Another personal blog

Call me Michael. Currently disappointed about the off-brand comic sans.

[unteriors]

Black Oak Road, Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

[monsterpotion]

the next pdf struggles to be born

[prokopetz]

what would a ttrpg that prioritizes roleplay and actually functions as such look like? i've played a few that claim to be "rp forward" and every time the mechanics meant to facilitate roleplay ended up impeding it - and meanwhile i've had perfectly rewarding rp experiences in crunchier systems with no mechanical social encounter support at all. is there really a way to build rp into a system that works, or is it just a unicorn idea?

"Proiritising roleplaying" doesn't mean anything – it's a piece of vacuous marketing text targeted at people who've constructed their identity politics upon arguing about the correct way to pretend to be an elf.

The basic problem is that the term "roleplaying" is, itself, not well defined; in practice, it means whatever the person trying to sell you something wants it to mean. Here, for example, by invoking the presence or absence of "mechanical social encounter support" as the distinguishing feature of self-styled "RP forward" systems, you seem to be implicitly defining "roleplaying" to mean "set-piece encounters in which a player character attempts to persuade an NPC to do something for them without resorting to violence". Is this justified? Is playing out the process of hitting each other with sticks not "roleplaying"? Why not?

What most people mean when they toss the term "roleplaying" around in the context of tabletop games is something in the vicinity of "roleplaying is when we do things I'm interested in doing, and not-roleplaying is when we do things I'm not interested in doing". As all game rules are unavoidably opinionated about what player characters ought to spend their time doing – indeed, arguably this is the only thing that rules can meaningfully express opinions about! – the question of "does this system 'prioritise roleplaying'?" is typically reducible to "does this system agree with me about what kind of game I'm playing?". Games are then sorted into "priorities roleplaying" and "does not prioritise roleplaying" based on which side of the answer to that question they fall on for the person doing the sorting.

This is the ultimate root of a lot of this "the best sessions I ever had never touched the rules at all" stuff. For a variety of reasons, many people have genuinely never experienced playing a tabletop RPG whose rules agree with them about what sort of experience of play they ought to be having, and in some cases they can't even imagine what that would look like. If you and the system you're using disagree so badly about what kind of game you're playing that "engaging with the rules" and "engaging with my desired experience of play" are mutually exclusive activities, it's not surprising that ignoring the rules entirely would be your best play.

In this light, your question of "what would a system that really prioritises roleplaying look like?" translates to "what would a system that actually agrees with me about what kind of game I'm playing look like?", and that's not a question I can answer unless you're willing and able to get a lot more rigorous about what you mean when you say "roleplaying".

[plaguedocboi]

I remember when I was younger, anytime I watched a movie where the characters have to kill a scary monster/alien, I always thought the act of killing it was intended to be part of the horror. Like there’s this amazing creature that we’ve never seen before, and maybe under different circumstances we could’ve coexisted with it, but it’s trying to attack you and you have to defend yourself, but by destroying it you also destroy the ability to ever understand it and that’s sad and is supposed to make you feel conflicted.

It was not until well into my adulthood that I realized most people do not have complicated feelings about movies where people have to kill a scary alien monster, nor is that necessarily meant to be part of the narrative (unless it very obviously is). They just want the scary thing to die because it’s scary. I don’t have a real conclusion to this I just started thinking about it for some reason.

[bogleech]

I always felt I couldn't possibly be upset about dying to an alien monster because proof of otherwordly life is exactly what it'd take for me to die happy

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

the staccato trumpet trills from the end of TANK! but they just keep going

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP-brp-brp-brp-brp-BRP

[rose-blumen]

Visit Original Link

I have been prepared for this moment for like 2 months

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

holy shit i am in tears

[hopeless-eccentric]

if i met a genie and fixed the world and all its ills with my first two wishes, my third wish would be that sabrina carpenter would get gradually taller. she'd be in on it and think it was hilarious. we'd have a strong cap at 7 feet here, maybe an inch a week so people have time to theorize--let's not be ridiculous. but she'd still keep up the "ooh! im so little and small!" schtick. but shed be gradually getting taller. she'd be like 6'1" and still jumping for the microphone. and she'd never say anything about it. and if anyone asked shed act like she had no idea what they were talking about. and shed cheekily play into it a little bit but mostly still keep up the "ooh im so little and small" schtick. do you see my vision. do you get it

[hopeless-eccentric]

ok and so if i met a genie and fixed the world and all its ills in one wish i would do the sabrina carpenter thing second and third i would wish for all evidence of one random taylor swift song to disappear from the world once every month or so. taylor would have no memory of it. her fans would remember it and there would be an outcry over where it went (it's not even in concert videos anymore!) but taylor would have no memory of it

instead, all her brainspace spent on that song would be replaced with the vivid memories of roman gladiator, taylaurius velox. she's able to hide this at first, but her music begins to take on a gradually romaner and romaner tint. at first, people are like "damn, she's getting REALLY conservative, huh" and other people are like "wow, she's so deep, she knows what a rubicon is" but eventually travis kelce leaves her out of nowhere (he wasn't sure if dating someone possessed by a roman gladiator made him gay or not and anyway he was getting sick of being like "we're going to play the lions" and taylor being like "LIONS? WHERE?") and taylor publishes an entire brutus themed album about this betrayal and it's beginning to weird people out

and so eventually travis kelce is getting like, bomb threats sent to his family for leaving taylor and eventually he's like "okay, okay, i left her because she kept having all these vivid nightmares of gladatorial combat and she kept saying that football was giving her the ick because we never actually killed anybody for the glory of rome" and then he just gets more bomb threats because he left a struggling woman during a mental health crisis

and eventually taylor is writing music about her forbidden roman senator lover and her fanbase is either whittled WAY down or WAY up because people want to watch this trainwreck happen (or maybe she influences culture so hard that we're just all really into rome now) but she's being super cagey about the name of this roman senator. until. and now here's the twist:

weird al has been getting all of the same vivid memories of taylaurius velox. and he still has all his memories of her old songs. so he's writing all these detailed song parodies of taylor swift songs that don't exist anymore including specific details about their shared gladiatorial reality that taylor has never shared with anybody else. including that her lover's name was publius, and she's been calling him Poob for short

at this point a lot of original swifties are leaving. they could do the brutus stuff, but they really can't survive poob. taylor makes a clapping back at the haters song including the lyric "these bitches don't know publius" and it ends up all over all sorts of merch. there's a renewed archaeological interest in roman gladatorial combat

most importantly, the internet discourse is the best it's ever been. does this make taylor swift transmasc? is travis kelce problematic for leaving his fiancee while she gradually morphs into a roman gladiator? is this good queer representation? if taylaurius velox was a gay man, does that mean the gaylors were technically correct? is weird al morally wrong for capitalizing off of her music if she cant remember it anymore? was weird al sent by god to torment taylor swift?

anyway thats what id do if i met a genie

[nostalgebraist]

I keep thinking about that attempt I made to characterize people I get along with, a few days ago.  There’s a specific thing there but I’m just not sure how to phrase it.

It’s like a sort of … feeling that the world is bigger than you, and very complicated, and filled with things you’d never expect.  It’s not exactly “skepticism,” and not exactly “humility.”  It’s compatible with having a high view of oneself or one’s intellect, though not with certain versions of those things.  It’s compatible with strong and numerous opinions, too, though not with certain ways of having strong and numerous opinions.

It’s having your most instinctive response to the world be “this is billions of distinct things; this is jeweled chaos; this is a buzzing, blooming confusion.”  And then you make models and concepts to try to make some sense of it.  Sometimes you become quite attached to them.  Sometimes maybe too attached.  But if you become too attached it’s not because you think your concepts are reality.  It’s because you feel you’ll be so terribly lost without them.

When I try to think of the opposite of this temperament I think of those sorts of political or culture bloggers who are never surprised by anything, who always respond to every news story with “oh, look, more of the thing I know about, doing the things I know it does.”  It’s not that these people are too political, or too certain.  It’s that their politics and certainty doesn’t feel like a lifeboat they’re clinging to in a vast roiling ocean.  They give off the impression of not seeing the ocean.

And lots of things follow from this.  You have to find ways of living with this ever-present sense – sometimes dulled, but never gone – that reality is too large, grotesquely large, that you’ll never find your way in it.  So you learn to revel in it a bit, to become an eclectic, an amateur, collecting and admiring little bits of jeweled chaos.  You collect #quotes.  You learn to laugh when you see something you don’t understand, so that you don’t instead despair.

You feel wary about systems, you feel wary about things that are top-down and a priori.  You like data.  But not in the sense of “the data is in”; not in the sense that we have measured, so now we know, and now no one can ever question again.  But you are always worrying that you are missing the forest for the trees, because there are so many trees, too many, too many.  You distrust the single event, the dramatic example, because you know that reality has room for everything, because you have enough such specimens pinned and mounted in your collection to prove any claim or its negation.  You want the species, not the specimen – but you feel deep down that that has to be hubris, because all you see are specimens, and the great whirling confusion laughs at your taxonomies.

You come to observation, to experimentation, to something like science, even to something like positivism, not out of a zeal for the general but because you know the particular will wash over you and crush you.  When the concepts are stripped away everything is laughter and awe and horror and you bring the concepts back, not to perfect life, but simply to bear it.  And you tend to your collection.

[notlikingbestgirl]

Out of Touch

[hustlerose]

Out of Touch Thursday

[arbyscurlyfries666-deactivated2]

OUT OF TOUCH THURSDAY

[snuv]

but im out of my head when you’re not around…

[rockmilkshake]

happy birthday.

[saltwatersweets]

this is the only out of touch thursday you can reblog this

[miraclemaya]

MADOKA - “I’m thinking I’ll order a beef udon bowl, since Sayaka-chan told me that they make those really good here. What about you, Homura-chan?”

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY - Food needs can be met with an expenditure of 1.23% of total magic. Proceed?

GRIEF SYNDROME [Trivial: Success] - MAGICAL GIRLS THAT IGNORE FOOD ARE OFTEN MORE PRONE TO GRIEF ACCUMULATION. MY ARMS WILL ALWAYS BE WAITING FOR YOU, HOMURA, BUT IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE HAPPY UNTIL THAT DAY. BESIDES, MADOKA WANTS TO EAT WITH YOU. DISAPPOINTING HER WILL FILL YOUR SOUL GEM WITH A HALF A GRIEF SEED WORTH OF DESPAIR.

TEA WITH MAMI-SAN [Legendary: Success] - Sayaka says the beef bowl is good? Maybe go for that. She knows Madoka’s tastes better than anyone — and if Madoka likes something, you will certainly like it too.

“I will have the same as you, Madoka.”

“I’m not feeling very hungry.”

[CALL AND RESPONSE - Medium 10] Come up with an order on your own

CALL AND RESPONSE - [Medium: Failure] - You’ve eaten here before, you’re pretty sure. Was it Loop 32… no, Loop 12..? No, wait, it was on the first Friday of Loop 68. No… that’s not right. You’ve never eaten here before. In a stunning display of incompetence, you have taken Madoka on a date to a restaurant that you have never experienced before.

THE ANGEL - It’s okay, Homura-chan! I don’t mind if you haven’t eaten here before. Remember what real me said, Sayaka thinks this place is good! And even if it’s not perfect, that’s okay, just spending time with you makes me happy.

THE CRAVEN MASSES - Sayaka has raised her blade against Madoka 16 times before. You should leave this restaurant and kill her. It would only take-

FALLING SAND [Trivial: Success] - 1528 seconds on average.

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY - It can be cut down to 1243 seconds with an expenditure of 2.7% of total magic pool.

THE CRAVEN MASSES - Exactly. Do it in front of her family and make it bloody. Kyoko would likely try and stop you, but even she isn’t immune to bullets. And if Mami comes for revenge, well, you know the exact words you could say that would destroy her, don’t you?

THE ANGEL - A-Ah, I think that’s a bit of an extreme reaction, Homura-chan!

HUMAN SHELL - Your heart rate is increasing. Stop that. You have absolute control over your flesh. Act like it.

MOE INSTINCT - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT ARE WE GOING TO ORDER MADOKA IS GOING TO LAUGH AT US

WITCH’S NIGHT - Is… is this a trap? Walpurgis may be defeated, but you know that the stage witch never truly ceases its show. Perhaps this restaurant is a part of the stage?

MADOKA - “Um, are you okay, Homura-chan?”

MOE INSTINCT - OH GOD SHE HATES US

“I’m going to kill myself.”

“I’m so sorry. Would killing myself make you feel more comfortable?”

Isn’t there anything else you can say?

YOU - Isn’t there anything else you can say?

THE DEVIL - Come on, Homura. It’s high time you do it. Really, this is just another in the long, long chain of failures that make up your life. The only way to fix it is to kill yourself.

CLOCKWORK PRECISION - Target: Located on right ring finger. Target is not moving. Chance to hit: High. Plan: Retrieve pistol. Aim pistol at ring. Pull trigger.

THE ANGEL - Oh my god, please do not do that!

"I am going to kill myself."

"I'm so sorry, I'll kill myself if it makes you feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Should I kill myself?"

There. There has to be better options than this.

YOU - There. There has to be better options than this.

MOE INSTINCT - I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE. THE ONLY RECOURSE IS IMMEDIATE SUICIDE. THAT’S THE ONLY WAY MADOKA WILL LOVE YOU AGAIN.

"I am going to kill myself."

"I'm so sorry, I'll kill myself if it makes you feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Should I kill myself?"

YOU - “I’m going to kill myself.”

MADOKA - Madoka’s face twists, her eyebrows raising slightly in shock. Whatever response she was expecting, it was clearly not this.

GRIEF SYNDROME [Challenging: Success] - IF MADOKA WAS A MAGICAL GIRL, HER SOUL GEM WOULD FILL BY A QUARTER HEARING YOU SPEAK THOSE WORDS. THAT WAS CRUEL, HOMURA.

MOE INSTINCT - WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?

MADOKA - “I’m so sorry, Homura-chan. Please don’t do that. I… I really care about you and so does everyone else.” Madoka’s eyes fill with tears as she speaks. She hugs you.

DAMAGED MORALE -4

CALL AND RESPONSE [Trivial: Success] - Quick, tell her you were making an edgy joke that didn’t land. You’ve gotten away with that before, you’re pretty sure.

SPACE-TIME MASSACRE - Twelve quarter shifts left and two up from your current space-time position, and there’s a Japan that it’s actually illegal to not commit suicide in.

FALLING SAND - You’ve been seated for 5 minutes and 32.5 seconds already and still have not ordered. Mami has requested your presence at her apartment in 3.4 hours from now.

TEA WITH MAMI-SAN - She wants to help you find a hobby. She’s really worried about you, you know.

STRINGS OF FATE - You can feel Madoka’s heart beat in sync with yours as she holds you. Everything will be alright, as long as you follow the beat.

THE ANGEL - Yeah! It’s okay Homura-chan. Just explain what’s been going on and Madoka will understand. And then order something, it’s important to eat a full meal!

YOU - “Ah, sorry Madoka. I was… overwhelmed with choice, and my… brain spit out the first thing it thought. I am not planning on killing myself.”

MADOKA - “Um, I think we should probably talk about this more, Homura-chan….”

CALL AND RESPONSE - Ask her a question to change the topic. It’s worked in three different loops, it should work here.

RATIONALITY COMPLEX [Trival: Success] - Ask her if she wants to try anything else and then order that for yourself. This will accomplish your goal of deciding on what to order, as well as showing Madoka that her desires are important to you.

YOU - “Is there anything else you’d like to try, Madoka? We can share our dishes.”

MADOKA - “Uh, okay Homura-chan. Maybe get some tempura?”

Order 10000 yen worth of tempura

Order 1000 yen worth of tempura

Order 100 yen worth of tempura

YOU - “Excuse me waiter, give me 10000 yen worth of tempura.”

HUMAN SHELL - Calories and magic are just two different types of fuel. Feed me and control me.

THE ANGEL - T-that’s probably too much, Homura-chan. Maybe you can sneak some into your cool shield, though!

MADOKA - Madoka doesn’t say anything, but her eyes do bulge out slightly. She gives you a gentle pat on the shoulder and smiles at you.

HEALED MORALE +1

RATIONALITY COMPLEX - Displays of wealth like this can broadcast value to potential mates. This will increase your value in Madoka’s eyes, furthering along one of your goals.

THE ANGEL - I think you should just focus on enjoying the food, Homura-chan. Take a break, everything is okay.

Thank you.

Why don’t you hate me?

YOU - Why don’t you hate me?

THE ANGEL - Because I care about you, Homura-chan! And besides, you hate yourself far too much already.

Thank you.

THE ANGEL - You’re welcome! Now, please, enjoy your meal with real Madoka. She loves you a lot too, you know.

[chirasul]

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

[chirasul]

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

[fishmech]

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

[chirasul]

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life

[crazy-brazilian]

[puppygirllaika]

#if the portals don't share a reference frame then there's sound logic that gets either answer unfortunately#it isn't properly defined and the vibes can lead you to A or B being correct

wait no please explain, how could it be A? like, genuinely, what is the chain of reasoning for that?

[psych-is-the-name]

Adding my notes for context before I respond:

So the people tied to the tracks are stationary right? The orange portal has velocity and is heading towards them while the blue portal is stationary. Using the doorframe analogy its easier to understand that just because the "doorframe" is traveling at speed doesn't mean that momentum will magically be transferred to the stationary people. The people will pass through the "doorframe" at the same velocity as it is moving, but there is still no inertia, meaning the people will quickly appear on the blue end but continue being physically stationary, causing them to just kinda flop down the ramp

[canofstars]

IMO, the people maintain their speed *relative to the portal*, not their speed relative to the Earth. If the trolley/orange portal pair hits the people at 20m/s, that's the same as the people entering a stationary orange portal at 20m/s, and then of course exiting the blue portal at 20m/s. So, situation B.

You'd only get A if the people maintain their speed/momentum/velocity *relative to the earth* instead of the portal.

The videogame *Portal* doesn't make it clear if people maintain their velocity relative to the portal, or relative to the Earth. In the videogame, portals never move; a portal on a moving surface just disappears. (Secret third thing option C: the orange portal disappears and the trolley smashes the people).

Anyway, if the portal doesn't disappear from the trolley, and we just ignore all the other ways portals just Don't Work with real physics, I think the correct answer is still B, and the people maintain their momentum relative to the portal.

After all, they MUST move, relative to the portal, to be able to enter the orange portal in the first place, and they must CONTINUE to move, relative to the blue portal, in order to be able to exit the blue portal (instead of, say, being compacted into an infinitely thin pancake or something).

Consider: the people have to be moving, relative to the portal, in order to pass completely through the portal at all. When the trolley/orange portal reaches the 5 people, and the first person passes through, does the first person immediately stop at the edge of the blue portal? Does that first person then block the second person from passing through?

"The second person pushes the first person out of the way" Using what force/momentum? If person 1 has 0 speed/momentum, then person 2 must also have 0 speed/momentum, right?

Also, the picture shows the people tied "to" the tracks, but I think everyone has been making the unstated assumption that, like, they're just tied together *on* the tracks, right? And the people aren't getting smacked with the bottom edge of the portal or whatever. We're all just treating the problem as being equivalent to if, like, the people were standing in place on the track, and then just jumped in place (no lateral motion) so they were in midair when the portal got to them. So that they'd just pass cleanly through instead of smashing their shins or whatever.

EDIT: oh wait, I can use your doorway analogy!

The person is stationary. The doorway (orange side) moves towards them, reaches them, passes them, and the person stays stationary, right? After the doorway passes the person, does the doorway (now the blue side) continue to move *away* from the person?

In the analogy, the orange and blue portals are the two sides of the same doorway, right? Like it's one doorframe and each side is painted a different color. If that's true, then for the analogy to work the doorway has to keep moving at the same speed away from the person after it passes. So, the person must be able to watch the blue side of the doorframe get further away, just as fast as the orange side had approached.

Applying the analogy back to the problem, the distance between the people and the blue portal has to increase. And because the blue portal is stationary (stuck to the ramp), the only choice is for the people to move instead.

[crazy-brazilian]

[puppygirllaika]

#if the portals don't share a reference frame then there's sound logic that gets either answer unfortunately#it isn't properly defined and the vibes can lead you to A or B being correct

wait no please explain, how could it be A? like, genuinely, what is the chain of reasoning for that?

[canofstars]

Secret Third thing C: the orange portal dissipates immediately and the trolley slams into the people.

In the videogame, portals can't be attached to moving surfaces. If a portal is attached to a stationary surface that starts to move, the portal disappears. So in this instance, the orange portal couldn't persist on the trolley.

...I'm like 99% sure that there's never a moving portal in the gameplay sections of Portal or Portal 2.

(Do I need to call out Portal 2 spoilers?) There is the portal at the end of Portal 2 that gets placed on the moon, but that's really cutscene/QTE instead of normal game mechanic, so we don't see the detailed behavior. But it does present an instance where one portal is changing position, relative to the other portal, and maintaining its function, so the game says it's *kinda* possible.

Anyway, if we ignore that "no moving portals" thing, and we ignore the way that portals break physics (Aperture Science gets to violate conservation of energy because It's Funny) then I think that B is the correct answer, because vibes.

When an object passes through a portal, it preserves its momentum relative to the portal. The people on the tracks are stationary relative to the Earth, but they're moving relative to the portal. The portal hitting them at trolley-speed is equivalent to them hitting the portal at speed. They're "moving" into the orange portal at trolley-speed, so they exit the blue portal at trolley-speed and get launched.

And you would get interpretation A if momentum is preserved *relative to the Earth* instead of relative to the portal. But I don't think that would happen, because the Earth isn't special or anything.

Anyway I think the answer that *should* be the canon Portal answer (imagine learning that Aperture Science performed this exact experiment from one of Cave Johnson's audio logs) is whichever one is the funniest. Which, IMO, would be answer C. This would be a 2-part audio-log, where the first audio log involves Cave johnson excitedly explaining the setup, what he thinks is gonna happen, lamenting the "eggheads" who disagree with him, and how they have a bet going that Cave is excited to win. And then later you'd get a second audio log where he despondently explains that the orange portal dissipated, and how much of a waste it was to set up the big airbag that was supposed to catch the live test subjects.

[noknowshame]

my favorite thing about the mystery genre is that we all accept the concept of "world famous detective" without hesitation even though that is absolutely not a real category of celebrity

[literallymechanical]

For as long as I can remember I've wanted to build a large, elaborate machine, something big enough and baroque enough that you can't grasp its function unless viewed from far away/high above

[literallymechanical]

Like this

[bewbin]

dude honestly shout out to my guards i told them to seize this guy and before i could even finish my sentence they soze him. My goats

[excuse-me-thanks]

“i should take a walk for my mental health” boring, tired, i don’t even really wanna do it tbh

“i need to check the perimeter” i need to check the perimeter

[hillergoodspeed]

october 19th 2027 will contain an entire month within itself called "freakvember"