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SubstantialFrivolity

I'm not even supposed to be here today

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joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
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SubstantialFrivolity


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
I'm not even supposed to be here today

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 22:41:30 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would say that if there is no objective measure of quality, it does necessarily follow that quality is subjective. That's how the definitions of the words work, really.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"completely subjective" is redundant. A thing is either objective or subjective. There's no such thing as "partially objective", that makes it subjective.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One example that comes to mind is people who expect the president to be Christian as some kind of qualification. At one point, maybe that meant something about a man's character if he was running for president and said he was a Christian. But these days, it means nothing except to devalue the label of "Christian".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why would it imply that objectivity doesn't exist?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it was a great system even on Reddit, tbh. I definitely would be in support of ditching the megathread here. However, Zorba mentioned (in another thread) that he wants to keep things the same for now, as moving off-site is already quite a shakeup.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How does one even cheat at chess? I'm not following that part. Let's say if one player somehow knew the other player was planning to employ a certain strategy in advance. Is it not the point of chess to see when your opponent has countered your strategy and pick a different one? I don't see how that would be considered cheating any more than being at the table and realizing "ah, he's using the x maneuver, so I will counter with y".


Other than that angle, which doesn't really strike me as cheating, I can't think of any possible way to cheat. In a casual game you could move your opponent's pieces while he wasn't looking, but I'm guessing in a tournament that isn't going to be possible. Same for making illegal moves that benefit you, of course. And there's no hidden info to uncover in chess, nor randomness to stack in your favor.


So I guess I'm just confused on how this guy is supposed to have cheated, as the game of chess seems pretty damn cheat proof to me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I disagree with your take on why freedom of speech is important. I was taught, and I wholeheartedly believe, that it's important because people are fundamentally untrustworthy. When you give them the power to censor speech, it may well start out as a righteous thing. But ere long that power will be misused (by them or by their successors) to not only censor speech that is genuinely bad, but simply speech that the people in power don't like.


This is inevitable. It will happen when you allow any kind of censorship. The only defense, the only way to prevent it, is to not allow censorship in the first place. Human nature means that even the most benign censorship will ultimately turn ugly, so you have to cut it off before it starts.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 09, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite post on the Citadel.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 09, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The a-d registers, to the best of my knowledge, are named generic because it's in contrast to the other registers with very specific functions. For example, sp and ip aren't something you'd ever store data in just for funsies, so ax is very generic by comparison (even if it does have some special uses for certain instructions).


I imagine that the special uses come from the need to reduce binary size back in the day. If you needed to specify "mul rax, rcx" instead of just "mul rcx" that's extra encoding which would add up over time. Nowadays not such a big deal, but at the time the instruction set was designed it would've been quite a big deal.


For what it's worth, in long mode you get 8 extra generic registers (r8-r15), and those really are generic if the OG generic registers aren't generic enough for your taste. 😉


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 11, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Baseball is a weird sport for me. It's painfully boring to watch on TV, I'd rather do almost anything else. But going to a baseball game in person? I'm there. It's just so much more fun to watch a game in person than on TV. It's weird cause it's still the same sport, but the atmosphere is different somehow.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, to add to this, it's not like you have to make an HBD argument. There are many reasons why an organization (or even an entire field) might not attract black people, and not all of those reasons are necessarily "they're inherently less capable" or "the organization/field is biased". Point out some of those reasons, and say you think that the burden of proof is on the one who claims that it must be bias rather than any other possible reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 11, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For me it's baseball in particular. The other sports I've seen in person are hockey and football, and those I found to be about the same enjoyment as on TV. Even in person I still don't enjoy hockey, and in person I don't enjoy football any more than on TV. But baseball just hits different, IDK why.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 11, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I often take my wife out "for Valentines Day" on a day that is not actually Feb 14, since the restaurants are less crowded




This is the way. I do the exact same thing, it's not generally worth it to go out on Feb 14.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Having kids, especially infants and toddlers, is distinctly type II fun: "miserable while it's happening, but fun in retrospect."




I would call that what it is: not fun. You can have fond memories of things that aren't fun, but that doesn't make those things fun.


I think your food analogy kind of undermines your thesis as well. We all understand that we should eat vegetables and not junk food, but very few people are able to say they do so because they enjoy vegetables more. The reality is: vegetables suck, you just have to eat them. So that isn't exactly doing a great job of supporting the idea that having kids is fun.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's definitely not true. There are in fact people who would rather watch streamers than have real friends, or jerk off to an onlyfans girl instead of having a girlfriend. I think those people are profoundly unhealthy and wrong, but they exist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
TBH, saying "it's as good as the Hobbit movies" is a pretty damning criticism imo. Those movies were just bad. LOTR wasn't a great adaptation of Tolkien, but they were at least great movies. The Hobbit movies were a bad adaptation and they were bad movies in their own right.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I've barely read LOTR but unless whiteness was a critical part of the story it seems fine to change skin color. It's a movie about, like, whole different species of humanoids right? Different skin colors should be well within bounds?




For me at least there are two reasons why this sort of thing bothers me.


    

  1. 

    If a character is described a certain way in the book, they should be cast that way. Period. It doesn't matter if it's important to the story, what matters is that is the way the source material was written and that should be respected.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Even if I didn't have a problem with it otherwise (which I do, like I said), I still don't like it when creative decisions are made for ideological reasons. If someone wants to cast a minority actor who happens to be the best actor for the role, that's one thing. But like @haroldbkny I have zero belief at this point that that's what they are doing. I know damn well that these casting decisions are made with the skin color of the actors in mind as the first and foremost thing, and everything else is just a fig leaf justification. And just as I would be angry at "we can't have all these black people, cast some white folks" in a production, I am also angry at "we can't have all these white people, cast some black folks".
    

    3. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting. I admit, I didn't watch the extended editions. After seeing the theatrical versions, I thought that they already were bloated with too much filler (a consequence of stretching a short book into a trilogy). So the last thing I wanted was to have versions that were even longer. Perhaps I was in error on that score.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Alternate universe Tolkien writing today where Birmingham has significant Pakistani and Caribbean populations would plausibly have written a very different book.




Very possibly. But that isn't for an adaptation to do. An adaptation is not supposed to update the work for a modern era, it's supposed to stick to the original. If the writers on this show want to do their own thing, great! But then don't claim you're doing Tolkien. Either respect what the man actually wrote, or don't use his brand to prop up your original work.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for September 14, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The one guy I know that doesn't want to have kids doesn't because of mental health issues in his family that he doesn't want to propagate




Man, that's a big mood. I spent a long time being tortured by that very question. My parents have mental health issues, I have mental health issues, so can I really justify having a child who will almost certainly inherit those problems? It literally kept me up at night.


Thankfully the question got answered for me. My wife wound up having to get a hysterectomy, so we're not having biological kids (cause we sure as hell can't afford surrogacy).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the point is that someone who is truly addicted to porn isn't just rubbing one out. They are compulsively watching porn, not just having a quick orgasm and moving on with life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think that's it. I've known plenty of libertarians, and most played well with others just fine. I think the actual problem is that people simply don't like to leave others alone. It really bothers people when someone isn't acting right, and they really want to make sure that person acts right. It's simply not human nature to be libertarian.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A lot of DMs expect players to actually come up with a motivational speech (or whatever) for their character to say, rather than rolling a die. But I think that's unreasonable. I don't ask the fighter to tell me in detail what sword form he uses to counter the enemy's defenses. I also don't ask the CHA character to actually have a silver tongue.


So yeah, I don't personally think there's a problem with abstracting mental stats behind die rolls. You use the same abstraction as for everything else, and don't impose harsh "your character can't do anything you can't" rules on only one aspect of the game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Should the player whose bard has 22 Charisma have to roleplay making a speech to convince the king to spare you or is their nigh supernatural charisma and a single die role the way to go?




I mean, the latter mechanic works for everything else in the game. I don't really understand why people want to ditch the game mechanics for this scenario, but are ok with players rolling a die instead of getting out blunted swords to fight the battles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Shadowrun also has traits and statline differences for each of the different races you can play as, even as recently as 5th Edition (dunno about 6th), but I've never heard anyone complain about that.




Unfortunately people do complain about this. I've witnessed more than one thread on /r/shadowrun where people debate whether it's racist to have orks and trolls get a penalty to mental stats (because supposedly, those races are supposed to be a stand-in for black people).. It's Reddit, so perhaps to be expected given the general demographics of the site. But I think the only reason more pressure hasn't been brought to bear on Shadowrun is its relative obscurity compared to D&D.