theinspectorst
@theinspectorst@kbin.social
- Comment on Thames Water urgent 'do not drink' warning to hundreds of Surrey homes 5 months ago:
Politically, this is magnificent. The Lib Dems have target seats throughout Surrey where they're typically the main challenger, they've been campaigning hard locally on water quality through most of this parliament (hasn't always got national attention but they worked out a while ago it's a very resonant issue in their target seats) and then just in time for the election Thames Water start warning people the water isn't drinkable...
- Comment on What do you personally use AI for? 6 months ago:
I've found it useful for TTRPGs too. Art generators are certainly helpful for character portraits, I also find ChatGPT can be useful for lots of other things. I've had pretty mediocre results trying to get it to generate a whole adventure but if you give it tight enough parameters then it can flesh out content for you - ranging from NPC name ideas, to ideas for custom magic items, to whole sections of dialogue.
You can give it a plot hook you have in mind and ask it to generate ideas for a three-act structure and encounter summary to go with it (helpful when brainstorming the party's next adventure), or you can give it an overview of an encounter you have in mind and ask it to flesh out the encounter - GPT4 is reasonably good at a lot of this, I just wouldn't ask it to go the whole way from start to finish in adventure design as it starts to introduce inconsistencies.
You also need to be ready to take what it gives you as a starting point for editing rather than a finished product. For example, if I ask it to come up with scene descriptions in D&D then it has a disproportionate tendency to come up with things that are 'bioluminescent' - little tells like that which show it's AI generated.
Overall - you can use it as a tool for a busy DM that can free you up to focus on the more important aspects of designing your adventure. But you need to remember it's just a tool, don't think you can outsource the whole thing to it and remember it's only as helpful as how you try to use it.
- Comment on Two UK water companies lack complete maps of sewage networks 6 months ago:
- Comment on “Untitled Star Trek Origin Story” film officially added to Paramount Pictures' 2025-2026 lineup. 6 months ago:
But ... I thought the 2009 film was an origin story?
It was literally the story of how the Kelvinverse came to exist and it followed Kirk, Spock, McCoy and co from their Academy days.
- Comment on Food price fears as Brexit import charges revealed 6 months ago:
Rishi: we have a plan for dealing with the cost of living crisis.
The plan:
- Comment on ‘Section 31’ Movie Director Says It’s A “Different” Star Trek + New Character Details Revealed 6 months ago:
That was my thought, I'm quite up for this. I enjoyed The Voyage Home, I enjoyed The Trouble with Tribbles - I wouldn't want all Trek to be like that but there is absolutely a place in the franchise for light-hearted takes on Trek.
- Comment on Help @CountBinface@mastodon.world become Mayor of London. 9 months ago:
It's a first-past-the-post election - the Tories changed the electoral system because they knew they couldn't win it in a fair vote. The Tories have also nominated Susan Hall as their candidate - a right-wing extremist, Trump-supporter, culture wars lunatic, swivel-eyed Islamphobic.
In an election like this, if you're going to vote for a joke candidate then you might as well vote for the Tory directly.
- Comment on The genius of Britain’s anti-intellectualism 9 months ago:
Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/Snnot
- Submitted 9 months ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 9 comments
- Comment on No excuse for shoplifting because UK's benefits system is very generous, policing minister says 9 months ago:
It's not either/or.
The UK benefits system is not generous enough. But most shoplifting is drug-related, it's not Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread for his starving niece.
The poor and their children suffer in Britain, but they do so while staying within the rules.
- Comment on Energy bills in Great Britain rise by 5% as price cap increases 9 months ago:
It doesn't. It increases when the market price increases, it decreases when the market price falls.
The point of the price cap isn't to be some sort of subsidy of consumer energy costs - though the government did some separate stuff along those lines with the energy price guarantee (which capped the typical household's energy bill at £2,500 for the period it was relevant) or the support scheme in winter 2022 when the taxpayer paid everyone £400. The price cap is now below the energy price guarantee so the subsidies are no longer relevant.
The price cap is just a way of giving people who chose to be on variable tariffs a little bit of predictability of what they'll be paying for energy three months ahead when the market prices are moving around.
- Comment on One in three adults in UK and Ireland eat five or more daily portions of fruit and veg 9 months ago:
“This may be the first time the UK has topped a European league table for the right reasons,” said Rob Percival, the head of food policy at the Soil Association.
- One in three adults in UK and Ireland eat five or more daily portions of fruit and vegwww.theguardian.com ↗Submitted 9 months ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 2 comments
- Comment on Walter Koenig was bitterly disappointed about his role in Star Trek VI 10 months ago:
The movie wasn't that well-liked and wasn't the perfect send-off for the original crew of Star Trek.
What a weird thing to say. I've always heard it described as one of the best TOS films and I always found the ending quite an emotional and fitting send-off to the TOS crew.
- Comment on Two men, aged 60 and 61, arrested by counter terror police over ULEZ camera explosion 10 months ago:
Literally in the legal definition in the Terrorism Act:
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it:
- involves serious violence against a person
- involves serious damage to property
- endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action
- creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public
- is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system
Also, poor people in London don't generally own cars. Driving is not an efficient way to get around London and it's a luxury.
This is a tax on those better-off Londoners who do drive, and who drive older polluting cars - or who live outside London but drive their older polluting cars into London - to protect air quality for poor Londoners who don't drive but do suffer from the consequences of cars.
Also there's a massive scrappage scheme so that minority of poor Londoners who do drive - and who happen to old a petrol car that's almost old enough to vote - can get thousands of pounds of government money towards a new one.
So you're talking bullshit.
- Comment on Biden ditches trade deal talks with Britain 10 months ago:
If only there was something we could do to give us more clout in these trade negotiations. Like - hear me out - if we could club together with a bunch of other friendly mid-sized economies and negotiate collectively with Washington on that basis.
- Comment on Let's remember some Star Trek games 10 months ago:
- Comment on This chart perfectly sums up how badly the Tories have ruined the economy 11 months ago:
... followed by an inflation shock from imported fuel and commodities, due to an actual war between two European countries - something that literally none of the other prime ministers on that list had to deal with.
Sunak's government is awful and deserves to be ejected from office in a landslide - but it hardly helps (and possibly even undermines) the case against them to pretend that what has happened to household real incomes this Parliament isn't overwhelmingly due to factors way outside of their control.
- Comment on Disabled people must work from home to do ‘their duty’, says UK minister 11 months ago:
“Of course there should be support for people to help them into work but ultimately there is a duty on citizens if they are able to go out to work they should. Those who can work and contribute should contribute.”
There's not a tonne superficially wrong with it phrased in these terms. I think there are plenty of disabled people who are able and willing to work from home and there should be government support to help them get such jobs. There are plenty of non-disabled people who work from home most/all the time these days also.
But I think the thing that pushes it over the edge is the unnecessary double reference to people needing to do their 'duty' and to 'contribute' - it's framing the matter in a way that presupposes disabled people are some sort of burden, whilst seeming superficially reasonable. Classic Tory dog whistle.
I'd rather go after her for that than for the reasonable suggestion that disabled people can work from home when they're able to.
- Comment on Happy Birthday Terry Farrell 11 months ago:
The Host - the one where Riker ends up hosting the symbiont.
- Submitted 11 months ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 1 comment
- Comment on Cockney and Queen's English have all but disappeared among young people – here's what's replaced them 11 months ago:
How would travelling to Leeds help with a study of what accents are spoken in the south-east of England?
How would you react if a piece of research on the variety of accents spoken in Yorkshire included fieldwork from Wimbledon and Hemel Hempstead?
- Submitted 11 months ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 1 comment
- Comment on Tory MP sacked from Government job for urging PM to back Gaza ceasefire 11 months ago:
Apols, the last number I'd seen was 44% from a CIA Factbook dated 2018, but I see the latest now says 40% (but still under-14 not under-18). That's still a shocking number of children in a very densely populated enclave that has been bombed to shit over the last few weeks and is about to be stormed by a modern 21st century ground army.
- Comment on Tory MP sacked from Government job for urging PM to back Gaza ceasefire 11 months ago:
These acts of terrorism were perpetrated by the entire Gazan community, they voted for Hamas
There are 2.3 million people in Gaza. Nearly half of them are children under 14, who were not even alive when a minority of Palestinian voters voted for Hamas in 2006.
You are advocating collective punishment of innocent children - a war crimes.
You are fascist scum and you can fuck right off.
- Comment on England to diverge from EU water monitoring standards 1 year ago:
The thing is, this is such a massive political own goal for the Tories and they don't even know it.
Water quality sounds like a bit of a niche political issue. But you know all those rural southern 'Blue Wall' constituencies where the Tories have been bleeding votes to the Lib Dems over the last few years? Water quality and sewage discharge into rivers comes up as a top local issue for voters in so many of these places. This is why the Lib Dems are campaigning so furiously on water quality in their rural target seats. It's also why every time there's a national news story about water quality (like this one), there's always a quote from a Lib Dem spokesperson in the article rather than a Labour quote (even though in general, the national press massively prefer to look to Labour for an opposition quote).
The Lib Dems have identified this as a salient issue that the Tories nationally simply haven't woken up to. It's such an damning statement about Rishi's Tories - not just clueless about what's happening in the country at large, but clueless about even the parts of the country that have Tory MPs - so clueless that they're making national decisions that are actively harming their own election prospects but are clearly unaware of the impact this is having.
- Comment on Half of Britons can’t name a Black British historical figure, survey finds 1 year ago:
The fact that most people don't know the name of James Somerset is a sad indictment of how history is taught in this country. Somerset had been brought to Britain from Massachusetts against his will as a slave by a Scottish slaver called Charles Stewart. After he got here, Somerset ran away and then, when Stewart tried to re-enslave him, he sought to assert his freedom with the support of abolitionists.
The Somerset vs Stewart case of 1772 - in which the court found that there was not and never had been a common law institution of slavery in England and Wales, and therefore that a black man setting foot here would instantly become a free man - was a monumental moment in our country's history and set the scene for Britain eventually taking a global lead in combating the scourge of slavery in the 19th century. There were supposedly around 15,000 black people living in Britain at the time, many of them living in some form of de facto slavery, and the court's ruling was a cause for great celebration among the black community, and remains a proud moment in British history centuries later.
Children should learn James Somerset's name in school.
- Comment on Language learning app Duolingo to mothball Welsh course 1 year ago:
It looks like they're not actually removing the course, they're just not intending to update it further in future. So if you've started it you might as well keep going?
Definitely worth writing to your (Westminster and Senedd) representatives about this though to try to put pressure on Duolingo to reconsider.
- Comment on The Shit List 2023 1 year ago:
I mean, Agent Truss is also on the list...
- Submitted 1 year ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 5 comments
