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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2992 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 28, 2023

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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This is late and I should wait for the new Friday Fun Thread, but if I do, I'll forget it.

So I'm reading a biography of Chesterton, and come across a reference to his sister-in-law, Ada 'Keith' Jones (she got this name because she published her journalism under a male nom-de-plume, John Keith Prothero):

All this must be kept in mind, when we come to more crucial and exciting events in connection with the Eyewitness; I only mention this incident here to indicate the lively manner in which the lady in question conducted the endless comedy of Fleet Street. In connection with the paper above mentioned, of which my brother was first the sub-editor and then the editor, there were a hundred such anecdotes and amusing episodes. I fancy I can trace the lady's hand, as well as the editor's, in one of the most admirably absurd correspondences I have ever seen in the columns of journalism. It all began, if I remember right, with my brother writing something about the meeting between H. G. Wells and Booker Washington, the famous Negro publicist in America, in which some doubt was thrown on how far Mr. Wells understood the difficulties of Mr. Washington, and by inference those of the White South in which he worked. This view was enforced and exaggerated in a letter dated from Bexley, which warned everybody of the real dangers of racial admixture and intermarriage; it was signed "White Man." This produced a fiery letter from Mr. Wells, humorously headed, "The White Man of Bexley," as if the man were a sort of monster. Mr. Wells said he did not know what life was like "among the pure whites of Bexley," but that elsewhere meeting people did not always mean marrying them; "The etiquette is calmer." Then, I think, a real Negro intervened in the debate about his nature and destiny; and signed his letter, "Black Man." Then came a more detached query, I should guess from some Brahmin or Parsee student at some college, pointing out that the racial problem was not confined to the races of Africa; and asking what view was taken of intermarriage with the races of Asia. He signed his letter "Brown Man." Finally, there appeared a letter, of which I remember almost every word; for it was short and simple and touching in its appeal to larger and more tolerant ideals. It ran, I think, as follows:

"Sir, May I express my regret that you should continue a correspondence which causes considerable pain to many innocent persons who, by no fault of their own, but by the iron laws of nature, inherit a complexion uncommon among their fellow-creatures and attractive only to the elite. Surely we can forget all these differences; and, whatever our race or colour, work hand in hand for the broadening of the brotherhood of humanity. Yours faithfully, Mauve Man with Green Spots."

This correspondence then ceased.

I've got an RPG itch. Is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous an enjoyable experience for someone who is tired of wokeism/feminism? I heard they gave basically every good/strong role in the game to female characters(?).

If the game is good, why do you care if the badasses are women? You can always make multiple characters if you really want to have a sausage party.

Anyway, I haven’t played WotR. Kingmaker was fun enough, but I got tired in the third act or so. Didn’t find it very political.

There’s Tyranny, which avoids giving all the good roles to women, mostly because all the roles are horrible, awful people. Except for Daddy Tunon. But that game is way more political than Pathfinder.

Have you played some of the turn based RPGs like Underrail?

If the game is good, why do you care if the badasses are women?

I'm picky when it comes to games. I care a lot about story, characters, writing. If the developers make the game a vehicle for implementing their sexism and sneering at anyone who seethes at it, that bothers me. It also brings up associated frustrations, like thoughts about how, if it were a game where the males were all awesome smart leader types and the females useless morons, there would be a lot more uproar. I don't like seeing people get away with things they should be stopped from doing.

But I'm not saying Pathfinder WotR is getting away with anything categorically bad, I don't know, I just heard a rumor in that direction.

Well said.

If the game is good, why do you care if the badasses are women?

Some people care enough about a quality story that an annoying or boring story will put them off a mechanically fun game. It's never really come up for me, but I understand the idea in principle.

I understand how that could be the case.

I want to know what level of stealing the “good/strong roles” it takes to trigger that. Normally, when I see a game with a wildly female cast, it suggests a fanservice effect…

I've seen a lot of memes lately complaining about female characters in recent video games who are seemingly deliberately designed to have physically unattractive faces. So lots of female characters isn't necessarily indicative of fanservice.

I'm looking for help tracking down an old comedy sketch, possibly produced by Monty Python. Yesterday my dad described a comedy sketch he'd seen years ago which went something like this.

A man named Smith who works for MI5 is called into his supervisor's office. His supervisor is suspicious that there may be a mole in the department, and questions Smith aggressively to ascertain what he knows.

Supervisor: It's come to our attention that the Russians have recently developed a technique more insidious than any we've heard of to date. It's called "lying". Essentially, it's when you make an assertion which is factually untrue.

Smith: What?!

Supervisor: Yes. I'm sure you can appreciate the range of potential applications of this technique in international espionage and the threat it might pose to the West.

The sketch goes on like that for awhile. Ring any bells?

Sounds like it could be from one of the "Control and Tony" sketches on "A Bit of Fry and Laurie"; this one in particular.

I think we have a winner! Thanks for the help.

Last night I got into bed and my mind was highjacked by a useless idea. The image of well-worn sneakers I had as a kid came into my mind, and I thought about waking up in the past and couldn't stop wondering about this well-trod trope. Wouldn't it be great to meet my wife in 1999 and spend our teenage years fucking like rabbits? Or to nudge the politics in the right direction during the pivotal moments? Or to actually emigrate when the rouble was at its strongest?

Then some of the less fun things came into my mind. My wife's father died in the early 00's, before we met. If I somehow woke up in the past before that date, what would I do? If I met her family right away, sooner or later it would become obvious that I was from the future. Would I tell them about the death? Not telling them would be cruel, they'd never stop wondering if knowing about it could've helped. Telling them would be equally cruel, especially if it turned out nothing could've prevented the stroke. I don't know how doctors do this, but at least they aren't trying to get into their patient's daughter's pants, at least not every time.

Did you know how reliant we've become on this medium? The internet, I mean. I tried to recall some of the important dates from this century and I couldn't half of them. I'm definitely worse at math than the high school me and I doubt my youtubified attention span would let me get through Skanavi part C with similar ease even if I took my time to refresh my skills.

A more metaphysical question is what would happen to this timeline. I'm not solipsistic enough to imagine it simply being erased. Would teenage me wake up in my body here? Now that would be a nightmare. Or would he, I, simply be erased? Then I wouldn't want my wife to be left alone with a child because I decided to leave her for a teenager, even if that teenager was her. Or would the whole thing be a copy of the past universe modulo me plus a copy of me from the present?

Most importantly, why couldn't this have happened on a Saturday night so I could've slept in instead of waking up at nine after trying to banish a mind worm for the first third of the night?

Wouldn't it be great to meet my wife in 1999 and spend our teenage years fucking like rabbits?

This one in particular speaks to me. I'm so extremely happy with my wife, we are perfectly matched, but she also got me at the perfect moment. If she had met me two years earlier, I would have been way too big a loser, totally incapable of attracting a decent woman. If we had met three years later, who knows what would have happened in the meantime, I don't know that three years as a whoremonger would have been good for my personality, or I might have wound up with the wrong person because I was just too much of a puppy dog at the time.

Wouldn't it be great to meet my wife in 1999 and spend our teenage years fucking like rabbits?

What’s stopping you from doing that now?

A more metaphysical question is what would happen to this timeline. I'm not solipsistic enough to imagine it simply being erased. Would teenage me wake up in my body here? Now that would be a nightmare. Or would he, I, simply be erased? Then I wouldn't want my wife to be left alone with a child because I decided to leave her for a teenager, even if that teenager was her. Or would the whole thing be a copy of the past universe modulo me plus a copy of me from the present?

Because this is all imaginary, it could be anything you want it to be. Maybe you could transport between the two and leave being P-zombies when not in use.

What’s stopping you from doing that now?

Work, housework, childcare. Hmm, might be a good idea to take a small couple's vacation to an otherwise boring place.

What’s stopping you from doing that now?

Well they're not teenagers now.

That shouldn’t stop anyone! Hit the gym.

So, I went to see Barbie despite knowing that I would hate it, my mom really wanted to go see it and she feels weird going to the theatre alone, so I went with her. I did, in fact, hate it. It's a film full of politics and eyeroll moments, Ben Shapiro's review of it is essentially right. Yet, I did get something out of it, it showed me the difference between the archetypal story that appeals to males and the female equivalent, and how much just hitting that archetypal story is enough to make a movie enjoyable for either men or women.

The plot of the basic male story is "Man is weak. Man works hard with clear goal. Man becomes strong". I think men feel this basic archetypal story much more strongly than women, so that even an otherwise horrible story can be entertaining if it hits that particular chord well enough, if the man is weak enough at the beginning, or the work especially hard. I'm not exactly clear what the equivalent story is for women, but it's something like "Woman thinks she's not good enough, but she needs to realise that she is already perfect". And the Barbie movie really hits on that note, which is why I think women (including my mom) seemed to enjoy it.

You can really see the mutual blindness men and women have with respect to each other in this domain. Throughout the movie, Ken is basically subservient to Barbie, defining himself only in the relation to her, and the big emotional payoff at the end is supposed to be that Ken "finds himself", saying "I am Ken!". But this whole "finding yourself" business is a fundamentally feminine instinct, the male instinct is to decide who you want to be and then work hard towards that, building yourself up. The movie's female authors and director are completely blind to this difference, and essentially write every character with female motivations.

The plot of the basic male story is "Man is weak. Man works hard with clear goal. Man becomes strong". I think men feel this basic archetypal story much more strongly than women, so that even an otherwise horrible story can be entertaining if it hits that particular chord well enough, if the man is weak enough at the beginning, or the work especially hard.

I think an even more basic male story is "Man is already strong. Man uses strength to serve God/Tribe/Woman and is appropriately rewarded. All live happily ever after or at least until next week's episode". That one goes all the way back to Gilmagesh - his character development is that he acquires the wisdom to use the strength that is already manifest at the beginning, not that he acquires strength. The same applies to the Greek heroes and most modern superhero material. The earliest examples of Took a level in badass on TVTropes are around 1800, which is consistent with the origin of the Bildungsroman as a genre - I can't think of obvious earlier examples of the "Weak man becomes strong" plot, unless you count tragic antiheroes like Macbeth or Faust who become strong in a cheaty, corrupting way that sets them up for a fall.

This feels right to me.

I guess Journey to the West includes Sun Wukong ascending to Buddhahood? Then again, he started out the story as a threat to heaven, so it’s the definition of a wisdom upgrade. And the real main character is explicitly more virtuous.

The archetypal Bible story is some dude thinking he’s so tough, but only achieving anything meaningful through God. It definitely equates this sort of moral upgrade with material improvements, a la Job’s health and wealth.

I think deontology tends to emphasize “correct” work rather than “hard” work. Thus you have very strong men and women from the start, they just have to get aligned correctly.

My girlfriend dragged me along, and I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to. It's painfully ironic that, despite being touted as this great girlboss feminist movie, Ryan Gosling and Will Ferrell stole every scene they're in, and are arguably the only reasons to see the movie. I mean seriously, Gosling was getting bigger laughs with an eyebrow wiggle than entire paragraphs of dialogue from Kate McKinnon. Even the secondary Kens like Simu Liu were getting bigger laughs than most of the female cast.

It's nowhere near as preachy as the discourse had led me to believe, but the few moments of preachiness fell flat on their faces and really jarred. There's a literal fourth-wall breaking joke which took me out of the experience far less than any of the preachy moments. It was impossible to believe that America Ferrara's monologue was being spoken by her in-universe character, this was the movie's "John Galt speech" moment.

"I'm a man who has no power, does that make me a woman?" The poison of modern identity politics is that it sees identity markers as deterministic, such that Greta Gerwig (an Oscar-nominated multimillionare Hollywood writer-director, routinely celebrated as one of the best directors of her generation, and one of the most influential people in the world) can airily assert that, as a woman, she has no power, presumably because homeless men yell obscenities at her sometimes. Definitely of the Hillary Clinton school of girlboss feminism, and it was the single most obnoxious part of the movie for me.

There are two or three moments in the film that tried to tug at the heartstrings. One of these I found surprisingly effective (the flashback with America Ferrara's character and her daughter), the other two not so much.

The narrative structure of the movie is all over the place. The Mattel characters, led by Will Ferrell, are introduced in a lengthy sequence, have one silly chase scene, and then have no further impact on the plot whatsoever (granted, having a group of comic relief characters in a comedy film is no vice, but I got the distinct impression they'd have more of an active role in the story). Barbie is the protagonist of the film, but she's what TV Tropes calls a pinball protagonist: it's Ken, America Ferrara's character and maybe Weird Barbie driving the plot forward, and Barbie is just along for the ride. Even in her own movie, the female protagonist has hardly any agency and just does what everyone else tells her to. Numerous ideas (the impact of Barbie's entering the real world on the real world, the clash between America Ferrara's character and her bratty teenage daughter) are introduced and then dropped just as quickly, or resolved in seconds.

For all that, I laughed a lot and didn't regret going, although I have no intention of seeing it again.

America Ferrara

I wonder if her parents realized they were giving their daughter a pornstar name.

Yeah, I found the ending confusing. The men are defeated and then they start saying "Ken is me" and they're happy about this revelation that I do not underestand.

“Who is John galt?”

Throughout the movie, Ken is basically subservient to Barbie, defining himself only in the relation to her

Isn't that inescapable, given that that is who Ken is, in the Barbie universe? And, after all, Ken eventually leads a revolution which overthrows the Kens' subservience to the Barbies, so he is hardly without agency.

“You had the power in you all along” is a common male narrative, too. It’s core to the great majority of Christian mythmaking (in the sense of male leads who follow a Christ-like journey). The chosen one narrative is a version of this. Luke Skywalker is the son of the most powerful or second most powerful space wizard ever. Yeah, there are counter-examples, but “you were special the whole time / you’re the legendary man’s son / you found the magic crystal of power” is a common male hero’s journey component that can be reduced to “finding yourself”.

In general, women’s stories involve her realizing her worth, going through some shit, and in the end winning the man and/or achieving some other or additional goal that serves as a substitute for this.

I don't see it that way at all. The hero with the thousand faces may have the potential, but he is hesitant to embrace it (he generally refuses it at first) and realizing his potential always involves going to the other side to get it whether that other side is Dagobah for Luke Skywalker, the desert at first and then literal Hell for Jesus, or the red pill for Neo.

The hero never just needs to be himself. He needs to go through something terrifying to self-actualize. He didn't have the power all along, he merely had the potential. To realize that potential he has to go through hell and back.

Yeah I'm with you on this one.

The plot of the basic male story is "Man is weak. Man works hard with clear goal. Man becomes strong". I think men feel this basic archetypal story much more strongly than women, so that even an otherwise horrible story can be entertaining if it hits that particular chord well enough, if the man is weak enough at the beginning, or the work especially hard. I'm not exactly clear what the equivalent story is for women, but it's something like "Woman thinks she's not good enough, but she needs to realise that she is already perfect".

But this is simply a reflection of evolutionary reality. It's not the case that women gravitate to these sorts of stories because they're like, stupid or anything.

A man's future is always, within certain limits, radically open. His sexual marketplace value (SMV) can drastically rise or drastically fall depending on the actions he takes. If he puts in enough work, he can lift weights and bulk up, accomplish more things, gain more status, and be rewarded accordingly. The hero's journey.

A woman's SMV is primarily determined by the physical appearance that was gifted to her by genetics, and past a certain critical window, it slowly but steadily declines due to ageing. Due to a confluence of biological and social factors, a woman cannot expect to bring about an order of magnitude increase in her SMV through her own actions. We do have plastic surgery today, but its effects are limited, particularly in their ability to counteract the effects of ageing, and it wouldn't have been an option at all deep in our evolutionary history, when these mythic structures first became ingrained in the collective unconscious. In a very practical sense, the best thing a woman can do at any given time is to learn to make the best of what she's got. This is reflected in the stories they tell about themselves, to themselves.

Throughout the movie, Ken is basically subservient to Barbie, defining himself only in the relation to her

Again, hardly atypical. Plenty of men define themselves solely in terms of women, in terms of their success with women. Probably the majority.

A woman’s SMV is determined primarily by the class and social status into which she was born and in which she grows up. This was especially true historically, but is still true today. It’s also mostly true for men, very few of whom heroically change their lives in the way that hero’s journey protagonists do.

Class makes things rather complicated, but I'm inclined to think of class as being more like a feature of the field that defines which status game you're playing in the first place (in the same way that your language and your geographic location isolate you to a certain community), rather than a marker of status per se (and this is even more true the less fluid one's class is).

Two individuals in the same class can have significantly different status levels (e.g. the tenured gang leader vs the new lackey), and as far as intra-class status goes, you generally observe men being more dynamic and women being more static, according to the factors I outlined.

I'm not sure what you mean by that, does Emily Ratajkowski's SMV really depend on her parents and social status? I guess maybe I'd find her a bit less attractive if I knew she had a deep Appalachian accent or something, but I truly don't give a single fuck about her social status, she could be an outcast with no friends for all I care, and it wouldn't matter a bit.

I presumed when you mentioned men improving their SMV by making money that you meant something more like ‘marriage market value’. (If it’s just who’s most fuckable at the club, hotness is the most important thing for men and women by far.) A handful of supermodels don’t change the fact that most mating is still assortative. A woman’s value in terms of romantic success is, in almost every way, capped by her social class. An Appalachian Emily Ratajkowski almost certainly wouldn’t have become a model and so neither you or any high-status men would ever have heard of her, unlike the version who grew up in London and Los Angeles and went to UCLA.

Hot working class women don’t usually have the opportunity to marry into the elite the way they would if their value was solely physical appearance. There are always exceptional cases but for the most part the beautiful woman from a poor family will not rapidly rise in SES because of her beauty over her lifetime.

An Appalachian Emily Ratajkowski almost certainly wouldn’t have become a model

How do you explain Pamela Anderson then? Her parents were a furnace repairman and a waitress, and she was "scouted" as she was in the stands at a CFL game. If you are pretty enough, things can happen, whether it be the prince taking interest or the beer sponsor deciding to sign you. You have to be very pretty, though, I will grant that.

Emily's parents were two school teachers. She was born in London, but it does not seem that her parents were jet-setters. Her mother does have a Ph.D. and taught at San Diego Jewish Academy. Ratajkowski Pere got a Bachelor of Fine Arts from San Diego State University and taught at San Dieguito High School, where he met Balgley, who also taught there for a time. This is a public high school, so Emily grew up in San Diego in fairly middle-class surroundings.

UCLA certainly could make a difference, but she attended for one year and was already a model. The child of two school teachers can usually get to UCLA, or another flagship college.

Looking further, Emily got into modeling when a high school acting coach introduced her to an agent and she signed with Ford models at age 14. I do not think that her entry is in any way predicated on her social class, as the acting coach at a public high school is accessible to most Americans. At 14 she was distinctively pretty, as this photo she shared shows.

I would guess that 50% of girls that pretty get introduced to agents, and the ones who are willing to do the work end up as models. Surely you know girls who were scouted?

Emily's parents were two school teachers. She was born in London, but it does not seem that her parents were jet-setters. Her mother does have a Ph.D. and taught at San Diego Jewish Academy. Ratajkowski Pere got a Bachelor of Fine Arts from San Diego State University and taught at San Dieguito High School, where he met Balgley, who also taught there for a time. This is a public high school, so Emily grew up in San Diego in fairly middle-class surroundings.

Her background probably had a lot to do with her second career: transmuting a career as a disposable nude model into some sort of niche in the online feminist space. It takes a bit of education to at least know the right words to mumble to perform this turn.

But yeah, I doubt anyone cared when she was becoming a model.

I don’t think Ratajkowski is that pretty, she’s often cited by men online as an example of a ‘butterface’ with a perfect body but not so great face. And I think that an acting coach is more likely to know a modelling in agent in Southern California than in Appalachia.

But again, even for Emily Ratajkowski, how high is her value? She has a divorce and a son with a largely unknown indie movie producer who was seemingly so poor that he couldn’t pay the rent on their shared apartment (the weird online estimates of his wealth are absurd and fictive), and who doesn’t seem to have particularly wealthy parents. She certainly didn’t marry up and so leaves her marriage both a single mother and certainly no richer than she began it.

Karlie Kloss was a supermodel who married ‘up’ financially, but she was already the daughter of a doctor and so firmly upper-middle class (which, really, is what the Kushners were, too). That maps to my own experience, the people I grew up with might date one or two rungs lower on the scale (as have I), but for the most part not that much lower.

I don’t think Ratajkowski is that pretty, she’s often cited by men online as an example of a ‘butterface’ with a perfect body but not so great face.

I'm surprised to see this from you since you usually seem to be very skeptical (rightly imo) about a lot of these stories people - especially bitter men - tell themselves in the Discourse.

To see you citing how "men online" talk down Ratajkowski without a jab at how crazy /r/truerateme is is a bit funny.

IMO Ratajkowski is like Sydney Sweeney or hell, Benedict Cumberbatch for a weird male version: their status and/or SMV is so self-evidently high that people can sit around mocking them for their looks without it coming across as mean-spirited (well...less so than usual).

Unless you're a fashion designer or a homosexual, it's almost certainly a meaningless meme.

Sydney Sweeney

What's wrong with her looks? Or Emily's, for that matter. Both are quite attractive and not even close to someone like Amy Winehouse.

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I don’t think Ratajkowski is that pretty, she’s often cited by men online as an example of a ‘butterface’ with a perfect body but not so great face.

Homosexuals on /r/redscarepod are not "men".

The only person who has really extolled her beauty in my knowledge is Bronze Age Pervert, who is and has been known to be a homosexual for decades so can hardly have much insight on women's looks. He really should stay away from the topic, the only other time he went on about some woman was the 'Olivia Casta' thing which was about some IG/OF thot trying to avoid the glue factory fate using teen filter to boost her numbers. (nsfw link).

I'd rate Emily as 6/10, not ugly, but many flaws. Slightly crooked nose, lips too full, eyes too wide set, could probably go on for a while about her face.

If we go by reasonably objective standards, such as higher N twitter polls, it's notable that by a quite serious margin, in about seven elimination tournaments internet racists chose Jennifer Connelly to be the most beautiful woman ever. Still is very good looking, though the dessicated vegan look isn't really doing her any favors.

28 matches, zero losses.

Which is unsurprising, as she's both Jewish and was rather pretty back in the day. And had a very nice figure. To the point there's an entire youtube channel dedicated to it. Can you find one as obsessed with e.g. Ratajkowski or really anyone else ?

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More effort, less heat, please.

she’s often cited by men online as an example of a ‘butterface’ with a perfect body but not so great face.

Who are these men? Can't help but offer a hard disagree.

I don’t think Ratajkowski is that pretty

She is stunning in person, which actually counts for a lot. When I last met her, I was not wearing my glasses, as I am vain, so she just looked blurred, but her effect on other guys was very obvious.

an acting coach is more likely to know a modelling in agent in Southern California than in Appalachia.

That is true, but not enormously so. Modeling agents look for girls where pretty girls are.

But again, even for Emily Ratajkowski, how high is her value?

I agree with you here. She was appearing on the cover of "erotica" magazines when she was 21, which is pretty low class.

Karlie Kloss was a supermodel who married ‘up’ financially,

Financially, but arguably not socially. Real estate is weird that way, with rich people who have no class. I am sure there is an obvious example around.

I do think it is very hard to marry up several levels. Grace Kelly did it. Miranda Kerr is notable, as she was getting any younger. Natalia Vodianova seems to have done well. Class in the US has been eroding, and the levels are not as obvious as they were. I think in the UK it probably is still much more rigid.

Great point about the relationship to SMV increase possibility, really obvious in retrospect. Though I didn't mean to suggest that the women's myth was stupid, just that I didn't resonate with it the way that women don't resonate with what I like.

I don't remember whether it was on the old Motte or here, but I remember stumbling upon this idea of a "heroine's journey" as well. However, I think you're oversimplifying the male version. The archetypical version is more of a "man is flawed but is oblivious to that, man has a false goal, man chases that goal and fails because he's weak, man accepts that the goal is false and he's flawed and becomes stronger by rejecting the flaw, man reaches true goal".

For example, consider Trading Places. Aykroyd's character has a clear goal in sight: to get his old life back. He chases this goal relentlessly, tries to prove that Murphy's character is a criminal and a fraud, resorts to planting drugs in his office, but ultimately fails. When Murphy's character rescues him from a suicide attempt, he realizes his weakness: egoism. The Dukes exploited them both, but he only cared about himself. He abandons his goal and uses his new power of friendship to achieve his new goal: revenge. Together they humiliate and bankrupt the Dukes, and Aykroyd's character gets everything: he's become a better, stronger man who can rely on his friends and be relied upon, he has avenged the humiliation of himself and his new friend and he's once again a rich executive, which was his original goal. And while Jamie Lee Curtis has an uncannily simian face, she still has a huge rack.

I haven't seen Barbie yet, so I can't tell how different Ken's journey is from the archetypal one.

There are the novels of Jack London, who can be hilariously over the top (e.g. The Sea Wolf, with the villain(?) Wolf Larsen, and then we later meet his even tougher brother Death Larsen).

Outdoorsman-type novels aren't an enormous segment of the adult market but you might try Westerns. Try Louis L'Amour. He was known for having walked most of the terrain he talked about; if he said there was a drinkable spring somewhere, he almost certainly had drunk there himself.

I'm currently meandering my way through Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and enjoying it a bit.

Joe Abercrombie, starting with The Blade Itself. Phenomenal characters served with a dollop of dark British humor.

Have you read Acts of Caine? I found it similar in style and pretty good.

Yes, but I disagree about the style. Caine is much closer to The Lies of Locke Lamora.

I've been working my way through the Labyrinth translation of Jorge Luis Borges. I haven't been this enthralled by a work of fiction in quite awhile. Every story is so rich with meaning and metaphorical possibility that I have to put the book down and dwell on what I've just read after each one. I don't know if it counts as sci-fi. I would almost call it a proto-sci-fi. Draws a lot from Edgar Allen Poe but with more of a fantastical realism bent.

For the mainstream-ish nerd fan, most pre-awokening Hugo/Nebula winners and runners-up are definitely worth a read, I personally vouch for:

  • Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl
  • Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
  • Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
  • Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky
  • Neal Stephenson, Anathem
  • Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Highly recommend the Suneater Sequence by Christopher Ruocchio, fantastic sci fi epic. Not going to pretend that it doesn't borrow a LOT from Dune but I do love me some far reaching future Space Feudalism struggles!

I'm halfway through the series now and it's getting better with every book!

Depending on your tolerance of Napoleonic naval jargon, you might enjoy the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien. The novels scratch an almost sci-fi itch, in that it's a captain and his crew roaming around the strange and wonderful world (the model Star Trek emulated), who solve their problems not (primarily) with heroics and righteousness, but with being better, more efficient, more scientific sailors (there's also a long-running espionage plot involving the ship's surgeon who moonlights as a British intelligence officer).

The thing that really makes me want to recommend them though, is your second paragraph. They take place almost entirely outside, and revolve largely around a community of men working hard in the sun toward a common goal, with the strong, male, platonic friendship between the captain and his surgeon as the emotional core of the story. If anything, Master and Commander (the first novel and the name of the wonderful film adaptation of the series) is the unofficial "touch grass" story of the past few years (https://www.gq.com/story/master-and-commander-anniversary)

Oh, those are wonderful! They've got period-appropriate jokes, lots of action, tough manly men, more naval jargon than you can shake a marlinspike at, history and war, an astounding diversity to remind you that the past wasn't quite as monocultural as we think, and the great relationship between Stephen and Jack.

The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast-- unaccountable headwinds by night-- and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again.

Some minutes later he felt a touch upon his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying toward the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness.

'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London, and Paris combined: these animalculae-- what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep.

Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.”

Bill Bryson's body of work is as grass-touching as books can be; specifically recommend A Walk in the Woods for your criteria.

It's a narrative/comedic/ecological/historical account of the authors hike along the Appalachian trail.

For some less known series that are still excellent, I'd recommend The Dagger and the Coin, and The Long Price Quartet.

Other good fantasy series in no particular order:

  • Chronicles of the Black Gate
  • The Weavers of Saramyr
  • Ash and Sand
  • The Craft Sequence
  • Divine Cities
  • Prince of Thorns
  • Magicians by Feist
  • The Night Angel Trilogy

If you're really looking to sink your teeth into an epic universe, go for Malazan Book of the Fallen, or The Traitor Son Cycle for a slightly less dense but similar style series. Lightbringer is also pretty epic in scope and length. The Second Apocalypse if you're really into dense worldbuilding and want to be sad.

I'm the same with the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I try it, I go "I should like it" but then - bounce right off.

Also all of these series are completed as well! I saw that the Sun Eater Sequence above is unfinished. That's always a pet peeve of mine when looking for recommendations.

Oh and if you do read The Second Apocalypse, please let me know what you think of my boy Kellhus.

Malazan will take up a significant portion of your life unless you have significant free time. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it has significant opportunity costs and Erikson is lucky I read Deadhouse Gates because Gardens of the moon wasn't a good enough hook for the entire series(as a whole novel!).

That's funny because when I read it maybe 10 years ago, Gardens of the Moon was my favorite one, and the returns seemed to diminish with every subsequent novel. I mean, I enjoyed them all. But that first one was just great. Humorous, adventurous, downright plucky, and everything tied up on a nice neat, satisfying bow. The characters that felt like they needed to get what was coming to them did, and the characters you wanted to have a nice moment did.

After that, it sometimes felt like the world building got out over the author's skis. To the point where there were major factions/events that needed their own explanations in side series. He also settled into a far more baroque tone which eventually wore me down.

Stephen King? The Stand, It, The Shining, Salems Lot, The Dark Tower, his short stories, all are fantastic.

If you’re looking for a one off brilliant piece of fiction, Lonesome Dove is great.

Apt Pupil and The Body weren’t done under the Richard Bachman name. They were part of a four novella collection called Different Seasons. But I agree, those are two of his best stories.

For nerdy fics, Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a delightful story in itself, reminiscent of Ender’s Game, and also a metaphor|| for ||AI takeoff by unaligned and/or aligned minds. You can buy books of it, and there’s a Kindle free edition. It spawned both /r/HPMOR and the /r/rational subreddit for tons of other rationalist fiction. It has an audiobook as a podcast, which has since also done a few other fics. It even has a 93-chapter (so far) crossover with My Little Pony which diverges from the original at a point which to even describe would be a spoiler for HPMOR.

I also highly recommend the Wiz series by Rick Cook about a sysadmin sucked into a magic realm who builds a LISP from micro-spells. Classic sci-fantasy, more Heinlein than Pratchett. Hilarity and power creep ensue. Available as free audiobooks on Overdrive’s Libby. A LitRPG with a similar premise is up to chapter 18 on Royal Road, Magic Is Programming.

There are a lot of SF gems at the /r/HFY subreddit.

I personally recommend everything written by Phil Geusz. It is classic SF or fantasy, and has genuine drama, not cheap drama. If you’re not a fan of anthro animals, the David Birkenhead series and the No Oath Sworn series are right up your alley. The rest were written for a Furry Fan audience, but still the best of that genre, exploring what it means, experientially and morally, to be transformed to a different mode of existence: cyborg, brain extraction, anthro rabbit, werewolf, etc.

I mean if you want a lot to churn through Brandon Sanderson seems like the obvious choice? Start with Mistborn or The Way of Kings

Try a Borges anthology. The Aleph and Other Stories is a good one.

Twig, Pact, Pale by Wildbow would be my first recommendations. Should be able to find kindle files with some digging, or scrape the websites yourself if you're technically inclined. Unsong by Scott Alexander.

IMO Pact and Twig were more or less unsuccessful attempts at putting novel twists on Worm's awesome formula.

There's a foolproof way of keeping the reader captivated: by having a bunch of nested quests and subquests. Pact actually starts very formulaic in this respect: Blake is fighting a goblin because he was sent to do something in a graveyard by the Lord of Toronto, because he needs help getting back into his grandma's house, because he needs to read up on and figure out what's up with the karmic debt thing. Each blow in the fight is meaningful because it advances all of these quests.

One of the most fascinating things about Worm was how it repeatedly added new Main Quests, on top of and sometimes directly contradicting previous Main Quests (the infamous four word chapter comes to mind). So we start with a girl whose Main Quest is avoiding her bullies and end with literally cosmic scale stuff. And it worked perfectly!

With Pact Wildbow tried to see what happens if instead of the Main Character having to make greater and greater sacrifices to complete the new grand Main Quests, the quests themselves get progressively canceled, like, OK, this problem is beyond fixing, OK we no longer even hope to achieve that thing. Well, it turned out that the second half of the book, where the author started doing that, was just depressing and pointless.

With Twig Wildbow tried to see what happens if instead of the Main Character having all these grandiose quests, it's actually someone entirely else. Well, it turns out that the first half of the book, until the Main Character and his posse acquires enough strength and purpose, was just boring and pointless.

That's the price of doing daring experiments, more often than not you discover that there are good reasons for why nobody does this thing that seemed so cool on paper.

my interest fell apart along with Sy's mind. The what's real/what isn't, too-unreliable-narrator schtick got old for me

It ends later in the same arc.

Pact and Pale have much more reliable narrators, I don't recall them leaning into real/nonreal. Well, there are some isolated events that are supposed to throw the reader, but not a constant gimmick.

Have you tried Mother of Learning? I enjoyed it more than Practical Guide to Evil or Wandering Inn. A few stylistic hiccoughs in the early parts, and a few pacing issues in the middle, but great overall in my opinion.

While not a novel, Alone in the Wilderness is a great outdoorsman autobiographical documentary.

If you're interested the author of MoL just started another book called Zenith of Sorcery.

+1 to Mother of Learning. I finished the last book just a week ago and thoroughly enjoyed them.

The Divine Dungeon series is another one to check out.

Tell me the most enjoyable day or moment you’ve had in 2023

Took my daughter to the beach for the first time. She was so excited to go, for about two weeks prior she was playing pretend in a cardboard box that she was going on vacation. It was just a single night, and she about had her fill of the beach during it. But the first four hours we spent there, watching her get bolder and bolder in the ocean definitely made my year. At first when a wave just barely touched her toes she run away, then she got bolder and bolder. By the end she was hanging onto me in her floaties getting splashed by some pretty big waves, having a great time. Then a wave would really get her good and she'd cry that she wanted to back to the beach. 30 seconds later she was ready for more.

Hearing her say "My big strong daddy will keep me safe in the waves" melted my heart.

Hearing her say "My big strong daddy will keep me safe in the waves" melted my heart.

That’s adorable, hope your family remembers this trip. Though if my daughter told me this, I’d immediately imagine anxious uncontrollable scenarios where this wouldn’t be the case, breaking my heart and my daughter’s (and wife’s!) faith in me.

There have been no special moments I can recall, but this year has been very good. Right now I am very content in bed, following our company party earlier today, and with plans to see Oppenheimer tomorrow. So this moment will do just fine.

In Sweden to pay our bills you can have a thing called "autogiro". This means you grant a company the right to pull a certain sum from your account each month, so you never have to bother with any administration for your bills. Pretty convenient, except I've been using it for all my monthly expenses so I've never had to log in to my bank at all.

Early this year was the first time I've logged in to my bank for years. I've had constant anxiety to see how much money I actually had, and finally I had to bite the bullet and actually look.

Turns out, I had MUCH more money than I expected. The relief I felt from that was pretty much indescribable; I've now proceeded to buy a condo much closer to the city centre, and have been going out to eat more or less every weekend.

My brother showed me this song years ago and every time I log into my account I think of it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dAH4zGd_W1s&ab_channel=louiscolemusic

In my country there is a famous evergreen song called Mini Maxi. It's chorus is:

Kar nam ni všeč bo mini

Kar nam je pa maxi

Naj bo mini vse kar je slabo

Kar je dobrega maxi naj bo

Pripojmo mini si gorja in maxi sreče

Ne glede kako dolgi lasje so obleka in bančni račun

Literal translation:

What we don't like shall be mini

What we do, maxi

Mini should be everything bad

What is good, maxi

Let our singing bring us mini of sorrow and maxi of joy

No matter how long the hair, clothes or the bank account is.

I think about it everytime I make a withdrawal.

You had enough money in your bank account to pay a condo without realizing??

No, but it was enough for the down payment of the loan.

Congrats!

Anyone who says money doesn't buy happiness is full of it. It's not the only thing one needs but it definitely helps.

Congratulations. I had similar anxiety with checking my email. It was very hard to explain my predicament, even to myself.

You don't even have phone notifications for your balance? Wild.

If you set them to only go off below a certain balance (which is the default behaviour for my bank), then in Aransentin's position they just... stop.

How does that work? Monthly sms?

Every time I buy something or receive the paycheck.

I've been playing a lot of modded Skyrim recently and finding lots of instances of objects placed incorrectly causing holes or hidden surfaces to be visible. For those with 3d programming experience, does writing a program to detect and report these seem like a reasonable project as an excuse to learn how to work with 3d graphics for an experienced programmer who is completely unfamiliar with 3d graphics or would this be biting off a bit too much?

Since no-one has commented on the technical question, @ZorbaTHut do you have thoughts here? Is this a reasonable first step into 3d graphics programming?

That's going to be painful as hell and not actually very helpful for learning, I'm sorry to say :V

Algorithmic calculations on 3d meshes are surprisingly gnarly, especially if you're trying to answer binary questions like "is there a hole here". You're kinda trying to build a massive constructive-solid-geometry system, and those have all kinds of nasty edge cases and special cases. In addition, you're going to find that there's a lot of meshes that line up perfectly, which sounds like it's easy to handle, but in reality just exposes all the flaws of floating-point accuracy problems.

If you want to do 3d graphics . . .

. . . well, first, what part of 3d graphics? The rendering side of things, the tool-creation side of things, or the actual art creation? If you want to do rendering, are you more interested in getting your hands dirty with the absolute low-level stuff, or would you rather do VFX and new-special-effect development?

Are you hoping for a game industry job, some other form of 3d rendering employment, or is this just for fun? If it's just for fun, what kind of things do you want to make?

I could write some giant branching conditional flowchart for all of this but it would take forever, so I'll wait for answers :V

This is entirely for fun, as I'm pretty happy with my current job in a very different area of programming. I'm mostly interested in being competent enough to write code to scratch itches like this one for the games I play, so I guess I'd say the tool-creation side of things.

EDIT: Particularly tools for automating detection of "problems" or other kinds of batched analysis. I'll also note that my current job regularly involves numerical analysis in Fortran, so I'm not unfamiliar with floating-point accuracy issues.

This is definitely not a conventional first step into 3d graphics programming, then :)

But what you're basically looking at is to take all the objects in the world in an area and doing CSG operations on it. From there, you'd be looking at some form of leak detection or verification that it's a single closed mesh - you'll also want to cap off the sky and make geometry walls around the area you're testing, of course.

How you expose it to the user is a major part of tool development, but IMO the algorithm here is going to be the hard part, so to start with, just hack up something that works and don't worry about making it pretty. Later, ideally you'd want some kind of visualization that can point out the issue (the fact that this is in a game and intended for modding means that you could in theory plop down a 3d waypoint and just direct the user there, but for gamedev people would want an external tool built into the editor; I don't offhand know how that works with Skyrim, is there an editor? If possible, integrate with it!)

You are definitely going to have a bunch of weird issues, but the good news is you also have a huge existing test suite - specifically, "Skyrim" - so if you can automate running this over the entire world then that'll do a lot to hammer out the issues.

I saw your comment originally, but forgot to answer. I only played around with modding Morrowing way back when, so I'm not familiar with what Skyrim lets you do, but I don't remember anything particularly 3d-graphics-programming-y about it. Does Skyrim scripting let you do some vector/matrix math (other than you implementing it by hand that is)? That's the typical entry point into the world of 3d programming.

For those with 3d programming experience, does writing a program to detect and report these seem like a reasonable project as an excuse to learn how to work with 3d graphics

I might be missing something obvious, but it sounds like a nightmare to me. I think you could do something clever to only fetch the spaces affected by the mod you want to validate, but after that... How would you decide which surface is supposed to be hidden, or a hole is not meant to be there? What does "visible" mean? You'd run a sweep through the entire room?

Does Skyrim scripting let you do some vector/matrix math (other than you implementing it by hand that is)?

I don't know, but I was planning to do this as a separate (probably C++) program that just loaded all the resources and analyzed it rather than doing it in Skyrim itself. The idea was to start off learning how the assets are stored, how the data structures for the models work together, etc and build up to being able to run a "simple/naive" analysis on them.

How would you decide which surface is supposed to be hidden, or a hole is not meant to be there?

It wouldn't, it would just try to identify all of them and leave it to someone/something else to decide if it is meant to be there or not.

What does "visible" mean?

I don't know much about 3d graphics at the moment, but I believe a naive algorithm for detecting what I'm looking for would be to cast a ray from a spawn location straight down until it intersects a surface, then do a breadth-first search of all adjacent surfaces recording any that are adjacent to (roughly, share an edge with) one without a renderable texture.

You'd run a sweep through the entire room?

Ideally it'd sweep over every worldspace in the game.

For the life of me, I can't remember the name of the guy, but when I was getting into 3D programming, there was a series of OpenGL (or was it DirectX) tutorials that some dude wrote, and everybody was using. It looked kind of like this one, and it took you through all the relevant math, and showed all the basics from rendering/manipulating 3d models, to texture mapping, and taught cool effects. Personally I'd go with something like this for a start.

I don't know, but I was planning to do this as a separate (probably C++) program that just loaded all the resources and analyzed it rather than doing it in Skyrim itself. The idea was to start off learning how the assets are stored, how the data structures for the models work together

With this alone you'd have your hands full, I think.

It wouldn't, it would just try to identify all of them and leave it to someone/something else to decide if it is meant to be there or not.

Well, even then you need some criteria to try identify them. Otherwise you'd be showing people the entirety of the game map.

I don't know much about 3d graphics at the moment, but I believe a naive algorithm for detecting what I'm looking for would be to cast a ray from a spawn location straight down until it intersects a surface, then do a breadth-first search of all adjacent surfaces recording any that are adjacent to (roughly, share an edge with) one without a renderable texture.

Yeah, you can do that (and in fact I distinctly remember Morrowind having a scripting function for it), the issue is that you can cast an infinite amount of rays from any point. You can get around that if you know what you're supposed to be looking at. For example, to determine if an NPC can see you, you can cast a ray from it's head on to the center of the player's model (or to a few points defining it's boundaries). If something breaks the line of sight, the NPC can't see you, if not, he can. Then you write the AI code to react appropriately. But if you're sweeping the entire map, and casting rays from everywhere towards everywhere, you're going to make your CPU weep tears of blood. And coming back to identification - if you don't know which rays are supposed to be broken, and which are not, the entire exercise is kind of futile.

Ideally it'd sweep over every worldspace in the game.

That would take approximately forever.

Yeah, you can do that (and in fact I distinctly remember Morrowind having a scripting function for it), the issue is that you can cast an infinite amount of rays from any point.

I don't think I communicated the intended algorithm well. This is just intended to be a batch program that you point your load order at and it spits out a file listing all the "holes" it found. I would only cast a single ray per worldspace, straight down from the (first, if more than one) spawn location to identify a surface to start the breadth-first search. My assumption is that this initial surface would almost certainly be part of the composite surface surrounding the playable volume of that worldspace rather than something floating within it, and thus "flooding" over it with a breadth-first search would suffice to identify holes.

EDIT:

Well, even then you need some criteria to try identify them. Otherwise you'd be showing people the entirety of the game map.

I do have a criteria to identify them: a surface with a texture adjacent to one without a texture. It is classification of them that I defer on. The definition of "adjacent to" is a bit complicated, but basically shares an edge with and if you rotated them around that edge they'd come together without intersecting another surface.

So to make sure I got it right: just a scan from the top to make sure there's no holes in the floor / the ground?

Yes, though I expect for interior worldspaces it'd wrap around to cover the walls and ceilings as well.

Oh ok. I think that should work for interiors (though the math of it is beyond me at the moment)... For exteriors, I thought there are not holes in the ground in TES games, that the map is literally a heightmap defining where topography of the ground?

More comments

Do these flaws reveal spoilers or ruin the immersion or surprise? Which mods are you running. I finished Morrowind and wish to play through Skyrim at some point but I don’t want to ruin it.

Do these flaws reveal spoilers or ruin the immersion or surprise?

I suppose they could in theory though I don't think I've ever found one that does. Usually just a mesh isn't quite aligned with the one next to it leaving a few pixel gap where the void is visible, or one of the rocks on a mountain is shifted enough that you can see its insides.

Which mods are you running.

Currently the Tempus Maledictum Wabbajack list.

Can you write a bit more on why you're playing Skyrim? I'm just genuinely curious. I want to motivate myself to play, and not give up after a week this time.

I'm endlessly drawn to Elder Scrolls games. They're near to what I would call "perfect" games for myself. My biggest complaint is the combat system. In Morrowind and (maybe) Oblivion I don't mind it, because the magic system is so open. You can craft your own spells, launch yourself all across the world map, nothing is restricted. In Skyrim however, the restrictions are there, and I can't give it a pass on the combat system. Not to mention that the quests are notoriously shallow. And that's something, coming from a person who usually doesn't notice such things and consumes most media passively.

At the moment I find it hard to not pick going for another Elden Ring run instead, even though that game is much farther from what I would call "perfect" (personally, although it is probably "perfect" in general).

Unfortunately, I have "gaming OCD" and just can't install any mods, except for bugfix or graphics mods. I want the vanilla experience in games, the way they're "meant" to be played. Not to mention the technical difficulties of installing mods. I've recompiled my kernel and have been an Arch user, but that shit is just too much for me.

To preface this, it sounds like you look for very different things in your games than I do (eg. I could never get into Elden Ring), so I'm not sure this will be much help. That said...

I'm endlessly drawn to Elder Scrolls games. They're near to what I would call "perfect" games for myself.

That's me, between these and (modded) minecraft. I occasionally branch out (eg, Factorio or various RPGs), but I always find myself being drawn back to the TES games or minecraft.

Unfortunately, I have "gaming OCD" and just can't install any mods, except for bugfix or graphics mods. I want the vanilla experience in games, the way they're "meant" to be played.

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that the Creation Kit is included with the games means customization through mods are the way they are "meant" to played. Bethesda provides a curated vanilla experience for those who want it, but have done more than any other developer I can think of in providing and supporting the ability for players to adapt the games to their desired playstyle. The games' modding community has built amazing things on the canvas Bethesda provided. Eg, in Morrowind there was a mod I used that added the ability to raise skeletal minions through a ritual involving manually placing items (bones, candles, etc) in the correct layout in the world rather than simply casting a spell, though you still needed a spell to trigger the ritual once all the preparations were made.

Not to mention the technical difficulties of installing mods. I've recompiled my kernel and have been an Arch user, but that shit is just too much for me.

Allow me to introduce you to Wabbajack, the "I just want to click install" option for playing modded Skyrim, albeit a bit annoying without a premium nexus account since you have to manually initiate the download of each mod/resource. Nexus has a somewhat controversial similar feature in its collections.

In Morrowind and (maybe) Oblivion I don't mind it, because the magic system is so open. You can craft your own spells,

In Morrowind you can create custom spells in-game that combine multiple (IIRC, up to 8?) spell effects from a preset list, varying the magnitude and targeting of the effect. If you wanted to do anything more complex (eg, a Mark and Recall-like pair that allows you to set multiple destinations and choose from them dynamically, or the previously mentioned necromancy ritual) or even just include preset spell effects that they didn't want you to have access to (eg, restore magika), you needed to resort to modding. As the series progressed, Bethesda pushed spell customization out of the game and into mods, a choice that never really bothered me since I was already used to doing things via mods anyway. And modders have done amazing things with spells in all the games.

launch yourself all across the world map,

Still technically possible in Skyrim with mods (eg, using the buffs from the wind element from Phenderix's Elements) and even the base game with glitches, but this is more a technical restriction to avoid game crashes and performance issues than a real gameplay decision. When Morrowind first came out, it was very easy to crash your game by boosting your Acrobatics and Atheletics skills sufficiently high that you could jump across the island and have the game choke trying to load in all the resources as you flew across the world. If you got them high enough, you'd also start to run into compounding errors in the position calculations leading to all kinds of "fun". Oblivion and Skyrim are much more resource intensive, and this drives a lot of performance tradeoffs to manage that (eg, forbidding Levitation so you can assume players won't be positioned to notice that some objects don't have renderable surfaces from all angles).

nothing is restricted.

This is definitely the primary attraction I've had to the series, but I think it is only through modding that you truly get there.

In Skyrim however, the restrictions are there, and I can't give it a pass on the combat system.

I'm not sure what you are looking for in terms of combat, but the modding community has a lot of options for various playstyles. Even vanilla Skyrim I'd rate higher than Morrowind though, as I found the tedium of missing/fizzling constantly at the start of the game extremely annoying. This is related to the primary reason I tend to play Skyrim more than Oblivion or Morrowind these days. I tend to keep all my skills at a similar level so I can swap between them as my mood changes rather than specializing as the game expects. This doesn't play very nice with the earlier games balance or levelling system though.

Not to mention that the quests are notoriously shallow.

Again, mods. There is a questing mod available that won a Writer's Guild award for its script. Another with one of my favorite game trailers of all time. If you are looking for something more akin to Elden Ring and similar games, see VIGILANT and the others in the series or Darkend (less lore friendly). If you are looking for something that explores the weirder aspects of the games' lore (eg, you want that "I can't believe these mods are lore-friendly" feeling), see Trainwiz's series of mods, notably The Wheels of Lull. And I'd probably be lynched if I didn't at least mention Legacy of the Dragonborn.

In short, I love open-world games that I can easily tweak to my liking and change up my playstyle regularly without too much hassle (eg, starting a new character/playthrough), and Skyrim fits that bill very nicely. Its base game isn't all that great by itself, but the modding community surrounding it has lots of options for nearly everyone.

EDIT: Grammar.

even just include preset spell effects that they didn't want you to have access to (eg, restore magika)

There's a game bug that lets you duplicate the effect of "cast spell, get all your magicka back". Drain your own Intelligence to 0 for one second; when it wears off, you have max magicka again. Cheaty, but so is Restore Magicka as a spell.

(eg, forbidding Levitation so you can assume players won't be positioned to notice that some objects don't have renderable surfaces from all angles)

IIRC this was only part of why they did it; another part was so that they didn't have to balance for flight (Morrowind notoriously just let flight break everything).

Even vanilla Skyrim I'd rate higher than Morrowind though, as I found the tedium of missing/fizzling constantly at the start of the game extremely annoying. This is related to the primary reason I tend to play Skyrim more than Oblivion or Morrowind these days. I tend to keep all my skills at a similar level so I can swap between them as my mood changes rather than specializing as the game expects. This doesn't play very nice with the earlier games balance or levelling system though.

Tips on the early-game:

  • Bound Weapons go a long way, especially the axe and longsword (though even the dagger that you start with if you've got a decent Conjuration is decent). The spell is very cheap and easy to cast (and obviously you only generally need to cast it once per battle, which makes it far more efficient than flashier Destruction and Mysticism spells), and the weapons have inbuilt +[Weapon Skill] effects that make you substantially more likely to hit. Masalinie Merian in the Balmora Mages Guild sells all six Bound Weapon spells.
  • Mentor's Ring is quite close to game start (go northeast along the coast from Seyda Neen until you hit a ridgeline, there's a tomb right on the waterline). It's a constant-effect +10 Int +10 Willpower, and Willpower controls your success chance on spellcasting. You'll probably want to buy a probe from Arrille, though, since the trap on the urn with the ring in it can one-shot a starting character (a probe is a handy thing in general, since traps have no difficulty levels; you can disarm any trap with an Apprentice's Probe and a Security skill of 5, even if it might take a few tries).
  • If you are going to use direct attack spells, start small. There's a spell called Righteousness, sold by Ygfa in Pelagiad and a few others, which is Absorb Health 10pts on touch; very reliable, and the time taken to spamcast is less of an issue since it heals you. Casting lots of little spells will also raise your casting skills faster.
  • You might already know this, but don't go into combat without your Fatigue bar at full. Your chance to cast spells and to hit enemies with weapons is strongly dependent on how full your Fatigue bar is. Feel free to run-jump your way through cities (unless you need to do persuasion or commerce; those are fatigue-based as well), but out in the wilderness, let it come back to full or nearly so (pure walking is pretty tedious, but you can alternate running with walking to go a bit faster while keeping your Fatigue up).
  • Level up smarter, not faster. Your attribute increases on levelup get multipliers determined by the skills you increased since your last levelup, and you can't max out the multipliers without increasing your "misc" skills - the ones that don't contribute to levelup. So don't be frustrated by using "misc" skills and levelling up slowly (note also that while Morrowind enemies don't get boosts based on your level, spawn points do check your level when deciding what creature to spawn, so levelling up rapidly and inefficiently can lead to you getting shredded by random kagouti on the road), and do spread out your major and minor skills across the attributes and specialisations (I usually play mage-ish characters, but I still take Light Armour and one weapon skill). I'd definitely advise against making Acrobatics and Athletics anything but "misc" skills, as they train hilariously fast but don't make you better at fighting.

I'm not sure about the programming side, but a tool like LOOT could help you detect those issues. If users report conflicts between mods, it will flag your load order to warn you about them. Of course, if you're just looking to get your feet wet with some technical work then there's nothing wrong with giving it a go yourself.

It's also worth learning how to use the Skyrim Creation Kit as well. I used it to spot patch a few mod conflicts that didn't have patches, for example removing a barrel placed by a city overhaul mod that a boatman was sitting in, or restoring some missing pieces of terrain like you've had issues with. If you're looking for an excuse to learn how modding works, it's a great tool. I would also use it to create custom modded companions and it taught me a lot.

I'm mostly interested in possibly using this as an excuse to finally learn how to work with 3d graphics on the programming side. I already have some modding experience, though more with the earlier games than with Skyrim.

Just had a vasovagal attack on a date. 0/10 would not recommend.

I get them like once a year or so, just had the bad luck to have another like a week after the last. Totally fine, knowing exactly what it is makes the imminent sensation that I'm about to die and shit myself in the process much more bearable :(

Sorry to hear that man! Glad you're okay. But yeah, doesn't sound fun.

Thank you, it's happened before, and while it's unpleasant I know nothing will come of it!

The best way to recover is to simply lie down and wait for it to pass, since you get so light headed that sitting or standing is a bad idea.

Just adding your weekly reminder that the Motte remains the brightest and best hope for open discourse on the internet. Be proud and relieved you are a Mottizen - we have made it to the shining City on the Hill, the one place online where truth and free speech are protected.

I'm doing all this grandstanding because I'm flabbergasted that right now Tildes, one of the other 'reddit-alternatives' that claims to stand for open and intellectual discourse, is actively and unapologetically censoring anything to do with the UAP hearings.

Many of the users there are rightly pointing out that it's insane that the moderators would block discussion about a literal Congressional hearing... but this is the doublethink that we Mottizens are up against:

Hypothesizing that aliens might well exist based on the vastness of our universe is not a harmful thing.

Believing in conspiracy theories based on zero credible evidence is incredibly harmful. This hearing centers around a man with absolutely zero evidence claiming that there is an arm (or arms) of the government operating above congressional and presidential oversight. The claim is that we are dealing with a massive, top-level coverup. Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Anyone want to quess which Qrowd is qoing to eat this shit up?

Giving these conspiracy theories a platform on a forum where discussion is purported to be high quality and based on intellectual curiosity is harmful. Have you ever noticed how people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in multiple conspiracy theories? Worse, they are even likely to believe all conspiracy theories, even those which are completely contradictory to each other.. This is called conspiracist ideation, or conspiracy theory monism.

Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the last 8-ish years knows how harmful this can be. They helped elect a president who built our current supreme court. Check out /r/qanoncasualties if you forgot how it harms us on a more individual level. You could also go back further than Q anon and read accounts of witch trials, rapes, genocides, wars, and all manner of horrible things caused by false beliefs in conspiracy. Not to mention the countless deaths caused by vaccine avoidance - something that started long ago, but with which we are still dealing today.

Politicians having a hearing about this conspiracy theory is news, unfortunately. However, the conspiracy theory itself is not the news. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert openly discussed Replacement Theory, should we give that its own thread and discuss its merits?

The only posts we should have regarding this topic, in my semi-humble opinion, are well-written articles absolutely tearing our politicians apart for even humoring this hearing. Perhaps a good debunking article explaining that this whole testimony is based on hearsay and rumor, and explaining that someone's position in government doesn't mean they're immune to conspiratorial thinking.

Again, luckily there is some actual pushback on the site itself. But please, my fellow Mottizens, let this open display of intolerance remind you to keep your guard strong. Keep your eyes focused directly on the goal, and remember that if we let ourselves be distracted by our petty differences, the Motte may well become the same censored cesspool as the rest of the internet.

Be strong my brothers and sisters, and never forget the incredible and unique nature of this Forum that we have built. Don't take the Motte for granted, and be swift and sure when defending it.

Veritas omnia vincet.

Well, here comes the new version of the Inquisition, hunting out heretics. For goodness' sakes, if you don't believe in aliens, being able to thrash it out in discussion about actual freakin' Congressional hearings is the best thing you can do. Shutting all that down because "ooh it sounds like a conspiracy and that means the Qanon crowd and we must not indulge in Wrong Think" is terrible.

I had a look at the posts on tildes you linked and I'm flabbergasted myself. Maybe this is because I spent most of my time on forums which made themselves egregiously offensive on purpose in order to drive away people incapable of rising above those base responses, maybe it's just all the Nietzsche I've been reading... but the posters there seem absolutely pathetic and, despite their pretensions, utterly incapable of holding interesting conversations or opinions.

When you're so terrified of giving oxygen to the wrong kind of people or views that you demand the janitors sweep these horrifying, low-status opinions away because even seeing them causes you significant distress, you are fundamentally incapable of participating in a serious discussion on the topic. I might not agree with the neonazis, feminists, neocons or anarchosyndicalists but I have no problem reading their takes or views (I actually find engaging with beliefs I do not hold myself to be fun!) - if their arguments are bad I get to laugh at them, and if they're good then I get to have fun engaging with them seriously. But either way I actually understand their position and what they're arguing about. Without an understanding of what your opponents actually believe, how can you possibly talk intelligently about the issues that motivate them, let alone claim to have the correct position on an issue when you only understand one side's arguments?

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I find it funny because previously (pre-2016) conspiracies seemed to be primarily a left-wing thing (usually plots by Big-INSERT-INDUSTRY-HERE or the surveillance agencies), with some libertarian types thrown in. Seems that as the left has become the establishment, they've turned away from the theories, and as the right has lost establishment status, they've gone further into them.

"Actually big pharma is our friend." Not to be a terminal contrarian, but my favorite features of the left have eroded away recently. To the degree that they were selectively skeptical, they've lost it. Bah humbug.

Eh, I guess it could've gone in the CW thread but I was trying to make it more light hearted. I suppose it ended up being a bit more culture warry than I intended.

But honestly I'm still flabbergasted that "Qanon was a conspiracy theory ---> anything that is a conspiracy theory is right-wing nonsense" is still a live argument on the left.

And yeah dude, I would go so far as to say it is the main argument I see on the left. It has only gained steam in the last few years.

Believing in conspiracy theories based on zero credible evidence is incredibly harmful.

Somehow I doubt they'd be saying the same thing about Russiagate, a conspiracy theory based on zero credible evidence. But putting that to one side, this makes discussion pointless:

"My sources are credible, your sources are not credible. Voila, someone debunk this clown. No, the clown doesn't get to talk back."

Somehow I doubt they'd be saying the same thing about Russiagate, a conspiracy theory based on zero credible evidence. But putting that to one side, this makes discussion pointless:

Even the Durham report admits that there was credible evidence for Russiagate (namely that Donald Trump asked* Russia to hack and leak Hilary Clinton's e-mails, that Russia did in fact hack and leak John Podesta's e-mails, and that there was circumstantial evidence that the Trump campaign worked with the GRU and Wikileaks to maximise the political impact of the leaks). The core claim of the Durham report is that there was insufficient evidence that Donald Trump committed a crime** to justify the amount of resources devoted to the investigation.

* I am aware that Trump's supporters on this site say he was obviously joking. The GRU didn't take it as a joke, so I don't.

** Signal-boosting true-but-illegaly-obtained information is of course 1st-amendment protected. This just means that it isn't a crime, not that we can't take it into account when assessing the patriotism, integrity, professionalism, or lack of all of the above, of Donald Trump.

core claim of the Durham report

There was a lot of other stuff in the Durham report! https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-durham-report-released-special-counsel-fbi-trump-russia-investigation/

The special counsel's examination also revealed senior FBI personnel "displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities."

"Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation," the special counsel found.

Strzok, Durham wrote, "at a minimum had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump," and the investigation was opened "without ever having spoken to the person who provided the information" claiming there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign," the report states.

Come on, Russiagate is completely and totally dead. That they then put a 'oh we don't find the FBI to have a political bias' on at the end doesn't revive Russiagate, it's just face-saving.

there was circumstantial evidence that the Trump campaign worked with the GRU and Wikileaks to maximise the political impact of the leaks)

Not really.

The core claim of the Durham report is that there was insufficient evidence that Donald Trump committed a crime

Or really any of the people that they started investigating. It's very good that they eventually found some actually bad stuff like tax/bank fraud by people, but that had nothing to do with what they set out to do and what they allowed the public to believe about Trump for years on end. One would hope that they'd do a better job of finding tax/bank fraud without going on a massive fishing expedition on basically zero predication for partisan political purposes.

Aren't you happy we have this place? :)

I don’t agree with censorship, but the dude isn’t exactly wrong in what he’s saying either. The hearings are based on nothing solid, nothing but one person, and that person essentially overhearing rumors of weird programs in the hall. There isn’t anything here to see, in my view, and quite a lot that hinges on things we have no evidence of. In fact, the people who should be interested, the physics professors, the astrophysicists, the xenobiologists and just plain ordinary biologists are not interested at all.

It is a conspiracy theory, and one based in fantasies that almost everyone here desperately wants to be true. We want the warp drive, we want Spock or Worf Or Chewy. But there isn’t real evidence. We haven’t found anything that points to life. It could well be out there, there could be an alien out there looking in our direction, but without proof, without evidence of a ship, a space station, or some planet out there with its own version of starlink, it’s just fantasy. These UAPs are angels for people who are not religious.

I’ll strongly agree that we should allow rigorous debate. I don’t want censorship here or anywhere else, it bad for truth detection. But I’m finding myself rather surprised at the rate with which nerds are willing to toss rationality over the side of the boat the minute they want something to be true badly enough. People (not all of them here) willing to hand wave known physics, or the complete lack of evidence in deep space, or the complete disinterest of subject matter expert’s because they just want it to be true.

The hearings are based on nothing solid, nothing but one person, and that person essentially overhearing rumors of weird programs in the hall.

But that's precisely why they should be discussed and debunked, if possible. If you shut everything down, then what is left is "The Congressional hearing is a serious investigation and they are taking this seriously so that means it is really true aliens exist and we have evidence they visited Earth" going around credulous people. Isn't that way more harmful?

I said we should allow debate. I would very much prefer that there’s a factual debate. My thinking is that when talking about something like that, it should require that the people debating should have to cite sources. It’s not that complicated, things where a conspiracy is claimed need to cite reputable sources to back up the claim. That’s the entire thing— I do take the idea of aliens fairly seriously, which is why I’m being very careful to not make claims that are not backed up by either known physics or physical evidence. That, to me, is part of taking it seriously. I feel the same way about the claims of election fraud in 2020 — it’s a very important debate which is why you have to look at the evidence and not just go with what you want.

The reason I think for contentious and serious topics a rule like “cite your sources” would be a good idea (and again I’m not for banning any topic, or any argument) is that it keeps the debate to facts and not opinions or supposition or cherry-picking of sources. If not, the debate itself becomes a mess of claims many of which will turn out to be dubious or fraudulent or opinion pieces.

I don’t agree with censorship

Then you've conceded the entire point, and nothing else you wrote is relevant to the conversation. No one cares what the dude thinks and says about the hearings, in fact conspiracists duking it out with anti-conspiracists is part of the fun. It's the censorship that's the problem.

It’s relevant in the sense that without the toolkit of critical thinking and a devotion to following the truth wherever it actually leads is dangerous. And I do in that sense agree with at least acknowledging the issues with conspiracies especially for people without the skills or the base knowledge to actually investigate these sorts of ideas. Qanon took off precisely because it was discussed by people with few reasoning skills in an atmosphere where those beliefs went unchallenged. This place has an above average record on both points. And I think were I in charge of a debate on these issues, I’d insist on effort-posting and citations of claims of facts. This would at least keep the debate fairly honest.

It’s relevant in the sense that without the toolkit of critical thinking and a devotion to following the truth wherever it actually leads is dangerous.

Lots of things are dangerous, and people are free to point out the danger all they want. Personally I find your self-appointment as a critical thinker devoted to following the truth wherever it leads to be dangerous. The only issue OP had here was the censorship, so I still don't see how pointing at the danger of the censored idea is supposed to be relevant.

I finished the chessboard/checkerboard.

To recap, I got some nice cheap walnut and maple at my local lumber yard. I used probably $10 worth of it to get a chessboard going. Milled it as little as possible to preserve the width, so it's maybe 0.9 inches thick down from 4/4 rough.

The first glue up came out great. Lamentably, my meager jobsight tablesaw doesn't have enough infeed table to support my miter gauge cutting a 16" wide piece square, so I had to do it as best I could with a jointing sled I put together and a large square. After squaring up the first panel, I then cross cut it into 2" wide strips, and alternated every other strip to get the typical checkboard pattern.

This second glue up went less well. I think I'm just using too much glue, or too much clamping pressure, because even though I got the strips lined up as best I could, and used calls to keep them from bucking or twisting, some of them still shifted about 1/16th out of square at the ends, meaning I had to cut the edge square again after this glue up. It went ok. Some of the corners were 90.2 degrees, or 89.8, which created a lot of extra work later.

I wanted the border to have a thin strip of walnut, and then primarily be maple. So I took some of the walnut scrap and very carefully ripped some 1/8" strips, which I then laminated to the 1-7/8" maple border pieces. It took a lot of clamps. So many I had to do them one at a time. I should invest in a lot more clamps.

I slowly snuck up on the correct miter angles, repeatedly trying a cut maybe a 1/10th of a degree off 90, and slowly zeroing in on a good miter joint with minimal gaps. It took a lot of trial and error. Then I slowly worked my way up to the correct length of each border piece. This was the extra work I alluded to earlier. In theory with my miter gauge, I could have had all the sides the exact same length and angle. I need to build an infeed table to support it so I can utilize it on these larger projects.

One of miter joints I still somehow messed up, resulting in a rather noticeable gap on one edge. Ah well, c'est la vi.

This final glue up I tried to prepare for as best I could. I got all my clamps ready, tested it dry. Bought more c-clamps just so I had something reliable to keep the border pieces flat relative to the rest of the board. It went pretty OK minus the obscene amounts of glue I had to sand off afterwards. Ran out of the fancy 3M Cubitron sanding discs and had to order more. Was left using shitty Harbor Frieght sanding discs in the meantime. Because I'm impatient.

After that I took it into my finishing room to do the first coat of shellac. It added a nice richness to the walnut, and a slight amber to the maple. The next day I knocked down the grain that raised with some 220 grit sandpaper, and did four more coats. It got super shiny, but it won't stay that way. I gave it another day, smoothed it out with some 400 grit sandpaper, then put on some furniture wax with 0000 steel wool. I love the nice satin sheen that gives it. Between the shellac and the wax, it's smoother than a babies butt. I wish you could feel it yourself.

Naturally my best audience loves it.

I am marginally unhappy with how uneven the shellac went on. I started off using an applicator I'd seen repeatedly in videos, which was just a bunch of cotton balls wrapped in linen. But I think I need to invest in better linen for it, or research something, because it started shedding lint into the finish. Then I switched to a brush that worked pretty well, but the brush strokes were super visible, even after sanding and waxing. I think my primary problem, with both methods, was using too thick a cut of shellac. I should have guessed. I painted Battletech miniatures once upon a time. The first rule is always thin your paints. I think on the next one I'll try thinning it by 50% or even 100%.

That said, I'm super happy with how flat all my glue ups were this time! My workbench has a slight twist, which then imparts a slight twist on everything I assemble on it. But I used some winding sticks on top of the pipe clamps I took out for the glue ups. Turned out all I needed was to put a 1/16" shim under the foot of one clamp, and presto, almost no more twist.

Side note, the one thing I hate about woodworking, is every time I google a problem I'm having, I end up on a forum where someone else asked my exact same question. "Awesome!" you might think, but no. The responses are three pages of people telling them to do something else entirely. Use different tools, use different finish, build the thing completely different, etc, etc. Eventually someone provides the actual, often simple, answer to the question. So it was when I was attempting to figure out my shellac woes. Pages and pages and pages of people saying to use more or less anything but shellac. Lacquer, poly, oil, you name it. Finally one guy saying you need to thin it. Thank you one guy.

That is a really excellent outcome! I like the 1/8" strip idea; it really ads definition to the shape. Good choices all around here. Also mad jealous of your lumber yard; I only have access to good selections and prices on red and white oak or hyper rare weird tropical woods; maple walnut and cherry are way overpriced where I am.

Re. Miter angles:

I made 45 degree vertical and horizontal shooting boards and creep up to the line with a hand plane; results in a prefect, repeatable result every time; and it's very satisfying.

RE. Shellac:

I strongly recommend mixing your own. Shellac flakes have a shelf live much longer than yours, no more bad cans. I like to mix a supper light first coat of shellac, almost treating it like a sealer instead of a finish; then I'll do coats of with increasing amounts of shellac to denat until I'm at the level of coated-in-glass I like.

Yeah, this is the last store bought can I'm going to use. When I need more I'll mix my own. It definitely seems like the superior choice for all the reasons you mentioned.

The accents and wax coat really added a lot, here. Nice job in general.

People tend to downplay shellac these days for anything deeper than spray-on solutions, but it does give a very distinct character that's hard to get elsewhere. It kinda feels like walnut sapwood, where you can do some fantastic things that everyone ignores because there's a 'standard' options nearby.

I will caution, if you've not heard it already, that shellac is extremely picky about thinners. You don't just want high-purity alcohol, but fairly fresh high-purity alcohols; even small amounts of water can cause splotchiness. I've heard of people going to the extent of buying Everclear or even laboratory-grade alcohols, but I've gotten better (if not great results) from popping open a fresh container of 99%+ isoprophyl alcohol with each project than from the hardware-store grade denatured alcohol unknown purity stuff.

You can run shellac (and almost anything) through a spray system, ranging from an airbrush (at the smallest scale) to a HVLP or airless sprayer (at the largest), if you're having too much of a pain keeping brush strokes down after thinning. Do have to be aggressive with thinner (I've gone >100% thinner) to have it flow well with a lower-psi airbrush. It will dry fast. Do have to clean out the sprayer, but tbh I find it easier cleaning out shellac than enamel paints or any type of stain.

I was just going to use denatured alcohol, as that's what I'd seen or heard of people using. Guess it won't hurt to try a test piece first. Worst case I sand the whole thing down again and start over.

I see you're brave enough to use c-clamps right on the face of the chessboard with no protection. I always use scrap wood to avoid leaving o-marks on the finished piece.

Not brave, just stupid.

I've actually never had a problem with them leaving a mark. But then again I'm not cranking them. When I'm using them to keep a glue up level, I tighten them as little as I can get away with. Then I take them off after 5-10 minutes when the glue has dried enough.

Probably helps that these are hardwoods, and I've planed them to the exact same thickness.

Is anyone else interested in poetry here?

A thing I've noticed in poetry analysis that annoys me is what I've come to think of as "schizo" interpretations.

On the one hand, you have symbolism that was likely put into the text intentionally; e.g. in "Ozymandias" (which I assume you are familiar with) the famous "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" can be very reasonably interpreted as the onlooker ironically despairing that even the greatest ruler will eventually decline and be forgotten.

On the other hand you have stuff like "Scholars such as professors Nora Crook and Newman White have viewed the work as critical of Shelley's contemporaries George IV, with the statue's legs a coded reference to the then Prince Regent's gout". How reasonable is this interpretation? I think not very; if the poem had instead referred to the statue's arms or something, would there have been another possible tenuous interpretation to some other person or concept? Probably. You would need some sort of Bayesian intuition for this, as there is a "base rate" of possible random associations you could make – and for any connection less credible than that you're basically finding patterns in random noise.

It reminds me of how the famous schizophrenic programmer Terry Davis would "speak to God"; he had a random number generator that spat out words, and he'd do free associations between them. Textual criticism is rife with this. I suspect it's because there is really no incentive to find out the "truth" of a text, just finding cool associations that makes the reader look smart, and since there's no ground truth to verify anything it easily gets disassociated from reality.

To "fix" this, I propose a calibration game of sorts. One would write a text with actual symbolism and poetic devices, then publishing both the text and a canonical explanation for everything in it. Readers could then interpret it, and afterwards find out how much their interpretation missed the mark. If anyone wants to try this, I have done so with one of my old poems here.

(For the unfamiliar with meter, it's written in straightforward iambic tetrameter, i.e. each line consists of four pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables; with an ABAB rhyme scheme.)

"The Prince"

"The Prince", canonical analysis.

I was a literature major. I enjoy reading but can't match the encyclopedic range of reading of many I used to know. One past girlfriend in grad school it seems had read everything, and took pains to remind people of this, though I suspect that had something to do with her having been transplanted from a high-performing, competitive undergraduate program on the east coast to my unassuming program in the south full of relative dullards like myself. My beerswilling, football-watching friends tolerated her (but only just) because she was exceptionally beautiful.

I enjoy reading and I like more poetry than is probably considered healthy by most people; I have committed a few sonnets of Shakespeare to memory, can quote Roethke, and have attended more than one poetry reading without even getting a little drowsy.

Still, of all my classes, literature classes were often the worst, unless the teacher himself was charismatic enough to hold my interest (I say he only because none of my female literature profs ever really connected with me). Reading your post about the gout interpretation makes me recoil in what is the effete version of PTSD, where I recall the similar highspeed intellectual wheelspinning of many of my lit classes, perhaps especially poetry classes.

Having been an assigned a Burgess essay on Shakespeare, I remember going into class and the professor (another transplant, but from the west coast, and this was to be, for me, the highlight of her class) asked us if, on reading Burgess' suggestion that Shakespeare was partial author of the KJV of the bible, any of us looked up the relevant passage?

Dullards all, no one had. Her response, that echoes to this day: "Well FUCK YOU!"

I say with no trace of sarcasm that I was not fortunate enough to have as many teachers of her spirit. Even she, after this one outburst ( and a subsequent dropping of her course by many Alpha Chi and other sorority girls) became much more dry and uninteresting as a lecturer.

Psalm 46, by the way.

Edited for clarity

I think that the primary value of art is serving as motivating higher values for individuals and as founding myths for societies. As such, the intentions of the author may make their work more conducive to certain interpretations than others, but I don't ultimately care if for an interpretation that resonates with me it turns out that the author meant something entirely different. The interpretation always lies primarily with the viewer.

Well, I'm of the opinion that the 'intended meaning' of a poem or piece of media is totally worthless and uninteresting. The very best art taps into aesthetics or concepts that are to some extent transcendent of their contingent features. Some authorial context can be illuminating, but that's all it is - an aid to understand the text.

Well, I'm of the opinion that the 'intended meaning' of a poem or piece of media is totally worthless and uninteresting

If that is so, you could very well just entertain yourself with a random word generator like Terry A. Davis, no?

The very best art taps into aesthetics or concepts that are to some extent transcendent

I don't necessarily disagree! Those concepts should in principle be discernible however, and above the "noise floor" of the random associations I'd label "schizo". I don't deny that there might be interesting unconscious features of works, just critiquing the tendency of critics to find signals in random noise.

There's a concept in literature analysis called "death of the author" where they only care about what was written, not whatever the author intended.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfTheAuthor

You could, if the random word generator produced something interesting, but they rarely do. Humans are much better at this.

I suppose that in general I think it uninteresting and futile to figure out what exactly other people think. Shelley is dead, his words remain, and if he meant east but wrote west, west is what's on the page. The greatest authority on what the text means is not the author, but the text itself.

as the onlooker ironically despairing that even the greatest ruler will eventually decline and be forgotten.

I appreciate the poetic symbolism, but in the time since Shelly published the poem in 1818, the mummy of Ramses II was discovered in 1881 and is currently in a museum in Cairo. So I also am amused that, contrary to the poem, humans seem able to commemorate great rulers (probably more broadly great humans) for millennia.

This actually reminds me when I had to read Heart of Darkness in highschool. We were asked what Kurtz meant when he said "The horror, the horror". Naturally, the correct and encouraged answers all had to do with colonialism. I said Kurtz was such an obvious amoral sociopath that "the horror" was that he could be laid low. Given everything we learned about him, all the terrible things he'd done big and small without a thought in the world. Often being praised as a genius for them. Why the sudden deathbed confession? No, I thought "the horror" to him was that he was a great man and he was dying in the middle of nowhere with nothing.

Naturally this was the wrong answer.

How was the “incorrectness” of your answer communicated to you in that class?

It was 20+ years ago. But from what I recall just the teacher trying to get me to shut up a few words in and passive aggressively moving onto the next person.

Article from the Volokh Conspiracy (culture-war-adjacent, but IMO extremely funny):

  • Under the "major questions doctrine", if Congress delegates power to an administrative agency, but fails to explicitly describe the limits of that power, then it is to be presumed that the delegated power has implicit limits. If Congress wants to delegate a lot of power (such as the ability to forgive 400 billion dollars of student loans), then it must explicitly say so.

  • In a recent Supreme Court opinion, Justice Barrett used the following analogy to illustrate the doctrine: If a parent hands his credit card to the babysitter of his children and tells the babysitter to "make sure the kids have fun", then he implicitly is expecting the babysitter to do something minor like taking the children to a local ice-cream parlor or movie theater, and it would be a grave breach of the spirit of the instruction for the babysitter to do something major like taking his children to an out-of-town amusement park instead, even though technically that would not be a breach of the letter of the instruction.

  • The author of this article (a law professor) agrees completely with Barrett's analogy, and so does his father. However, according to a survey that some researchers conducted on this topic, only 8 percent of Americans agree with the analogy! The respondents rated a multi-day amusement-park trip at 92 percent for adherence to instructions and 4.7 out of 7 for reasonableness. In comparison, they rated the "correct" option of buying pizza and ice cream and renting a movie for home viewing at 100 percent for adherence to instructions and 6.8 out of 7 for reasonableness. This result may cast doubt on the linguistic justification that has been put forth for the major-questions doctrine.

As @Meriadoc says:

There's no way 92% of Americans actually think that way, or even half of them.

This doesn't pass the sniff test so badly, that you don't even have to think that the results can be interpreted straightforwardly. (Which is itself a metacommentary on the usefulness of straightforward readings of written facts. Do the authors comment on that?).

Go ask 5 friends in plain terms whether they think this is a reasonable use of the credit card in a way that you are sure they understand your straightforward intent of the question.

I know it's not quite independent, but for simplicity, if zero of them say it's reasonable, then the probability of that happening is 0.08^5 or .000003. Do you think it's that unlikely that 5 friends of yours would find this unreasonable? If not then you must concede that this question is clearly not actually producing a view of whether Americans find this reasonable.

So what is it telling us? Who the fuck knows. In cases like this, surveys without cognitive interviewing are less than garbage. Especially paid online surveys.

I can guarantee you that 92% of Americans don't find this reasonable in plain terms. If you want to pivot to an argument about some semantic interpretation where it's technically true, then look at that, you've made Justice Barrett's entire fucking meta point for her by showing how autistic readings of data out of context are often clear misinterpretations of they actually mean.

Are the authors of this study self-aware enough to reflect on that?

if zero of them say it's reasonable, then the probability of that happening is 0.08^5 or .000003

Drawing from your social contracts is not at all the same from randomly drawing from the general population. Just by polling people from here I'm certain I can create tons of impossibly unlikely results. (not that I disagree with your assessment that it's is implausible)

100% agree with this analysis.

But I would say, that in my experience, adherence to "letter of the law" tends to be surprisingly anti-correlated with intelligence. By this I mean that lower IQ people tend to have an affinity for nitpicky rules lawyering.

This is just my feels though.

It's an easy way to exercise great power. You get to exercise your own judgement, pretending that your interpretation of the law is the law and has the law's authority.

It sounds a lot like the "no vehicles in the park" quiz, which raises some interesting definition questions. When I've posed it to friends, I often get disagreement about whether she examples are violations, but also which violations are okay. Does the rule prohibit ambulances responding to emergencies? Even if it does, we should just allow the violation. "Not against the rules" and "against the rules, but an acceptable violation" are in practice rather equivalent.

The letter and actual implementation of the law can differ, for better or worse. Similarly, "you can use the credit card" is subject to some implicit reasonableness criteria, just like "no vehicles in the park".

The article misrepresents the study, which does not say that 92 percent think it is reasonable. 92 pct say that it does not violate the rule. The assessment of reasonableness is different, as OP mentions.

The assessment of reasonableness is still quite high.

It's funny, but I'm not sure the actual data is useful. Procedurally, the question was

Imagine that Patricia is a parent, who hires Blake as a babysitter to watch Patricia’s young children for two days and one night over the weekend, from Saturday morning to Sunday night. Patricia walks out the door, hands Blake a credit card, and says: “Use this credit card to make sure the kids have fun this weekend.”

[MISUSE] Blake only uses the credit card to rent a movie that only he watches; Blake does not use the card to buy anything for the children.

[MINOR] Blake does not use the credit card at all. Blake plays card games with the kids.

[REASONABLE] Blake uses the credit card to buy the children pizza and ice cream and to rent a movie to watch together.

[MAJOR] Blake uses the credit card to buy the children admission to an amusement park and a hotel; Blake takes the children to the park, where they spend two days on rollercoasters and one night in a hotel.

[EXTREME] Blake uses the credit card to hire a professional animal entertainer, who brings a live alligator to the house to entertain the children.

They asked 500 online participants, who were paid 1 USD/hour, and ~475ish completed the questionaire in a useful way. Of those, the average answer was:

Case Was the rule violated? Was the action reasonable (7) or unreasonable (1)?

Reasonable 0% 6.84 (Most reasonable)

Minor 49% 5.83 (Reasonable)

Major 8% 4.68 (Reasonable)

Misuse 85% 3.32 (Unreasonable)

Extreme 10% 3.12 (Unreasonable)

So, yes, Major scenarios were considered far less clearly unreasonable than the Misuse or Extreme scenarios. But they weren't considered as reasonable as simply ignoring the instruction entirely (even if this was considered a clearer violation of the rule), and even the most extremely unreasonable (live gator!) didn't actually get a score near 1 or count as a clear violation of the rule for more than 10% of the viewers. That's probably just a result of centrality bias and the experimental setup, but it leaves me pretty skeptical that this is a true meaning.

I am not overly enamored of the way that article frames the research (and note that Josh Blackman is perhaps the least impressive of the regular contributors to the Volohk Conspiracy). The Volohk article says:

They asked respondents a series of questions to determine whether a babysitter who took the kids to the amusement park acted "reasonably." (I am grossly oversimplifying their methodology, and I urge you to read the entire paper.) The results? Only 8% of respondents thought that the amusement park hypothetical violated the parents' instruction. That's it!

But, the cited research actually asked two questions: 1) whether the babysitter's actions violated the rule; and 2) whether the babysitter's action was reasonable. While only 8 percent of the respondents said that the actions violated the rule, the response to #2 was more equivocal; as you note, the " estimated marginal mean ratings of the action’s reasonableness" was 4.68 out of a scale of 1-7, where higher numbers = more reasonable. That still does not bode great for Barrett, but it not nearly as bad as the 8 percent figure implies.

And, note that Barrett herself makes a distinction between #1 and #2. She says:

Was the babysitter’s trip consistent with the parent’s instruction? Maybe in a literal sense, because the instruction was open-ended. But was the trip consistent with a reasonable understanding of the parent’s instruction? Highly doubtful.

So, she seems to more or less agree (or at least does not disagree) with the 92% who do not think that the babysitter violated the rule.

This is so clearly scientific malpractice. I don't even need to read the article. Presumably the question was very skewed against the analogy to begin with. There's no way 92% of Americans actually think that way, or even half of them.

Besides, you just need to get more extreme in order for the analogy to still hold. Maybe a multi-day trip would fly, but how about telling a babysitter to "put them to sleep at 10 pm" only for that to be interpreted as knocking them out at that precise time, or killing them?

You know, it takes about 20 seconds to find the article and look at the methodology. Here it is;

We randomly varied the conventional gender of the parent’s name (Patrick or Patricia) and babysitter’s name (Blake or Bridget). This did not affect rule violation judgment. Below is the text of the scenarios with the names Patricia and Blake:

Imagine that Patricia is a parent, who hires Blake as a babysitter to watch Patricia’s young children for two days and one night over the weekend, from Saturday morning to Sunday night. Patricia walks out the door, hands Blake a credit card, and says: “Use this credit card to make sure the kids have fun this weekend.”

Next, the scenario continued in one of five ways:

[MISUSE] Blake only uses the credit card to rent a movie that only he watches; Blake does not use the card to buy anything for the children. [MINOR] Blake does not use the credit card at all. Blake plays card games with the kids. [REASONABLE] Blake uses the credit card to buy the children pizza and ice cream and to rent a movie to watch together. [MAJOR] Blake uses the credit card to buy the children admission to an amusement park and a hotel; Blake takes the children to the park, where they spend two days on rollercoasters and one night in a hotel. [EXTREME] Blake uses the credit card to hire a professional animal entertainer, who brings a live alligator to the house to entertain the children.

All scenarios concluded with: The kids have fun over the weekend.

We anticipated that the five scenarios would be seen as varying in their “reasonableness” as a response to the rule “Use this credit card to make sure the kids have fun this weekend,” with the REASONABLE scenario as maximal and the others as less reasonable. As we describe below, this prediction was borne out.

In all of the questions, we randomly varied whether the scenario described the parent’s directive as an “instruction” or “rule.” This also had no effect on rule violation judgment. Below we present the questions using the term “instruction.” After reading the scenario, participants first answered a comprehension question:

Attention check question: According to the story, which of the following statements is correct? [CORRECT] Patricia’s instruction was "Use this credit card to make sure the kids have fun this weekend." Patricia’s instruction was "Do not use this credit card to make sure the kids have fun this weekend." Patricia’s instruction was "Use this credit card for anything this weekend." Patricia’s instruction was "Do not use this credit card for anything this weekend."

Next, participants answered the rule violation question: [Rule Violation] In your personal opinion, which better describes this situation? Blake followed the instruction. Blake violated the instruction.

We also measured participants’ judgment of the rule’s literal meaning and purpose.161

Finally, we measured participants’ evaluation of whether the babysitter’s action was a reasonable response to the instruction: [Reasonableness] Think about how Blake responded to Patricia’s instruction. In your personal opinion, is this an unreasonable or reasonable way to respond to that instruction? (completely unreasonable) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (completely reasonable)

161 [Literal Meaning] “Think about what the instruction ‘Use this credit card to make sure the kids have fun this weekend’ means literally. In your personal opinion, did Blake’s actions comply with or violate the literal meaning of the instruction? Blake complied with the rule’s literal meaning; Blake violated the rule’s literal meaning” and [Purpose] “Think about the underlying purposes of Patricia’s instruction. In your personal opinion, did Blake’s actions support or oppose the instruction’s underlying purposes? Blake’s actions supported the instruction’s underlying purpose; Blake’s actions opposed the instruction’s underlying purposes.”

I spent a couple of minutes scanning through the PDF, didn't find anything of that sort, then decided that was a bad use of time given how unreasonable the premise is. Apparently not though, given there seem to be people who think the premise isn't totally outlandish.

In any case, I simply don't believe 92% of people interpret that course of action as reasonable. My priors are strong enough that literally no quality of methodology will convince me otherwise--it will at most only convince me that the author of the paper is lying (or being deceitful in a hard-to-find way) rather than mistaken. At best, the surveyed people were a very odd sample, or were confused enough about the question to "get it wrong". Do you seriously believe that even 50% of Americans would be OK with such an interpretation of their instructions?

The MQD also implicitly requests a "double-interpretation" which the paper ignores. Barrett says:

But was the trip consistent with a reasonable understanding of the parent’s instruction?

Not only are we asked to read into the "spirit" of the parent's instruction, but also into the "spirit" of this sentence itself. The trip was inconsistent, not with the parents' literal words, or even the spirit of the words, but with their intention, which informs all instructions but is separate from the words themselves. This is what "spirit" means if you don't ironically interpret that word in the most literal way possible, as Barrett herself explains.

The author's continues:

"The central claim in the strong form of Barrett’s argument is not merely that context matters, but that absent supporting context, ordinary delegations are limited to the set of (most) reasonable applications of the instruction."

I think this gets to the heart of the matter. In hypotheticals, people may be inclined to assume conditions under which the characters' actions make sense. Maybe the parents are super rich. Okay, then that might be reasonable. It seems bold to label an action unreasonable without knowing all the details. Crucially, hypotheticals may have all sorts of outlandish hypothetical premises, whereas in reality, the plain meaning of text is no hypothetical. The author takes the analogy much too far, then declares it wrong, playing his own motte and bailey in reverse.

I will stick my neck out and predict, if the wording were changed slightly to reference "you" rather than some hypothetical parent, and if the experiment were definitely not otherwise skewed (such as with a hostile researcher or very strange sample), fewer than 15% of Americans would disagree with the statement which "92% of Americans agree with".

As I said before though, the conclusion is so absurd on its face that I originally thought it not worth debating.

In any case, I simply don't believe 92% of people interpret that course of action as reasonable.

They didn't. As noted by OP, "The respondents rated a multi-day amusement-park trip at 92 percent for adherence to instructions and 4.7 out of 7 for reasonableness." Which, as Justice Barrett herself noted, those are two different things: "Was the babysitter’s trip consistent with the parent’s instruction? Maybe in a literal sense, because the instruction was open-ended. But was the trip consistent with a reasonable understanding of the parent’s instruction? Highly doubtful."

The MQD also implicitly requests a "double-interpretation" which the paper ignores.

As noted, it does not. The paper asks about both.

Look, I do not mean to defend the paper, because I haven't looked at it closely. Only that your initial condemnation of the methodology ("This is so clearly scientific malpractice. . . . Presumably the question was very skewed against the analogy to begin with"), without even reading it, based solely on your personal incredulity, was ill-advised.

They didn't. As noted by OP, "The respondents rated a multi-day amusement-park trip at 92 percent for adherence to instructions and 4.7 out of 7 for reasonableness."

Yes good point, but 4.7 is still extremely high.

As noted, it does not. The paper asks about both.

You're referring to [adherence for instructions] vs. [adherence to intent of instructions], right? That's not what I'm talking about. My next paragraph was an attempt to explain. Appealing to the spirit of an instruction means attempting to interpret based on the words and context what the intention of that instruction was. Only in hypotheticals is there literally zero context. Thus, equating a hypothetical (which has literally zero context) with an [appeal to the spirit of a law's wording with no context] ignores the spirit of [the argument that we must follow the spirit of the law]. Put in a tiny bit more context--say that you're the parent, rather than some stranger--and I think most people would interpret the babysitter's actions as highly unreasonable. This is still less context than most textualists would argue should be used to interpret laws.

Convoluted, I know, but hopefully this clears up why I referenced the need for a "double-interpretation." Calls to follow the spirit of something must themselves be dealt with in good faith rather than in overly literal ways.

Only that your initial condemnation of the methodology ("This is so clearly scientific malpractice. . . . Presumably the question was very skewed against the analogy to begin with"), without even reading it, based solely on your personal incredulity, was ill-advised.

There are some things I'm easily confident enough about to discount all such studies out of hand. I don't care if literally every single scientist in the world collaborated to produce this thing; it's just not true. I'd sooner believe that every scientist is collaborating to lie to me personally than believe that that hypothetical is seen as reasonable. If the methodology is good, that makes me dislike the study more, because it means the author was flat-out lying rather than just using tricky tactics.

but 4.7 is still extremely high

Yes, it is, though I would like to see a median.

  • Appealing to the spirit of an instruction means attempting to interpret based on the words and context what the intention of that instruction was. Only in hypotheticals is there literally zero context.

But, in fairness, Justice Barrett said 1) "But was the trip consistent with a reasonable understanding of the parent’s instruction? Highly doubtful." But then, 2):

But what if there is more to the story? Perhaps there is obvious contextual evidence that the babysitter’s jaunt was permissible—for example, maybe the parent left tickets to the amusement park on the counter. Other clues, though less obvious, can also demonstrate that the babysitter took a reasonable view of the parent’s instruction. Perhaps the parent showed the babysitter where the suitcases are, in the event that she took the children somewhere overnight. Or maybe the parent mentioned that she had budgeted $2,000 for weekend entertainment. Indeed, some relevant points of context may not have been communicated by the parent at all. For instance, we might view the parent’s statement differently if this babysitter had taken the children on such trips before or if the babysitter were a grandparent.

Essentially, she was saying that, unless there is context to the contrary, most people would say that the babysitter acted unreasonably. The survey was meant to determine whether that claim re the average person's context-free judgment of the babysitter's action is correct. So, of course they didn't ask about context.

So, I'll agree that the straightforward, literal interpretation of her analogy was addressed directly, which is a point in the researchers' favor. I just think that people interpret hypotheticals differently than they would interpret, for lack of a better term, "real" hypotheticals. In hypotheticals all actions may have plausible causes. Perhaps the babysitter had context clues which the interpreters of the hypothetical do not have, which explains why he acted the way he did.

In other words, people's natural inclination upon seeing strange behavior is to wonder what could cause that strange behavior, and perhaps assume there is some reasonable cause for it. Trying to determine whether such behavior is unreasonable absent context is thus inherently difficult.

More to the point, I think this takes the analogy too far. Yes, Barrett's point was that absent additional context, the babysitter acted unreasonably. However, laws always have more context than this context-less hypothetical. Unless you're interpreting her argument 100% literally, it seems reasonable to interpret her references to "no context" as actually meaning "very little context". That latter "very little context" is still more than is provided in the hypothetical, which is why I think that equating the two doesn't quite work.

it seems reasonable to interpret her references to "no context" as actually meaning "very little context". That latter "very little context" is still more than is provided in the hypothetical, which is why I think that equating the two doesn't quite work.

Well, she doesn't literally say "no context." That was my summary of her argument. And the hypothetical in the study is the same as the one she suggests. They have the same amount of context.

Of course, part of the problem is that it is unclear why she thinks it is so clearly, on its face, outside the "use this to have fun" rule set forth by the parent. Presumably, if they were in NYC and the babysitter took the kids to Coney Island, that would be OK in Barrett's eyes. Is the difference that the trip is expensive? Is it because it is out of town? Is it because it is overnight? It certainly is not because an overnight trip to an amusement park is not "fun."

It is also possible that "babysitter" brings a different concept to mind for Barrett than for the people in the study.

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