spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
No bio...
User ID: 2892
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
3mo ago
character.ai has a pretty notable userbase if its subreddit subscriber count is any indication. I think Zvi might have had a more objective stat in a recent newsletter. I expect AI RP, much like regular RP, is just something you're not going to hear about if you're not already in certain circles. As someone very much outside of the circle my only exposure to the subculture is the occasional peek into the chatbot threads on /g/.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
3mo ago
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
3mo ago
A sudden surge in personnel could cause exactly the kind of organisational chaos that allows for gaps in oversight, especially when multiple organisations are involved.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
4mo ago
Can't speak for /tv/ but most boards I browse tend to be moderately much more tightly for off-topic content now than they were 5 years ago. I find the mods over-zealous, but prefer it to every board degenerating into some different flavour of /b/.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
4mo ago
As someone that only started interacting with the rat-sphere and adjacent parts somewhat recently, I appreciate this window into history. Great work.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
4mo ago
How often do you see your co-worker tackling problems beyond their profession? In my experience raw intelligence and domain expertise can very easily give the impression of a deep and profound wisdom that simply isn't there. Do not be too surprised if one day you see them out of their element and the illusion shatters.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
4mo ago
I didn't play much Starfield, but i did complete the SecurityVPiracy questline and it reminded me strongly of the Skyrim Thieves Guild questline, in how little of the plot actually makes sense. I have mercifully forgotten most of it at this point, but my overall impression was that it was deserving of the kind of breakdown that the late Shamus Young did for the aforementioned Thieves Guild quests. That said it does at least have one decent (by the game's abysmally low standards) dungeon on a lost, derelict ship.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
4mo ago
Whilst this is equal parts sad, tragic and horrifying, the prevailing thought in my mind is that this is excellent material for a black comedy.
Today no journalist beside Tucker would ever interview a Russian.
Requests have been made for interviews with Putin. The BBC still has Steve Rosenberg in Russia and I feel safe assuming there are other western journalists, some of whom interview Russians.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
5mo ago
They've just grown up with tools that work. They aren't shadetree mechanics because that hasn't been something in their environment. They know other things.
In your opinion what are these other things?
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
5mo ago
I want to like Kidology, and I like that she's tried to position herself atop the culture wall. But Christ is she verbose, whenever I try to watch one of her videos I find myself skipping forward looking for some meat on the bone.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
5mo ago
Sachs is making the same fundamental mistake the current administration has made and the next administration will likely make again, which is thinking that the US is in the driver's seat and all it needs to do is turn the wheel to get everyone going in the direction it wants. The war did not start on America's terms and unless it wants to intervene directly, it will not end on America's terms (a position Sachs is not advocating for, as I understand it).
NATO's enlargement was not, as Sachs seems to imagine, a result of an ever expanding American empire, but the manifesting of the strategic needs of the member states. Even if the US could wave it's magic wand and dissolve NATO tomorrow a new Euro-centric bloc would form as a symptom of the same strategic anxiety. Life in the Russkiy Mir is still within living memory of the majority of the former SSR and there is hurry to return to it. The Baltics are preparing for the worst and Poland's military buildup has gone into overdrive. Western Europe, which does not have the misfortune of sharing a border with Russia, has been slower to wake from its stupor.
Meanwhile at the Kremlin there appears to be no desire for a neutral Ukraine either. Putin et al shunned all offramps prior to Feb 2022 and have opined repeatedly that Ukraine is Russia. The Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson have been legally incorporated into Russia. After the sanctions placed on it in response to its seizure of Crimea, Russia made great efforts to reduce its reliance on the west and built up great wealth (which it is now spending to fund the war). Does Mr Sachs imagine that if Biden were to ask nicely that Putin would just pack up and leave?
Sachs is right about one thing though, America does have the means to end the war. Through violence.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
5mo ago
As a relatively new user I made the jump to start frequenting the motte because the discussion at my former haunts had become increasingly shrill and monocultural. Moderation might be a little more hands off, but I see no such trend towards deeper and thoughtful discussion on the wider web.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
7mo ago
And in this hypothetical the positioning of troops in Mexico and Canada was in direct response to USA's seizure of Nova Scotia.
The Baltics joined NATO in 2004, and didn't host any permanent NATO troops until the EFP was created in response to Russia's seizure of Crimea. The current force is ~10,000 in the Baltics, 11,600 in Poland. It doesn't take much historical acumen to understand that this is not a credible threat to Russia's continuity.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
7mo ago
I can neither agree or disagree with such a vague assertion. When did the drop off happen? What are some notable examples of poor writing? What sort of games do you actively seek out and which do you avoid?
In creating my own mental shortlist of games I'd recommend on the strength of their writing, I find it starts in the early 00s and continues right up to the present day. This is pretty consistent with the transformation that happened around the turn of the millenium, where genres that had previously included only the bare minimum of writing suddenly had characters the audience cared about and plots that were more than just the connective tissue between levels. Naughty Dog went from Crash Bandicoot to Uncharted in less than a decade, and many studios went through similar if not quite so dramatic shifts.
If I had to offer an explanation as to why you feel writing is worse, it's because it's much, much harder to ignore now. In many games you simply cannot escape voiced dialogue unless the developer had the charity to offer a distinct volume slider for it. Audio logs are fucking everywhere, friendly NPCs chatter, disembodied voices give instructions and repetitive incidental dialogue just won't die (No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses). Probably most egregious are the walk-and-talk segments that Ubisoft (I believe) pioneered, which are the worst incarnation of the unskippable cutscene yet. Maybe they're 'invisible' to the average player which is why they've become the expository vehicle of choice for titles like the new God of War.
Anyway if you're looking for some good writing in a scifi setting I'd recommend The Talos Principle.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
8mo ago
why China would want to advance US foreign policy goals is unclear to me
My best guess: the US believe China has more to lose than gain if Russia were to use destructive satellite weaponry and that their Chinese counterparts will reach the same conclusion. Russia and China may have a 'special relationship', that doesn't meant they're on the same page.
spring
safe, legal torment nexuses
8mo ago
Greg Egan's Dichronauts moreso for the strange non-Euclidean geometry of the setting, than the plot itself which is a relatively pedestrian Jules Verne-esque voyage into the unknown.
To really salt this fine broth of a comment, it needs to be read by Dagoth-Ur.
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