DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
7mo ago
Is Expeditionary Force Craig Alanson?
Yes, Craig Alanson. The first book is Columbus Day.
DradisPing
7mo ago
One of WoW's features was that it was a place to hang out online. You could gather friends and have an epic adventure together going through a rich open world. But it moved away from that. They couldn't solve the latency issues from having too many people in big outdoor battles. They couldn't solve the zone resource scaling issues where zones are either empty or too crowded.
Instead they decided that the open world wasn't important and switched to building mechanically complex battles in instances.
Now you can gather all of your friends in discord voice chat without having to play the same game. There's less need of a hang out game with a bunch of stuff to do in it.
Perhaps the future of MMOs is for small groups of people to use AI tools to develop elaborate Minecraft mods & worlds that other players can enjoy.
DradisPing
7mo ago
Allow me to bring down the intellectual quality with the various sci fi audio book series I've listened to recently. Light spoilers ahead, but I tried not to include anything too major.
The Murderbot Diaries.
The protagonist is a Sentry Bot. Made out of cloned tissue and cybernetics, he's born into servitude as corporate property rented out for security on planetary survey missions. He has recently managed to hack his governor module and has freed himself from control. With his newfound freedom he quietly does his job but spends all of his free time binge watching serials.
A mission goes awry and adventure ensues. 7 books, I listened to them all. Some fun characters. The later books seem a bit padded, there was an arc over the last few books so the endings of each weren't as satisfying. I probably just needed a break from the series.
Bobiverse
In 2016 a Silicon Valley CEO of a mid-sized company signs up to have his head frozen in case of death. He dies. The cryogenic company promised to use his funds to build him a new body, but that didn't work out so well. In 2133 his mind is brought back online as a digital replicant because his personality is seen as a good match for becoming a von Neumann probe.
4 books, I made it through them all. Some very imaginative world building and explorative sci fi. There's some Reddit tier atheism stuff at the beginning but it quickly moves on to more interesting things.
Expeditionary Force
In 2030 bipedal hamster-like aliens launch a surprise assault on Earth. The protagonist, Joe, helps defend a small town at the initial invasion site. Later, some lizard-like aliens recruit them to launch a counterattack. Joe ends up as part of an occupying force on one of the hamster worlds. Joe is a blue collar grunt, and bit boring. The early parts drag. He later discovers an ancient alien AI housed in something similar to a talking beer can. Things pick up after that.
I listened to 3 books of 16. It initially had promise but the alien world building was a bit weak. Skippy's origin is the most interesting plot thread but apparently there's not much progress on that until book 9. It had its moments but I gave up on it.
Starship's Mage
This one was interesting because I didn't think I'd like it. It's essentially hard sci-fi with magic.
A brutal eugenics program on Mars led to the creation of Magi. They are the key to FTL travel and the galaxy opened up to colonization. Some alien ruins have been discovered, but no sign of living aliens. The Mage King controls FTL and thus all trade and travel between worlds.
I really enjoyed the first few books. I made it through 7 of 14. The sci-fi magic just being magic meant that everything not involving a wizard is easy to understand. There are Newtonian space battles similar to the Expanse.
For me, it peaked at book 4, Alien Arcana. The first 4 books had more investigation and mystery. After that the series shifted more to fleet space battles and interstellar politics with anti-mage separatists. The author doesn't have the grasp he needs on things like large scale military production and what the military advisors would be saying for those plotlines to work well.
DradisPing
7mo ago
Can you post an update if it picks up? I couldn't get through it and gave up on the series. It'd be good to know if it's worth the slog.
DradisPing
7mo ago
From about 2015 until Merkel's retirement people were regularly calling Poland WN or worse. I'm not exactly sure when it stopped, but from the Trump impeachment to covid it wasn't a priority and after the Ukraine invasion internationalist types weren't badmouthing it anymore.
DradisPing
7mo ago
You can practice by working on some github issues on some repo like this random one: https://github.com/themotte/rDrama/issues
https://codecrafters.io/ is a bit pricey but fun. You should be able to burn through the "build your own http server" in python one pretty quickly.
I like to manage all of my language versions with asdf since it's one tool for versioning python/go/javascript/elixir/whatever.
Burning through a bunch of leetcode easy problems is a good way to get comfortable with a new language. Or if you've done a bunch of problems already try to translate those into python.
DradisPing
7mo ago
The problem goes back to Griggs vs Duke Power and related employment law cases.
Universities are the only ones who can do respected credentialization because any system will inevitably have a racially disparate result and universities are the only institution that judges respect too much to destroy for producing a "racist" result.
Any other system you try to set up is living on borrowed time until the judiciary decides to whack it.
DradisPing
7mo ago
I think the way the press reported him was never really accurate. His hero was always Octavian and has been sporting a roman haircut for like 15 years now. He was known to take new hires on long hikes and was always somewhat outdoorsy.
He's the sort of guy who would decide that learning some hand to hand combat training is important.
But if you're a white guy doing a VC funded bay area tech company there are certain cultural expectations you need to conform to.
After 2016 he was personally blamed for Trumps election by many. In 2020 he spent 400 million of his own money in a scheme to oppose Trump that put him in some significant personal legal jeopardy.
It didn't get him back in good graces so I think his attitude now is "I don't need those people anyways".
It's common for famous people in California to play down personality traits that don't conform to the ruling consensus. A good example is someone like Stephen Spielberg who's definitely a loyal democrat, but he's a former eagle scout who loves guns. People tend to assume he was a pot smoking theatre kid when he was young.
DradisPing
7mo ago
I've heard it before and thinking it over it's poor phrasing. It was always used in reference to bureaucracy.
Specifically back when this was in the news, https://reason.com/2014/12/20/pennsylvania-couple-seeks-return-of-wine/
People were posting about their own stories.
DradisPing
7mo ago
My understanding is it's saying that the situation calls for a protective institution that doesn't exist or isn't doing it's job.
https://www.themotte.org/post/832/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/180922?context=8#context
DradisPing
7mo ago
The vim feature is there as more of a crash recovery feature. It asks you if you want to recover your edits when you start. The new style is a little different.
DradisPing
7mo ago
There's actually a whole discussion around that. iOS popularized it, then Apple started including saving edits by default in some of their apps like Preview. They added a "create duplicate" menu item if you want to preserve the original. Designers live on their iPads, so it's been infecting other apps ever since.
The other change is how most web apps do "save edits automatically" now. Previously the standard was to present the user an empty form, let them fill in values, then create when they hit save.
Apple changed it to create an item (the item is actually created), then edit the item where your edits are saved by default. The big downside to this is that things get messy when a field has to be unique or it's expensive to update.
I've had many nightmare codebases where the designer wanted Apple style, the backend people wanted traditional style, and neither were willing to sit down and discus the differences.
DradisPing
7mo ago
Or is it that they are just more disposed to finding a suitable "good" partner than the one.
I'd guess it's a few things. Pragmatic and risk averse personalties to start. They probably know to avoid cluster-b partners. Other people in the sciences probably are less aware and get caught up in the passion and excitement.
The high divorce risk occupations seem to involve common things. Unstable hours which disrupt home life and provide opportunity for cheating. Jobs that provide a lot of opportunities to meet attractive singles.
Actuaries are probably also better at evaluating the pain of divorce and their prospects on the singles market.
Also it probably helps that they were never that exciting in their 20s. Women who married a guy in a rock band are going to have to reconcile when the man gives up on it and gets an office job. Whereas the actuary has gone from diligent student to starting actuary to better paid actuary. So she knew what she was getting into.
DradisPing
7mo ago
Apparently the arrest warrant just said "the court" without any reference to a specific court or case number so everyone involved should have known is was invalid. No criminal liability but they are going to be sued individually.
Yes, they just got a lawyer a few days ago. Robert Barnes found out about it because he was in town working the Amos Miller case and he wanted to verify some details before he filed anything.
So things are moving but I posted it here now to see if anyone had any interesting takes and also to set up an update post later if there's political fallout.
The situation seems to be that the Secretary of Agriculture has financial links to the major milk producers and is trying to shut down the small Amish farms. The Amish don't like to sue for religious reasons so he's getting away with a lot.
DradisPing
7mo ago
This was also "Notorious RBG's" argument
In her case I think the truth is she expected Hilary to win and wanted the first woman President to appoint her replacement. It'd have made for a better story.
DradisPing
7mo ago
The counter argument is that jamming up Senate proceedings is Mitch McConnell's defining political skill.
DradisPing
7mo ago
In the past I've heard a lot of jokes about "The People's Republic of Pennsylvania". I don't know much about the state, but the Secretary of Agriculture has been making news lately.
The latest evolving story is about Rusty Herr and Ethan Wentworth who ran a bovine reproductive services company called "NoBull Sires, LLC".
The dispute arose back in 2010 because the Ag Department sent them a cease and desist plus a statement of fine on the grounds that using an ultrasound was practicing veterinary medicine without a license. The counter argument was that the Ag Department was out of scope of the law. Routine checks don't meet the requirement of "diagnosis and treatment" for practising veterinary medicine, even if they involve an ultrasound machine.
Notably the Ag Department seems to have never filed the paperwork with a court, which is a prerequisite for enforcement. So they were likely aware of the legal issues. In 2020 the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medicine Association sent a complaint to the Department of State.
On April 10-11, 2024 they were arrested and sent to jail for 30 days for "contempt of court". The problem is that the Ag Department seems to have issued the arrest warrant on their own. The case has never been in court. They have not been before a judge.
So they are both in jail serving a 30 day sentence that didn't involve a judge and they haven't been allowed to see a judge.
There is a culture war angle here. The press seems to be reluctant to get involved for a few reasons. These days they like to defer to the bureaucracy, particularly when the Governor is from the right party. Plus Pennsylvania is in play for 2024 so they are reluctant to kick up a fuss that could help Trump.
I'm only finding coverage in the farming press right now and they don't really dive into the legal issues.
DradisPing
7mo ago
The ginger gene is recessive, so you'd only need to worry about quarter asian ginger grandkids.
DradisPing
7mo ago
I do not want to be a gym rat or get humongous.
Don't worry about this, you don't accidentally get humongous.
The low risk move is to say you're worried that neither of you is getting enough exercise and push to go to some Pilates classes together to live a healthier lifestyle.
DradisPing
7mo ago
Ukraine has a conscription problem. El Salvador has 100,000 gang members in prison that they don't know what to do with.
I see a solution to both problems.
DradisPing
7mo ago
A more workable slogan would be "We don't expect you to be white, but we do expect you to act white." They want to be in a society where white American behavioural norms are expected and not being white isn't an excuse.
DradisPing
7mo ago
His personality and charisma are appealing to the BoomerCon demographic, while he's never going to go off script and upset Roger Ailes (Fox News President).
DradisPing
7mo ago
That's the standard way for organized leftists to 1984 something from Wikipedia. Vote to merge the article in question with another semi-related article. Move over some of the content, redirect old links, delete the original article. Then vote to minimize and delete the moved over content as it doesn't really fit with the new article.
Every step can be argued as neutral, but the end result isn't.
It's not Christianity in general. The key people are New England Puritans. Their followers and institutions (eg Harvard, Yale) became dominant in the US, then after WW2 became highly influential in Europe.
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