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self_made_human

amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi

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joined 2022 September 05 05:31:00 UTC

I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.

At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!

Friends:

A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.


				
User ID: 454


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
self_made_human


								

								

								
								
									
								
								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi

				
				
				

				

					16 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 05:31:00 UTC
				


				
					

					
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.


At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!



				

				
					
Friends:

					
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.


				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 454


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Friday Fun Thread for November 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
13k? At API prices? Jesus. I suppose that's cheaper than testing on prod, though I would dispute that's "smaller scale".


I'm hoping you're just European and mean $13.


I've only just been surprised by the fact that Things Just Work. I make a point of having LLMs try tasks that I'm not entirely sure they're capable of, because I end up positively surprised often enough to be worth it. I was trying AI for Rimworld mods since middle 2025, and it was a slog even for a dead-simple project. It was a nuisance 6 months back. Now, the biggest concern is endless scope creep, and I can't even say that the mods breakdown when you shoot for the moon.


I would never have made these mods with AI-assistance. I know people are getting half-decent 3D models out of them, and at some point I might get even more ambitious. Depends on how the upcoming 6.2 Astra and Fable do I guess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for November 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
An update on my Rimworld modding-spree:


Holy shit. Opus 5.5 is just that good. I'd heard people gushing about it since release, and I've definitely tracked the flood of new software it and Astra enabled. I just hadn't used it for anything more intensive than what Fable or prior Opus models had been capable of.


I got my hands dirty by starting a mod that expands the permit system from the Royalty DLC. It worked so smoothly I was taken aback, and my involvement was largely playtesting, ideation and balance suggestions. Even the testing was largely automated, Claude could write test scenarios, take screenshots and review logs.


We went on to MVP - by which I mean the maximally viable product. It had no issues integrating content from 45 additional mods when I shared my 500+ mod list.


It also made permits much more flexible, and added customization and QOL no problemo.


I had been tracking token usage, and at medium reasoning effort I still barely made a dent in my 5x Max plan.


I launched additional instances - a few QOL mods. Another moderate-sized expansion of Empire content, this time focusing on adding new unit types, making the Imperial court feel more alive, additional political and economic systems.


The biggest headache was that if I had the OLED TV I use as my monitor set to sleep, the pc would eventually stop rendering things. Screenshots would come out black and even worse, the game wouldn't launch. An agent found a way around the latter, though there was no way for them to change actual sleep or power settings. I didn't press that too hard, there's probably something, and I don't want to risk screen burn in.


This added a little extra time as I couldn't check some things while I had downtime at work.


I then had an agent make a LLM-powered storyteller, and a better one that any out there. I even had it figure out how to use CC instead of my API credits for the calls.


I also discovered the agents could schedule cron jobs, and later, found out that they could message each other for coordination purposes. Made my life even easier.


I set one of the spare agents to make programming art for assets (Opus is quite good at that) to save me the minimal hassle of using a dedicated image model. It also made decorations and UI elements for the other models, and seemed to be enjoying itself. In the Singularity, the most important thing is to have fun and be yourself.


I also had them make a multi-purpose bridge with hooks into the game state to ease their testing, which works just fine. Computer Use would be better, but would mean I'd have to leave the screen on and surrender control of input when I'm using the pc myself.


Later, I had one of them run performance profiling to find out what was making my rather bloated mod list slow down. It was able to figure out the culprits, including breaking things down by constant TPS tax and 1% lows or stutters.


I then had it simply fix a few mods. Easy as that. A few code optimizations, fixing bad patches.


An agent with downtime got tasked with code review. It found a few bugs, and then worked with the agents with ownership to fix it all.


Still wasn't happy with the performance, but it quickly became apparent that the only solution would be jumping to the 1.7 beta where they had swapped out the game engine from Unity to Waylith (maintaining near perfect backwards compat for mods and saves!). I'd eat my hat if a project of that scope hadn't benefited from the recent leaps in AI coding.


This went surprisingly painlessly. Most of my mods survived, and even when I had to remove several performance mods that were no longer compatible, I still got nearly double the TPS and like a fifth the load time on boot.


The agents got their mods updated without major hitches, the only one that didn't survive the transition depended on a different mod that hadn't been updated. I can probably solve that too if I try.


I then managed to get a solid game in, and the majority of bugs I found were probably to do with the original mods and not mine.


Now that is pod-racing vibecoding. I feel like a slightly clueless but well-meaning PM with a full staff of Senior Engineers on call. I say something, it gets done, and when it doesn't, they usually find a workaround or alternative. There's no observable degradation in performance before or after compaction. I remember when we had to be meticulous in prompting, and and precisely define tasks and goals. Now, I often just half-arse things by telling Opus to use its own discretion or stick to stopping by to give feedback. My primary contribution is enough game knowledge and wider awareness to come up with ideas in the first place.


I'm currently considering a mod that simply makes or sets up bases in Rimworld for me. I restart playthroughs quite regularly (mods breaking, TPS death, boredom from lack of challenge) and I find making a brand new base a chore at times, even with God Mode. Ideally, I'd like Opus to be able to just make something for me on the fly, and make the colony feel like something that's growing of its own volition, rather than helpless without my constant intervention.


I think this would work, though making it as quick and responsive as I want might be a challenge. Expanding my existing feature-complete mods wouldn't break a sweat. If Claude had native image gen capabilities, that would have been even nicer. Creating art with code works fine in some places, but it's not a general purpose solution. I can probably work up a way to get it to talk to Codex.


I'd worked with Sol 5.6 and 6.0 for my last mod, and a bit with Astra, but they were too token hungry for my taste. Opus 5.5 is simply much more pleasant to work with, and takes an appropriate but not excessive amount of initiative, while demonstrating good taste. Even Opus 4.7 and 4.8 had guzzled usage on a 20x plan, let alone a 5x one. It's a slow day at work, and I really wish I'd booted my pc up with CC running and prepped things for later.


And no, no real disasters from giving the agents unrestricted access to my C drive. Worst that's happened is one of them overwriting a mod list, or sometimes getting in each other's way. I have nothing on it that I can't afford to lose, really.


I could live like this. The bottleneck is simply my imagination, and I have plenty of imagination.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for November 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've received my report card (of sorts) in anticipation of my annual review.


It's not as positive as I'd like. To be clear, it's plenty positive, my boss made it clear I'd been performing very well lately and that several senior consultants had shared "really glowing praise" over a month when I'd been the only more junior doctor under them - stating that I had been on the ball and got shit done.


The problem is that my boss also elected to include negative feedback from early on, when I'd been in the midst of a depressive relapse, and then made it less than clear that I had improved in all the domains involved. He did say that there was plenty of improvement, and that I had managed to amass "more than enough" evidence to support that.


Even worse, I had a senior doctor stab me in the back. I'd considered them a friendly face, and approached them for feedback when I'd been struggling. They'd always said I'd been doing well and all I had to do was "keep it up". And then went ahead and called me below par later. I hadn't even worked under them for half the placement, though they'd been around on the ward while I'd shifted to a different sub-spec. The people I'd actually worked under were happy with me.


The worst part is that this guy had slept on several assessments I'd had asked him to complete on my behalf, for months, and hadn't told me. When my boss finally sent me his collection of assessments, I had noticed the discrepancy and madly chased him. This time, he gave me positive feedback again, but it relates to work I'd done months ago, and to a panel that doesn't know me, it appears chronologically followed up by a claim that I wasn't up to scratch.


Looking at the report, I was both relieved and felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I didn't sleep on things, I managed to prepare and evidence responses and factual corrections. I tell juniors the importance of documenting EVERYTHING, and I have receipts.


The colleagues who've only known me for the last few months were rather taken aback to hear that there was anything negative at all on there. They'd seen me when my health was better and only knew me as maximally competent. Juniors and seniors had approached me privately and offered to write me additional feedback to outweigh the negatives. I had thanked them with genuine gratitude, it's just too late for a review panel to consider.


I'm probably going to be fine. My boss said he was happy with where I was right now, and described me as polite, pleasant, compassionate, hardworking and "demonstrates response to feedback". The latter is a big one, even if you have issues, being able to show you've worked on them successfully is a big fucking deal.


I just wish he'd been clearer about things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just never setup internet access on the TV and you should be okay in terms of the latter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was busy with Halloween, and for the record I actually went out in proper clown makeup and a very loud sequined jacket.


Well, the actual mod seemed to be working reasonably well. The improved UI worked, I'd made several existing permit mods redundant, and there was good progress on adding additional themed sets. I also had it fix the UI for using permits in-game, which was previously a simple list that got unwieldy when you had more than a handful.


The end experience was significantly better than I would have been content with. And Claude Code with Opus 5.5 is a much better experience than Codex with Sol or Astra, everything is simply a lot faster, and Opus has good taste and needs very little hand holding.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm working on a rather ambitious mod for Rimworld. By which I mean I've told Opus 5.5 to do all the hard work while I play Helldivers 2 in the background (as somewhat expected, modders have gotten around the anti-cheat) and then nip away for brunch.


TLDR: One of the DLCs, Royalty, adds an ll faction with imperial hierarchy with access to permits that function as supplies, resources and manpower on a cooldown. Like everything else in vanilla Rimworld, the implementation is underwhelming.


There's a mod that expands the system drastically, from the Vanilla Expanded team. But it's still not what I want. I wanted more diversity in content, lower cooldowns, a lot of other missed opportunities addressed.


I had Claude implement a few ideas, then a few more ideas. It's being a champ, autonomously loading and running tests and debugging everything. I then got drunk with power, and asked it to look at my modlist of 521 mods, and think of more. Why not overhaul the whole permit UI while we're at it? Opus 5.5 on even a 5x Max plan is more than I can eat.


I then took the unprecedented step of enabling full access to my c drive, while telling it not to do anything regrettable. I would not have used that feature any earlier than 6 months ago.


Well. I'll come back and let everyone know how well this works.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ever? What am I supposed to be at work!


I'll be putting on zombie makeup, which by my standards is very high effort!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always get ready to give up every Halloween and dress as a doctor. For some reason this takes minimal costume changes. I can take out my stethoscope, rarely used in anger, and I've already told med students that buying a Litmann second hand off psychiatrists is a good idea.


Well, might as well be a zombie doctor this time, which also isn't much of a change, depending on how much caffeine I've had.


Anyone have anything more exciting planned?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I only connected my email to ChatGPT maybe six months back. In fact, I wasn't sure if I had, I had to go back and double check.


I haven't really done anything with that, but on the other hand nothing has gone wrong either. I get models to draft emails and manually paste them in anyway once I've edited them. They've never sent anything by themselves on my behalf.


ChatGPT and Claude already know more about me than most humans alive*, and it can occasionally be very valuable. I am still leery of autonomous agents, but I don't have much utility for them anyway.


*And they can identify me with ease off ridiculously small samples of text with memory disabled. Claude can identify me off my user customization, which is just stylistic guidance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm alive and kicking and looking forward to retirement. I'll settle for a vacation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm tired. But mostly the good kind of tired, like I've run a marathon and the finish line is close enough to piss on. I'm coming up on the end of a grueling placement, on top of which I had to manage to acquire a frankly questionable number of assessments for my portfolio.


I had a meeting with my boss today, and was relieved to hear that he had been happy with my work and the feedback he'd received. Which had been the case already, to be fair, but he's a gruff man with occasionally mercurial moods, and this is probably our last meeting before he writes his report. It helps that he's just back from his vacation and the stress hasn't quite hit him yet. As we both agreed, I was a rather changed man compared to when I had started, and for the better.


Well, I've worked harder than I had thought I could, and eventually, it became sustainable. I will still be very happy to see the back of the place.




Speaking of bosses, this placement has made me MUCH better at placating them and staying on their good side. My current supervisor is a decent man, and reminds me of my dad (another slightly acerbic gentleman with a good heart buried somewhere). They're senior doctors who are good at their jobs, and dote on their kids. The type of man who does care, but finds it difficult to express that. And are slightly obstinate and not particularly receptive to critique, however well-intentioned.


We'd had a patient die while being treated by a new trainee and a just as new intern. Both the girls had a breakdown, and elected to break down in front of me, because I just seem like the right person. I'm not complaining, just noting, I'm glad people come to me with their problems . The trainee had felt useless and worried that our boss held it against her. I knew him well enough to tell her that wasn't the case, but that wasn't quite enough.


I broached it to him later, though I left the tears out of it. He didn't say much, but later in the day, he came around, sat her down, and spent half an hour coaching her on similar scenarios. His way of saying he cared, when the words didn't come lightly. I helpfully translated this later, and this time it worked.


Similarly, he's thrown fits when I've outright asked him for assistance sometimes, and then goes on and tries to help me out in the background in ways I only find out later. I learned that just because he'd done it once doesn't mean he'd do it again, and no, there is harm in asking.


I also learned a few months that he does not like to hear moaning. He might be understanding if I was genuinely falling apart, but anything short of that was best kept for him. That is not ideal, supervisors hold some responsibility for pastoral care and the wellbeing of their trainees, but by then I was already past the worst and did not care to kick up a fuss.


I also learned that the best way to stay in his good graces is to do as he asks, promptly, and without question. Some of those requests pushed the boundaries of reasonable, but argument only ticked him off.


But keep jumping without asking how high? And he will remain content. I needed him to be very content.


On the other hand, there are seniors who are lovely people and decent clinicians right until the point where they have to say no to a patient. That usually leads to me being instructed to send pointless investigations, or making referrals that I know very well will be rejected.


Doctors who have a sense of humor and appreciate that in others. Doctors who possess the former but are leery of the latter. The old dodgers who probably ought to have retired by now but never learned how to play golf and fill their Sundays.


The list goes on. While it's rather moot, I can well imagine the kind of consultant I could have ended up becoming. Slightly eccentric (but you can get away with eccentric when you're good at your job), excellent bedside manner. Fundamentally supportive and curious, while making sure my juniors are doing alright.


Might still get there in the end.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				fast-following the Moonshot: a look at Chinese AI as of summer 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I believe he said that I was having issues "translating from Indian to English". Well, I don't miss him at all, I was consistently perplexed by what people saw in that blowhard.


Now, despite the unprovoked driveby above, I've argued in favor of Dase not being permabanned. But if he continues digging his own grave, I find it difficult to care.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there some degree of "cynicism" involved? Sure. But it's not all-consuming cynicism, I'd say much of it is becoming better calibrated on what you can trust, and how much weight to put on various findings.


I know plenty of idealistic senior doctors who go above and beyond.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Indeed!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wash and iron my shirts with the buttons on. If I was actually unbuttoning and rebuttoning anything, I'd have noticed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's winter in Scotland, and you can feel it in your bones and in the heating bill.


A few days back, I groaned at the alarm, rushed to work, and started the ward round with a consultant. A few minutes in, a nurse approached and handed me a handwritten note. She looked genuinely concerned. I took a glance.


It said I'd put my shirt on inside out. Oh.


Ten minutes later, another nurse beckoned me aside and whispered the same thing into my ear. I told her I appreciated the concern, but I'd already got the memo.


When the round wrapped up, I fixed the problem in the loo. White shirt, white buttons, and clearly nobody of a masculine persuasion had noticed.


When I came back, the nurses were joking about it. Then one of them told me, entirely serious now, that they'd been rather worried about me. In their view, I'd only make a mistake like that if I was seriously stressed or anxious. I explained that I'd been too lazy to turn on the lights and had dressed in the dark, and thanked her anyway.


I found the whole thing very funny. Women seem to notice and care about wardrobe malfunctions far more than men do, though I suppose the social penalty is higher when it happens to one of them. I was just confused by how seriously they took it. It's a shirt! I couldn't even tell, and I was wearing it!


On the other hand, I've made a consistent effort to dress well on this placement, resisting the siren call of scrubs. Yes, I regularly wear white in an environment where ending up in blood, urine and feces is a genuine occupational hazard. I'd call it a flex/costly signaling if I cared that much, but I haven't given it much thought beyond liking white shirts and looking good in them. And I'll be damned if I stop wearing pointy shoes. The Great Male Renunciation was a mistake.


Maybe seeing me miss something so obvious made them think I'd finally lost it? I was having a good day! They've seen me on days when I'm visibly on the edge, and it has never shown in the fashion. I suppose that means they'd come to expect a certain standard from me. I hadn't realized anyone was keeping track.




I was on a medical ward, waiting on a consultant while he peered at someone's asshole, with a female med student as chaperone (and clerk, and paid for neither role). It was taking a good while, and I was stuck in the corridor with three other female med students. We struck up a conversation, and I launched into an impromptu lecture.


I offered to teach them how to do Mental State Exams. In theory, the MSE is a structured clinical assessment of a patient's cognitive and emotional functioning. In practice, Liaison Psychiatry refuses to accept referrals unless you have documented one, so the actual utility for a ward doctor is learning how to half-arse it persuasively enough that a psychiatrist will be convinced to do the real work. I explained that 90% of the exercise consists of taking completely normal human observations and gussying them up into High Church Psychiatric Jargon. The patient is not "talking really fast and jumping from topic to topic"; they are exhibiting pressure of speech with flight of ideas. "He seemed a bit off" becomes "affect incongruent, speech of normal rate but reduced volume." You can't skip the Latinate vocabulary. If you do, then they won't take you seriously.


Then I segued into the practical bits they should know: the common drugs psychiatrists would sneak into prescriptions; why they should always blame the SSRIs for GI bleeds, because someone else would anyway and now they could appear smart and proactive ; and how pretending to give a fuck about QTc prolongation would keep pharmacists off their backs, while the vibe within actual psychiatry was that the risks were grossly overrated (but don't let pharmacy hear that).


I was halfway through this random assortment of self_made_human's Clinical Pearls Earned Through Bitter Experience when one of the girls took out her notebook and started scribbling. The other two followed in close succession. I was very amused and a bit proud. In my experience, med students only take actual notes when they think the material is practically useful. I'm the same, and I know the acceptable response to a senior talking shite about an uninteresting topic is to nod politely and thoughtfully while wondering what the cafeteria has for lunch.


I get moments like that quite frequently, when people ask me questions or seek advice and I rattle off the answers from memory. Then I pause and realize that at one point I hadn't known them. Which blood tests to send, and why. Which abnormal results are concerning and which can safely be ignored. Where to even find the fucking results on a program designed in 1999, by aliens. Complaining about NHS IT is a bonding experience second only to complaining about the weather.


I think this is what becoming a senior doctor feels like from the inside? I'm not one yet, but the process has clearly started, the way you often notice you've aged from other people's reactions before you feel it yourself. Nurses have a model of my baseline. Students write down what I say. Intellectually, I knew this was supposed to happen eventually. I just never expected it to happen to me, in the sense of actually feeling it.


Ah, fuck.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Jesus. I joke about being occasionally mistaken for a gay man, but that's only happened when I'm loitering in a gay bar (tends to change the priors a bit).


I think a bandana would be simply confusing to everyone in Scotland, rather than a sign of being gay. Can't say I've seen a gay man with one out. Or that I've even seen a bandana in the wild.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Of course. I saw it begin in the Rimworld community, since modding is significantly easier and less demanding in terms of art assets.


But it's a flood everywhere and anywhere. Rimworld. Helldivers 2. Warhammer 3. Arma Reforger.


The only thing approaching it in magnitude is the community arguments it produces. I don't care about the general sentiment even if I'm made my personal stance clear, revealed preferences are what they are, and the ratchet turns only one way. We're past the inflection point.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It is very appropriately named. Much like a soldier in UCP, it could hide very well in a grandmother's living room.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You've acknowledged and set aside the biggest issue, which would already explain everything: money.


Arrowhead are also particularly stubborn about responding to community feedback. Well before this all blew up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The devs have access to the same tools, as I've noted before. It's also an online live service game, so even though people have already made their own offline forks (with co-op, because why not), it's not impossible to lock down official servers.


That makes it somewhat different from reverse engineering Photoshop or making a cheap and cheerful clone of a game some dev made the mistake of teasing on Steam.


I still don't know how it'll work out over the medium term. Eventually, we'll also have communities making their own feature-complete and free alternatives to proprietary games, but for now it's mostly reproducing or extending existing works.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've recently posted about the Helldivers 2 modding Renaissance enabled by AI. As I had feared, it only lasted a few weeks before the developers cracked down and added Easy AntiCheat to their game. The primary impetus, of course, was the fact that their wallets were being hurt.


I left a suitably negative Steam review.


The good news is that barely a few hours after the patch, mods that bypassed EAC showed up. The bad news is that the overall difficulty of creating new mods has shot up drastically.


Why? My understanding is that the devs removed a lot of the hooks that allowed for easy scripting, and encrypted some of the code. Most modders using OAI or Anthropic models found that they'd no longer engage in intentional circumventing of DRM, leaving aside the classifiers kicking in. Previously, the devs had simply made no effort to obfuscate things, unfortunately the merest act of putting on a lock (no matter how shoddy) means many AI models suddenly develop a newfound respect for property rights.


Clearly people are finding their ways around it. I'd imagine some have resorted to using Chinese models like GLM 5.3 that are more gung-ho about greyhat territory, or found other tricks.


I make no strong claims on the balance between attack and defense here, or if it's going to turn into an endless cat-and-mouse game. We shall see.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do agree that it's severely distressing to their near and dear ones, I could have phrased that better. I just don't think that the distress is all that dissimilar to what's seen with say, severe depression or schizophrenia. I'd contrast that with personality disorders, where there's more of a tendency to be actively malevolent instead of manipulation with the underlying goal of getting away with not eating.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've been keeping. Stress levels are reasonable, though I occasionally have bad days. A single colleague calling in sick on a busy day can mean a ridiculous pile up.


I've also finally gotten to understand just how difficult managing eating disorders can be. There was a patient I was asked to opine on, who'd been seen by psych on a medical ward on a prior admission and not found to have an ED, on the grounds they weren't happy with their weight loss and had declared a strong commitment to improving.


I'd seen the patient, but didn't want to repeat an assessment or declare a new diagnosis other than possible ARFID because of the earlier opinion from a senior and a few real medical issues impairing eating. The med consultant had been rather peeved, and pointedly noted that the patient had ended up back in hospital a few months later in even worse condition. I had to concede the point, people can lie.


Or the med student with anorexia I saw recently. Both my seniors and the internists had noted her consistent tendency to use her medical knowledge to try and get her way and manipulate people, particularly her parents. Unfortunately for her, she's not very far into her course, and quite a few things she describes are somewhat ridiculous.


I'm not saying they're evil, far from it. They're very, very mentally ill, and the fallout is usually restricted to themselves. Some people can just do a very good job fasting themselves to death while declaring that's the opposite of what they want. I knew the stats, but it's another to see it for myself.


Sigh. I do what I can, when I can. It's sometimes enough.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My X feed decided to drop a tsunami of culture warring on me after I (rather disinterestedly) hit like on a few posts about the Hades 2 debacle.


My general opinion is that I could not give less of a shit if I tried. Sure, all else being equal, I'd prefer that a videogame have eye candy than not, but I have never been remotely tempted to mix gooning and gaming. On a Likert scale, I'd put down a weakly disapprove when a video game makes the protagonists uglier than the mocap actors they're based on (uh, TLOU 2 and that game with robotic dinosaurs, neither of which I've played?), but it's a homeopathic dose of fucks given.


If someone wants titillation, the options are endless. Hentai games certainly don't shy away from the Male Gaze™, and the Chinese pioneer finding the distinction between NSFW and SFW, or at least they find the grey area where they won't get deplatformed. There are mods, someone's going to finetune DLSS 5 to exclusively enlarge badonka-donks soon enough. The market for attractive pixels is about as close to perfectly competitive as anything gets: near-zero marginal cost, plus a customer base that has never once been accused of hiding its preferences.


I can be annoyed that a restaurant I spotted while hungry is vegan, but I really wouldn't have to go out of my way to find a more palatable alternative.


I'd go so far as to say that there isn't any grand conspiracy to Erase Conventional Beauty Standards - at best/worse some companies are disproportionately staffed by people with taste that differs from the average straight man. By which I mean they have a large number of trans or queer people on staff. Some of it is definitely the product of ideology, I think the degree is overstated.


Far be it for me to dictate what people care about it, I just find the amount of burning passion for the topic perplexing. I suppose there worse hobbies.