Check out Gandahar. Anyone who thinks Star Trek has the most messed up time travel plotlines needs to watch this.

I love Bakshi’s LotR and Wizards but I think his best movie is American Pop. Not as WTF as Wizards, but it’s so epic!

The last two Dell laptops my work provided me with have little sliders that physically cover the camera. I use them all the time while working from home.

“Siri, how long has this been going on?”

Siri: https://youtu.be/UGP9uz4s8hQ?si=jhoEOFKHBPhIPszs

Like tears… in rain.

I don’t like the idea of restricting the model’s corpus further. Rather, I think it would be good if it used a bigger corpus, but added the date of origin for each element as further context.

Separately, I think it could be good to train another LLM to recognize biases in various content, and then use that to add further context for the main LLM when it ingests that content. I’m not sure how to avoid bias in that second LLM, though. Maybe complete lack of bias is an unattainable ideal that you can only approach without ever reaching it.

https://youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec?si=0bTNdugjosLnu9-r

I gotta have my naturally sparkling Perri-air

I think I’d enjoy a Sledgehammer! reboot more. The Naked Gun movies (and the 6 Police Squad episodes) are perfect as-is and don’t need a remake, but Sledgehammer! would benefit from a modern update, I feel.

In a 5e campaign where I played a halfling Warlock, and found that Fireball isn’t on the basic Warlock spell list, I convinced my DM to allow me to create a Fireball-like spell, since at that point I didn’t have a lot of choices for AoE attack spells, and my party-mates could all do more single-target damage than I could.

Since the 5e go-to attack cantrip for Warlocks is Eldritch Blast, I figured I might as well learn into it and called it Eldritch Boom. The effect is similar to a sonic boom. Instead of catching fire, creatures and objects in the AoE that fail their save are knocked over (creatures are knocked prone). For the damage, I conceded that I couldn’t just copy Fireball, so instead of 8d6, I went for 6d8, but higher level slots add 1d8 per level.

The DM allowed it mainly because I was the main spellcaster. But later on, our party got a new addition: a pyromaniac sorcerer. Around that time, I switched to Blight as my go-to attack (when I didn’t just use Eldritch Blast).

Well, in that picture, I’d go with Lightning Bolt instead.

You’re trying to apply objectivity to a very subjective area. I’m not saying it’s impossible, and you should by all means try it, but maybe it would be a good idea to try something that has a better chance, first, such as this:

How about an open platform for scientific review and tracking? Like, whenever a new discovery or advance is announced, that site would cut through the hype, report on peer review, feasibility, flaws in methodology, the ways in which it’s practical and impractical, how close we are to actual usage (state of clinical trials, demonstrated practical applications, etc.)

And it would keep being updated, somewhat like Wikipedia, as more research occurs. It needs a more robust system of review to avoid the problems that Wikipedia has, and I don’t have the solution for that, but I believe there’s got to be a way to do it that’s resistant to manipulation.

I haven’t checked how this is presented in 5E, but I remember in 2E that the costs of the stronger healing spells that operated on more than hit points, and especially the Raise Dead and Resurrection spells had a very high cost in material components, and took their toll on the caster. In other words, not to be used lightly and all the time. Which means finding someone to cast it for you would come at a correspondingly high cost.

In a well-designed campaign world, that should be reflected in either a high monetary cost for the casting of such spells (a church requesting a sizable donation, for example) or some kind of demonstration that the target is worthy in the eyes of the church or its god.

This can actually turn into a storytelling and role-playing opportunity. Imagine you’re blind, and you and your party need to prove that you’re a worthy person while blind before they’ll restore your sight. Or the whole party is made totally blind for the duration of a test or short quest that you have to complete together before the restoration spell can be cast.

All this sufficiently explains the existence of blind people. Lack of imagination is not an excuse for bigotry.

Also, a character may be unable to get their sight restored, and that can and should be explored for its role-playing potential.