He’s rich from a long and successful multimedia art career. And I can’t find any source that says he bought it, it seems to still be owned by James Zigras, the mineralogist friend. He just carved it.

Not sure about the racist bit. DEVO definitely utilized racial stereotypes, but the consensus seems to be that it was very clearly satirizing systemic racism. I dunno if Mothersbaugh has any other history of sincere racism, but I can’t find anything.

I play GURPS and my son is also named math

Yes, but it is infinitesimally close.

When taking about limits, you can approach 0 from the positive or negative direction, which can give very different results. For example, lim cotx, x->0+ = ∞ while lim cotx, x->0- = -∞

After all the OGL drama I considered going to PF2 also, but after a little research decided if I was going to take the time to learn a new system and embrace crunch, I might as well go all the way and landed on GURPS. Got rid of all my 5e stuff and haven’t looked back

I do everything in black anyway, and 4 packs of Elegoo PLA are like $45. No complaints so far and $11-12/kg is hard to beat

Kandinsky was the first artist to come to mind

as long as you accept the data

Ehhhh, data isn’t necessarily sacrosanct. Bad methodology, bad equipment, or bad presentation can lead to biased or misleading data. Hell, every once in a while purely fabricated data slips through the cracks.

It’s still the best guide we have, and mountains of data from disparate sources should be very suggestive indeed, but science involves being able to question even well-accepted hypotheses, on the slim-but-non-zero chance that all that data was based on some common methodological flaw. If the hypothesis is correct, it’ll stand up to scrutiny.

Yeah, you’ll get some whackadoos with their thumbs in their navels, but those whackadoos are an important part of the scientific ecosystem; random mutations in scientific evolution which every once in a long while turn out to be useful, if only in getting serious scientists to look at a problem from a new angle. Stagnation’s a bitch.

Proncess

Lemme just turn my tooth into a jellyfish real quick

Is this a JoJo reference?

Bin juice drinking gronks

Is it? He looks very different

It is. We say sapience when discussing intelligence, and sentience when discussing consciousness.

Pretty sure I got it, assuming the layout is roughly as I suspect. Don’t want to spoil it for everyone else though, it is clever

Idk, I think that might be a bit of an overreaction and a missed opportunity. He has a good point about being from that town and slavery being a normal part of his life growing up. That could’ve turned into an interesting in-character exploration of cultural moral standards: genuine confusion about what’s wrong with being a “good” slave-owner, maybe a conversation about how easily freed slaves are re-captured, it could turn into a whole revelation for the barb that culminates in a quest to dismantle the entire slave trade.

Obviously we’re missing some context, and it’s possible that the player exhibited problematic behavior, but personally I don’t think the scenario is itself that bad. Just sounds like a barbarian from a slave-trading society role playing their character. Some would argue that eating meat would be likewise incompatible with a good-alignment, but our culture sees no fundamental moral objection to slaughtering animals.

Spelljammer and the OGL were what drove me to GURPS.

I don’t need a book’s permission to use my imagination. I buy a book to have play tested and balanced content.

I would actually pair that with secret rolls. Every once in a while, just roll the dice behind the screen, consider the result sagely, then make no mention of it and continue as usual.

That’s just meta-meta-gaming imo. Fine if that’s your group dynamic, just not my thing. Personally, it seems like way more time and effort.

Perception stats exist for a reason, and I’d argue they’re usually incompatible with knowing the result of the roll, even with players who try not to meta-game. Even if they behave, they’re subconsciously going to know how they rolled and that will change the experience, unless you start meta-meta-gaming (changing the success window, frequently calling for rolls for nothing, etc.). Personally that seems like a pound of cure vs an ounce of prevention.

If a semi-spoiler-laden, actively counter-meta-gamed experience is what your group likes, more power to you. But more often than not, I think the GM rolling for checks where success/failure isn’t obvious preserves the experience for all players and prevents meta-gaming, both intentional and subconscious.