Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:52 am

I have told family members to fuck right off with their racist shit before. Then again, most people aren't me (which I am convinced is a mostly positive thing).

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:01 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:So, the Ebola scare is making novelist wheels churn in my head in regards to the walking dead and spitter zombies.

The question is, how crass would it be to actually write something where the Ebola crisis mutated into a zombie plague?

The real problem, of course, is that they wouldn't be zombies.

They'd be ghouls.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 6:16 pm

Ebola makes you eat people before you die?

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:52 am

Well, there's always that danger, but also, what most people think of as zombies (undead horrors wanting eat the flesh of the living) are actually ghouls.

Real zombies aren't even dead people. They're just a hoodoo (or is voodoo? I get the two confused) method of mentally enslaving people you don't like.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:29 am

Could we at least have something original like a spectre apocalypse or something?

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:50 am

Well, it's blood-born, right? Go with one of the weird blood undead like a crimson death or blood amniote.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 4:53 am

Ebola does tend to result in brain damage in the people who survive it without treatment. A mutated version that was long-distance airborne, and caused limited and specific forms of brain damage, could result in a real zombie plague.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:05 am

I think the disease you want to go to for a zombie plague is rabies. That one actually does compel you to stagger around biting people.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 2:43 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I think the disease you want to go to for a zombie plague is rabies. That one actually does compel you to stagger around biting people.

I thought that just made the subject much more irritable, which would cause animals to be more likely to bite.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 5:01 pm

Shrapnel wrote:Well, there's always that danger, but also, what most people think of as zombies (undead horrors wanting eat the flesh of the living) are actually ghouls.

Real zombies aren't even dead people. They're just a hoodoo (or is voodoo? I get the two confused) method of mentally enslaving people you don't like.

Well, yes. Just like how we all know vampires aren't pretty boys who die in sunlight and can dominate you with a glance, but are actually shambling corpses who drink blood and must be disposed of by nailing them into their coffin, beheading them, stuffing the mouth full of communion wafers, then burning the lot of it.

Also, ghouls are classically intelligent, zombies aren't. Thus modern zombies are zombies, unless you're watching a Romero commentary on modern consumerism.

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 5:03 pm

Typically, people suffering from advanced rabies fall into one of two categories: paralytic or furious. Paralytic is straightforward - you get muscle weakness and paralysis that spreads until either your heart or lungs give out and you die. Furious gives you increasing bouts of paranoia, hyperactivity, hallucinations, and aggression until, again, your heart or lungs go. Oh, and you also often salivate more and loss your ability to swallow, thus the whole foaming at the mouth bit.

What I am trying to say is that 'irritable' would be understating the situation.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 5:54 pm

I knew about the lack of swallowing leading to foaming of the mouth, but not about the hallucinations.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:09 pm

Wait . . lose the ability to swallow? O.o

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 6:20 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:
Shrapnel wrote:Well, there's always that danger, but also, what most people think of as zombies (undead horrors wanting eat the flesh of the living) are actually ghouls.

Real zombies aren't even dead people. They're just a hoodoo (or is voodoo? I get the two confused) method of mentally enslaving people you don't like.
Well, yes. Just like how we all know vampires aren't pretty boys who die in sunlight and can dominate you with a glance, but are actually shambling corpses who drink blood and must be disposed of by nailing them into their coffin, beheading them, stuffing the mouth full of communion wafers, then burning the lot of it.

Also, ghouls are classically intelligent, zombies aren't. Thus modern zombies are zombies, unless you're watching a Romero commentary on modern consumerism.

I know, I just like being pedantic about monster and myth origins. I'm not allowed at Halloween parties because of this.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Oct 10, 2014 10:18 pm

Does anyone know where I can get fake body hair? It can be glued on, or it can be a fake hairy shirt I could wear? I'm doing a con on Halloween and I'm going as Carl from Aqua Teen, and I only have very light body hair (and the hair I do have is blonde and can only be seen at short range)

EDIT: I checked the local Halloween stores and stuff, couldn't find anything. Although I did find a horse mask at the thrift store for $5, felt it was stupid for me to NOT buy it...

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Oct 10, 2014 11:23 pm

http://www.dailybri.com/2013/04/08/ches ... -braggers/

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:13 pm

So, I've been using Git on Ubuntu with public/private keys to upload to a server for class, and I just realized it prompts me to enter the password to use my private key when downloading from the server that only has my public key.

Can anyone explain what the fuck? Note that people who don't have my private key can totally pull from the same repository.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 6:23 pm

You mean like this?

Oh, also my store has horse hooves:

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:34 pm

So, recently there's been a few some fappery about Sikhs on /tg/, about how they're the closest things to Paladins in real life and how they are always armed to fight injustice and whatnot.

I'm wondering what the down side is, and if anyone can tell me it's the godless fucking atheists that live here. So, Denners, tell me why Sikhs are bad and I should feel bad.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:42 pm

Stahlseele wrote:Wait . . lose the ability to swallow? O.o

Yep. It's why one of the old names for rabies is 'hydrophobia'.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:53 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I'm wondering what the down side is, and if anyone can tell me it's the godless fucking atheists that live here. So, Denners, tell me why Sikhs are bad and I should feel bad.

1. Mandatory symbolic clothing.
2. The weapon is purely symbolic - in many cases the blades are dull, sealed into the scabbard, etc. and cannot be used.
3. While the emphasis on militarism has lead to some good things, when Sikhs go fundamentalist, they go militantly fundamentalist.
4. They forbid removing hair from any body part to any degree, which is both arbitrary and massively inconvenient.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:15 am

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:So, recently there's been a few some fappery about Sikhs on /tg/, about how they're the closest things to Paladins in real life and how they are always armed to fight injustice and whatnot.

I can't answer the bit about why they might be bad. But...

For the Paladins bit, it really depends on your personal definition of Lawful Good, given they mean precisely dick in D&D and we live in a world that doesn't have magical alignment detection. This means that a "paladin" would only have to meet the following criteria:
1. Religious maniac
2. Extremely violent
3. Has a stick up their arse
4. Consider themselves to be the good guys

I'm pretty sure there's a group in the news lately that meet those criteria.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:38 am

Sikhs are generally pretty good dudes. They've also historically been badasses. /k/ is pretty fond of them as well.

I'd conceivably convert, but I can't handle to no shaving and haircuts thing.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:55 am

I couldn't do the chastity part, I'm too much of a manslut.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:03 am

A lot of mainstream Sikh leaders are basically assholes. They get pissed at things like "letting the elderly sit in chairs instead of on the ground during religious meals" and "homosexuality," but on the flip side individual Sikh temples and followers are amazingly comfortable telling their religious leaders to go fuck themselves.

Sikhs have a tendency to militarize, but usually they are on the right side of conflicts in which they participate, so as far as religious nuts with a propensity for force go it is hard to find a group you'd pick over the Sikhs. But their track record isn't perfect and a disproportionately large number of Sikhs did in fact help Britain violently subjugate India.

They have a lot of wildly impractical traditions that they adhere to, and they tend to take them a little too seriously. Wildly impractical traditions are wildly impractical, and need to fuck off.

But fundamentally egalitarianism and tolerance are enshrined in their religion as core tenets, as opposed to things people attempt to torturously extract from their religious text because society has forced them to stop being the shitbags their holy books tell them to. In the grand scheme of things, that gives them the moral highground on virtually all of their competing religions. If you were going to devote your life to bullshit fairytales that aren't real Sikhism would be a solid choice. Alternatively, you can just not be an asshole and skip the part with bullshit fairytales.