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Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow?
Yes. Obviously.
How many mutations do you think it took to evolve an entirely new gut structure in that lizard?
You're assuming that this is the result of mutations. If you are truly interested in the science here, then you should probably seek out the actual scientific literature. Popular media, even media dedicated toward scientific endeavors, is notoriously (and sometimes laughably) bad at reporting the technical details. The broad strokes they have to paint scientific discovers to make the information easily consumable often give false impressions.
To wit:
"Although the presence of cecal valves and large heads in hatchlings and juveniles suggests a genetic basis for these differences, further studies investigating the potential role of phenotypic plasticity and/or maternal effects in the divergence between populations are needed."
Translation: We don't know if this is the result of a mutation, the expression of existing, but previously dormant genes.
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@janesix
You are attempting to shoe-horn evolution into a simplistic model as either universally and absolutely "slow" or universally and absolutely "fast." I do not know why you are insisting on doing this, but if you are at all actually interested in evolution, you shouldn't do that.
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@Imabench
Most of the election coverage I watched was people staring at a map of Florida like a Tucker Carlson whining about gypsys.
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Vargas: Young dwarf, I am a busy man. Lots of people come and go. Irene was here one day and gone the next. Is that all you came here to do? Waste my time about bogey men and whining girls?
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@Smithereens
Uh... his profile says 2003. Solidly GenZ if accurate.
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Something fucky is going on with the gov race. Barely any precincts in and people are calling it for Hogan
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@David
I voted for Hogan, but wouldn't be sad if it goes to Jealous.
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Vargas thinks and thinks. Oh! The Burgomasters daughter! Yes. Very dreary girl. She left. Went back to Barovia.
[Roberts Insight check (advantage): d20 (4, 11) + 5 = 16]
Vargas doesn't appear any different and doesn't appear to be hiding anything. He appears to have legitimately forgot about Ireena, perhaps considering it a subject beneath his attention.
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Vargas narrows his eyes. Feature act. Feature act. Oh yes! The banjo playing halfling, yes? Of course, pleasure to have you back in my abode. What's this about a guest? We have no guest? Who is this Ireena?
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(I assume you mean insight)
Vargas listen and furrows his brow. This is indeed a distressing tale. Almost unbelievable. I assure that this town is quite safe and there are no murders going around gutting poor coffin-makers. Now I'll ask you not go spreading such rumors and ruining the natural joy of our town.
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@KingLaddy01
Only if people vote. Herp.Naw. It's clear as day what's going to happen. Dems win House, Reps wins the Senate.
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(Roger)
There is less activity now that most of the wood has been gathered, but a snooty butler does come to the door and takes the group to the waiting room where they were before. After not long, the Baron arrives with two huge, black mastiffs at his side. They are eye-to-eye with Snerp and give him copius licks to the top of his gnomey head.
Vargas: I am Baron Vargas Vallakovich. Who has the honor of meeting me? A circus act for our festival tomorrow?
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@zedvictor4
She wasn't talking about the general need to drink.
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(Ok, Roberts hands over his two swords and Grahf hands over his (Unless Earth says otherwise later)).
The group then heads to the Burgomaster's mansion. Piles and piles of stick now occlude the front of the house, with a small cap allowing entrance.
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Home pages are so pre-2000. Take 'em right to the debate page.
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@janesix
No.Isn't evolution supposed to be slow?
Next question!
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"Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, 'Fuck you, tree, may no one ever eat fruit from you again.' And his disciples heard him say it." - Mark 11:13-14
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(I'll just note that Grahf can make his weapon magical via Channel Divinity and things that are vulnerable to silver are usually vulnerable to magical weapons too)
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The smith takes one of Robert's longswords and one of Snerp's hand axes (and presumably the silver needed).
Anything else I can do for ya?
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Blacksmith: Hm. A bit of an odd request. But sure, it's something I could manage. Have to melt down the weapon and reforge it. Takes about a week. What have you got?
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After a few minutes a squat, balding man in blacksmith's garb comes out of the building.
Eh?
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They follow the directions given to them to the smithy. It takes them to a small decrepit shack near the southern border of the town. The road here runs into a southern gate that doesn't appear to have been used in a long time. The gate is rusted shut and held closed with a chain and large pad lock. Vines have encroached upon the gate and the road leading away from town on the other side is cracked and filled with weeds from disuse.
Near the gate is the small squat smithy shop.
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The group searches through the house, including the storage area where the undead were first detected. The 6 crates have been burst open as if from the inside. The crates are filled with dirt, leaving just enough room for a humanoid body to rest. In the middle of the floor is the corpse of the coffing maker, his throat and entrails ripped out. In blood on the floor:
Vargas is next
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@Smithereens
It's more of an anarcho-syndicalist commune.
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(Did you guys search anywhere inside the shop or just step in, detect nothing, and step out?)
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Unlike before, Grahf detects no undead anywhere in the shop.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Listen. Strange site owners lying in ponds distributing hammers is no basis for a system of moderation. Supreme moderator power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical electronic ceremony.
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@Ramshutu
I agree that the mods shouldn't enforce a stricter voting standard than the debaters request. But this is probably implemented in better ways, such as allowing the instigator to choose a "win/loss" option, or opt out of requiring RFDs.
The problem with putting reporting only in the hands of debaters is the following scenario:
- Enter into a "gentlemen's agreement" with other debater that votes won't be moderator. (e.g. lax standard, no moderation, no rfd required, etc)
- They renege on this and then report all of the bad votes against them
- The mods delete only those votes (remember, mods will only ever moderate reported votes. Even if a bad vote is staring them right in the face, they won't touch it)
If done before the other debater sees what is going on and can respond, then they're SOL.
So it is a "solution" that invites exploitation while other, better solutions exist.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
(Just the south door was open)
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The group, as one, heads to the coffin-maker's house. Both doors to the house are wide open, barely hanging from their hinges. There is no sound and no sign of the coffin maker.
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@DebateArt.com
Well, bronze is supposed to be something easy, getting to the third place in the rating is not that easy, so that was my logic. Regarding the situation with being at the first place, I am afraid I couldn't have implemented it even if I wanted to because I don't keep the records so there is no way to find out who has ever taken the first place.
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We should take turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs or by a two thirds majority in the case of more important issues.
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Requested
Popular:
- 🔥Group PMs
- 🔥Add "select winner" option for debates
- 🔥Improve quoting system
Profile Features
- Profile comments
- Add "National Socialism" to political ideologies
- Add "Big Issues" stances
- Add "gender fluid" to gender options
- Add "friends" feature
- Increase size of profile picture on profile page
- Add "favorites" to profile
- Add "preferred pronoun" on profile
- Photo albums on user profiles
Forum Features
- Merge less active forum topics
- Add "like" option for forum posts
- Reveal previous iteration of edited forum posts
- Forum post signatures
- Add "History" forum
- Allow changing/adding @'s to post after the fact (when editing)
- Interaction point system
- Have hyperlinks open in new browser page/tab
- Clicking "reply" appends (instead of overwrites) the users to the @ field
- Allow images to be posted in forum posts
- Add "Meme" forum
Debate Features
- Caching/saving of unposted arguments
- Tied points go to no one.
- Change ELO scoring (https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/5?page=8)
- Add "reply speeches" to debates
- Add debate tournaments functionality
- View counter for debates
- Undo "full width" debate arguments
- Keep "full width" debate arguments
- Allow adding images to debates
- Add "30 minutes" and "3 hours" to "time to argue" options
- Add "concede" option for debates
- Add auto loss for forfeiting debates
- Add "open voting" option
- Add "judicial decision" option
- Add "self moderated" option
- Extend reporting of debate votes to one month after voting period closers
- Allow for removal of votes after voting period ends
- Extend voting period on a debate when a vote is removed
Other
- Search function for members and forum topics
- Subforum drop-down menu in header bar
- Notifications drop-down menu in header bar
- Real-time updating of private messages
- Change color/background of pinned topics
- Disable "enter = send" for private messages
- Persistant log-on across devices/browsers
- Specialize username color based on leaderboard percentage
- Add subject lines for PMs
- Ban notification for banned users
- Allow adding images to PMs
- Create a wiki
- Make reports anonymous
Planned
- Add "Fascisim" to political ideologies
- Bot protection (Captchas)
- Add basic bio info under name in profiles
- Full screen private messages
Implemented
- Pinned Topics
- Edit debate comments
- Like debate comments
- Enlarged private chat input field
- No default sex on sign up
- Add "Pagan" to religions
- Add "Progressivism" to political ideologies
- Change "argumentation" to "debating"
- Add link to most recent post in a forum
- Add "Christian" to religions
- Add profile info under avatar in forums
- Edit forum posts
- Added pagination to top-right of topics
- Direct linking to individual posts in topics
- Added visual indication of banned users
- Increased debate argument limit from 20k to 30k characters
- Add user's debates to their profile
- Added forum topics information to profile page
- Increase character count for RFDs from 3k to 5k
- Add direct linking to posts that mention you (from notifications)
- Allow instigator to be "Con" in a debate
- Add "block" feature
- Added category picker in the forum topic creation form
- Delete newly created forum topics
- Changed location of edit button for forum posts
- Edit forum topics within 5 minutes of creation
- Increased forum editing and deleting to 15 minutes
- Report feature
- Added crown to forum mods
- Added "read only" forums
- Allowed mods to sticky and lock forums
- Added mod icon to profile page
- Madet debates and arguments "full width"
- Allow debates to be removed within 15 minutes of creation
- Added reporting for debate votes and comments
- Added way to delete debate comments
- Preview feature for debate aruguments
- Add debate acceptance criteria (minimum rating)
- Allow instigator to choose word/character limit for debates
- Added sorting of leaderboard
- Forum post leaderboard
- Votes require an RFD
- Mods can mark reports as handled
- Allow notifications for any comments or votes on a user's debate
- Added links to debate comments and votes
- Added "characters left" counter for debate arguments
- Add number of debate votes to profile page
- Add indicator for popular threads
- Change "sex" to "gender"
- Add "other" option for gender
- Add direct links to mentions in e-mail notifications
- Can delete PMs
- Mods can remove voting rights
- Added two new profile fields: country and native language
- Add awards/medals
- Debates with ALL forfeits or no votes do not affect participant ELO ratings
- Display who is "Pro" and "Con" in a debate
- Drop down for selecting forum post recipients
- Add "time stamp" to each post
- Moderation system
Deferred
- Add polls
- Add opinions
- Add ability to change e-mail address
- Personalized color themes
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@bsh1
Proponents of user privacy don't wait until after the privacy has been violated to raise it for discussion. Even if you didn't know that Mike's change was going to remove anonymity, the response should have been to ask Mike to roll it back and then bring it to the community's attention yourself.Based on my history of comments on the issue, I am a big proponent of respecting users privacy. By putting this up to community discussion, the goal is to allow the community to decide what it wants, precisely to remove the issue of their being some kind of nefarious agenda.
Instead, the mod team happily exploited that information and a user had to bring it to the attention of the community. You don't get brownie points for doing the right thing after you've fucked up and been called out on it.
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