Frustration

So on another thread I was talking about direforms being perhaps the single greatest foot soldiers in the Cosmere, when @Trusk'our brought up Koloss. So I have a two questions to pose to the community. Which one would you choose as a foot soldier in your army? Who would win in a fight?

You put @I Am A Fish, which I 100% agree with absolute legend that one, but you missed @Mist, @Vapor, @Condensation, and @Channelknight Fadran

For the people who liked it what in particular would you say made it good?

WaT overall was decent, I'd say better than 60% of the books I've read. But most of the rest of SA was 90% or more. WaT had the potential to be good, but it had so much weighing it down that if it wasn't for the cosmere attached to it, I honestly don't know if I would be excited for SA6. The Dialogue was really bad, even for Brandon The characters all felt off, except for Shallan of all people, who is usually the worst offender for this Too many characters given PoVs that they didn't need Related to number 3 the Rlain/Renarin subplot was a lot of added bloat that didn't contribute to the story as it should have. I know Brandon was setting up for book 6 there, but it could easily have been left for book 6. The contest sucked. I remember when Gavilnor was first theorized, and thinking: that would suck. And I was right. I also remember thinking that Brandon would be too smart to do that, but I was wrong there. Massive letdown for three books of buildup. Brandon still isn't funny. A chull head? Really? Plot holes. So many plot holes. Zero consequences. Like absolutely none. Adolin loses his leg, but gets a prostetic one that's just as good, Dalinar dies, and that's it. Nothing else bad happens. The combat was really mid. Like Adolin and Szeth had some good fights, but where's the equivalent to Kaladin at the battle of the tower, or Adolin vs. Four shardbearers, or Kaladin vs. Amaram? The villains were all terrible. Stormlight never had great antagonists, but all the villains here were bad even by SA standards.

Kaladin specifically mentions that he can draw stormlight while in front of the highstorm. I would say that the answer is that while Radiants can draw stormlight from the Highstorm at various points, gemstones cannot and will only be recharged in the center.

TBSP to tsp is easy, 3tsp = 1TBSP You never really have to do TBSP to cups, except maybe for butter, but that's super easy to do, and you can't measure it in mL anyway. I think I might have done it like twice in my life. And again, there are a lot of countries that use the metric system use imperial measurements for TBSP and cups. In particular in Brazil I had one companion(which for those of you who aren't church members, is kind of like a roommate if they were also your coworker) where we argued quite a bit about the Imperial vs. Metric system. One day I was in the kitchen and found a set of measuring cups. I held them up triumphantly asking why they were there. He looked down in defeat: "It's convenient."

Cooking is one of the many ways that the imperial system is by far and away better. In fact a lot of counties that use the metric system still use the imperial system for cooking. And why TBSP in particular? Are you converting Tablespoons to cups a lot or do you just hate the size?

But why? Other than unit conversions, which aren't that hard anyway, there's no benefit to the metric system.

USA! USA! USA! Hey, freedom includes being free to hate freedom. mm/dd/yy It's not a political thing it's completely cultural

Fair enough. Even if it does hurt me

Why have you done this?

This side of the Atlantic is quite nice this time of year, even if it gets a little hot. Getting quite ready for some fireworks about now

Answer: Yes souls are made from Investiture. There isn't any question about this. What Zahel was referring to there was his personal belief that Cognitive Shadows are not the original person, but investiture that acts like them. Which other people might dispute.

That would be in RoW, I believe it to be interlude 7, but don't quote me on that.

The dead eye is the blade, only one will appear at a time.

There are ways to send large amounts of data discreetly, but that's reliant on the server that is sending the data compressing the files not the Tor network, and even that can only get you so far. Simply put information needs a way to travel, and there's only so much you can do. There are some things you can do to decrease your risk of being profiled, such as browsing other sites before and after so that your log in and off times don't line up too neatly with various nodes turning on/off. However there isn't anything you can do if someone controls all of the nodes you're using.

You're welcome So lets say that I download a documentary over the Tor network. The documentary is 45GB, that information has to go through each of the nodes before it reaches my computer. So if someone such as the NSA or another government organization in another country has the ability to watch global or near global internet traffic, they can see that this website sent out 45GB worth of data, at say 3:26PM. They can also see that my ISP sent 45GB worth of data to me at the same time. Now for most users the amount of data moving is small and will blend in with everyone else's. However if you're doing something like downloading a three hour documentary your government is suppressing because it exposes a politician's corruption, if they are paying close attention you might stand out.

This will probably be a short one. So there are a lot of mysteries and misdirection offered about the dark web, today I'm going to shed as much light as I can on the subject. The onion router(Tor) network is a series of volunteer run nodes(or computers) that allows people to route their browser traffic through them to avoid things like government surveillance and censorship. How it works is that your method of accessing the TOR network(which I recommend only using the Tor browser for) will select three of these nodes, an entry node, a relay node, and an exit node. Each one of these serves a crucial function. First your browser uses the public information from each of these relays to encrypt your data requests, first the exit node, then the relay, then the entrance node. The entry node is where your requests enter the Tor network, your browser sends the encrypted information to the entrance node, which is able to see your computer's IP address, but not that of the site you are visiting. This connection is similar to a VPN, but I will talk about the differences later. The entrance node then removes the first layer of encryption and sends the data to the relay node. The relay node does not know your computer's IP address, or what website you are visiting. The relay node removes the second level of encryption, and forwards the information to the exit node. The exit node removes the final layer of encryption, and with that is able to tell which website you wish to visit, and sends out your request to the open web, however neither the exit node, or the website you visit can see your IP address, or your location. Theoretically this provides near perfect anonymity to anyone who wishes to use the Tor network. Indeed the NSA(People say that the FBI is spying on American's internet usage, it's actually the NSA, but for all intents and purposes you can consider them the same), has admitted that mass surveillance over the Tor network is impossible. Believe me, they've tried. However, it's not fool proof, and there are some weaknesses that we need to be aware of. The Tor network isn't a free VPN. Now if you really just need to hide from your ISP or a network administrator such as your school or work, it would probably work just fine. They can tell you are using the Tor browser, but nothing else. However you can't choose the exit relay, and that does come with some vulnerabilities, such as not having control for geo-restricted content, and some relays have been found downgrading HTTPS connections to HTTP connections. Do not use HTTP connections over the Tor Network. Honestly you probably shouldn't use HTTP connections for any reason, but especially not over the Tor browser. If someone such as the NSA has the ability to monitor nearly all internet traffic they can over time build profiles. I.e. you started using the Tor network at this time, someone downloaded 45GB of content off of this website via the Tor network five minutes later, you received 45GB of data at the same time, and then both you and the exit relay that made the download turned off your computers at near the same time. Now they can't necessarily prove it was you from just that, but they can build a profile from it. If someone controls the entrance, relay, and exit nodes they can see who you are and what websites you visit. Multiple government organizations run Tor nodes for that reason. The dark web is similar, only that not only are you using the Tor network to connect to the website, but the website is using the Tor network to connect to you, meaning that a total of 6 nodes are being used, hiding both of you from each other. URL's on the dark web are completely randomly generated, but they all end in .onion. So you won't see something like 17thshard.com, instead you would see something like Qwfidanl54/dhffeihfjs8fhsih9rh=fshi.onion. That's not a real URL, don't try it. A lot of propaganda says that the dark web is only for criminals or hackers, that's not even close to true. While some do use the dark web, the dark web was created for a much higher purpose. Journalists and ordinary citizens in authoritarian countries use the dark web to find or post news the government wants to suppress, or simply to access the free internet. Researchers will post their findings there. The military uses the dark web for all kinds of things. Even businesses will sometimes use the dark web to create anonymous tip lines or to allow whistleblowers to report on their bosses without threat of punishment, even Facebook has a dark web domain. In short the Tor network and the dark web are useful tools for the world, and greater understanding is needed in regards both to what they are and to what they are not. A few other things really quick If you are worried about your internet service provider(ISP) or local government flagging you as a Tor user(as some do), you can use a VPN to connect to a server in a freer country and access the Tor network from there. As access to the Tor network is more difficult in some countries due to government crackdowns the Tor project has created snowflake to allow volunteers in free countries to operate bridges that will allow people in places like China, Iran, or Egypt to have free access to the Internet, by making it look like they are having a video call with you, https://support.torproject.org/anti-censorship/what-is-snowflake/. Which is something I plan to do once I have the resources to make it a reality.

So I wanted to share a quick thought I had from my scripture study lately. The particular thought actually came during my mission, but I recently reread the verses in question. In particular it has to do with the Fall of Adam. As you all know one of the defining beliefs of the Church is that the Fall was a necessary part of God's plan, and it allowed us to have agency, children, and a knowledge of good and evil. One of the things that had always confused me however, was why God couldn't have created Adam and Eve in a mortal state directly. They already had agency and a knowledge of good and evil in the pre-mortal world, it just seemed unnecessarily complicated to me. Well after years of studying off and on I found the answer in 2 Nephi 9. In particular verses 6, 8, and 9. This for me gave the answer, as it revealed something about the nature of death, in that it by nature separates us from the Father, and that the Resurrection is what is needed to bring us back into His presence. Indeed Samuel the Lamanite teaches as much in Helaman 14:17 So in other words, mankind needed the ability to die in order for Christ to preform the Resurrection, however God couldn't create us in a state where we could die, as death separates us from God, and it would be unjust to do so unless a violation of the law was made, requiring the Fall of Man to occur as a violation of the law. I know it's just some small thing, but it genuinely was one of the most impactful moments for me, as it showed that constant scripture study can answer some vexing questions, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. I'm also working on another post for here, so watch out for that.

BAM was still stuck inside of a gemstone in the SR, I doubt the CR would be all that diffetent.

Honestly if all regals could do that I'd understand why the Desolations were so bad.

Well Regals can use voidlight in some ways, at the very least they can get it from the song of prayer, and Venli asking for lots of it wasn't considered unusual.

I have to disagree, if I was planning to deal with them I would require everyone entering to undergo a face test, doubly so for any sort of high importance areas or people. It takes less than 5 seconds to test someone, and there's little reason not to. After a few months during wartime everyone gets used to starting conversations that way, and they lose all effectiveness.