Silverdawn
34-year straight, white male from Eastern Europe. Interested in videogames, books, and running. Lean towards libertarianism/consequentialistism/determinisism.
User ID: 2412
My bad, I didn't realize. I've edited the original message with a link to the wayback machine and won't be recommending that author in the future.
Silverdawn
9d ago
Yeah, I felt the same way.
I recommend "Beware of Chicken", here's a royal road link. It's kind of a parody of the genre, so should be a lot easier to get into.
Edit: Nvm, the author had the brilliant idea to hide the novel behind a paywall. You can use the wayback machine to view the old chapters but it's a huge pain in the ass and probably not worth overall.
What do you think of the tariffs?
Mostly, I'm surprised previous US presidents haven't used the immense economic and geopolitical advantage of their country more.
If you're asking for a moral judgment, history only remembers good victors and evil losers. So if Trump wins, he will be remembered as a good president and vice-versa.
He already forced his will on Panama and Mexico and he'll probably keep 'winning' the same way. There are scant few nations on the planet who can afford to say 'no' when threatened with 25% US tariffs.
How strict are the owners of substack in regards to culture war? I'm thinking about starting a blog for reviewing videogames as a hobby and curious exactly where the line is between "spicy" and "permanent ban". I used to do these kinds of reviews on /r/patientgamers but reddit has turned to absolute shit the last few years.
Edit: Consider this question answered, thanks lads 👍
Silverdawn
30d ago
Yeah, I'll try a few things to try to revive my current pan and if none of them work, I'll get a cast iron. Seems like the best option overall.
Silverdawn
30d ago
The 5-year number probably assumes sporadic use. I use mine daily, multiple times a day.
As far as care, nothing problematic that I can think of. I use a wooden spoon and a regular sponge for washing.
don't buy expensive non stick. replace every year at least. there is no such thing as a long-term coated non-stick pan.
Yeah, that seems to be the popular opinion everywhere else online I'm seeing. It's a real shame, I would much rather buy one decent product and use it for 5 years or longer.
What are my best frying pan options if I want to fry eggs? I bought an expensive non-stick model about 10 months ago and it apparently already needs to be replaced. Is there any good long-term alternative option?
Silverdawn
1mo ago
"Woke" is a preterit and past participle of wake.
Thanks to the evolution of language, it became associated with being "awake to" the injustices faced by black people in the USA.
Thanks to the further evolution of language, it means the performative, superficial show of solidarity with minority and oppressed bodies of people that enables (usually white and privileged) people to reap the social benefits without actually undertaking any of the necessary legwork to combat injustice and inequality. It is a form of "virtue signalling" and is indicative of heavy-handed political messaging at the expense of quality of product.
Silverdawn
1mo ago
"We" (or rather the US) can fight a war without clothes, shoes and auto parts. China receives 60-80% of its oil through the Malacca strait. The US has worked for decades to make almost every nation in East Asia an ally in a possible war with China and has stationed a tremendous amount of troops, naval and air assets in that region.
Here's a decently detailed video if you want to learn more about the situation there.
I am morbidly curious. Can you link some?
Here is a transcript from one of the court cases.
I regret reading even some of that. Don't think I'll be getting any sleep tonight. And the UK government actively covered up this massive gangrape ring for thirty years. Absolutely unthinkable that such a thing can happen in the 21st century, in a first-world country.
Silverdawn
1mo ago
Small correction: "reperations" should be "reparations".
Silverdawn
1mo ago
I expect the rates to be actuarily fair and the median customer to have been better of self insured.
That doesn't make any sense. For an insurance to exist as a business, they have to take more then they're giving to the average customer. They have to pay for offices, ads and personnel. Maybe you got lucky and are temporarily ahead financially, but long-term insurance will always result in a net negative for the customer.
Silverdawn
2mo ago
Unfortunately, the AI in Alpha Centauri is still kind of bad. It will forward-settle 5 tiles away from your cities like a complete imbecile and all the AIs band up together if the player ever gets strong.
Plus, you don't really get to choose between econ/tech/military. If you do, the ginger bitch will declare war and invade you with 50 units as soon as mathematically possible.
You should have good AI.
This is the most unbelievable choice by far to me. The ai genuinely plays like a 5-year old and needs to cheat its ass off to present even a mild challenge.
Civ 5 in multiplayer was a 9.5/10 experience for me. Single player is straight up tedium in comparison.
In what way did it pass the Turning test? It does write news articles very similar to a standard journalist. But that is because those people are not very smart, and are writing a formulaic thing.
If you genuinely do not believe current AI models can pass the Turing Test, you should go and talk to the latest Gemini model right now. This is not quite at the level of o3 but it's close and way more accessible. That link should be good for 1500 free requests/day.
Silverdawn
2mo ago
TIL Adam and Jeff are still doing sc2 casts. I thought they stopped years ago, thanks for the heads up!
Silverdawn
2mo ago
I added a new link but it might get taken down in the near future too.
Silverdawn
3mo ago
Half-life 2 (as well as episodes one and two) are free to keep on Steam as a celebration of its 20-year anniversary. There's also a big update with bug fixes, slight graphics updates and 3.5 hours of new dev commentary.
Any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans out there? 5 days until release of the long-awaited sequel. The newly updated system requirements dashed my hopes for launch, unfortunately.
But GAMMA's latest update is launching on december 3rd, and it's a big one. Huge changes to artifacts, gear, damage system. And tooltips that are actually accurate and descriptive, for the first time ever.
Silverdawn
3mo ago
You really just have to put your foot down and tell these people (the men, in this case) that they're not welcome. And when they inevitably respond with accusations that you're being sexist, transphobic, and exclusionary, you say: "yes I am sexist, yes I am transphobic, yes I am exclusionary, yes yes yes, it's all true; now please, the door is that way, if you don't mind."
On social media, you get banned at this point. If the moderators controlling the forum in question don't bend the knee, they get removed.
IRL, these conversations don't really happen. Presumably there are a lot of legal things happening behind the curtains but you only find out when you're already being sued.
And frankly, 'trans' advocates were never interested in having a real conversation in the first place. They only act like they want to talk because they think that will get them the most influence. They don't actually believe there's anything to discuss, they already know they're right.
Silverdawn
3mo ago
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that in fiscal year 2019, the federal government spent about $300 billion on civilian personnel, including wages, salaries, and benefits.
80% of that number is $240 billion dollars. Posting this in case anyone other than myself was curious.
Hiding books that were previously free is a bad practice for a host of reasons.
It's bad from RoyalRoad's perspective because it hurts the objective of the site (namely, no-name authors get a chance to become someone and casual readers can read potentially good fiction for free, with a few small caveats).
It's obviously bad from the user's perspective because what used to be free and convenient is neither anymore. Even if I take the obvious next step of filtering out works with the 'stub' tag, maybe I find a story I like, come back to it in a year and find out most of the content is now gone. And this also changes my perspective of the site: it used to be "This is a pretty good way to introduce casual readers to decent fiction", and now it's "This site is unreliable, any story could be removed at any time". Naturally, I will no longer link to such stories, which hurts everyone.
It's arguably bad from the perspective of the author because they trade short-term money for a loss in popularity, word-of-mouth circulation, comments, reviews and even freedom (in the sense that they are stuck with Amazon).
But the main reason this is bad is what it does to the community and people's way of thinking. If we have an environment where information is freely distributed, everybody benefits. The authors get a little bit of fame and a little bit of money, the readers get to enjoy what is usually way less accessible. But if a few authors start reneging on this unspoken rule? Well, everything changes. A lot of authors will see this is allowed and start thinking "Why not me too?", a lot of the community members will start subtly guilt-tripping the unhappy fans in the obvious, predictable ways. And the unhappy people will leave silently because of the widespread censorship that will follow any negative public expression. And in no time at all, you end up with a completely different atmosphere: fewer positive emotions all around, more aggressive monetization, way worse access to good content for everyone.
The RR owners screwed up in a huge way when they didn't immediately punish the defectors in this game of Prisoner's Dilemma. I can't change that but I can push-back on a personal level against what I perceive is a phenomenon that significantly hurts something I care deeply about (fiction, writing, free sharing of information).
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