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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   518 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The PirateSoftware drama was entertaining and I think tells us something about prosociality: the same ego that can lead someone to rise to the top can make them bad at cooperation and detrimental to a group as a whole. I mean, his ego literally prevented him from saving lives or amending his behavior. In hardcore WoW at least.

From Asmon's breakdown video, it looked like Thor did nothing wrong, and the accusations to the contrary were groundless. They messed up the engagement, the raid leader called "run", Thor ran, then the leader tried to un-call "run" while the tank screwed up his positioning and pulled an additional pack. I know little of WoW, but from the analysis, it looked like Thor more or less played it straight, while the people accusing him bore the large majority of the responsibility for the clown-show resulting.

From what I can tell, Asmon’s take is the sole outlier among the big streamers. Pirate’s fault isn’t that he bore a disproportionate amount of the blame for the raid breakdown — that goes to whoever accidentally pulled the mob(s). His fault is more complex. Whenever a “run” command is called, the players whose class have utility in obstructing mobs are supposed to use their abilities to do so, and then continue to run. Pirate did not do this. He played unskillfully. Yet even this isn’t the fault. He told the group that he lacked mana when he had enough to use a spell, and even hovered his mouse over the “mana gem” but refused to click it so as to pretend he didn’t have mana. Yet even this isn’t his fault. His fault is that after making these errors, he refused to give a trivial “my bad, I panicked and ran”. It’s perfectly acceptable to play poorly in WoW provided that you apologize for your mishap. His worst technical mishap wasn’t pushing the wrong button but doing something called “roaching” where you save yourself to help the group; this technical mishap is also forgivable. His unforgivable sin is being unrepentant in his error and showing some sociopathy in concealing how he could help the group. The other players confessed their errors.

It’s like a relic of the old Internet Hate Machine, all because someone failed to give a sincere apology.

Your analysis seems to match up with the Onlyfangs guild leader's breakdown, which I've just been sampling. Most interesting, and a neat toy example of politics at play. Now I'm wondering if streamer solidarity is why Asmon gave such a positive take.

I read this site and often have a tentative familiarity with the topic at the beginning of a set of comments, then get to the point slowly, as I keep reading, where I am just seeing words, stories and events that seem to have occurred somewhere outside my ken, like big events that everybody dreamed the same night except me. Odd, isn't it, really, in the end, these forums--like listening to people behind you on a bus.

Some background: KnowYourMeme

Piratesoftware, a prominent streamer, participated in a World of Warcraft Hardcore raid that went bad and resulted in two of his guild-mates getting their characters perma-killed. People blamed him running away without supporting the other players for the bad result, and the internet commenced to arguing over whether he could have done something different that would have resulted in the two making it out alive, or whether he did nothing wrong. Prominent streamer Asmongold (notably a veteran WoW player himself) did a hour-plus video breakdown, and his assessment was that Piratesoftware bore no significant responsibility for the bad outcome, as all the serious mistakes were made by others.

This has been your entirely useless information for the day.

In the continuation of Elon Musk PoE2 journey, he went on a xitter feud with Asmongold, one of the streamers who posted expose videos about it. I think that answers the question on whether Musk actually cared about being the best at the game, or simply got a boosted account for expediency.

The community notes on his posts are hilarious. The take I saw recently is the Elon wants to be "King of the Nerd", and with his eggshell-thin ego he really can't take being called out by people nerdier or smarter than him.

https://open.substack.com/pub/samharris/p/the-trouble-with-elon?r=4gi50d

Somewhat related.

Elon Musk apparently owes 1M USD to some charity based on a very silly bet, from Elon's side, made with Sam Harris about the covid pandemic. A braindead move from Musk's side and he started hating Harris instead of admitting he was wrong.

He can't stand to be made to look stupid.

I can definitely believe that Elon would make the bet and then renege.

That said, Harris is himself an icky creature at times. Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected. Understandable? Maybe, except that Harris is also the author of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_(Harris_book)

Lying is a 2011 long-form essay book by American author and neuroscience expert Sam Harris. Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie.

Harris has a Trump sized blind spot that makes him beclown himself regularly. Trump is living rent free in his head, ruining the quality of his content. And, more importantly, why should we listen to someone who admits to tactically lying to us?

Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected.

Is that really true? From the linked post:

Not only have I never advocated lying to defeat Trump (despite what that misleading clip from the Triggernometry podcast might suggest to naive viewers), I’ve taken great pains to defend Trump from the most damaging lie ever told about him. Elon knows this, because we communicated about the offending clip when it first appeared on Twitter/X.

What is the evidence here?

I just love going for these source hunts that you assign me!

https://x.com/Brian_Kennedy/status/1878561046362791991

Sam Harris said that burying the Hunter Biden laptop was a left-wing conspiracy to deny Trump the presidency and that it was absolutely warranted.

Maybe we can charitably say that Harris wasn't advocating lying, only hiding information. But the Biden laptop story was also (falsely) called "right wing propaganda" by the media. Harris gets destroyed in this interview and he doesn't have really any defense.

I wish that clip actually went on. I'm going to search for the entire interview. It's true Harris looks bad here, but he's not wrong about Trump necessarily, he's wrong about everything else. In other words, he isn't wrong that Trump has a laundry list of obvious cashgrabs and scams--which should give anyone pause --he's wrong that he and the big brains should do any and everything to impede Trump's election. He also doesn't seem, when he says "but that's not conspiracy," to realize that he is perfectly describing conspiracy.

Yeah, not a good look. Some claim that the context makes a difference but none of them explain how and I don't want to go further into the sam Harris cinematic universe so I'm going to call this one confirmed.

It's believable, and reflects badly on Musk if true.

Which makes it a little awkward when Harris has to interrupt his 'trust me bro' with 'oh, and that Triggernometry episode that keeps getting thrown around tots is being misportrayed, don't believe your lying eyes'. I don't follow Harris, so maybe his interpretation was right, or that speech was a one-off and he's spent the last four years trying to bend over backwards to admit that he was wrong then. But it makes a surprise reveal of a three-and-a-half-year-old need a little more proof than 'it's believable, and reflects badly on Musk if true'.

((And that Harris can't make it through a substack piece of this short length without dumb asides like the Gaetz comparison, leaves me skeptical that he is trying to bend over backwards.))

He has a track record of lying about things and the fact that people took his claims about playing games seriously is just hilarious. He will double down on it. Musk never cared about being good, his gameplay looked not far off from somene who is fairly new to the game, it is the same as Dan Bilzerian who allegedly won hundreds of millions playing poker whilst looking like a noob about it when compared to actual pros, not even the high level ones.

Yeah this never seemed like anything other than trolling on Musk's part. I didn't read the original tweets where he showed off his gaming level, but it seemed obviously ridiculous. Of course he is not one of the best players in a world at a game that takes dozens or hundreds of hours of play to reach that level.

What is supposed to be the punchline of that trolling? Pretending to be retarded?

David Lynch died yesterday which was terrible news. I have written dozens of short movie reviews here and may have even uploaded ones of Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet. They are both great movies, unlike most I have seen, you actively think about them for hours on end and can have valid interpretations that differ a lot from others. I haven't watched much of him, I'll write a review of twin peaks once I start that.

This weekend is ufc 311, this is the best card of the year and features the absolute pinnacle of mixed martial arts. The main event is Islam Makhachev taking on Arman Tsarukyan in a rematch 5 years in the making. Islam is the best mma fighter on the planet alive, period. Technically, tactically and defensively sound, very different from his teammate and now coach Khabib Nurmagomedov. Khabib was a freak physical athlete like his current opponent Arman though I favor Islam. These two alongside Ilia Topuria represent a better future for the sport where people are not just gopd athletes but also very sound with their fundamentals.

David Lynch died yesterday which was terrible news.

It felt weird to find out about his passing via a post on /r/guitar. I didn't know he was a guitarist, nevermind that he played a Parker Fly. The man was as eccentric in his choice there as in his movies.

His lifestyle is what made me get into his movies. He would eat the same meal for years, everyday at the same time, follow a strict routine, meditate and leave all his creative capabilities for his artistic work. Everyone on frog twitter was super charitable to him which is not the case for most deaths, especially artists.

His final words publicly were Jai Gurudev which is a slogan some use in India for various different things, in his case meditation. He squeezed as much out of life as one could, lived well.

tangent, but would you please name one frog twitter person you would recommend to follow (so i can follow them and add variety to my inputs)

What the heck is frog twitter?

the dissident-right/alt-right/white-identitarian faction of twitter, which adopted Pepe the frog as their symbol back during the 2016 election race.

I learned about this from a buddy who learned about it from some hipster goth cashier chick at the Dollar Tree on his lunch break. He didn’t snap a candid photo of her like I asked.

We’re going to revisit his short films this weekend.

Another The Motte exclusive give away! Dm me for a free closed beta the Bazaar invitation code. First come first serve. Those who know know (;

Would be nice if you used my referal code aswell: https://playthebazaar.com/signup?referral=d07d3d9c-b5d9-4e59-a399-1edb837e66fb

Dont really care about the ingame rewards so whatever. I just needed to play for my own sanity after watching too many northernlion missplays.

Edit: sent to @TheDag

For those who don't know, what is it?

If you've seen backpack battles (the link is a demo), it's very similar. Basically, it's an autobattler where you buy/obtain items between asynchronous PVP battles (the battles are fought based on other players' setup but you're not playing against them in real time) and the items will synergise with each other in more and more complex ways. So, say you get a bunch of fruit and each fruit does a specific buff between attacks and you also have something like a fruit bag which gives a buff for each fruit you have.

To me, nothing about the bazaar looks better or more interesting than backpack battles, in fact it looks dumbed down and mobile-gamed by comparison, but it seems like people like it a lot better but I've heard people say they preferred its less complicated take. Though I prefer Super Auto Pets to Backpack Battles but maybe that's just beause it's perfectly playable on mobile (maybe the Bazaar will be but it's still in beta and PC only for now, I think). Funnily enough both of these other games were inspired by the Bazaar which has been in development for the better part of a decade.

Though I'm maybe too biased since the genre isn't for me since I don't like PVP games as they turn into perfect play or lose simulators after a few months.

How much FOMO is in that game? I don't want to fall for yet another Arknights/Limbus "do the daily or the exclusive monthly banner gets it".

Its not fully out yet so i dont know what the monetisation model will be, but right now the only unlockable things are cosmetics.

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