The Register: If Australian animals don't poison you or eat you, they'll BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE
Birds have figured out how to light fires to scare their prey into the open

I'll go ahead and reprint Dear Leader's tweet in full:

CNN quoting @realDonaldTrump Wrote:"Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart," tweeted Trump. "Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!"

So it begins anew...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/obitu...-dead.html

No doubt everybody's heard the news reports about the newly-discovered security flaw in Intel chips. Guess what: there's two of them; "Meltdown" and "Spectre". And the same security flaw is in Arm Cortex CPUs - which are probably in your cellphone. A similar flaw also exists in AMD chips; they aren't vulnerable to Meltdown, but nobody's willing to say whether they're vulnerable to Spectre. EDIT: Update: They're vulnerable.

Patch your OS, no matter what you run (MacOS, Android, Linux, Windows, whatever).

If you use Chrome, patch it and turn on site isolation.

If you use Firefox, turn on site isolation.

If you use Xen Hypervisor, patch it.

If you use VMWare, patch it.

And if you have a password manager on your cellphone or you let your browser store your passwords... change all your passwords, and don't store the new ones in your password manager or your browser.

Spike Jones for the Win. Summons Bunnies, Sticky.

Was initially going to add it to the Video thread in general, but it involves religious and political aspects

It's after midnight on 01/01/2018 in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, so the New Year has reached North America.

Happy New Year!

I'll start off by saying that I'm not interested in video gaming, either PVP or cooperative (which is why I'm not asking in The Legendary). What I'm looking for is a "virtual tabletop" - something that people can connect to and talk though a game, with a dice roller function that can handle more than just 1d20 or 3d6.

What's out there for roleplaying when people can't get together? What's good, what's okay, what's usable with external add-ons, what should be avoided, and what's out there that people know about but haven't used?

My criteria:

• Pros: Low cost, Presence of a dice roller where everybody can see the results, Ability for at least a half-dozen people to take part at once.
  
• Would be nice: Voice communication, Ability to show maps and other visual aids. If it has a text interface instead of voice communication, the ability to save the game log.
  
• Not wanted: Ads.
  

... Dr. Who/Quantum Leap crossover?  We just got back from the theatrical presentation of Doctor Who: Twice Upon A Time, and there was one line in it that seemed almost a shout-out to Quantum Leap.  And that got me wondering...  Of course there's a Who/QL category over at the Pit of Voles, but none of them seem to have very many recommendations or reviews.

Thanks.

First thing first, let me just say that the Monster Girl Encyclopedia is extremely lewd and not NSW. I won't go too indepth in my story, but please don't veiw this or any other MGE related writing near sensitive people. This is my "what if story" for the monster girl encyclopedia. I've noticed that monsterification is a... touchy topic for the western audience. What if someone manages to reverse this process? How will this someone influence the MGE world? How will the Order, DL and other leaders of monsterkind react to this person? These questions, and many more, will be answered in my story. I would like to receive suggestions from anyone who veiws my writing. I always want to know what others think of my writing, so I can improve. Also, happy holidays!