Why is this still news? Something like this gets posted every week on Lemmy or Reddit and gets a ton of upvotes. The article even says that there is more than enough power. I have friends that live in Texas that haven’t had a single outage since the winter storms years ago. But still, there are comments that they’ve been warned that this would happen. Yes, they were warned and it seems to have worked, they’re doing just fine it looks like.

If this was an article on corruption or the lack of connection with the rest of the nation, that would be another thing. This is simply an article saying there is record power usage and they’re doing just fine.

Honestly, it’s pretty easy. Its just playing in everyone’s collective imagination with rules.

You go around the table to each player and say what you want to do and the Game Master or Dungeon Master tells you what happens based on your decisions. Sometimes you’ll roll a dice based on the rules or if the DM wants to leave something up to chance, but that really is all there is to it.

Player: I want to go down this hallway.

DM: Ok, you reach the end of the hallway, it leads to a dead end but the wall looks flimsy as if its fake.

Player: I would like to try to break it down.

DM: Roll a 20 sided die

Player: I rolled a 19

DM: That’s good! The goal was a 14. You easily break down the wall! But as it crumbles, there are enemies on the other side. Time for combat!

Things are little more complicated when you add all the rules and everything together but the basic rhythm is player asks, DM responds and you do that for a while. Its hard to really explain why this is fun but its very much like a video game but without limits. The wall would have to be scripted to be breakable in a video game. With Dungeons & Dragons, the wall may not have been planned to be breakable, but since the player rolled high enough it is now breakable.

I always send my new players this video. Its pretty long but Matt Colville explains the basics of the game VERY well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo_oR7YO-Bw

I will accept my downvotes in advance because what I’m about to say is probably against the mindset of most of the people that come here but:

Piracy is wrong.

I say that as someone that pirates. I’m not sure why people have to justify their actions. I know what I’m doing is wrong, I know I’m taking money away from these businesses that run streaming sites, that make movies, write books(this is the one I feel worst about because this is likely taking money directly from creators). But I do it anyway because I’m cheap, I can’t afford it, its easier to pirate stuff, plenty of reasons. But none of them make it morally right, and none of them make it ethically right.

When we pirate things, we’re pirating entertainment. Entertainment isn’t a right. You don’t need this stuff to survive. Plenty of entertainment is provided for free at libraries, online with free movies and books. Hell, you can go outside, grab a stick and a rock and boom! Free entertainment. Sure, there are people that pirate things like Photoshop to get ahead in their careers or to jumpstart them, I’m not talking to those people. Adobe has done research and they know those people buy their products when they become professionals. I’m talking to the people downloading a movie and somehow morally justifying it. But when it comes down to it, you are taking something that someone paid money to make in an effort to make money off of it. In my mind, there’s no justification for that. Again, I don’t care that you do it, I do it too. But no one is gonna get any points in my mind for stating that somehow what you are doing is right, or that it isn’t stealing because you’re downloading a copy of something. How silly an argument that is. If you take something that someone else expects money for and it isn’t vital to your survival, that is wrong.

I’ll get off my soapbox now. I love all of you, have a great day :).