptographic-vulnerability Woopsidaisy.

Who cares, they all voted for Putin anyway.

Wrong, Arrakis is not a desert any more by that point!

Recently got the news that a former friend of the family was found dead by her son. Her son used to be a friend of mine until the end of school caused us to lose contact. Say what you will of the perils of mobile phones and social media, one thing they certainly made a lot easier is keeping in contact with each other. The only people from school I still have contact with were those from the vocational high school I went to - and that only because we all had instant messaging (anyone remember the then ubiquitous ICQ?) and mobile phones. Friends and acquaintences from before, like the aforementioned son? No, not really. Anyway, apparently she already had two heart attacks and was diabetic, and her health issues caught up with her. She also went through a lot of mental health issues, some ages ago, some years ago, some recently, like when she had an affair with a married man and did not take it too well that he would not leave his wife for her. She also had two sisters, and both commited suicide, one of them as a little girl, the other as adult. The other sister was a former teacher of mine - sort of, she gave me (private) physics lessons when my school's physics education was, well, let's say, a little lacking in depth and focus. She had a stroke a couple of years ago, then fought tooth and nail to get enough control of her body back so she could end her life on her own terms. Wee, that post became a little bleaker than intended.

Frank Herbert on Dune in an interview with Charles Platt: The first book is a classical hero's journey, indeed, but even then Paul has visions of what his jihad will cause. It becomes much clearer with Dune Messiah.

What are you talking about, Dune (1984) was directed by Alan Smithee and written by Judas Booth. Well, at least the version broadcast on TV. Heh.

Hey, the 14900KS is here! Well, and no one cares, except maybe for overclockers. For them the extra money for (more or less) eliminating silicon lottery might be worth it.