I've been reading Margaret's posts for a few months now, and she released a new post about voting and how it relates to anarchism.

I thought it was a good read worth sharing here. It fits my thoughts pretty closely.

The second Artemis mission took four astronauts around the moon and back – the first crewed deep-space flight since 1972. Not everyone gets a chance to put on a space suit, but you can still be an important part of NASA’s human space exploration story by doing NASA science!

Volunteers with NASA’s citizen science projects have tested chili pepper plant varieties to grow in space, monitored active regions on the Sun, and analyzed data from experiments on how life adapts to the low-gravity, high-radiation environment of space. Participation does not require citizenship in any particular country – you only need a love of science and a desire to help. Join one of the projects below and help NASA make space travel safer and healthier.

Only a few minutes to spare? Space Umbrella is a great project for you. The brief online project tutorial will teach you how to read data collected by NASA’s Magnetosphere Multiscale (MMS) mission, which has been flying back and forth across Earth’s magnetosphere since 2015. By sorting data into in-magnetosphere and out-of-magnetosphere readings, you will help scientists learn more about how solar storms interact with our magnetosphere. Solar storms can pose a serious threat to astronauts, so this work can help missions minimize risks from radiation in space.

I'm looking to expand and further secure my home server, and I've been poking around at the FUTO self hosting guide, and as a result I'm looking to host OpenVPN then connect to my services through that.

However, is it safe to have the machine running OpenVPN connected to my router, with my router operating normally, but forwarding the port to the OpenVPN server?

Then once I'm into that, I'd connect to what I'd like. Unless I'm misunderstanding, this would offer me sufficient security, correct?

I do have a backup RPi that I might end up turning into a router as the FUTO guide suggests, but I'd rather not mess with my network where possible, plus I'd need to buy a switch.

I've been toying with the idea of running a campaign that has a kind of doom system. And when I say that, it is in reference to World of Horror's doom system.

For those unfamiliar, you are given 5 mysteries, and a final boss dungeon to complete. Every time you investigate a mystery, your doom percentage rises by 1-5%, with the occasional event that decreases it. Resting increases doom, as well as shopping, and other sorts of time taking upgrades. Finishing a mystery grants a small reduction in doom.

And there is a cult trying to bring an eldritch god to Earth, which will destroy and alter everything in lovecraftian ways.

Once the doom meter reaches 100%, the player loses the game. And I'm trying to think of ways to do something similar with a campaign.

The 5 mysteries and boss dungeon are easy enough to do. But tracking doom could be something which is dangerous to penalize players with. It would absolutely suck to spend several months on a campaign just to lose it because they took one too many long rests. But it's also something that can be an empty threat of reaching.

So my current thoughts:

• Every session, doom rises by 10%
• Once doom reaches 100% it resets to zero, and an entire location gets wiped off the map.
• Completing a mystery reduces doom by 50%, min 0%.

In effect, it could severely hurt them, but not immediately kill the campaign. If the party was planning on going to candlekeep but it suddenly got sucked up by a demon portal, then they must change their plans. Alternatively, if a location they didn't depend on gets destroyed, then it would at the very least still be a threat in terms of guilt tripping them to some degree.

Another difficulty with a system like this is keeping it balanced to the speed of play. Maybe 10% per session is too much, or maybe too little. And changing that rate mid game would feel a little cheap. Another option would be to go based on vibes from the get go. So any rate changes could be gradual. This would still feel cheap, but it would at least be more subtle.