cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2hr ago
Not meant to be a ringing endorsement, just an honest assessment.
If you want a ringing endorsement from me check out Ar'kendrithyst or Mother of Learning.
cjet79
4hr ago
Its one of those stories where the flaws don't bother me too much or they are actually kind of a positive.
I'd consider Runesmith kinda mediocre, but its also held my attention much longer than other stories.
I think the author is very good at creating interesting worlds/settings, decent at desperate and action packed combat scenes, and good at a steady sense of progression for the main character.
The grammar and word choice and editing leave a great deal to be desired. I think the author uses voice to text, because there are sometimes words that sort of sound correct if you are speaking out loud, but are totally the wrong word choice. If you are an editing stickler this story is a hard pass. I am mostly not a stickler for tight editing. As long as I can mostly understand it then I'm fine. Though repeated bad explanations like in translated novels will wear me down into frustration eventually.
The dialogue and social scenes sometimes annoy me. The author likes to create "anime scenes". Where the main character and side characters are doing silly and embarrassing things. The side characters are filled with beautiful women. Its not Harem, but it falls into a side genre that I'm gonna call "Harem Eyes". The MC isn't sleeping with a bunch of people, but the author is definitely undressing all of them with his writing. There are lots of beautiful big breasted women around. Its almost like being set in a harem setting, without the actual harem showing up.
The main character is also mostly rational in their long term approach to problems. They will sometimes make emotional hero-like decisions in the moment. Generally I am not getting frustrated with the main character for being an idiot to drive the plot forward.
Without the MC holding an idiot ball the author seems to have some trouble advancing the plot sometimes. So instead the MC just seems fantastically unlucky. Also because the author often describes mundane events and interesting events with the same amount of leading details you never really know when a bout of bad luck is about to strike the MC. I kinda like that surprise.
cjet79
23hr ago
I'm back to reading The Runesmith after taking a half year break to let chapters build up.
I also recently read a new story by Arcs the author of Ar'Kendrythryst. The story is only available on their patreon right now, so no link. The author being ridiculously prolific released what they called "part one of book one" and it was 130,000 words long, which is nearly twice the length of a standard book.
cjet79
23hr ago
I'm part of a heritage/ancestry organization. Descendants of some people that came to the US in the 1620's. I'm mainly a member cuz my mother and grandfather cared about it a bunch and bought lifetime memberships for their kids. I have helped them with some website stuff a few times.
cjet79
2d ago
I know of one person that met their spouse on here: https://www.itsjustlunch.com/
Both of them weren't very attractive. The one I knew was a nice person and good conversationalist, but I imagine dating apps did not treat them kindly.
cjet79
2d ago
If no one is doing intersolar colonization then I really don't see a need to worry.
cjet79
3d ago
If we discover advanced alien civilizations existing doesn't that actually lessen the evidence for the Dark Forest theory? Something like massive infrared indicators imply that they are not hiding. Dark Forest theory implies hostile and hidden. @hydroacetylene
If this is a valid way of spotting alien civilizations. I think it becomes very important to look at groupings of stars. A cluster of 100 stars all having this indicator right next to each other suggests an expanding and potentially grabby aliens. If its just 100 stars spaced out randomly in the galaxy then that maybe implies that expansion and colonization is not something anyone has bothered with. If there are 100 stars with this indicator that are sort of close to each other but not exactly next to each other then it might imply islands of habitability (explained in this video). I also think if the candidates are randomly dispersed it also means its more likely that this explained by a natural phenomenon (like planets crashing and causing a debris cloud).
I believe propellant-less propulsion is possible and just not widely explored enough. The physics limitation is that you just need something to push or pull on that isn't the craft itself. We know of forces already that do this. Gravity and electromagnetism. Maybe we'll find other forces that do this. Maybe we will find something else to push on in space.
cjet79
4d ago
Definitely could have had some better word choice there. "filled" seems to replace "infested" just fine.
cjet79
5d ago
We have Sunday threads if someone just wants to throw out a short question.
Otherwise what Primaprimaprima said is kinda true we don't want people who cant contribute three sentences to a discussion to be the ones that dictate what gets talked about.
Some people don't care what is talked about they just want something. But many posters care a great deal about the specific topic, and thus a low quality entry on a topic they don't care about is a double negative. It's crowding out topics they might care about, and it isn't interesting enough to expand what they might care about.
cjet79
5d ago
Context is ultimately a suggestion, not required. I happen to think it's a good suggestion, and I also happen to think that people will dismiss the need for it more than they should.
You having personal experience with one of these camps is interesting context! I don't go near a college campus on a regular basis.
cjet79
5d ago
I don't watch the news. My smartphone news feed is heavily curated. I in fact do not leave the home most days because I work from home. My main outside trips are to pick up my kids from school and to go grocery shopping. I am not on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, etc. My reddit browsing is limited to gaming and fantasy fiction subreddits.
There are things I "hear about" in the sense that I might have seen a news headline. That was probably as aware as I would have gotten about Campus protests.
As unaware as I am, my wife is even more unaware. Most topics barely pierce her awareness. Unless it shows up directly at her workplace she usually doesn't know about them. Since the closest person to me is just as unaware I find this state of things normal, and the opposite hyper awareness of culture war issues strange.
cjet79
5d ago
Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.
There are other good reasons to ask for context:
- To avoid talking about nothingburgers. Sometimes people have weird news feeds and they get small incidents show up on their feed.
- For future readers. We do keep a list of old quality posts. The reader of a post is not just the people here this week.
- For additional depth and discussion. For example, if they had linked Brown University they could have started a discussion about divestment.
Yeah, they did that - it's right there!
Yeah they sort of did, which is why I half parroted their words.
Some of you seem to very much live in the culture war. You are very aware of what is going on and the latest news. And you also seem to want to replicate that newsfeed here?
I'll admit I just don't get it. If I didn't read this website I'd probably be unaware of a large portion of the culture war. I am not certain I would have known about the campus protests if I had not read about it here on TheMotte. I specifically need the context. I basically live under a rock. I hangout with my family and my neighbors, and we talk about local stuff mostly.
At the same time I don't want a scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. That is what twitter and mainstream news outlets are for. I don't visit those websites because I don't want the scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. If there is something novel and interesting to be discussed about a particular item, sure, lets have that conversation.
What do you want here exactly? Do you want this to just be a twitter clone (but with indents!) where we write a few sentences to performatively crap on our outgroup? I don't see the point.
cjet79
5d ago
that many of them perceive the barrier to entry to be too high.
Exactly! Its a perception thing, so I am trying to clear it up by changing that perception. WhiningCoil and others are making it more difficult by adding to the false perception. You of course are asking them to stop posting these bad interpretations of the rules, and thus discouraging posting, right?
Saying that they're mistaken, it's really not that high, isn't going to change anyone's mind.
There are different barriers to posting. One of those barriers is being afraid that the mods won't like your post and you'll get banned or in trouble. I can lower that barrier. I can't lower other barriers like "I don't know what to post about", or "I don't really want to talk about anything".
cjet79
5d ago
@somedude @WhiningCoil @Stellula
Tagging all of you due to confusion about the low effort posting.
This is an example of a short post that meets the requirements: https://www.themotte.org/post/1002/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/212011?context=8#context
Context:
So a bit of a time ago there was a discussion here about the gender war, demographic implosion and political male-female divide in South Korea. rokmonster stated that "Seoul is the only city worth living in [there]" as self-evident fact, apparently.
Analysis:
As someone who knows little about Korea, I find this puzzling. Aren't there other large cities there?
Opinion / jumping off point for discussion
I'm sure there are. Are they really that bad? And if yes, what is "that"?
7 sentences, 73 words, 425 characters. That does not seem very long to me. It does not seem like a 40k word essay. It does not seem like a wall of text.
Will we continue to have this discussion again and again every month? It does not make our job easier when you spread inaccurate interpretations of the rules, especially overly hostile interpretations that would scare people off from posting.
cjet79
5d ago
[2]: Yes cjet as you say every single time anybody complains about this topic there is no length requirement. And yet: yes there is.
Does the NBA have a height requirement? It doesn't but also it does. They have a good at basketball requirement, and height helps a lot. Likewise, we have a 'decent post' requirement and length helps, but I think it helps less than height does in the NBA.
If you held my feet to the fire I could give you a minimum length requirement: three sentences. I just don't often say it, because its not really about the length its about the content. And three sentences doesn't mean you have satisfied the requirements. Its just impossible to have enough content in less than three sentences, and I don't want people pointing to this and saying "hey I wrote three sentences like you asked". Which someone will do, and I will laugh along with them and give them a temp ban for being so funny.
All you need: Context of the thing. Interpretation and analysis of the thing. An opinion on the thing. A very good concise writer could do that in three sentences. It wouldn't be a very good or interesting top level post but it would satisfy my personal "low effort" rule. Five sentences would be safer. One context sentence and then an average of two sentences for the analysis and opinion parts.
If you don't want all three of those parts then about ten sentences is good enough. But these posts tend to get dinged for other problems. An opinion only rant tends to run afoul of boo-outgroup and waging the culture war.
cjet79
5d ago
I wrote this up thread
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
There is a definite problem where people skip step 2. And part 3 sounds like "The protestors seem evil, it would be nice if they were shot." Yes that sort of post will get you dinged for boo outgroup.
cjet79
5d ago
@Primaprimaprima is correct. Write about a paragraph of original thought and you are fine.
I wrote this up thread:
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
cjet79
5d ago
For top level posts in the culture war roundup there needs to be more effort and content.
In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:
- Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
- Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
- Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."
cjet79
5d ago
The best fits are recommended below. I'd second the reca for cyberpunk, ghost recon, and dishonored.
If you want to try something a little different, Zero Sievert is a top down stealth shooter and roguelite. Extended firefights are a bad idea, and I had a real sense of caution and danger. Whenever I got too carefree I was punished with death.
cjet79
6d ago
Banned on request, he did not say he plans on coming back. My impression was that this was permanent and from a building discontent with the community. The main point of frustration was with people dropping bullshit or unsubstantiated claims. And then those claims mostly going willfully uncorrected.
cjet79
6d ago
There are full matchmaking services. Pay for one of those instead of having someone run a dating app for you.
Inclusion has a weird status in culture, because its opposite is not always seen as a bad thing.
Diversity : Homogeneity :: Equity : Unequal :: Inclusion : Exclusive
Exclusivity is still a widely accepted marketing and branding decision. Media networks love to brag about exclusive events, where only they get to show something. Hollywood in general loves exclusive events where only the biggest stars can attend. Clubs brag about their exclusive requirements. High end brands love to use cost as a way to exclude the riff raff and readily imply that only the rich and discerning can afford to choose their brand.
I do wonder if exclusion has enough staying power to survive scrutiny by the culture. I am 90% sure it will stay around. Marketers will just have to very carefully tiptoe around who is being excluded, and the rules on who it is ok to exclude will likely shift randomly depending on the whims of internet mobs.
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