Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
No bio...
User ID: 214
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
Go figure. It's very noticeable for a lot of properties, like League of Legends, but I always wondered whether it was an unspoken thing or explicit rule in these companies to always be showing certain types front and center. I'm in a different field, but I have received explicit instruction in the past to request diversity from the graphics team when I have ad creatives made.
I suspect this is why you aren't allowed to change the race or sex of your character in Battlefield One. You're gonna have to swallow your pride and accept playing as a black woman fighting for Germany in WW1.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
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.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
Thoroughly recommend Matt. He used to post on the old site too. His New Epidemic, Enron, Opium War, and Aztec posts are some of my favorites.
LOTR is the exceedingly rare case where I prefer the movie adaptation over the book. I found the Hobbit and Fellowship books enjoyable, but the Frodo sections of Two Towers and ROTK were... difficult to push through. Movie Two Towers made the right decision to interweave Aragorn's story with Frodo's, instead of hitting you with it all in one uninterrupted block.
This is the main thrust of it from Matt Taibbi from his statement to congress this month. I don't know why they released the leaks as tweets; it's impossible to find specific receipts for these statements when they're broken up between 20 threads over several accounts...
We saw the first hints in communications between Twitter executives before the 2020 election, where we read things like:
Hi team, can we get your opinion on this? This was flagged by DHS:
Or:
Please see attached report from the FBI for potential misinformation.
This would be attached to excel spreadsheet with a long list of names, whose accounts were often suspended shortly after.
We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation “requests” from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same, including Stanford’s Election Integrity Project, Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and others, many taxpayer-funded.
A focus of this fast-growing network is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.” The latter term is just a euphemism for “true but inconvenient.”
Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for “deamplification” or de-platforming, but to firms like PayPal, digital advertisers like Xandr, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, algorithmic judge.
Another troubling aspect is the role of the press, which should be the people’s last line of defense.
But instead of investigating these groups, journalists partnered with them. If Twitter declined to remove an account right away, government agencies and NGOs would call reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, who in turn would call Twitter demanding to know why action had not been taken.
By implied threat of regulation I mean the unsaid thing that would be on these companies' minds when they received a communication like this — what will they do to us if we refuse to comply? These requests weren't based off a legitimate court order, just the government saying "We'd really like it if you stopped this person from saying things we don't like." Right now they're doing the most they think they can get away with, ReportMaxxing and informal requests, so if given increased jurisdiction over content we have good reason to suspect what they'd immediately start doing with it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
I don't think the Taliban were exempt from bans in the pre-Musk era. There was a fairly popular account that sprung up in 2021 right after the pullout that was supposedly them, but it got nuked after about a month. By now most, though not all, of the conservative accounts banned under the old regime have been let back on. I think Signals is expressing uncertainty whether the Taliban PR account is genuinely them. I'm leaning towards thinking it's real due to the post informing people that Lord Miles is missing. But it's hard to tell anything these days honestly.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
There are a lot of barriers to free competition that people aren't aware about. One of them is that payment networks, which are required to participate in the modern economy, are in the business of blacklisting people and businesses for opaque and often unappealable reasons. This article, Section 230 isn't the problem, Payment Networks are goes into some detail on this. If your ability to process credit card transactions can be taken away for not playing nice, this is a significant deterrent to sticking your neck out against the prevailing culture.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
I can’t imagine showering less than 40 times a year. Aella is weird and often offputting, but is obviously someone who understands physical presentation. I suppose I believe her when she says she doesn’t smell, but I’m interested how she manages that.
Hygiene is a fun subject. Physical activity and clothing are obviously important, but dirt and genetics seem to matter a lot to your personal experience with it. I have a friend who smelled of mold and BO for years and didn’t seem to understand despite me hinting/outright telling him for the longest time. He almost certainly showered more than Aella but still smelled awful. He eventually had an embarrassing encounter where his coworkers told him frankly how bad he smelled.
I like showers in general; they’re pleasant and being freshly washed helps me feel presentable and confident when I go out. I shower once a day, and feel shlubby if I leave the house without washing up beforehand. That’s mostly psychological, but I get terrible bedhead and it’s obvious if I don’t get it wet. I wash my hair with water every day but only shampoo once a week or so.
3 a day seems high, but I would probably do that many days if drying out my skin and hair wasn’t a concern. Season and exercise will make the average number very. How often do you shampoo and moisturize?
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
I'd love to see nuclear implemented at all, so if we have to put them out at sea then so be it. I'm a layman when it comes to this, but I guess there's the risk of contamination going directly into the sea if things go wrong. That said, we've detonated nuclear bombs over the oceans in testing before so it's probably not an existential problem, and we still run the risk of ocean contamination with traditional power sources via oil spills.
I don't think this will change the minds of many who aren't on board with nuclear already. Most of them oppose it on concerns of safety or the supposed permanence of the waste. I suspect there is a large group against nuclear because it can address power sustainability without fundamentally restructuring our economic and social system, but this is getting close to CW thread territory so I don't want to get into that.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
I do a combo of Roth IRA + the lazy portfolio 3-way split. I'm avoiding looking at the numbers as of late so as not to stress out since they're investments for the very long term. I don't really do individual stocks or options since I don't value my financial predictive ability that highly. I recently broke that rule and tried crypto trading and wound up with universal losses, though fortunately I only used a relatively small amount of play money to buy in. This has only reinforced my personal rule to stick to long-term stuff and not try to beat the market.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
Definitely a lot of Genshin in the DNA of the art. I’ll probably get used to it thought
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
That makes sense to me. Last year I saw a Skyrim modding tool that let modders synthesize new voice lines from an AI that listened to and mimicked the lines of the in-game voice actors. It was rough but surprisingly solid, especially if you put in the time to chop up the lines by hand to make them flow better. I figured that if modders could do it (for free) then the actual industry must have something like that cooking.
I'm convinced that the HODL meme is a sociopathic way for current bagholders to get others to raise the price of their investment to the ideal cash out point. Many of the people who bought at the bottom made out with lifechanging money.
A lot of them though, yeah. They're just idiots. I begged my friend to sell his Gamestop stocks at his buy-in price when the stock rallied back up to it, but he held on for the MOASS and is now in the red. I don't know what can be done to protect those types, short of just not allowing them to spend their money on stupid things, which opens up a new host of (worse) issues. As the adage goes, "a fool and his money are soon parted."
EDIT: I may be undervaluing the clout you get in these communities for HODLing and hanging on well past when you should have sold. For some people, the money may not even matter and it’s more about the clout and fun of fucking around with like minded men with a normally serious topic like investing. Again, not my thing, but for some that may be worth it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
I've been playing Rimworld, which feels appropriate given the circumstances. I did a run last year with Royatly installed, which was nice but felt more like a well-polished mod. This time I have Ideology installed, which makes the game feel complete, to put it simply. Being able to modify how colonists think with a dynamic ideology you can convert others to is both fun and feels true to what the game is trying to be. It's worth playing again with it installed if you've done one run but haven't been back to it.
I'm also running more mods than I've done before, at least on Rimworld. I'm quite into modding Bethesda games and have made a few simple mods for myself in Skyrim, and while that process has gotten more user-friendly over time, if you really want to get into it you're going to have to do a lot of reading and be prepared to get hands on with it. Rimworld's mod support is... shockingly good. Compatibility is rarely an issue as long as the mod maker has updated to the latest version of the game. It remembers your mod order for each save and will automatically regenerate it for you if it detects a difference. It's so nice.
Some of the standout ones are the Rimworld of Magic, Vanilla Expanded, Outposts, and Rim War. I did a tribal start which kneecaps your tech growth and is much tougher overall than a drop run. Combined with ideology it really feels like you're some group of tribals that has broken off and is doing its own weird thing. Rimworld of Magic interacts with Ideology so my tribe venerates magic and has a priestess that can awaken the spark of magic in colonists to let them eventually become one of the (overpowered) magic classes the mod adds. Extremely cool. I've teched to electricity but I've kept the colony electricity-free, letting magic serve our needs as we move through the midgame.
Outposts and Rim War gives you a dynamic, warring world to play around in and raid. One of my pawns has a spell that lets him teleport in our attack squad of powerful gun-wielding mages to annihilate rival resource outposts and colonies, forgoing the need to caravan over there. The magic is definitely OP but it feels like our small group's unique advantage that lets us punch above our weight despite the low numbers and lack of electric tech.
Still not near the victory condition yet. I might eventually get electricity, but we'll have to see. I may try to wipe out my rival tribe instead. Rimworld is proving to be one of my favorite games of all time at this rate.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
2yr ago
I view it as more akin to the printing press, game development engines, digital art tools like photoshop — something that will increase creative output, not decrease it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
3mo ago
Stranded in Fantasy is one of my comfort reads. It's a quasi-gametale written on /tg/ about a group of ordinary humans who get portaled into a fantasy world. It's not a power fantasy like most isekai-type stories; the characters have nothing to start out with and must struggle to survive. It's extremely comfy and the characters, while flat, are fun and care about eachother.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
10mo ago
I’ve emulated Fire Emblem games from the SNES, GBA, and GameCube on PC and it was very smooth in all cases. You get access to save states if you’re interested in that, so it’s arguably a better experience. I recommend using a gamepad with a decent d-pad if you’re going to play the older games though, as it’s ergonomically preferable to doing it on your keyboard.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
Fantastic work, though the sections on how Gerard manipulates procedural outcomes on Wikipedia to turn supposedly neutral, fact-based articles into hit pieces fills me with dread. This same kind of malicious citogenesis was used in the Kiwi Farms deplatforming saga back in 2022/2023 to turn the Wikipedia narrative on them into a one-sided hit piece, with journalists citing conjecture and laundering it into a Reliable Source. I assume anything controversial on Wikipedia is written this way now, but I don't think the average person does.
You're on a roll with this niche you're carving out for yourself. I'm excited to read about the next bizarre rabbit hole you decide to post about in 4-6 months.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
2015 is Current Year, so we're in Current Year + 9 at the moment
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I don’t believe it’s been covered here, at least not recently. I’d certainly be interested in hearing about it.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
Very true. I didn't prioritize Kawakami and even skipped Chihaya in my first run because I was so peeved about getting scammed by her, and this time around knowing who to prioritize made things go much more smoothly for me. Jose and Ryuji's reworked instakill make it trivial to farm money and XP. I'm not complaining too much as I like having the money to fuck around with Persona crafting, but I wish there was a way to only get the money so I wasn't overleveling the content so much.
The scenes introducing the new characters could be awkward, but I can accept why they had to be inserted in like that. Maruki was handled much better than Yoshizawa so far, and I agree with you that her scene in the casino was goofy and makes zero sense. For me, all of the followup phone conversations tacked on to every confidant or how the Phantom Thieves start a new groupchat every day to gush about how evil their current target is wore very thin.
Makoto was one of my favorites originally, but she really gets on my nerves now. She becomes the main character once she joins, and I wish the game didn't feel obliged to pretend that Joker is the leader since she it's so clear that she is. The way the Phantom Thieves are so thoughtlessly cruel to Mishima rubs me the wrong way too, since the narrative never acknowledges how hypocritical it makes them look. I still love Haru, Ryuji, Yusuke, Akechi, and my favorites from the first time around though.
I have high hopes for the new semester. I was spoiled ahead of time on the direction it takes and it seems quite interesting. I did follow a guide to make sure I wasn't missing any of the triggers for it, though.
Haha, I fused Izanagi and Kaguya in the early game before I realized how busted all of the DLC personas were and dropped them. It's a shame, because they have cool designs, but it feels like cheating to use them for combat or itemization. If they were a bit weaker it'd feel better to use.
My main squad is Jack Frost, Pale Rider, Titania, Seth, Bugs, and Alice. I'll say that having the means to keep personas you like relevant past the dungeon you fuse them is a great mechanic. Theorycrafting their movesets to cover every situation and going through the steps to get the builds online scratches a certain itch. I'm thinking of adding Metatron or training up Kaguya now that her ability isn't gamebreaking, but they won't be necessary to finish.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I'll have to see how Royal handles the original endgame content post-Shido to compare. I don't remember the original endgame being that bad, but the ideas in it definitely grabbed me so I could have overlooked any pacing flaws it had.
It's all the stuff Royal added to the original game that makes the pacing suffer for me. Like those pointless followup phone calls every confidant has where they repeat the ideas you just saw two minutes ago. The extra scenes for Kasumi, Akechi, and Maruki feel a bit out of place, but I like those characters enough that I don't mind too much.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
Try running Stable Diffusion. It's open source and you can find a specifically-trained model for whatever you want. If you can't run it locally, you can find a million services online that can do it for you. You don't need to deal with content restrictions or it adding diversity to all of your prompts. I use a site called NovelAI, which runs its own version of SD trained off of an anime booru. They recently put out a new version of the image gen and it's really good. The progress made since just the last year is astounding.
We could have easily been in the timeline where the big three image diffusion models (Dall E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney) all kept it locked down, but since one of them broke ranks and made it open source, it's opened up a world of potential for everyone to use image generation how they want.
Seeing as so much of the AI Safety field turned out to be, in practice, simply ensuring the AI Overlord agrees with progressive dogma, I'd prefer to just let it rip at this point. I'll throw in with the /acc types and take my chances with Clippy over having these ideas be enshrined in the AI that will mold the thoughts and lives of future generations.
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