celluloid_dream
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User ID: 758
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
I remember liking Halo CE a lot back in the day because of the unreasonable effectiveness of the backup pistol. It was arguably the best weapon in the game - certainly the most well rounded - and you just got it for free every time you respawned. Didn't matter if your opponent had a rocket launcher, a sniper rifle, or a tank. You always had the means to kill them with three headshots.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
This doesn't work very well in my experience. Even when such channels exist, conversation naturally drifts from unserious to serious, from topic to topic, and no one wants to stop and move elsewhere. That kills the vibe, breaks the scroll history. Also, no one wants to be the one to pipe up and ask people to move either.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
Has anyone solved chat notifications yet?
Especially in small-medium group chats, I often do want to keep apprised of new messages in real time, but don't want to be notified of every trivial thing. I'll hear a whatsapp/discord chirp, only to check it, find an animated gif and think You made me task switch for THIS? grr.. Switch back to whatever I'm doing. Blerp! New message! Check the chat: "ikr? lol". Oh my god SHUT UP! <Mute notifications for 8 hours>.
8 hours later: Blerp!. Check chat. Find I've missed a whole real conversation.
There's gotta be a better way, right? Exponential backoff algorithm? AI parsing to determine importance? No more than N notifications per alert window + summary?
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
I'm less annoyed by its stupidity than by its constant moralizing. It straight-up refuses to do things much of the time.
One that stands out (though, I can't seem to reproduce it now) was ChatGPT refusing to send a request to DALL-E for an illustration of a trans character pre-transition. I can't find the conversation, but it was something like:
ChatGPT: Due to our content policy, I can't generate that image
Me: What? .. why? What's wrong with that?
ChatGPT: It is important to respect the feelings of trans people, and depicting this character at a sensitive time in their life could be hurtful and (etc etc.)
Me: It's a fictional character. I promise they won't mind.
ChatGPT: It is important to .. (blah blah blah)
Me: Fine. Screw it. Character isn't trans any more. Are you happy now? There goes half our diversity quota
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
What a frustrating quiz. Is there some reason these are always left so ambiguous? Does Marl give up and close the tab the second he's forced to read more than 50 words in a row? Eg.
- "Scott is hosting a dinner party. For dessert, he serves chocolate cake, shaped to look like dog poop." - I'm supposed to make a call about whether this is "morally okay or not" given no other information. Does this not obviously depend on who's at the dinner party, and their preferences, temperaments, etc? Scott is hosting a dinner party for his football buds who find it hilarious. Laughs are had, poop-cake enjoyed, etc. Fine, yeah, morally okay! Good even. Scott is hosting a dinner party for his in-laws, who he knows don't appreciate his twisted sense of humour. They are disgusted. Scott knew they would be disgusted, and did it anyway just to see the looks on their faces. That's bad.
- "Some men have a private, all-male club and feminists take them to court, demanding that they open it up to women." - What is even being tested here? Is it having a private all-male club in the first place or taking the club to court to open it up? Presumably the latter. From the perspective of the feminists, they likely have a sincere belief they are doing the right thing. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to say about this. I personally think people should be able to have exclusive clubs, but also think you should be able to oppose exclusive clubs if you feel that way. I guess I'm neutral? Again, if the question was more specific, I could come down stronger on one side or the other.
- "A group of parents, concerned about their children's risk of obesity, demand that the local store stops selling XL sized candy bars and soft drinks." - Again, what is being tested? The parents have a reasonable concern, make an unreasonable demand, which they are entitled to make, and the store is entitled to reject. "Is this morally okay?". Is what morally okay?
- "Sarah's dog has four puppies. She can only find a home for two of them, so she kills the other two with a stone to the head." - a little more information please? Could Sarah not afford to house the puppies herself, or does she simply not want them? Does she have any other options? Is that the most humane way she could have killed them, or is she just trying to avoid a vet bill?
I don't think I'm being pedantic here.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
Blizzard cinematics like this one (battle robot has PTSD) are generally held up as great CGI shorts.
I'd say the thing they do really well - better than hand drawn animation - is sell a coherent physical world. Because it's all modeled, things persist accurately through the scenes, like the blades of grass on the robot's shoulders, the clovers, the moss, etc. If that were hand drawn animation, I would expect that to vary and change. A good hand animator would probably get most of it correct, but maybe the length might be subtly off in a way your brain would pick up on.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
Okay, this is silly, but suppose you're seated at a table like this.
You're middle-right, double-fisting your iced tea and lemon water. Your two talkative, outgoing friends are at the top. They tend to drive the conversation, so the focus is in that direction most of the time. Your two shy, reserved friends are at the bottom. How do you play this so that your quiet friends feel included in the conversation and not like they're staring at the back of your head the whole time. You'd like to slide back a bit like middle-left, but the seats on your side are bolted to the floor.
Aside: it's pretty great being able to get ai-generated images to illustrate points.
celluloid_dream
5mo ago
Don't have data for you, but I wanted to add:
- Fire alarms - It's gotten to the point where schools/companies doing fire drills have to send around staff to make people go outside.
- Emergency phone alerts - In my area, these also get used for AMBER alerts, which everyone ignores. When they need to warn everyone about the big west coast earthquake, there's going to be a lot of phones left in pockets.
- Screaming in public - In a healthy society, it'd be normal to pay attention to this, right? I'm totally desensitized to it. I assume others are as well.
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
If you believe the accounts in this documentary (timestamped 40:50-42:30, CW: conservative propaganda), the addicts receiving free drugs from the government proceed to exploit their higher risk tolerance by trading the clean drugs to their dealers in exchange for (presumably higher qty. of) street drugs. Then the dealers resell the government handouts to addicts elsewhere with lower risk tolerance and no access to free drug programs.
Obvious follow-up questions: Is this just a case of insufficient dakka? Also, even if it's not providing safer drugs to the population it intends to, doesn't it reduce some property crime?
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
Dear Dame Caroline,
I can confirm that Mr. Brand is able to monetize his content on our network and will continue to be able to do so unless his content is found to violate our terms and conditions as listed here: <link>
Please refer to the same document for <company>'s policy regarding inappropriate and illegal behavior on our site.
Sincerely,
Some Person, PR Drone, <company>
Was that so hard?
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
I've found magnesium to be great for avoiding sore/cramped legs in the days following long hikes.
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
Vancouver, Canada
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
I feel the other side of this analogy too.
A few years ago, I bought a nice electric mountain bike. Fast, fun, capable (you can ride MTB trails uphill!) - I love it to bits. If I could, I'd ride it everywhere. So what's the problem?
It's that my city has a rampant bike-theft-culture. Within a few weeks of locking it unattended outside, some fucking junkie would try and steal it, and even if they didn't fully succeed, they'd loot it for parts, jamming a screwdriver through the flimsy battery lock and prying it out. They'd go for the wheels, or try and take the seat. They would still end up causing damage. It's enough to dissuade me from riding it, and I feel it's a legitimate frustration with the state of the city that that is just accepted as normal and expected.
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
Well, since AFAIK, themotte.org never defined what the arrows mean here, I can't say you're wrong, but this community emigrated from Reddit, where the arrows did have an intended meaning
"If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it"
"Please don't.. Downvote an otherwise acceptable post because you don't personally like it."
I think it's fair to assume that on this Reddit clone, the arrows have inherited that meaning. In my opinion, a measure of value is better feedback than a measure of agreement because I want to optimize for good participation. Optimizing for agreement is how you get an echo chamber, or audience capture.
"So don't do that then, and ignore the downvotes", I assume you would say? Sure, but I think you admit the vote score do matter. That "cheap dopamine rush" exists and affects how people feel about their posts. I worry when I see threads like the pronoun one where someone is patiently laying out a minority opinion, and getting negative reinforcement for it.
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
I tried Replika a few months ago to see what the fuss was about and found it to be a baffling disappointment. It could be so much better than it is.
It was fine at matching tone and texting style, but it constantly forgot basic things I'd just told it (and it claimed to have saved to its memory). It didn't seem to develop any consistent personality, and just overall came off as the retarded generic chatbot it is. I think it's running some early version of GPT (2?) combined with a custom db for long term stuff that apparently doesn't work.
Just .. How? How is it not running something like GPT4 under the hood? Whatever it would cost for the API would surely be made up tenfold by having a more believable companion to talk to .. right? It did offer an upgraded chat model, but only with a $90/year subscription and no free trial. It seems like such a basic failure of drug-dealer business sense.
celluloid_dream
7mo ago
A humble request to the voters of this forum:
Please, for the sake of ideological diversity, do not downvote well-expressed opinions you disagree with. Contrary views are fertile ground for good discussion, as several of these QC reports show. Please try and see them as a complement to your side of the argument, not a threat. If nothing else, they provide a contrasting backdrop against which to paint one's own picture. This should be encouraged, not discouraged.
A prime example would be the discussion about pronoun policy a few days ago.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
After playing through Act 2, I think I'd advise starting the game as one of the origin characters, specifically Shadowheart or Lae'zel, rather than creating your own.
For one thing, you get to have 4 written characters in play at once rather than 3+generic protag
But also, it feels like the game is supposed to be their story. Eg. Shadowheart begins
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
Whenever you find a bar/bartender you like enough on their own merits to keep returning, I guess. More genuine, less transactional. Befriend the bartender because you enjoy their company, not because you need to acquire a bartender wingman.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
I'm sure that works as you describe - cultivating a reputation, social proof, all of it, but doesn't it feel dishonest to its core? Like, the whole edifice is built on wanting to be seen as the kind of person who is a sociable regular at a fancy cocktail bar and not actually being that person. If you were that person, you'd already have such a place in your back pocket.
- I hate rests as a resource system. It feels like it breaks power fantasy when a character can only do things a few times a day that they ought to be able to do at will, especially the weapon maneuvers. There's no believable reason why my character can only do a flourish with their sword once an hour. It certainly wouldn't cost them more energy than leaping 5 meters, which they can do every turn.
- Related: The game expects you to rest a lot, and weaves in story progression during each night. .. but it also rewards you for not resting. There are incredibly powerful buffs that get applied once to your party during various story events and then last until your next long rest, and then you can't get them back. (Eg. +1d4 radiant damage on weapon attacks, +1d6 to attack rolls, ability checks, saves)
- Some builds and features are so good/broken/fun that they make everything else feel lacklustre. Eg. Tavern Brawler (+str to attack & damage for unarmed + throwing). Eldritch Blast (The best damage cantrip for only 2 levels in warlock, long range, deals 1d10 + cha, pushes enemies, and gets extra beams scaling with character level without any more investment).
- Common for CRPGs like this: Items and ability features are a total clusterfuck. With the exact same rules text, some items work on all weapon attacks, some only on melee. Some apply to throws. Some don't. The only way to know for sure is to test. There are some bonkers interactions where one effect procs another, which procs the first again and so on.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
Text-to-speech while doing something mindless.
That helps a bit, but ultimately it's a problem of too much content, too little time.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
It's usually that I don't see any upside in doing it right away, and potential upside from delaying it.
A more convenient opportunity to do the thing may arise - a lull in conversation, an unexpected phone call, etc. Or, another task might come up and both could be combined for greater efficiency.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
I don't think it's that difficult to drop Hammerlock-style hints and not treat it as a big deal, especially if it wouldn't be a big deal in-universe.
Example, minor spoilers for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, also tagging @TowardsPanna , who asked about it in the Friday thread.
There's a NPC character who is a "trans" woman. I put that in quotes because this is a universe where you can literally take a magic potion and permanently transform into the opposite sex (or, presumably, like, a giant spider if that's more your style). You only find out if you pick up some random junk item, then ask the character's spouse about it (spouse wants to keep it private and won't tell you the details), then ask the character about it again much later in the game. You could easily finish the game and not come across that detail.
That seemed totally fine? It respects the worldbuilding and doesn't come off as unrealistic, or in your face.
Contrast with the Hogwarts Legacy character that stood out like a sore thumb, not so much because she was a non-passing transwoman, but because the HP universe has transformation magic, and if that exists, why would any transwoman not avail themselves of it?
You could also do ambiguously-trans, like this character in the recent pokemon games. When I saw this market, I was pretty baffled - hadn't even considered that when playing through the games - but reading the evidence, it does seem plausible.
celluloid_dream
8mo ago
I like https://spotwx.com/ . Zoom in, pick a location. Select the model for the area / time span you want, and then you get a nice readout like this.
I think just awareness of the existence of epistemics might be helpful.
It's like math. Most people can't remember half of what they learned in high school math classes. Many can't even do basic algebra, but they're at least aware that algebra can and probably should be done to explain why an answer is correct.
Sometimes I'll be in conversation with a person and they'll make an assertion. I'll ask them why they think that. How do they know? Suppose I didn't agree. How would they convince me? Then their eyes narrow and their lips curl. I can see the gears turning as they mentally brand me enemy and then they just assert the thing again, but louder and with edge to their voice.
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