exocrinous

@exocrinous@startrek.website

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exocrinous ,

These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.

Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day..Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.

Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it's a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.

exocrinous ,

The pun works equally well in English. "Aw, man!" has the same meaning as Ach mensch.

5e has an advantage of not requiring doctorate in quantum physics to run ( ttrpg.network )

I would usually be sad to see another original RPG go 5e compatible but Neuroshima was infamously poorly designed ruleset, possibly worse than Shadowrun. I probably won't be running it, but may steal statblocks for my 5e game if I need weird stuff again.

exocrinous ,

When I first got into D&D I didn't know what edition I was playing. I know there were multiple editions, but I couldn't find the edition number. The box just said Dungeons and Dragons.

It was 4E, and I played multiple other systems before I finally got into 5E.

exocrinous ,

For those who don't want to read the article but do want to understand what it's about:

  1. You download an app on your phone that makes it look like you're streaming to thousands of people
  2. You go to a bar and show your phone to a woman "look, I'm famous"
  3. The woman fucks you because she thinks you're famous or something

The creator of this app is a misogynist scumbag who edits interviews with journalists to erase criticism and promote his app.

exocrinous ,

"Maybe if I date someone who's famous, they'll have enough money that I won't have to worry about paying for medical bills or groceries anymore. Gee, maybe we could even buy a house and raise kids."

We live in a capitalist hellscape where such things are no longer taken for granted, and are now associated with the heights of success.

exocrinous ,

The "thousands of people" watching your "stream" are bots. They can respond to what's going on in the video in real time because they're bots. Actually I technically think this would be more efficient and therefore is probably designed so that it's only one LLM pretending to be thousands of people, but I'll call it bots because that's easier to visualise. The bots know what's going on in the "stream" because they can understand what the "streamer" is saying, which means the pickup artist can put on a convincing performance to trick the mark. If it was just a recording, it wouldn't be able to respond to novel situations caused by the mark's behaviour.

I don't actually know if this technology even works, but that would be the intent used to sell it to pickup artist bros.

exocrinous ,

Narcisstic Personality Disorder is a lifelong disability with no cure. You can be a nice person with NPD. You can be a wise person with NPD. You can even be a healthy person with NPD, because disorders and illnesses are two different things. Having NPD is like having type 1 diabetes. You can live a normal life, but it's still going to take constant attention to treat, and some stuff is always going to be just a bit harder for you. The myth that people with NPD are abusers is pseudoscientific bigotry. There are plenty of self aware people with NPD and there are plenty of non-abusers with NPD. People with NPD are most likely to be the victims of abuse compared to the abuser, but the kind of people who prey on the disabled to satisfy their own desire for cruelty don't want you to believe that.

A personal argument for a benefit of gaming

I grew up hearing all the talking heads (media), religious groups and parents strongly criticizing video games. You've, probably, heard some of this. For example, video games involving any type of violence causing people to become more violent, etc. As far as I know, the academic community has failed to produce any negative...

exocrinous ,

WOW is proof that human beings are biologically programmed to work together to achieve goals. It's a shame capitalism suppresses this desire in people and forces them to only let it out in games. Imagine if we had a society where people's work was properly valued, where they could self organise to accomplish great things.

exocrinous ,

It sounds like you don't want capitalism. It sounds like you want market anarchism. Look up mutualism some time.

exocrinous ,

While mundane fire can't burn underwater, the sudden appearance of magically produced fire underwater would cause instant vaporisation, filling the affected area with bubbles of scalding hot steam. The sudden increase in water pressure from the vaporisation would have an impact like a small bomb, increasing the amount of disorientation and potential damage. In engineering, this is called cavitation and is significantly damaging to machinery. It's the reason a mantis shrimp can kill its prey with a punch that doesn't hit.

TL;DR: you can absolutely kill someone with an underwater fireball. Though you might want to convert half the dice to thunder damage.

exocrinous ,

Wouldn't it be eat your cake and still have it? Typically you have cake before you eat it, but you don't have cake after you eat it. So the eating would go first in the sentence, right? Unless the saying is that you want to have your cake after eating it. Either way you gotta use a word that implies the directional flow of time, because technically you do have cake for most of the duration that you're eating it.

exocrinous ,

Bathes as frequently as she hunts fish.

Bruh she has two toned hair and it looks good. That woman knows how to use hair dye well. I bet she bathes every day. Or every second day, goblins probably have healthier bathing habits than humans. Humans are so obsessed with cleanliness they don't give their bodies time to apply its own natural measures. You're not supposed to wash your hair with shampoo every day, you'll damage it. And no conditioner above the neck. Your hair's natural oils will come in and you'll have healthy locks that shine. Constantly stripping your hair's natural oils away will just make you dependent on shampoo and conditioner.

exocrinous ,

Actual Plays can introduce you to new styles of playing and DMing and improve your skills at the table. For example many people started running planescape campaigns due to Rolling With Difficulty. Before RWD, lots of people had no idea that D&D has spaceships and what is essentially a sci-fi setting. If you're a GM who wants to get better at running the game, then obviously my first recommendation is Matt Colville's videos, but try listening to a few different actual plays and learning from the styles of different GMs. Maybe you hate the way Matt Mercer runs the game, but you really like how Brennan Lee Mulligan does it. Maybe you didn't know it was possible to run the game in a different way than how Matt Mercer does it. If you don't have three decades of experience playing with diverse tables, then actual plays provide a substitute for that experience.

exocrinous ,

GNU Terry Pratchett

exocrinous ,

Technically if magic were real, then the rules of magic would be the rules of physics. Plus any rules of nonmagical physics.

This is invoked hilariously in Harry Potter and the Natural 20, which involves a D&D 3.5e character being portalled to Magical England. His name is Milo, and he works a little differently than the people native to this universe. For example, he takes actions over the course of exact 6 second increments. And he can heal almost any wound with 8 hours of sleep, with his body magically knitting itself back to full health at the moment 8 hours have passed. He's not capable of learning new skills over time, his level of proficiency stays exactly the same in all tasks into he levels up, at which point improving his abilities requires investing skill points. He finds the idea of learning and healing gradually to be ridiculous and silly. Also, he can move faster going at a diagonal than a cardinal.

exocrinous ,

Capitalism manufactures scarcity. Even when we have plenty, capitalism must create limits on the sharing of free resources

exocrinous ,

"Yes, we already have more empty houses than homeless people, but I'm sure building more houses is the solution to homelessness. We can't disrupt the economy, after all."

We need to instill voters with the courage to vote for actual left wing parties so we can get some politicians in Parliament who'll just do what needs to be done, and seize the empty houses from the investors and landlords.

exocrinous ,

Why isn't 2018 GOW hack and slash?

exocrinous ,

TES definitely focuses on story over action. Those games have much better lore than combat

exocrinous ,

If Zelda is an RPG then so is Halo. Master Chief and Link both have exactly the same number of thoughts in their heads. I would argue Halo ODST is more of an RPG than any Zelda game.

exocrinous ,

That's what hack and slash means? I thought it was a game where you hack and slash

exocrinous ,

I haven't played Morrowind, but I hear that you can connect to an enemy with a hit, and then a die roll determines whether that actually happens. It seems to me that while such a feature would be good for making a character with their own unique strengths, it would be damaging to the immersion required to inhabit that character. Thus, immersion building features that make the character do what the player does, can easily be considered roleplaying features.

exocrinous ,

But it's not hard.

exocrinous ,

Realistic and no magick is an oxymoron

exocrinous ,

Neither of the above. Reality contains magick. Reality doesn't work without magick. The premise presented is impossible.

exocrinous ,

Everything is a bias, everything is subjective, everything is open to interpretation. But most people think their own point of view is unbiased, no matter what it is. This is just a fact that naturally arises from believing in such a thing as unbiased information. It should be obvious. People want to hold whatever viewpoint they think is unbiased, so they do. People can be convinced to become racists, which necessarily implies that people can be convinced racism is unbiased. You didn't think racists all knew they were biased, did you? They think they're unbiased the same as you do, because you're both humans who want to believe that you have the good opinions, and that good opinions are unbiased. And the fact is, you're both equally correct on that front. You're both equally biased. It's just that you're biased in favour of compassion and equality, while they're biased in favour of hatred and supremacy. But the amount of bias is the same, because there's no such thing as an unbiased viewpoint. You just think kindness isn't a bias because you like kindness and you've been taught biases are bad things. Likewise, they think supremacy isn't a bias because they like supremacy and they've been taught biases are bad things. And if you're wondering if there's an alternative to the way both you and this racist think? Yes there is, you can knowingly adopt good biases. I'm knowingly biased in favour of kindness, because I like kindness. I think choosing such a way of thinking makes me more capable of empathising with people I disagree with, understanding why they act the way they do, so I can attack the more foundational reasons for their belief effectively. It means I'm never surprised to see stuff like this. Because the thing is, they think exactly the way most people do. Just with different starting points.

exocrinous ,

Stalin wasn't far left. The man made being gay illegal. That's not the behaviour of a leftist.

exocrinous ,

Also, I'm a soulist. I recognise that all parts of our experiential reality are subjective and socially constructed. And right now, that reality is defined by the rich and powerful. You cannot fight a war while believing that your enemy's weapons are natural and immutable. You cannot fight the rich from inside a reality they control and win. Even if you kill them all, you'll still live in the world they created. You need to take power over reality for the people. That's the only way anyone can ever be free.

exocrinous ,

The man also concentrated ownership of the means of production in the hands of one person, administered by a hierarchy of national and regional subordinates who controlled the labour of the people and the distribution of resources. This is an economic model known most commonly as feudalism. Now given the term left wing originally referred to opponents of the monarchy in France, I don't see how there's any way to argue in good faith that a feudal dictator was left wing.

exocrinous ,

the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

That's the USSR.

exocrinous ,

WTF does the sheep's colour have to go with liberty? Do black sheep taste better? I thought their colour only mattered to humans because humans like to dye their woolen garments. A wolf doesn't need to dye clothes.

exocrinous ,

Oh okay. So what does racists complaining that the government freed slaves have to do with soulism?

exocrinous ,

If I was the wolf, I'd just point out that the shepherd eats lamb too, and is therefore just as much a murderer. The only difference is the amount of power in the equation. The wolf doesn't need to be bigoted to make its point, there are much better criticisms against the way the shepherd deprives the sheep of liberty. I didn't really understand why Lincoln was describing a foolish wolf who attacks the shepherd for bad reasons instead of readily available good ones. What the wolf says is pretty nonsense to me.

exocrinous ,

Oh, okay. Soulism expands on the fact that everything is a bias.

exocrinous ,

You know how transphobes say to trans women, "You're a biological man, that's a physical fact of reality and you can't change that"? That's the kind of reality, law of physics, and limitation of our bodies that soulism seeks to abolish. Soulism recognises that such "laws" of reality as immutable sex are myths, and seek to abolish all belief in such laws.

exocrinous ,

Assassin's Creed 1 and 2. I've also heard good things about Morrowind but haven't played it.

exocrinous ,

If I'm an experienced D&D player, will I need to worry about knowing how to build a class? I didn't have any problems understanding KOTOR's character creation, and I actually prefer Mass Effect 1's combat and levelling over 2. I love crpgs.

exocrinous ,

I upvoted it. I don't think it's literally just as bad as meta, but I still think it's bad. Websites should let you opt out of cookies in one click. If they don't, I prefer not to use them. I'm sure this website's article is very important, but if they want their journalism to be read they should present it in a respectful manner. Otherwise I'm just reading the headline. I like the headline, it's a good headline, it will inform my views going forward. I will not read the article and I will not give them ad traffic.

exocrinous ,

This article seems strangely lacking in how it wants this goal to be achieved.

exocrinous ,

That would be a great solution, because while I love Typescript, I hate compiled web code. One of the coolest things about the internet is that as it's supposed to work, you can download the source code for any website you go to. It's open source by design. I hate closed source websites and I hate compiled website code that helps close the source it's quite a contradiction because typescript is awesome and I recognise that compilation is the only way to get it to run on our web infrastructure. So it would be great if we could just type JavaScript and solve the contradiction that way.

exocrinous ,

I actually first ran into geas in Halo. The Librarian had the ability to implant people with a genetic destiny, a sequence of DNA which guides their species' evolution in predictable ways. She used it to make Dr Halsey a eugenecist and John Halo a good candidate for surgical augmentation.

exocrinous ,

Warframe.

exocrinous ,

Do you have arguments to make against the people who hate Infinite's story? I'm undecided, I've heard their opinions and I'd like to hear an opposing one

exocrinous ,

Sorry, I can't hear your edgy ass over the sound of these Eldritch blasts

exocrinous ,

M for Manchester (1807)

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