drail

drail OP , 4 days ago

That is what I keep saying! The team I like should just play amazing basketball every time and then they won't lose! I am waiting for my offer from the Denver coaching staff to bring this kind of advice.

drail , 11 days ago

Good lord, it is a slugfest already. Seeing these teams both be under 50 at the half was not something I expected, but this us a gritty, grimy game

drail OP , 15 days ago

Thanks! I absolutely pinched the style/format from your Suns post, but I thought the recap+outlook style was a really neat element in an elimination post to make it more than just a brag as a nuggets fan.

drail OP , 16 days ago

This was a game winner to win the nuggets first round playoff matchup, which is always a big deal, but there are three things that are particularly impressive here:

1. Jamal Murray was injured coming into this game, so the fact that he held strong through the game, played great basketball, and hit the game winner is impressive.

2. The degree of difficulty on that shot was massive. Going left and shooting right requires perfect balance, focus, and contortion to get the shot off properly. Murray used this to catch the Lakers' Austin Reaves off guard and get a clean look, leveraging a difficult shot against an even more difficult to defend attack.

3. This is the 2nd game winner Jamal Murray has hit this playoff series, both of which were highly difficult shots. Big time shot maker making big time shots.

drail OP , 16 days ago

Ayo, can I post the 'Eliminated from contention' post for the lakers? Don't wanna step on mods toes if that is a mod privilege.

drail , 16 days ago

Jamal Murray has ice water in his veins. Good god that man is a big time, big moment shot maker.

drail , 27 days ago

Man, the Porter family is the worst combination of unlucky, injury prone, and self destructive. MPJ's injuries, Bri and Cierra's injuries, Coban with the DUI/Vehicular Homicide, and now Jontay with a betting scandal.

drail , 1 month ago

To be fair to the post, it is describing how to tell people who wear all black apart, not categorizing them goth subtypes. Punk is also not goth.

drail , 1 month ago

Fat bummer, my condolences. That was one of the coolest things I've ever seen, the clouds parted just in time here in DFW.

drail , 1 month ago

I pitched this exact idea to my fiancé a few days ago (and have no clue why it came up). she didn't think it was a good idea, but now I can tell her that it was good enough to patent.

drail , 1 month ago

She and I don't want to make kids, so it isn't immediately applicable anyway. That being said, I am an experimental nuclear and particle physics PhD student, so I am at least 85% sure that I could convince my boss that we need a medium size centrifuge in the lab and make some... adjustments... upon completion.

drail , 1 month ago

It seems like a great way to send ~50% of the babies birthed out in space. Just remove the net, speed it up, and tilt it 90°, then you have a coin flip chance at space babies or crater babies.

drail , 1 month ago

We (maybe) want kids, she just doesn't want to ever be pregnant, so adoption is our route if anything.

This would be the worst of both worlds: A pregnancy that we don't even get one of the little shits from! She'll have to deal though, science demands that we try it at least once.

drail , 1 month ago

Helps with pregnancy nausea AND child birth! Just flip the seat direction and you are ready to expectorate whatever you want out!

drail , 1 month ago

Sometimes it is worth the brief verbal abuse and getting slapped with a pillow by an exhausted SO.

drail , 1 month ago

Hell of a win for my birthday, love seeing the young guys get good run and watching Jokić feast! Got a vintage nuggets mountain logo hoodie, a throwback Alex English rainbow skyline jersey, and a 23-24 city edition flat-brim to watch the game in full drip.

drail , 1 month ago

Twice, both related to my Crohn's Disease.

The first was in preparation for my first colonoscopy, where I was told that I was only allowed clear broth, clear soda, coffee, and water for 24hr before taking the colon prep solution. I didn't think the diet would give a mile-long headstart before the prep solution, so I enjoyed copius amounts of clear broth and coffee, which ran through me like a river, resulting in the mishap. The bathroom was only 10ft away from me, but it was still too far given the rapid pressure buildup.

The second was during an insurance conflict about my Crohn's Medication, resulting in a flareup and multiple weeks of gut agony and loose stool. It got to the point where no flatulence was trustworthy, and I took a gamble because I was so tired of getting up to run to the restroom every time I felt something bubbling (10+ restroom visits a day, each at the slightest sign of stomach rumbling will do that to a motherfucker).

It is always humiliating, even when I am home alone, and I am hyper concious about the possibility, even when in remission. It fucking bites.

drail , 1 month ago

You smoking chicken dick if you think I'm frying fried fuck

drail , 1 month ago

I have certain memories that are crystal clear, mostly traumatic, from ~2.5-4yo:

• When I fell off the couch and hurt my dog by landing on her, resulting in her snapping at me and getting bit on the face (required significant reconstructive surgery and rehoming the dog to a family without kids just to be safe, which destroyed me and my dad who loved her dearly)

• Getting chased and bit by geese at the farm-style day care my parents sent me to before preschool

• When I got a Streptococcus infection in my forearm growthplate and had to spend a lot of time in the hospital and had a port in my chest for direct medicine administration to my hear

• When I put an unpopped corn kernel in my ear and had to go to the ER to get it removed (the one day where both my parents' insurance had lapsed. My dad was starting a new job the next day, naturally, though I didn't understand that at the time obviously)

• Being scared of my great grandma when she was dying in the hospital with all the tubes and her sallow, paper skin

• The first (and only time) I got spanked, by my dad, which ended with me peeing myself and my mom shouting at him until early in the morning (he wasn't abusive or anything, just a young dad who thought it was appropriate based on his upbringing that never did it again, apologized profusely to me and my mom, and still feels terrible about it)

I remember other, more positive, things from those ages, but not with the clarity or specificty that I recall these events. I remember watching the pokemon anime with my dad on the couch when he slept in after working the night shift, him making characters for me and teaching me how to play computer games via Everquest, my mom taking me to work with her when I was sad about not seeing her a lot, being with my aunt and cousins who lived just down the road, chasing garter snakes in the yard, etc.

I think it is like the red-light/green-light effect when driving: you are more likely to notice all the red lights you hit when driving because they negatively impact your normal routine, but forget the green lights that facilitate the routine. The positive memories become the general feeling you get of the time, the green lights. The bad memories stand out because they were disruptive and different, harsh red lights in your younger years.

drail , 1 month ago

My two cents is that multiclassing should be driven first and foremost by what seems cool or fun, then looking at story consideration, and finally looking at optimization. Rogue is one of the best classes for MC, it has endless synergy with basically every other class, so I don't think there is a wrong answer in terms of viability. Rogue/bard is super fun, allowing for a super versatile character in terms of being the face and skillmonkey, rogue/fighter is a potent martial combination, and warlock rogue has neat RP potential and some nice interplay between invocations and roguish abilities (darkness, mask of many faces, etc.)

How has you character been played so far? A dashing trickster would lend itself to bard (swords, whisper, or lore), a deadly and efficient assasssin would lend itself to fighter (BM or echo knight if allowed), or a curious seeker of secrets would lend itself to warlock (hex blade is the best choice for a mixed martial imo).

drail , 1 month ago

Ah, damn, you are totally right!

drail , 1 month ago

Fighter as a class is only as cliché as the story behind it from an RP perspective imo. An assassin who has only relied on his mental acuity (precision and brain blades) and stealth to reach their goals deciding that they need to more formally learn how to be an effective combatant doesn't read as cliché to me, it seems very pragmatic. Or having escaped near death time and time again in combat, an assassin learning by trial and error how to improve their odds of surviving direct combat. Or literally extracting the knowledge via their soulknife abilities from every fighter they slay, adding experiences into their repertoire. Loads of potential there for a fun Rogue/Fighter build.

I have three questions that I ask every time I theorycraft an MC build (and some example prompts):

1. Why do you want to MC?
Is it to make a more powerful character/to diversify your skills/to fill a niche in the party/for narrative completeness/etc?

**2. Why is your character developing these new skills? **
Does your character have a latent predisposition to this change? Did they get challenged in a way that necessitated change? Did a party member/mentor influence them to try out a new skillset?

3. Do you want the change to alter your concept for the character (both in combat and RP), and how does that fit with the character you play?

Answering these questions helps me a lot in deciding how to explain the MC decision, flesh out the character concept, and work it in to the game as written. If you just want to mix it up or beef up your character, that is fine too, but I think it is more satisfying when you can bridge the RP and the mechanics.

drail , 2 months ago

As one of the most senior grad students in my dept, holy fuck this hits hard.

drail , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Physics is a mixed bag with this stuff. Gell-Mann came up with the name quarks after a line from Finnegan's Wake because Joyce referenced them as coming in three. It was a nonsense word inserted just to rhyme with Mark, Park, etc, so its pronunciation in physics isn't even correct, but it was fun and physicists were just having a good time with it.

Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he has not got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.

Then we got the strange/charm and top/bottom (which was originally the beauty/truth, so bullet dodged there) so the quarks really got all the fun names. Strong Force physics in general gets the good stuff: Axions were named after a detergent because they helped "clean up" the strong CP-violation problem of the standard model. Fantastic, no notes.

Neutrinos (my field of study), had so much potential for fun, stupid naming that was squandered. The neutrino was originally proposed with the name "neutron" by Pauli, but then the actual neutron was discovered and observed first, so the name got pinched. To remedy this, the electron neutrino was dubbed "neutrino" or little neutron (they didn't know that other flavors of neutrino existed). Meanwhile, the muon neutrino was originally supposed to be the neutretto (before they realized that the neutral leptons were related by the different particle generations), so we could have had a world where each generation of neutral lepton was just another combination of neutron + diminutive italian suffix.

1. Neutrino
2. Neutretto/neutronetto
3. Neutrello/neutronello

Then, when the mass eigenstates were confirmed, we could have diversified and gone with big suffixes to indicate that neutrinos have mass.

1. Neutroni
2. Neutrachione/neutronachione
3. Neutrozzo/neutronozzo

But noooooo, particle physics decided to just give neutrinos the lamest possible names, electron/muon/tau neutrinos for flavor states and m_1/m_2/m_3 neutrino for mass states. I am ashamed of my predecessors for what they've done.

Don't even get me started on the J/Psi debacle...

drail , 2 months ago

Gell-Mann said it sounds like "quart", Joyce rhymed it with Park, it is a silly word and the pronunciation is as fluid as you desire.

drail , 2 months ago

In physics- Like "quart" with a k
In the Joyce novel- rhymes with park.

drail , 2 months ago

Neutrello sounds good, but it is actually pretty...

weak

Rimshot, crowd moans

drail , 2 months ago

I see your dramatic girl and raise you a dramatic crazy boy:

drail , 2 months ago

Maybe I am just dumb, but I don't get it. The sentence structure is odd, but otherwise this just reads as a kid looking to earn some extra scratch.

drail , 2 months ago

Ahhh, okay, I see that I suppose

drail , 2 months ago

Holy hell, this team can't catch a break. I wanted the Nuggets to get the #1 seed as a Nugget fan, but watching OKC and MN put it all together and having a three-way race to the top has been the best part of this season. Hope he recovers quickly and fully.