Ranyhyn.net – Interesting stuff.

WH40K – Where Bleak Becomes Funny.

Published on March 9, 2026

Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
– Grimdark Hams

It’s been years since my last post – a lot has happened in life, and time just slipped by, but recent events in the world has made me want to write about my interests again, and I thought I might start on a lighter note: The Warhammer 40,000 universe is the worst of all possible worlds, and we’re not there*.

*yet.

The number of books, games, and who knows what has been made in the 40k universe could fill my blog and then some, so I’ll keep this uncharacteristically brief.

I recently switched my daily driver computer to Linux because Microsoft – you know, the company that really hates being called Microslop and wishes people would stop saying Microslop. It really annoys them when people say Microslop, so we should maybe stop saying Microslop. We wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings. The feelings that are hurt if we say Microslop.

Click here to read the microslop story on windowslatest.com

…where was I? Oh yes. I switched to Linux because frankly I have about as much use for Copilot in my notepad, clunky 100-click menus, and ads in everything as I have use for a stun gun applied directly to my nutsack. If that’s your idea of a good time, then I’m not here to yuck your yum, but it isn’t my cup of tea.

So, what does this have to do with Warhammer you might be asking yourself, and the answer is that I saw Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 go on sale on steam the other day and decided this was the time to invest a few bucks in it, being quite cheap by now compared to it’s new release sticker price. For the uninitiated, it’s basically a game where you play as sentient testosterone, slashing bugs to death with a chainsaw.

Ultrasmurfs begging for the sweet release of death, or possibly paint thinner.

I bought it, downloaded and installed it, launched it, and started the game. So far so good. Then I took about seven steps and the game froze. Less good. A quick duckduckgo lead me to a forum thread that explained that I should make sure drivers are updated, make sure I’m using the experimental proton layer, and one more thing.. oh yeah – trick the game into thinking my desktop computer is actually a steam deck. For some reason that worked just fine.

In the intro mission you’re this 7ft+ tall guy in thick metal armor, probably all in all weighing at least half a ton or more, doing that red bull stratosphere jump but without a parachute, and you just get back up, dust yourself off, and carve your way through the jungle to *checks notes* detonate a WMD, a virus bomb in the atmosphere. The same people that laud this will start frothing at the mouth and shouting incomprehensibly if they see a female character that they personally wouldn’t jerk off to, and try to hide it behind realism.

These are probably the same people who enjoy playing BG3 with the “anti woke” mod pack, and Withers big naturals mod just to be on the safe side.

So, current events. With the Americans deciding to let Donald Trump back into power, he decided to kidnap the venezuelan president, threatened to annex greenland and depleted their tomahawk missile stock on Iranian schoolgirls – a move true republicans like John McCain wouldn’t supp-

-ort.. Well, this is awkward.

Well, it made me want to think of something lighter and brighter, like a sci-fi world where bdsm elves might turn you into living furniture or perhaps some whimsical inquisitor decides your entire planet is unfit, and condemns it to be stripped of life.

Sourced from https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/109yeke/krieg_on_garden_world/

Hopefully I’ll feel like writing before another four years have passed. Perhaps I’ll recount some of what’s happened in the meanwhile.

Heavy Devy: Redux

Published on August 2, 2022

Last time I went to see Devin Townsend live was back in 2019, and it didn’t exactly go as planned, as I detailed in my blog post back then. Little did I know what absolute fuckery was about to come out of a wetmarket in Wuhan, China before long.

A couple years have passed, where mother earth was playing a very exciting game of Pandemic with real people. We’re not out of the woods yet, but things are returning to normal, and the disease is no longer considered quite as big a deal as it once was.

Devy’s back, let’s go!

When I saw Devin Townsend was returning to Oslo for his Lightwork tour, of course I just had to have tickets, and so I bought them.

Yay, Lightwork!

Turns out Devy was releasing a new album called Lightwork, and was promoting it on an album tour, including Europe. Sweet!

But the album release was pushed back, and Ticketmaster decided not to let me know that until quite a lot of time had passed. However, Mr. Townsend still went on tour – playing various older songs, and he’s got an amazing discography, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I was able to refund the original tickets, and buy new ones for the other tour, which it turns out he was doing along with Dream Theater.

Being someone who listened a lot to Dream Theater in the mid 2000s, I thought that sounds good to me, and I ordered tickets for me and my girlfriend, and planned a stay with some relatives living a quick train ride away from Oslo. That way I can see relatives, cut costs, and drive my own car most of the way, without having to deal with Oslo traffic and parking and all that jazz. Sounds like a win to me!

Cool & good! They even have a cute kitten.

The logistics went perfectly this time around. No hiccups at all.

If anything went a bit wrong this time around, it might be that Devin Townsend was a warmup act for Dream Theater. His set wasn’t very long, and the audience was mostly there to see Dream Theater, which means they weren’t mostly there to see him, and I think they made that very clear unfortunately.

Devy must have picked up on it, because although he delivered a good show, he seemed almost depressed. Lacking some of the joy and spark I’ve come to appreciate about him. The technical aspect of the performance was great, and he played a very good setlist, so I’m pleased to have seen his show in it’s entirety – including finally hearing Deadhead live without having to leave the venue as it starts, as happened last time. But yes, something was amiss.

The evening devolved into Devy making constant fart jokes, and telling the audience he doesn’t care that they’re not excited, he gets paid either way.

We enjoyed the show regardless, but I hope to see a whole show of him at his best. Then again, he’s weary of touring now from what he’s said. Still, he’s supposed to be back in February 2023, and I might catch his show then.

In my teens I used to listen to Dream Theater daily, but that night they were not my cup of tea, to put it mildly. Being a prog band, it’s to be expected that some of the music gets too esoteric and technical to be enjoyable to most people, and while I like a lot of their discography, I simply didn’t enjoy them that night. It didn’t help that James LaBrie seemed to have gotten hold of some bad amphetamine, with his uncoordinated whirling and jogging around the stage. We left pretty quickly.

After ditching Dream Theater, we headed to a bar called Brewgata instead. Although a bit hipstery, I found it enjoyable regardless. We enjoyed some drinks and a little people-watching before we headed to the train and went home, feeling like the night was a good experience all-round, even though I was a little bit disappointed the crowd bummed out Devvy, which in turn made his performance a little bit less exciting for those few of us who were there for him.

Better than last time, but let’s hope next time is even better!

Bellingcat

Published on May 12, 2022

Open Source Intelligence collective ‘bellingcat’ is an excellent source of news.

Bellingcat logo | https://www.bellingcat.com/

“Stealth is not about hiding, it’s about inundating.”

We live in a world dominated by information. We have the knowledge of our species available at our fingertips, and yet this vast trove of knowledge has been polluted by half-truths or lies, or what Kellyanne Conway called “Alternative facts”.

In such a blizzard of good information mixed in with bad information it can be incredibly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s hard work to stay on top of current events, and arming oneself with relevant information of good quality. I certainly don’t know many news outlets I think I can trust.

About a year ago, when listening to Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans mentioned writing for Bellingcat, and my interest was piqued. I decided to look it up and find out what this was all about. In short, Bellingcat is a news blog powered by open source intelligence, and I for one think it’s of unusually good integrity. Of course, everyone has biases, and you shouldn’t blindly trust any source, but the interesting thing about Bellingcat is how diligently they source their material, and document the evidence from which they draw their conclusions. After all, bias does not necessarily equal inaccuracy. I’ve been particularly impressed with their work on the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

“Knowledge is power.”

The year 1947, mankind entered what we now call the information age – but Francis Bacon famously wrote ‘Scientia potentia est’ in 1597. We know it better today as ‘knowledge is power’.

What Bacon knew is what people must have known for as long as there have been people, is that information is crucial to making the right decisions. If the potential for better decisions increases with the vastness and accuracy of relevant information, then it follows that the opposite must also be true. This fact is so intuitive to us all that we even see a variety of animals engage in wilful deception to increase their odds of survival – or decrease the odds of their competition.

The information age followed on the heels of the second world war, wherein the victory of the allied forces was greatly helped by cracking the encrypted communications of the axis to learn their secrets in time to act on them, and to leak misleading information back to them in order to trick them into making poor decisions.

“Manufacturing of consent.”

It’s no surprise then that the cold war focused so heavily on the spy game. This game was played not just between the competing superpowers of the US and the Soviet Union, but also against their own people in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. This is something I for one was taught those authoritarian states did, but as an adult I think it’s even more important to secure grassroots support in democracies.

Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky’s 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media”

It’s not as if this kind of practice ever stopped, and they’ve only gotten better at it – and it’s not just nation-states that get up to this. For no reason at all, I will now refer to a picture of companies ownership.

Behind the Bastards

Published on November 15, 2021

With episode titles like “Hitler’s Drug Problem”, “How Nestle Starved a Bunch of Babies” and “John of God: Oprah’s Favorite Ghost-Channeling Rapist Surgeon” you know this podcast has some wild tales to tell.

**Source:** Banner image for the Behind the Bastards Facebook page.

Hosted by former editor at Cracked.com – Robert Evans, whose career currently includes hosting this podcast, and being an author at the investigative reporting site bellingcat.com, this podcast discusses some of the worst people in history, their backgrounds, and the aftermath of the things they got up to.

I first heard of this podcast when it was new, advertised on other shows under the iheart radio umbrella, but it wasn’t until the death of notorious lunatic John McAfee died, that I decided to listen to Behind the Bastards two-part episode on the subject, titled “John McAfee Is Not Funny Anymore”. They aired in early 2019, so well before he died, and I heartily recommend everyone listen to this remarkable account of a tech mogul who redefined burning the candle at both ends, setting the bar for eccentricity and privilege for what I suspect might be decades to come.

McAfee

Action Park

In 1978, a white-collar criminal by the name of Gene Mulvihill decides to get to the bottom of the age-old question: What happens if we build an amusement park with complete disregard for physics, and federal safety regulations? The answer is Action Park. The kind of park where rides were designed on the back of napkins by someone who doesn’t understand engineering, and the staff are inebriated teenagers. The kind of place where you have to pain the bottom of the wave pool white, so it’s easier to look for corpses.

This water slide was designed with a loop at the end, just like any sane engineer wouldn’t.

Perhaps you wish to light fuel-soaked tennis balls on fire and launch them at workers? Or maybe getting drunk, disabling the speed governor on a go-kart and taking it for a spin on the interstate? How about rolling a cart with no functioning brakes down a track made of concrete, fiberglass and asbestos for a mile, with no safety precautions whatsoever, including not removing the rocks surrounding the slide? If none of these are your speed, perhaps Vernon NJ in the 80s just wasn’t for you. The episode detailing this stuff might be just the thing however.

There are also a few good documentaries on the rise and fall of Action Park.

King Leopold and the Congo

Ever thought to yourself: Other people shouldn’t have hands? Perhaps entertained the thought of stealing an entire country, looting it’s resources, and killing 8-15 million people in the process? Ever wanted to round off your day of genocidal greed by taking your tricycle to meet your teenage prostitute girlfriend?

Well, then you and Leopold II of Belgium have a lot in common.

Leopold II overlaid on images of Africans whose hands were taken in his rubber-production operation.

This arch-bastard stole Congo, turned into a rubber- and ivory factory, and worked it’s population to death. Those who didn’t work hard enough had their hands or feet chopped off as punishment. Meanwhile, he fell in love with a teenage prostitute, who scammed him out of everything he had, and left his children without an inheritance. Probably just as well she did, to be honest.

The full story can be heard on Behind the Bastards, in a two-part episode Robert did on “King Leopold II – The first modern bastard”. A strong recommendation from me, and I’m now reading the book much of the book was sourced from, called “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hochschild.

This is not my cow.

Published on January 10, 2021

My first brush with the Discworld must have been around 1996, perhaps 97 – when my horrified mother dragged me off to our local equivalent of Blockbuster to return the copy of Mortal Kombat 3 I’d rented for the weekend, because apparently hyper-violent arcade games with depictions of dismemberment isn’t suitable entertainment to an 8-year-old. In retrospect, she might have had a point. While we were returning the game, she asked some people there what might be more suitable for a child my age, someone recommended Discworld.

The European cover art for the Discworld PSX game.

At the time, my English proficiency was poor, making it a confusing and honestly disappointing experience. Did I mention I was 8?

A second beginning

A few years later, somewhere in the early 2000s, I had my 2nd exposure to Discworld, this time, a 2nd-cousin decided to lend me his copy of The Color of Magic, admittedly it was a Norwegian translation and much of what makes Discworld so amazing is lost in translation, plus Terry had hardly found his voice on the first book, but it was definitely interesting enough to stick in the back of my mind.

A few years later, probably around 2005 – my then girlfriend was looking to read something new, and I recommended the series to her. I had only read the first book myself, but she got hooked. Our relationship didn’t last very long, but within the year I had picked up one of the Novels in it’s original English from a bookstore – not knowing publication order or being familiar with any of the recommended reading order charts, I started off with The Last Continent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Close-up of the cover for The Last Continent, featuring Rincewind

Fast forward about a decade and a half, and I’m a seasoned Discworld-enthusiast. I like the Sky adaptations of Hogfather, Going Postal and The Color of Magic, and I really thought the Amazon adaptation of Good Omens – a non Discworld book co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – was very well done, and despite some changes, remained true to the source material, this is probably because Neil Gaiman was directly involved in the project. By this time, Terry had passed away and couldn’t be involved himself, but I really think Neil and the rest of the crew did right by him.

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably priced love, and a hard-boiled egg.

The Watch

A few years ago now, I started hearing chatter about a new show being developed, which would base itself on the novels concerning themselves with the ankh morpork city watch, and would be a sort of “CSI Ankh-Morpork” type of show. Being a storyline drawing heavily on cop dramas and film noir, it makes complete sense to create a show like this. You get the unique chance to play with fantastical elements while delivering a suspenseful narrative and deep social commentary. So I was as giddy as a child for Christmas. To see a more mature take on Ankh Morpork, depictions of it’s underbelly, and introducing my beloved Discworld universe to an even wider audience. Something I could watch with people I’ve recommended the series to, but never bothered to pick up a book.

The Watch, by B.S Johnson

Among many colorful characters on the disc, there once was a fellow by the name of Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, B.S Johnson for short. He had a unique talent for designs that never quite worked as intended. Among his achievements were a maze so small people got lost looking for it, the collapsed tower of Quirm – built out of quicksand because he wanted to do it fast, salt and pepper shakers large enough to be used as grain silos, and a manicure machine now used as a potato peeler.

For his unusual contributions to Discworld society, B.S Johnson was nicknamed “Bloody Stupid Johnson”, and rightly so.

BS Johnson’s cruet set – doubling as grain silo and apartment complex

Meanwhile here on Roundworld, as the inhabitants of the Disc call us, we have our own incarnation of B.S Johnson – Simon Allen. BBC America owned the rights to the show The Watch, and they allowed Simon to get his grubby hipster mittens all over Terry’s literary legacy, and for no apparent reason – except perhaps trying to be artistic and modernize things, perhaps he mistakenly thought he had something interesting to say – he imposed himself on an established universe by a beloved author, with a huge and dedicated fanbase – and turned it into this filthy abomination

Among a myriad of unnecessary changes that add nothing of value whatsoever, we have a lot of pointless swappings of genders, species, professions, introduction orders, personality types and more. Two central characters to the watch are just cut out of the story altogether, the character of Sam Vimes changed beyond recognition from a tough but fair street-wise slum kid – now a stoic police captain who does what’s right even when it’s hard – is now a breathtakingly unintelligent party-animal with no substance. His nemesis, Carcer Dun is now portrayed as Vimes’ old friend who saved him from the streets. This perversion of the Night Watch novel quite frankly turns my stomach.

I can’t properly express my distaste for what has been done to The Watch, but I can genuinely say it feels like the show-runner has gone out of his way to defile Terry’s work. I imagine this is how the family of an Egyptian pharaoh would feel if they knew grave robbers would one day dig up their loved one, so he could be unrolled for entertainment at mummy-parties.

To Simon Allen, I would remind you of words found in Reaper Man, as I think you were derelict in your duty to treat the source material with due respect and care.

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