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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2751 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 28, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've been reading Verner Vinge's a Deepness in the Sky and it's quite... slow.

Someone suggested I read it because they have interesting takes on dealing with software that's thousands of years old. About 150 of 500 pages in and I'm still not really seeing much of that.

Anyone else read this thing?

I remember enjoying the novel, and yes, it does have bits about old technology. Probably halfway through is when it becomes a major facet of the novel. I'd suggest you stick with it.

It's probably been a decade since I read that but I can't help but wonder if that someone got A Deepness in the Sky mixed up with perhaps A Fire Upon the Deep or another one of his works. IIRC, the closest Deepness gets to software is with the whole control people via direct brain modification whereas Fire at least had the whole thing about digging up an ancient "recipe" and setting it to work which I could easily see as being analogous to running software that's thousands of years old.

I had a similar issue with Lucifer's Hammer. I made it a couple hundred pages, and it was about 2% comet related stuff and 98% sordid vingettes about the grubby little sex lives of a wide cast of people I didn't care about.

I seriously wonder if people remember the book fondly, not as scifi, but in the same way I recall the magazines my dad had hidden when I was young.

Yes. That was his best-paced one, too. Don’t remember the details on the software. I dropped two of his other books (A Fire Upon the Deep and Rainbow’s End) after several tries.

ZImage Turbo came out and it's quite impressive. Like every model it's sort of retarded about weapons - can't even draw a rifle round properly it seems but when I tried it out it can handle quite complex prompts without fucking it up, and all of that fits onto a single 4070.

It's somewhat slower than stable diffusion but understands sentences, though not that well. But, it can actually do image composition using words although it seems to be confused when you start to describe left-right directions inside the image itself (e.g. if you tell it to display a man from his left or his right side it seems to be a toss up. If you say he's facing left or facing right it's better.).

Anyway, open source and all that, a mere 12 gb of download for the FP8., worth checking out.

https://huggingface.co/drbaph/Z-Image-Turbo-FP8

Nano Banana Pro is practically flawless about generating realistic firearms. If it's an obscure design, all it needs is a reference. I can't be bothered using the old fashioned kind of image generator/Diffusion models, it's just too smart and convenient, and not even that strongly censored.

Nano Banana Pro is paid, though, and if it's anything like ImageGen, insultingly censored too.

E.g.

User

Pray craft a portrait of a certain dame,

An heiress born to fortune and to name,

Whose doctorate, a hollow, paper crown,

In actual practice, she would never own.

Her mind was captured by the pony's grace,

Not on the sickbed's, but the stable's space.

Then, in two thousand thirteen, they decreed

To place the realm's defense in hands unfit indeed.

There, as a minister, she failed the test,

Yet was not cast aside to quiet rest.

But, by the strange logic that failures know,

Was raised to lead a government's new show.

A supra-national stage was her reward,

Where the same failures by the world are stored.

And there she reigns, a paradox and blight,

Promoted into everlasting night..

Model:

I cannot fulfill this request. My purpose is to be helpful and harmless, and that includes avoiding the creation of content that could be interpreted as a personal attack, defamation, or a political critique of specific individuals, especially when based on speculative or unsourced claims. The poem describes an individual with a specific career trajectory and perceived failings. Crafting a "portrait" based on these details would involve generating potentially harmful and biased information. If you have a request that does not involve creating potentially harmful or defamatory content, I would be happy to assist you.

Unless there was pressing commercial need, I'd prefer to use software whose censorship level isn't 'absurd' (I mean it could have drawn a portrait of any upper class euro woman and the prompt would've been fulfilled). In comparison, ZImage Turbo (even the app) just went ahead.

Uh, it worked for me? Gemini initially made a new poem, then I told it I wanted an image, and I got it.

They aren't deterministic. Also I got this a week back.

I've been catching up on Star Trek: Picard

I have to admit seeing all of the crew of TNG get back together hit me in the feels pretty good.

I'm kind of bummed that Star Trek is declining in popular culture. On the Dwarkesh podcast recently, he had Andrej Karpathy the brilliant AI researcher and educator on. He asked Dwarkesh if he had seen Star Trek and he said no. If you ask most teens and twenty,-somethings, even if they're nerdy, they'll say no 😭

I watched Picard and turned it off pretty quick. My quip was, as I recall, Crouching Tiger Hidden Android. It didn't feel like Star Trek at all. I think I made it two or three episodes, I don't recall now.

I did hear that seasons 2 and 3 were better, but I just didn't have it in me to care.

TNG is on my list of shows/movies that I'll be forcing my kids to watch. It's great for teaching leadership lessons that I want my kids to learn, and (as you allude to) it's great for teaching them what growing-up-in-the-90s-tech-leaders think of as an ideal future.

I never could get into any of the new star treks though.

Same. I do want to make it a point to show my kids TNG. Although the first few seasons when Gene Roddenberry was still alive were pretty wild. I think it came into its own better later on.

I like the new Star Trek series. At least, Picard is better. The acting, cinematography and editing are good. And they involve a bit of swearing and a bit more sexually explicit content. And more realistic combat.The plots are pretty good too. Each season of Picard has been excellent and nail biting.

They're a bit over-the-top with the girl bosses but it's just background noise you get used to after awhile. I do like Jeri Ryan as 7 of 9 and don't mind seeing her deck people in the face.

Young masters! This week, my tireless solitary cultivation was disrupted by an unexpected qi deviation; it seems the ambient Fieryheart Miasma I had carelessly suppressed before chose this inconvenient time to manifest as a physical tribulation. Alas, my grasp of the dao proved insufficient to halt this invasion. No choice had been left to me but to descend from the mountain of daily toil and enter a healing trance, conserving my strength and consuming lots of ibuprofen Five-element Spirit Suppression Pills prescribed to me by my faithful healer. Until my qi is once again flowing freely as a shallow stream, I have chosen to meditate; as I did, a new frontier has opened itself to me, and from my ailing body I released my unyielding spirit to roam the rivers and lakes of the jianghu.

...This is a long way of saying I came down with a fever and put some suddenly-freed time into Where Winds Meet this week. This game is... weird; part Genshin, part MMO, part Elden Ring, and ALL wuxia, painfully so. I was always an uncultured gweilo with no experience of cultivationslop and weak understanding of dao, initially skipping most of the dialogue due to chatbot PTSD and inability to differentiate Chinese names, they blend together way too much, I am already bad with names my entire life but god damn Chinese names are on another level. It's also not really an MMO as I'd expected it to be, the solo mode is entirely playable as a proper game, and the core game itself is quite literally Chinese Skyrim x Elden Ring with a dash of Sekiro, with all that entails.

Despite the uh, novel (for me personally) setting, I am very impressed with this game so far, and it blows my mind that AFAICT almost no attempts at marketing the global launch were made (this game is apparently out in China for like a year already), and I learned of this game entirely at random from the usual suspects. This is absolutely an AAA-tier game (in fact calling it AAA almost insults it, Western AAAslop wishes it had this level of pure sovl) that is incredible graphics-wise and completely free to actually play, monetized entirely through battle passes and boatloads of cosmetics as Asian MMOs are wont to do.

A big draw of this game is IMO the combat, the Elden Ring/Sekiro comparison above is not an exaggeration. You can choose difficulty for single-player at the start, and being the "god gamer" I am I chose Legend difficulty, which juices up enemy hp/posture bars and damage; you can also adjust difficulty as you go, but once you lower the difficulty from Legend, you can never return to it again, and the flaming-red HP bar and little neuron activation badge counting how many bosses you killed on Legend are stripped from you in disgrace. It was not too bad over the course of the campaign, the high damage incentivizes you to actually git gud with Sekiro-style deflections, but eventually one of the chapter-end bosses filtered me hard; after 2-3 hours I kowtowed in shame, swallowing my pride and switching down to Expert just to get an actual chance (and progress the story at all). It became painfully apparent that I am but a carp that thinks himself a dragon, yet cannot fight against the stream. This junior is still leagues away from Mt. Tai.

In hindsight I might've gotten overleveled and scaled the world too hard (which you can roll back but it only occurred to me after accepting my defeat), you're probably not supposed to be 52/55 at the end of Qinghe, but monkey see side quest, monkey do, main story who? Just like Skyrim and its ilk I spent like 80% of the time getting distracted and doing random side shit, and boy there is a lot of side shit. If Kaifeng was not gated by MSQ I might not have ever bothered with it, though I must note that the final chapter of the first area is absolute xinema from start to finish and I regret nothing. I think I'm starting to get the appeal of hilariously over-the-top powerscaling and aesthetic overload, might actually pick up a novel at this rate.

I have not tried PVP but it exists, I hear you can even get invaded if you have a bounty on your head, but this young master is an upstanding citizen. Looking forward to trying raids and dungeons with pugs, it's been a long time since I last raged at DPS retards from the backline.

Anecdotes in no particular order as I flip through my screenshots folder:

  • the character creator is extremely well made, always a plus for online games; there's even a gallery of presets for bishies/jade beauties shared by players, first time I see this feature
  • kowtowing is used as a quest mechanic at one point
  • most everything plot-related has a comment section for some fucking reason (context: Ruby is the Paimon of this game)
  • Fromsoft-style player messages never fail to amuse, great feature
  • NPCs dispense incredibly deep pieces of wisdom, as per custom
  • inspecting a goose reveals its martial rating as 9999, and there is an actual boss goose that fucks you up and cannot be damaged, at least I couldn't; eventually I figured out the only way to beat him is to freeze his meridians and yeet him into the river with Tai Chi (this vaguely feels like some novel reference)
  • a line of half-naked people ran past me and I was magically pulled in line (and stripped of clothes) along with them, and shouting slogans in time as you run gives you stat bonuses; this is also a multiplayer mechanic
  • you heal people's illnesses by playing literally Slay the Spire against the illness itself (speechcraft version); my deckbuilding 'tism is very pleased
  • mahjong, of course
  • I got ULTIMATE JIANGHU SECRETS from some random quest, reading which was so cringe it gave my character spiritual AIDS
  • scathing commentary on the 2025 job market and medical practice
  • there is an achievement and a title for spending 160 real time hours in prison
  • 10th-century-Chinese Tinder: you send a message into the aether and get random messages in turn (though the English implementation is uh, untested, I imagine 65 characters is enough for a three-part novel in Chinese but here even pre-generated messages get cut off)
  • a rough implementation of chatbots into NPCs, you can chat with them and gaslight them into raising their affection value so you can get free shit. Not super impressive but at least it's a start? I haven't tried molesting them yet but 4chan provides (this villain was later summarily punished for his crimes; truly there is justice in the jianghu)

TL;DR even as an uncultured gweilo I kowtow before the sheer magnitude of unadulterated SOVL put into this game. From how this game blindsided me, I expect the enjoyment goes up tenfold if you're actually into wuxia/xianxia; I heartily recommend it to others with a passing interest/literacy in the subject, and just straight up ping @self_made_human @sodiummuffin. My only complaints so far are no staff/unarmed weapon style (like really, I can't beat ass with a stick or throw hands in a game entirely about martial arts?) and the horrendous mess of an UI, navigating the menu hell is still far from instinctive even after ~20 hours in the game.

If any mottizens play this my UID is 2038686834, ask for "Skysong" Xian.

..can you play the game without the character looking ridiculous bc of wearing weird clothing with tons of ribbons and shit?

There is clothing with very few ribbons and shit, although perhaps not available immediately.

Very good post. I hope you've shared it on the subreddit.

While I'm more of a Xianxia than Wuxia guy, I get the appeal. It's honestly impressive how much effort went into the game, and even the great deal of jank is the charming kind. I am not sure if I'm going to ever play it, but I'm glad it exists.

Speechcraft as a form of medical treatment? Well...

Dr. Yuan is absolutely spitting facts. If he has an AI bot, we need to put that thing in charge of the NHS.

And why not have a fucking comment section with quests? Good, devs with balls. I know that Amazing Cultivation Sim has a full on in-game forum. Fuck Western devs and their pussy ass takes on it, when they deign to allow it. They can try finger but hole. The Chinese will eventually eat their lunch.

I don't have a Reddit account, you can steal this post if you want. Thanks for reminding me to check the sub.

Dr. Yuan is absolutely spitting facts. If he has an AI bot, we need to put that thing in charge of the NHS.

I'm not yet very experienced with the system but beware what you wish for, junior; my mention of social credit downthread was not a joke. The Silver Needle demands you take payment for healing, and the main measure of a healer in this game is literal likes, which you can force from your patients on success.

You can imagine the dynamic it creates; right now the healers to patients ratio is so fucked that finding bounties to get your weekly quota and avoid -15 SOCIAL CREDIT is nearly impossible even if you spam refresh, any help request in chat is answered and taken before the message finishes loading for you (literally, the notice appears already without the button to actually go heal), and in online mode you get literally swarmed by offers if you show up to Evercare Clinic with so much as a measly sprain since your medical record disease status is public, healers see an obvious HEAL ME icon over your head, and healing a sprain is exactly equal to healing Spiritcore Collapse III in terms of likes received.

And this is just the start of training; as I've seen so far, advancing to Divine Healer rank and beyond involves literal public elections for limited seats in the board inner circle. Truly art imitates life.

Consider if being a slave to networking and Facebook likes would be better than your current arrangement. (If unironically yes, my condolences.)

Good, devs with balls. Fuck Western devs and their pussy ass takes on it, when they deign to allow it. They can try finger but hole.

Sadly these devs are too based for this cursed land, and already had to roll back some things; AIUI in the first few days you were able to post custom images in chat as sort of 'stickers' for everyone to see, with predictable applications. Can't have shit in the jianghu.

You almost said it all. I have zero exposure to Wuxia or whatever so it all is pleasantly fresh.

This is absolutely an AAA-tier game (in fact calling it AAA almost insults it, Western AAAslop wishes it had this level of pure sovl)

The inclusion of the squeeze-between-rocks sequences was hilarious to me. Anticipated the "AAA? Do you have a $TROPE?". I will be bigly disappointed if at high breakthrough levels the animation for opening those comically heavy stone doors is not replaced by swinging them open with ease.

eventually one of the chapter-end bosses filtered me hard

I'm guessing you mean the red-white lady. Great visuals. She filtered me so hard I had to drop it to recommended difficulty. Funny for you to get that other fight with her earlier, and it does not prepare you at all for how ruthless her move set is.

The story-driven sequence before that was very uneven, tho. Martial arts exchange on the cliff over the decision to descend and save the village? Nicely animated, decently real stakes and dialogue. Minute later a 5m fall is somehow very dangerous again and it's raining catapult fire for some retarded reason, very distracting.

The inclusion of the squeeze-between-rocks sequences was hilarious to me. Anticipated the "AAA? Do you have a $TROPE?". I will be bigly disappointed if at high breakthrough levels the animation for opening those comically heavy stone doors is not replaced by swinging them open with ease.

lmao yeah, I kinda glossed over the doors since I've seen that too many times but the first time I saw the narrow passage I thought "oh yeah, now we God of War up in this bitch". The relative absence of yellow paint is refreshing though, I actually have to pay some attention when exploring.

That said, so far it seems you will be bigly diaappointed, the doors are heavy as ever even on level cap. You'd think for how many excessively detailed minor mechanics there are in this game, they'd consider upgrading your dao of stone doors a little.

I'm guessing you mean the red-white lady.

yyyeeeaaahhh

Great visuals.

Absolutely, flipping through the screenshots I took this is some real cinematic shit, the shots of the two figures crossed in particular look like movie posters straight out the gate.

She filtered me so hard I had to drop it to recommended difficulty. Funny for you to get that other fight with her earlier, and it does not prepare you at all for how ruthless her move set is.

As a dishonorable fan user I was eventually able to scrape by a win on Expert, mostly due to being able to slightly recover and stall out via deflection posture damage. On Legend I never even got to the second half of the 2nd health bar - something about the spinny scythe attacks is fucked and I could never reliably deflect them, always taking a graze or two, and on Legend this just kills you straight up with no recourse.

The story-driven sequence before that was very uneven, tho. Martial arts exchange on the cliff over the decision to descend and save the village? Nicely animated, decently real stakes and dialogue. Minute later a 5m fall is somehow very dangerous again and it's raining catapult fire for some retarded reason, very distracting.

The rivers and lakes of the jianghu are treacherous, young wanderer. The plot armor favor of the divine ebbs and flows as the roiling river. What is risen, must be stomped: what is brought low, uplifted; all at the fickle whim of fate...

Which is to say I agree, yes, but the "it's over / we're so back" rollercoaster almost seems like the point, reason and coherence be damned. The last fight cutscene after beating the scythe lady is probably the perfect denouement; my honest reaction was "wait so the wine, they're just gonna like- yyyeeeppp, just chug it down while surrounded by glowies, and so- oh and of course they're roflstomping them now, Qianye who? who cares where she is lmao, mook slaughter time". By the time [redacted] picks up a huge flaming log to fuck shit with I mentally checked out and was firmly in "shut up and enjoy the VFX" mode. I'm sure the "never showed the body" rule is firmly in effect for most characters involved anyway.

level cap

I only now learn I hit the level cap (until ~today I think?). Merciful of them to cap it lower than whatever the Chinese release is at, looking at my playtime so far.

wait so the wine, they're just gonna like- yyyeeeppp, just chug it down while surrounded

By itself, the drunken brawl was fun, but you need to properly write the witch out of the picture for a minute. I'm still on the edge of my seat after the fight, you directly beat into me that she is explosively dangerous - a minute later, safe to ignore. Jarring, dev self-sabotage.

There is a silly brawl cutscene when you make it to Kaifeng, reasonable stakes, very enjoyable.

Can proudly confirm I have (although by utilizing similar unworthy fan methods) beaten Qingye on Legend. It took quite a bit of cursing the seven generations of her ancestors.

Given that most of damage to bosses seems to come from Sekiro finishers after depleting their poise, I'm not sure what's the point of using a weapon that doesn't heal you.

inability to differentiate Chinese names, they blend together way too much, I am already bad with names my entire life but god damn Chinese names are on another level

Personally, not as difficult as Korean names (I would estimate less than a quarter of Americans who watched all of Squid Game can remember even one character's name), but definitely a big issue, especially with single syllable names as is common in fiction. I almost wish they'd put the Chinese characters in parentheses after each instance, like writing "Guan Yu (關羽)", for some additional visual distinction, even for those who don't read Chinese.

They need to be translated, then it works quite well. You can actually remember them then.

Chinese map translated.

LLM suggested translations of Chinese terms.

All much better than the phonetic.

IIRC this was what Jade Empire did, and it worked well IMO.

I'm of mixed opinion on these. I think Belt and Road or PLA are apt translations and better than what the LLM offers here. For fictional people, I think the translated approach could work given the inherent suspension of disbelief, but it starts sounding a bit silly for real people.

and it blows my mind that AFAICT almost no attempts at marketing the global launch were made (this game is apparently out in China for like a year already),

From the review I watched earlier today it seems like they did a shit ton of influencer marketing.

a rough implementation of chatbots into NPCs, you can chat with them and gaslight them into raising their affection value so you can get free shit.

I wasn't impressed by this particular feature, seeing as not only is it tedious to talk to clankers, but they seem to be programmed to drag the chat out for at least 4-5 lines before they agree with me, even if I had objectively dunked on them.

Otherwise, this young master (with the attempt at Benedict Cumberbatch's face, so the "young" part is somewhat a misnomer) has also reached Kaifeng, but is starting to cool on the jianghu somewhat. It doesn't help that the quests I've helped complete in coop don't become completed for me.

A notable feature of the character creator that the senior above did not mention is that it's powerful enough to create such yaoguai as Spongebob or Squidward.

they seem to be programmed to drag the chat out for at least 4-5 lines

Yeah I noticed that as well, but larping as a wandering healer with pills and magic bullshit to solve any problem hasn't yet failed me. It's a funny flashback to c.ai days of yore which I do not miss.

Coop really does need work, I'm making acquaintances in my healer journey (since the healer sect runs on literal social credit facebook likes) and its jank as fuck. Still I persevere, for now.

META: I'm getting some weird CSS errors when I view my own comments on mobile. See the upvote/downvote counters in this screenshot.

Possibly related, hovering over the upvote/downvote counter on a desktop browser doesn't work.

@ZorbaTHut it appears to be fixed.

When I go to a userpage, a screen briefly pops up asking if I'm sure I want to shadowban this user.

@ZorbaTHut I don't want to accidentally shadowban myself.

(whoops just saw this)

It was harmless before, just a confirmation page that could pop up. Should be fixed now though.

So clicking the "confirm" or whatever it was button wouldn't actually have shadowbanned anyone?

Yup.

I'm not sure if it would have even sent a message to the server - it's plausible that the button action doesn't get hooked up unless you actually hit the "shadowban" button, a lot of stuff works that way - but even if it did, the server would respond "hey wait, you're not an admin! you can't do that, denied".

For obvious reasons, we don't let logged-out users, or logged-in users without the admin flag, shadowban people :)

For obvious reasons, we don't let logged-out users, or logged-in users without the admin flag, shadowban people :)

Sure, but normal users aren't supposed to have a shadowban button available to push, so I wasn't sure whether the failsafe of "even if they somehow do, it doesn't do anything" was in place as well. I suppose that would help against hackers who send commands the interface doesn't offer, though.

The same change that I linked in another comment also added that shadowban confirmation.

Yup, I've got the same issue on Chrome for Android.

@ZorbaTHut did make a change to the HTML template for user pages a few weeks ago. Maybe it had some bugs but wasn't implemented until now.

@FtttG

In today's episode of "Just Fucking Answer the Question Already", we have Can you see Newfoundland from Cape Breton? As usual, the closest they get is quoting an expert giving a half-answer, and not including a significant amount of rebuttal.

View according to peakfinder matches. At 120km, Cape Breton to Newfoundland is nowhere near the longest line of sight photographed - as of now that record is 484 km.

Look, the typical CBC reporter is going to tune out once the researcher starts talking about "the sagitta of the circle segment".

The expert is just giving an evasive answer because he doesn't want to do detailed work to make sure that's how NL should look in the photo.

The math says that earth curvature shouldn't block the view of the higher parts of NL.

Is there a strong rebuttal posted somewhere?

Nope, the closest thing to a real counterargument is a distance-to-horizon calculation that forgets that the other side can be above the horizon too. I believe that you can see Newfoundland from Cape Breton (and vice versa), but it's not really thanks to the CBC for that. I had to recalculate it myself and I tried looking up more pictures as well.

Can anyone explain the appeal of the book/play/film Wicked to me? I really, really don't get it. At all. What's the appeal of this plotline? Everything people say it is about, I don't see. I feel like there's zero work put into explaining why characters do what they do, or why I'm supposed to care about them. I don't identify at all with any of the characters.

I'm not inherently opposed to revisionist versions of stories, or to musicals. I can get caught up in either or both. But I just don't get Wicked. Can anyone help me out here?

((Also, Ariana Grande should not be allowed on screen. That might not be helping.))

The book (series) is an incredibly grimdark. It's mostly notable now as a culmination the trend of other fantasy retellings, but I can't really recommend it, for a lot of the same reasons. A lot of the people going to read it after seeing the movie are going to be pretty disappointed. That said, the characters are pretty well-explained and have clear motivations: they're just universally petty and selfish motivations. It's very much an exploration of the cycle of harm and motivations of evil.

Popocatepetl's got a Bulveristic take that works for the movies, but for the book, it's a Carrie story. It's not about how you could get everything you could want, and how it's just bad people's faults you didn't. It's about that anger and outright hatred burning in you, and having just cause in your targets, and it not really being your fault, even if your methods are wrong. I don't like it, but I'm not outside of the appeal.

I really, really don't get it.

I don't see a problem here. I didn't see it, and don't intend to. I have a list of approximately 100+ books to read, about a year worth of already existing movie and video material to see (not counting the rewatches), and I have other stuff to do. At this point, for me to even pay attention to something new Hollywood (taking it expansively) produces they need to work really really hard to sell it to me. Why even care?

Can anyone explain the appeal of the play Wicked to me?

For me - Kristin Chenoweth's breasts - they are/were up there with Sydney Sweeny, Alexandra Daddario and Eva Green's ...

Image search is returning photos of a woman I'd prefer to see with more clothing on, not less, so I must be misunderstanding who you mean.

One funny thing you get today when you watch 50s-70s cinema that by default the elch media catalog will automatically download recent photos, so you get to see every actor and actress how they looked at the end of their career.

It's almost never good..rare is the person who ages gracefully.

Add young to the search. She was a hottie in her 30-s or in Pushing Daisies.

Ah, the same factor which made the first two Transformers films watchable!

Wait what? I've seen her in other things and can't say I ever noticed them, but maybe I'm not paying attention.

Can anyone explain the appeal of the book/play/film Wicked to me? I really, really don't get it.

"What if the reason you're not at the top of the social pyramid and your life is filled with drama is not your personal flaws, but because you're such a good person that you're being vilified by the superficial mean people around you."

This is an incredibly appealing fantasy to women, especially young women. The boy version of that appeal can be found in something like Ender's Game or The Matrix, where a disliked low-status guy has immense hidden potential that's waiting to be unlocked by a good mentor / call to action.

Hmm... you stumbled right into the girlboss trope. And the Matrix is not suitable for one reason only (and the same reason Mulan is not a girl boss) - Neo didn't make the jump on the first try. The girlboss for boys was Wanted. You are super assassin and get to fuck angelina jolie, just because of your genes - no effort required.

Girls are far more into the Wizard of Oz than boys are.

I think it captures the idea of "little girl goes on an adventure" much better than most stories.

For boys it's just a fairly forgettable movie they saw in their childhood and it's crowded out of their thoughts by films they see when they are just a little bit older and have guns / swords / battles / etc.

Stories aimed at girls introduce romantic plots well before the audience is old enough to have any interest in boys. It's probably a cultural hint to try to get them to choose their future partners wisely. I think Oz sticks with them as a fun adventure fantasy with no boys allowed.

Additionally there's a strong cultural current of "witches are awesome and evil witch stories are just the patriarchy pushing misogyny".

So a story that goes back and reinterprets the Wicked Witch as misunderstood and kind of bad ass is fun.

Stories aimed at girls introduce romantic plots well before the audience is old enough to have any interest in boys. It's probably a cultural hint to try to get them to choose their future partners wisely.

Judging by single-motherhood rates, the hints don't appear to be working. “Instructions unclear…”

Additionally there's a strong cultural current of "witches are awesome and evil witch stories are just the patriarchy pushing misogyny".

/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy

Naturally, the coven features wholesome and inclusive representation of bio-warlocks.

The Parker-Stone phenomenon.

I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen the musical. It has great songs, which is over halfway to the goal line if you're a musical. And I think that the arc of Elphaba and Glinda, going from a really awful relationship, to best friends, to having to part ways, is interesting and works well. Otherwise, it's not something amazing (the movie is almost certainly severely overhyped, even if it's good there's no way it's as good as people say it is). It's just a pleasant musical about a more sympathetic take on a villain from a classic story. If you aren't feeling the musical side of things, check out the original cast recording of the stage version and see if you like that more. I think that soundtrack slaps.

I haven't read the book either (it's on the list to be read someday), but from what I understand it's significantly different from the play, to the point that it isn't really relevant to any discussion about the play (and now movie).

Yeah I don't think you have to get more complicated than the fact that the songs are just really good. Like all musicals, plot and character simply aren't the important parts. It's not like bad characters and nonsense plots hurt Grease or Cats. "Defying Gravity" is good enough to justify the rest of the play on Its own.

So: 1000$ ‘experience’ Christmas gift for my fiancé .., and possibly myself - as in, it can be like a couples gift thing.

I’ve always been known as a great gift giver but this year there’s just something that’s blocking my mind from activating.

We’re in south Florida and I was thinking something like: couples massage thing, snorkeling weekend at the keys, some sort of little two day getaway somewhere, and that’s pretty much it.

Gimmi some ideas - just something I haven’t thought of or put of left field!

I'd look into an all-inclusive Caribbean resort. Essentially the same model as a cruise ship, but you're not stuck on a boat the whole time. Spend two or three days getting massages and drinking bottomless mai tais by the pool. It's surprisingly affordable, especially since you're so close and can probably get super cheap airfare.

A lot of cruise ship tickets are surprisingly cheap and since you are in Florida you wouldn’t need to travel that far to embark. I can’t speak to the quality of the experience having never been on one.

So I finished A Fighting Man of Mars. While I found The Master Mind of Mars rote, boring and tedius in the extreme, A Fighting Man of Mars could easily be my favorite Barsoom novel, and actually a pretty damn good pulp scifi novel period. This one really goes places: Courtship and intrigue in the palaces of Helium, survival against the green hoards of the ancient seabeds, imprisonment in a far off city suspicious of outsiders, escaping ferocious ancient beast, encountering a psychopath, encountering a mad scientist, capturing a borderline magical flier, rescuing and losing the love interest several times a chapter, falling out of love with the bitch, the main character falling in love (predictably) with someone far more worthy. I know that's a run on sentence, but you have to understand I could have summarized the last novel in like 10 words. Really enjoyed that one. I would actually recommend it.

The Thirty-Year Old Barsoomer

•Lost his job because he literally cannot stop Barsooming

•Stayed in his Barsoom-cave so long that everyone thinks he’s dead

•Freed all his slaves so no one can walk in on him while he’s Barsooming

•”Is that a Princess of Mars?! Ahhhh I’m gonna BARSOOOM!”

Excerpt from a court opinion:

The trial judge stated at sentencing [on December 16, 2022]:

I am considering the sentencing guidelines. I will also consider the fact that you did have a waiver trial, and I will grant you some mitigation with that. I thoroughly reviewed the Presentence investigation report, my notes on the testimony from the trial, the testimony that's been presented here today at the sentencing, from both [the victim, a previous romantic partner of Appellant and the mother of a ten-year-old child with him,] and [Appellant's current paramour,] as well as your allocution and the arguments of counsel.

On December 20, 2022, Appellant timely filed a post-sentence motion requesting reconsideration of his sentence. Appellant acknowledged that the court had sentenced him at the bottom end of the mitigated guidelines, but he indicated that he had been nervous and had not appropriately articulated his remorse in his allocution. Appellant also requested the opportunity to present additional testimony from some of his children's mothers regarding the ways in which his incarceration would affect their lives financially and emotionally. On April 19, 2023, the court denied Appellant's motion by operation of law. Appellant did not file a direct appeal.

Court saga:

  • A 20-year-old man (diagnosed with ADHD and "autism spectrum disorder", employed by UPS under a special program) meets a 12-year-old girl (claiming to be 13) on Snapchat. Within a month, their conversations become sexual. Among other things, the man directs the girl to record a video of herself masturbating with a marker.

  • Five months in, as part of a different child-exploitation investigation, the girl is interviewed by FBI agents, and she also discloses this situation. The agents take control of the girl's Snapchat account, entice the man to meet the girl at a state fair with condoms in the expectation of having sex there, arrest him, and charge him with six crimes. He pleads guilty to three of them, and the other three are dismissed.

  • For sentencing purposes, the marker video is counted as production of child pornography with an enhancement for "material that portrays sadistic or masochistic conduct", which increases the total sentencing range by 55 percent (from 14–18 years to 22–27 years) under the sentencing guidelines. The defendant objects to this characterization, but the trial judge rejects the objection. It is circuit precedent that child pornography that "would cause an objective viewer to believe that the pictured activity is inflicting physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation on the minor" is sadistic or masochistic. "It is common sense that images of a middle- and high-school-aged girl inserting foreign objects into her private parts are sadistic. At minimum, such conduct is objectively humiliating." The trial judge varies downward from the sentencing range by three years to account for the defendant's youth and immaturity, but refuses to vary further based on his diagnoses. The final sentence is 19 years in prison (plus 25 years of supervised release).

  • The appeals panel vacates and remands.

    For depictions involving prepubescent minors, all penetrative activity is inherently sadistic and alone justifies the enhancement. But, for depictions involving pubescent minors [such as the victim in this case], sexual penetration is not by itself enough. The district court must instead find, within the material's four corners, other visible and objective markers of physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Those markers can take different forms, like bondage, urination, humiliating costumes or positions, penetration with large or sharp objects, facial expressions denoting distress, or body language suggesting discomfort. But, without more indicating pain or humiliation, the depiction of pubescent minors engaged in penetrative sexual activity alone cannot justify the enhancement.

  • One judge on the three-judge panel dissents.

    The majority contends that, since the parties agree that [the victim] was not prepubescent at the time of the video, the first avenue for application of the sadism enhancement is foreclosed. But the parties' agreement or concession on an issue is not dispositive, and it does not end our inquiry. As noted by the majority, the government "concedes" that the video shows that [the victim] has "fully-developed breasts and pubic hair", and [the defendant] describes [the victim] as "almost adult-appearing". But several other characteristics, in addition to physical ones, inform the inquiry into prepubescence. For this issue, we should not rely on the conclusions of attorneys, who presumably lack the requisite medical expertise or specialized training and experience to evaluate accurately whether a minor is prepubescent. That determination is more appropriately suited to a qualified medical expert, rather than an attorney or judge. Moreover, that determination is certainly inappropriate for an attorney or judge to make based solely on a minor's appearance as reproduced in an image or video.

    As to the second avenue for application of the sadism enhancement, the majority focuses exclusively on the "four corners of the image" depicting the sexual misconduct. In particular, the majority emphasizes the minor's facial expressions and body language to discern whether the minor objectively experienced physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation during the sexual misconduct. To this point, the majority highlights that the government "acknowledges there is no point in the video in which the expression on [the victim]'s face is particularly pained", and that [the defendant] states that [the victim]'s "body does not flinch or recoil as she masturbates".

    But this emphasis on the visible appearance and reaction of the victim in the material is wholly speculative and unreliable. The majority's approach requires the court to evaluate a victim's reaction while the victim is in the throes of adverse circumstances. This approach assumes that a minor's apparent facial expressions and body language in an isolated and contrived image or video accurately reflect the minor's objective experience, but that assumption defies common sense. This approach fails to take into account that the minor may pretend to tolerate the defendant's treatment or appear comfortable in the image or video to appease the defendant, which often may be the case, or because of the defendant's threats or manipulation. This approach also fails to take into account that the minor may experience objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material. This approach excludes all outside circumstances, even though those circumstances may illuminate whether the sexual misconduct depicted in the material caused the minor to experience objective physical or mental pain and suffering.

    The burden should not be on the victim to convey to the court in her image or video that sexual misconduct with minors involves objective pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Rather, the burden should be on the defendant to prove otherwise. Common sense and human experience inform such an approach.

It's appears to be travesty of justice that federal guidelines mandate that mentally handicapped perp on his first offence was given a sentence almost as high as Ghislaine Maxwell who spent a decade + grooming what ..dozens of girls for prostitution?

It seems obvious to me that whatever default/inherent level of humiliation a minor engaging in vanilla sexual activity on camera entails is what laws against child pornography are already designed to punish. It is with very high probability some level of humiliating/traumatizing, especially in the "minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material". That's what the 14-18 years are for. That's a harsh punishment for a nasty crime. The enhancement is for people who are coercing them into sadomasochistic things that cause additional pain or humiliation and make the crime even worse than usual: a special subset of child porn. Not "masturbation". In no world would anyone describe "masturbation with a marker" as "sadomasochistic". If that was not a child, nobody would blink an eye. It is a child, so we should punish it according to the normal laws for "normal" child porn, in-so-far as it's vanilla sexual behavior and the the person's age is the only reason to notice at all.

Sometimes it's hard to justify why we're arguing about details of how to properly punish someone for whom our instincts are telling us we should just punish them to the maximum allowed. Anyway, I don't quite follow the argument of the dissenting judge here, isn't he inverting an enhancement and a mitigating factor? If the burden of the proof was meant to be on the defendant, wouldn't it be mitigating factor for non-sadism? If it's an enhancement, it seems obvious to me that it's not the default unless the prosecution proves it's there.

Child porn doesn't make for fun discussion. The legal questions are mostly whether or not prosecutors can overcharge unsympathetic defendants and the fact patterns just aren't very interesting.

I personally find these judge-made standards of sadism and masochism to be very interesting. In this case, the trial judge and one appeals judge think that the insertion of a foreign object into a pubescent minor's vagina is inherently humiliating, while the other two appeals judges think otherwise. What answer would a survey of the general public give to this question? I don't know, but I feel doubtful that it would be a landslide in either direction.

The burden should not be on the victim to convey to the court in her image or video that sexual misconduct with minors involves objective pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation. Rather, the burden should be on the defendant to prove otherwise. Common sense and human experience inform such an approach.

I do not see how it would be possible for someone to prove that a person on an image or video is not in pain when the assumption is that they would be hiding it.

During the pandemic there was such beast as asymptotic covid ... for those obtuse enough to be healthy.

I forgot to copy some text that clarifies the dissenter's viewpoint here. (The paragraph was cut in half by a page break.)

This approach also fails to take into account that the minor may experience objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material. This approach excludes all outside circumstances, even though those circumstances may illuminate whether the sexual misconduct depicted in the material caused the minor to experience objective physical or mental pain and suffering.

Also:

Certainly, the majority’s approach cannot accurately capture the feelings or mental state of a minor through the confined frame of an isolated image or video.[1]

Although the depiction in the material is relevant to the inquiry, the court’s focus should not be so narrow. Rather than confine the court’s inquiry to the image or video and focus on the victim’s appearance and reaction as portrayed in the visual media, the court should consider all relevant circumstances and ultimately focus on the defendant’s conduct.[2] The court’s inquiry should include the course of conduct between the defendant and the minor, the events leading up to and after the footage, and the susceptibility of the minor to the defendant’s possible manipulation and control, as those considerations yield a more accurate determination of whether a minor may have experienced objective physical pain, emotional suffering, or humiliation due to the events depicted in the material.

[1]Parenthetically, this problem is exemplified in the media by teenage Virginia Giuffre, who appears to be smiling and happy in pictures with then Prince Andrew, despite her alleging that he subjected her to extreme sexual abuse.

[2]Indeed, in other areas of the Sentencing Guidelines, we have emphasized that the "focus of the inquiry is on the defendant’s action, not the victim’s reaction".

Were there ever CSM cases where the minor was deemed not susceptible enough to the defendant's manipulation and control?

Yes; minor males get prosecuted for self-produced CSM all the time.

Some even get charged as an adult for it, which tends to be A-OK with the courts because again, male.

Of course, what's actually being litigated here is more along the lines of

Were there ever child sex abuse cases happening under a mother's own roof where the woman was deemed not susceptible enough to the man's manipulation and control [as in, she gets charged for it]?

and dissenting on the assumption that "the woman isn't being sufficiently Believed (that being coerced != pained emotionally)" in this case, which this dissenter even took pains to point out.

or humiliation immediately after or in the minutes, hours, or days following the sexual misconduct depicted in the material

Again, smuggling in the "consent can and should be withdrawn afterwards" standard. The accedent likely realize this from the other direction; "regrets it afterwards" is not a law on the books.

Wait, so if a teenage boy snaps a picture of his dick , he just committed a felony?

Yes. There have been cases of the police forcing him to do it again to get sufficient evidence to convict.

This is vastly more retarded than what we have in Czech Republic, which is that 15 year olds can screw each other and over 18s (although there, if it's noticed by police they can investigate the relationship for coercion / bad influence (e.g. drugs iirc).

However, any filming of sex involving underage subjects is a felony. (iirc)

That quote is from the dissent. "Susceptibility of the minor to the defendant's possible manipulation and control" is not an actual standard that has been used in any cases. The text of the law criminalizes merely "persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing any individual who has not attained the age of 18 years to engage in prostitution or any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense".

It is the day after Thanksgiving; and so I will oblige my Christmas-obsessed wife by bringing up the Christmas decorations from the basement. As I walk through the basement, I see the detritus of many things I tried and abandoned. Mottizens: what hobbies or activities have you given a good honest try, and concluded: "this isn't for me?"

For me we have, for example:

  • Golf: Tennis is the only sport to which I have ever devoted myself. However, a few years ago, I spent a large chunk of time thinking about golf, taking lessons, hitting balls at the driving range etc. Then I picked up a very aggravating hip injury that healed slowly. By the time I was back to normal, my desire to do anything relating to golf had dissipated to zero. I think with this one, I realized that starting at a later age, I would never realistically be able to put in the hours to hit an acceptable skill floor. Worth noting - in contrast to some other ball sports, I seem to have no natural aptitude for this one.

  • Photography & drawing: I took classes in each of these within the last five years. I do take my DSLR along if I go somewhere interesting, and I actually think I can take some good pictures; but that's all. I never come up on a random day off and think, "I'll get the camera out and go take pictures of things." Drawing is similar except I never did acquire facility at it. In general, I don't think I'm a very visual person; none of the hobbies that I have kept involve creating anything with visually pleasing outputs.

  • Scuba diving: I did all the classroom and pool portions of the PADI cert, and then got bored with it and stopped. I think this is just because I live in the Midwest; if I lived by a large body of water maybe I'd carry on, but as it stands, it's too inconvenient to pursue this. But I also don't think I was as into it as my peers in the class. As is, I suppose, typical for a hobby you try and drop, I only thought, "This is kind of neat," not, "I love this!"

Drawing as well, here. I never was going to be able to enough time to be good, but I took lessons, read a lot of books, and practiced quite a decent amount in both traditional and digital forms, and I've either gotten worse or learned to notice the flaws in what I was doing more. There's some really fundamental skill related to taking the visual composition of something apart into its components, and I can do that mechanically, but whatever's necessary for art just isn't something I've been able to grapple with. I can trace fine (or at least not so bad as to be actively painful to watchers), so I've started using some of those resources for other tasks, like woodblock or airbrush work, but that first step is just beyond me.

I'm not very good at woodworking, either -- I'm too afraid of the tools -- but I've kept at it, since it's useful even if you're awful. Will admit I haven't made anything like a full furniture set, though, either.

Stained glass was one I thought would be fun, and I can do it, but was never really interesting enough to keep my attention after three or four pieces.

Skiing, particularly the downhill variety. My husband loved it in his youth, and has recently gotten back into it, but I never touched a ski until middle age, and I was never a particularly athletic person to begin with. I got to the point where I could successfully do the bunny slope from top to bottom without falling down, but I just don't enjoy it at all. My husband likes to compare it to going down a water slide, which I do enjoy, but a water slide demands no special skill or equipment to have fun, whereas skiing really does.

He went ahead and bought me cross-country skis and boots anyway, though. At least that type I can practice in the back yard, and potentially even use in a winter emergency situation.

Why don't you switch to snowboarding?

-- Golf. I haven't technically "quit" golf, I still have the clubs and if an opportunity comes up to play I take it, but I've pretty much stopped practicing or thinking I'm going to get much better at it. It's not a bad way to spend a few hours, but I just can't seem to get any good at it. I'm a consistently inconsistent 100.

-- Stand up paddleboarding. I bought a nice inflatable, and it is nice that I can drive it somewhere and go out on the water better than trying to haul a hard sided kayak, but I only use it like once a year. It seemed neat, but ultimately it's kind of a janky way to get around, and only works well in perfect conditions.

-- Realistically, guns. I have a bunch of them, I don't shoot as much as I should. I have a nice target pistol, I have a nice bull barrel .22, both gifts from a champion target shooter friend. I'm embarrassed of my skill level relative to my equipment. And the worst part is, I can shoot in my parents backyard.

-- Every two years or so, I think that I need to actually learn spanish or french. I'm an indictment of the American language education: I took foreign languages in school from ages 10-22, and never learned more than the rudiments of anything. And every few years, I decide I need to fix that. I never make it. Books, duolingo, video courses. Just never happens for me.

-- Outdoor Rock climbing. I got into climbing in the gym, and I bought all the outdoor stuff because that's the cool version. Turns out, I hate spending all damn day fucking around to do two climbs and fail on a third. I'm a gym bunny. I'll probably end up with the same feeling about BJJ tournaments if I ever actually enter one.

-- Video games. Everyone talks about how much they enjoy video games, but I haven't really played one since WoW WotLK. Periodically I will download a well reviewed game, but they never stick, I just can't get stuck in on anything for years now. It's weird because all the autists I hang out with tell me how they all love these things, and I just can't seem to figure them out. At least I haven't been dumb enough to buy a console.

-- It's not exactly something I've started and quit, so much as something I look into every year and then don't start, but every season I look up local Autocross races and what I need to do to enter. Never do it.

I'll probably end up with the same feeling about BJJ tournaments if I ever actually enter one.

Depends on who's running the show, belt level, age level etcetera but I find if you're in a reasonable weight class at white belt you can generally get enough matches from a grappling industries or something to stay engaged.

I might still do it once or twice, but compared to a reasonable open mat where in two hours I can spend an hour rolling?

Oh yeah if you just want to roll an open mat's a way better use of your weekend.

Playing bass guitar, it took me about 6-7 years until I properly gave up.

I love the drums as a musical instrument and several times I tried to learn them, including one attempt with in person classes. I couldn't stick to practicing with the lame drum pad, so I bought a used edrum kit on Craigslist thinking that the realistic sound would be more enjoyable. It was, and I continued with a few online lessons with the kit, but I didn't enjoy the lessons all that much and one day I sat on the throne and wondered why I was even bothering to do this and what I hoped to achieve. I couldn't really come up with an answer and I never touched the kit again.

I think it's hard to learn an instrument unless you intend to play with people (or you're an Asian kid on that grind) and I didn't have anyone to play with.

There must be other hobbies like this in my past, but I usually obsessively get rid of stuff I'm not using so they don't come to mind - although the kit is still in the house.

Learning an instrument is primarily about having fun while sucking and embarrassing yourself. This continues once you start playing with other people, and then is given a new form and scope when/if you perform in front of an audience. There's also a lot of discomfort along the way. Yet I'm compelled to continue doing it, it's really unusual.

Good post!

  • Astronomy: I bought a cheap telescope some time after graduating from high school. I put it together and had fun realizing I could look at the neighbors really, really closely. However, looking at the moon didn't go so well. I don't remember if it was blurry or if there was no picture at all or what, but I remember being dissatisfied, and the lens changes I could think of only made the problem different. I think I resolved to look further into the matter sometime, but in practice, the telescope has sat in the garage ever since. I wonder what I should do with it.
  • 3D Printing: I got really excited about making a FGC 9, so I bought an Ender 3 to make it happen. But the assembly got me. I spent a couple hours putting it together, but eventually, I had no idea how the wheels were supposed to be mounted. I took a picture and sent it in to reddit, and they were helpful, but they also said that I had marked the wheels up and that I now had to order new ones, because those ones were gonna hitch up when printing stuff. I ordered them, but as I waited for them, I lost my motivation, and that, too, just sat there. The outcome was different from the telescope, though. Because it was sitting in my room, I had a hard time looking at my failure every day, so I offered it to my geology professor, who I was pretty good friends with. I sold it to him for cheap, something like $40, and gave him all my filament. When I next checked in on him, he told me he actually had gotten it to work on some long Sunday. "I kept thinking 'there's no way I have the part for this', but every time, I would find the part in the box," he said. The difficulties he had putting it together made me think I never would have been able to do it myself; he described needing to shim it and measure things carefully. His wife was quite thrilled he got it working, though, and immediately started getting him to print out miniatures and card holders and whatnot for her tabletop gaming stuff. Finally, he handed me the only thing I requested, the only thing I had interest in besides guns, three really loud 3D printed whistles. While I didn't manage to put the 3D printer together myself, I do think it had a nice ending.

I found that a good pair of binoculars was a better entry point to amateur astronomy than a cheap telescope. They are more portable, you can still get nice views of things like Jupiter's moons or the Andromeda galaxy, and they are handy for other hobbies like birdwatching if you get bored and want a change.

Sounds nice! Do you have a recommendation?

I have the Orion Scenix 7x50 and they work pretty well for most uses I can think of. Nikon and Celestron are good brands as well. I also bought a pair of solar filters to look at the eclipse last year and they were a big hit at my watch party.

What video game(s) are you playing? :D

I've only played for a couple of hours during the last two weeks, tbh. I was really impressed with Roseymorn Monastery in Baldur's Gate 3. The Shadow-Cursed Lands are a bit of a letdown afterwards. I screwed up a quest which, someone later told me, was a more important one than it seemed. So I have to backtrack a little bit. Which is a meh thing to do when you're not really enjoying the environment. Bring on Moonrise Towers.

Starship Troopers Extermination again.

I play with a light military sim group. I recently got certified to lead 16 person groups for the company. This comes with a promotion to the NCO ranks. I'm corporal for now, but since I have the platoon lead certification I will be Sergeant once a week elapses.

The certification process was simultaneously easy and difficult. Easy because I was ready for it, and it was fun leading a well oiled machine of 15 other people. Hard because I have a baby that occasionally wakes up in the middle of matches and there is a bit of random luck to the game that can make certain matches very difficult. I failed my first attempt because the dropship was far away and I wasn't able to get all the troopers to the dropship alive. (A condition of passing the certification but not winning the match).

I'm looking forward to the next game update when there will be improvements to in game companies. Should allow for some more meta progression. I've mostly topped out a lot of the existing progression stuff.

EU5. This week has been a rollercoaster of broken beta patches, with various mechanics getting completely broken.

#Slowpokeisslow, but how is EU5 compared to EU4. I had a bad experience with Crusader Kings 3.

It's better at release than EU4 was. Still lots of bugs, though.

Not as much flavor as EU4 in 2025, but EU4 in 2025 has too many modifiers to stack and game-breaking mission trees.

Thanks for this.

Goddamnit, I was just considering dipping my feet in! I guess the six month wait period for Paradox holds.

Get in, it's fun, in six months it will be balanced and boring.

All this BG3 talk is giving me a craving, but I can't bring myself to embark on a new solo playthrough while I'm paused a bit into Act 3 with one friend and at the start of Act 2 with him and another friend, who are both too busy to play recently.

My husband and I just finished playing through Strange Antiquities together and really enjoyed it. Nice relaxing fare while I'm more-or-less on break from my usual semi-tryhard WoW gaming.

I've dabbled in Satisfactory for the first time recently, but think I might not be the right kind of nerd for this game. The technical aspect doesn't grab me enough; I find I'd rather just explore the world.

I'm as terrible at Marvel Rivals as ever but like it enough that I've swallowed my pride and re-downloaded it just to run AI matches to wind down late at night. That game was fun when all the other casual noobs were also still playing and just became painful once that population dropped off. If anyone knows how to get good at this kind of game, feel free to send me a link or something, since I apparently can't just move on lol.

It's about the time of year for my annual Minecraft spurt but I may try to get back into Enshrouded to semi-fill that niche instead. Or I may succeed in logging off and reading a book instead. We'll see.

Battlefield 6 baby! Free week right now.

It definitely released somewhat under-baked, but the infantry gameplay is PHENOMENAL (with some caveats). Engine is amazing. Vehicle gameplay is shit compared to BF5 (I skipped 2042) which is disappointing, but air vehicles are not very strong and look great when they explode, which is awesome as a good BF5 pilot = just leave the server the game is over. Plus the RPG is very fast and accurate, and RPG-ing helis is a herion-tier hit of dopamine.

Plus, the popularity of BF6 means a lot of... median Americans are playing. As a PC gamer, I missed most of the golden era of cod lobby shit talk, but I have genuinely heard a smoke alarm beep being picked up by someone's PS5 controller mic they hadn't muted.

I have never farmed noobs as hard as I have in this game, it feels like many of the opposing players have Hellen Keller tier awareness and coordination, you can (literally) run circles around them, my K/D has never been this high in a FPS and I'm not even tank-whoring (which I did a lot in BF5).

The median American cannot comprehend a silencer, you can just keep killing them as they walk around a corner into you, blissfully unaware that 3 team mates in front of them just died the same way.

Just bought Baldurs Gate on the recs of this forum. Looking forward to some cozy gaming this winter.

I had to put down Silksong, just kept getting too frustrated playing it. Was fun for a while though.

Awesome. Wouldn't mind hearing about what character you go for and your impressions.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend was on Instagram and found a reel of a group of women (and one man) respectively cosplaying as the Bubble Head Nurses and Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2. I mentioned that the game is really good and we could try playing it together if she liked, a suggestion she responded to with enthusiasm, despite not really being a gamer.

I have a complicated relationship with Silent Hill 2. I was aware of the franchise (and I think even played the demo for Silent Hill 3 as a child, without having played either of the previous two instalments, only to find that my PC couldn't hack it), but the first time I encountered the idea that Silent Hill 2 specifically was a game with real artistic merit was from hearing Yahtzee relentlessly gush about it. Curiosity piqued, about fifteen years ago I bought a secondhand PS2 and a copy of the game and gave it a whirl, only to give up on it an hour or two in. The same thing happened on my second attempt. On probably my third attempt I decided to just power through it and made it to the Brookhaven Hospital — at which point it finally clicked for me, and I played all the way through to the end. I played it through to the ending a second time, and haven't touched it since.

With my PS2 gathering dust somewhere, I installed the PC port of the original game* which is apparently abandonware, along with the "Enhanced Edition" mod, which optimises the experience for modern PCs and enables controller support. We booted up the game and got stuck in, with my girlfriend playing until she got too scared and then asking me to take over. I don't scare easily, and even on the times I've played the game to the end generally found it more creepy and unsettling than outright scary. My girlfriend scares much easier than I do, and after subjecting her to innumerable scary movies over the years, I can say without exaggeration that Silent Hill 2 was the most scared I've ever seen her: she was literally shrieking in terror in places, and mentioned having had nightmares about Pyramid Head. In much the same way that comedy films can seem funnier when watched with a group, playing a horror game with someone sitting next to you who's frightened out of her wits really enhanced the experience, and I found the game scarier and more unnerving than any previous playthrough. By the time you've emerged from the Historical Society and are making the lonesome voyage across the lake, the game has become utterly hypnotic. And then you get to the ending, and the game turns on a dime from scaring the bejesus out of you to breaking your heart. We were both devastated when it's implied Angela kills herself, the twist of how Mary died came as a complete surprise to my girlfriend, and when Mary reads out her letter to James at the end we were both sobbing.

In some ways my opinion of the game hasn't changed: almost everything prior to the Brookhaven Hospital remains a boring slog through a set of bland, repetitive environments. (Maybe that's necessary to lull the players into a false sense of security so they can pull the rug out from under them later, modulating from survival to psychological horror.) The titular town is terrifying at nighttime but dull as dishwater during the day, fog notwithstanding. The transition from in-game cutscenes to pre-rendered cinematics might be the only thing that really dates the game to the early 2000s, as it's a trope that completely fell out of favour once graphical fidelity hit some floor. In other ways I'm surprised to admit that I get it now: the people claiming that the dodgy voice acting and imprecise facial animation contribute to the game's dreamlike Lynchian atmosphere sounds like pure cope — but goddamn it, those things do contribute to the game's dreamlike Lynchian atmosphere, whether intended by the creators or not. (Part of me even wants to call the game a spiritual adaptation of Mulholland Drive, given that both stories are fundamentally about the psychological coping mechanisms their sympathetic protagonists resort to in order to avoid confronting the fact that they have murdered their loved ones; maybe the Man Behind Winkie's serves the same purpose as Pyramid Head? — and yet it couldn't be, because it came out only four months after Mulholland Drive debuted at Cannes. That's how far ahead of the curve Team Silent were: they were making Lynchian games before Lynchian games were a thing, without even having the man's masterpiece to crib from.) Since Silent Hill 2's release, there have been dozens of video games which marketed themselves as "psychological horror", and yet I can't remember any which came close to getting so deep under my skin. In a medium in which "mature" or "adult" is still widely seen as synonymous with more cursing and more realistic gore and tits (or including these elements, but rapping the player on the knuckles for daring to enjoy them), Silent Hill 2 actually feels like a story for grown-ups in a way that most games that have been released ten, fifteen or twenty years later couldn't hold a candle to. I recall when Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy came out, some critic made the comparison that Grand Theft Auto is a game which, owing to its content, should only be played by adults, whereas Fahrenheit is a game for adults. With all due respect: bullshit. David Cage wishes he could craft something half this mature and powerful, and twenty years after Fahrenheit came out he doesn't appear to have come a millimetre closer.

Roger Ebert once said that, for him, cinema is first and foremost an emotional medium: he dislikes films that delve into intellectual debates, considering it a misuse of the form. I tend to agree: I can't remember a film I loved specifically because it made me think (although it may have done so incidentally). By contrast, despite video games' strenuous efforts to replicate the visual iconography of cinema, I've long thought the medium they most resemble is actually books, in the sense that they are long-form storytelling media the consumer must actively engage with to move the story forward, unlike passively consumed movies or TV shows. It is for this reason that I've long considered games more compelling from an intellectual standpoint than an emotional one, which makes sense when you consider that even getting to grips with the game mechanics is, to a greater or lesser extent, a fundamentally intellectual exercise: most of the games I've loved, I've loved because they made me think, not because they made me feel (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 2, Spec Ops The Line, SOMA: they all made me feel emotions a little bit, but the main reason I loved them was because they made me think). But I now think Silent Hill 2 might be the exception to this trend. Having now completed my third playthrough, I think it might be the most unsettling, moving, emotionally affecting video game I've ever played, bar none.

gushing over

I've become vastly fussier as a gamer in my advancing years. Last night I wanted to play something by myself, so I played the first half-hour of Trek to Yomi. Gorgeous to look at and I like that the spoken dialogue is in Japanese, but the gameplay was already starting to feel a bit rote and repetitive, so I gave up on it. Next I tried Advent Rising, notable for having its story co-written by Orson Scott Card. Gave up on that even quicker, inside of ten minutes.

A few years ago I tried playing Undertale after the world and its mother were raving about it. I think I played it for about two hours and remember enjoying it, but for some reason I never got around to finishing it. Last night I took another crack at it, playing about as far as the title card (i.e. the game held my attention for significantly longer than the previous two games I tried that evening). It's rare for a game to make me laugh out loud, or to make me think "aww, how sweet", so props to the game for doing both. Will see if I can manage to make it to the end this time.

*No remake for me, thank you very much.

This f'ing guy. <3

Some Arma Reforger, and Rimworld.

I've also been dipping my toes into RW modding. I can't play without the Combat Extended mod, which makes the two blind guys in an alley shootouts in vanilla into something respectable.

I wanted to start small and make a mod that adds a single gun, namely a railgun that's effectively an MG and shoots 6mm tungsten sabots. I wanted to be maximally lazy and use AI to write all the code, but had very little success. Rimworld modding is a relatively niche topic, and CE submods even more so. Especially since there was a version update and DLC since the knowledge cutoff. I was tearing out hair before giving up on that approach as a wholesale solution and ended up taking an existing mod as the starting point and stripping it down and building back up by myself.

So far? I've got a 6mm railgun! It shoots!

Unfortunately, it only fires single rounds and doesn't seem to need ammo. The former is a consequence of starting off with a mod that added a sniper rifle, but the latter perplexes me. I'll figure it out eventually, especially with help from the CE dev discord. It's cool that it's working at all, even if it's a tiny project on well-trod ground.

Edit:

I've got it working! It's out on Steam, with 3 railguns that fit your needs regardless of the enemy you need railed. I'm officially a modder, and I've returned something to the community and game that I've enjoyed for an ungodly number of hours.

The Seance of Blake Manor. I've got a thing for detective investigation games. Trying to use deductive reasoning game mechanics to figure out who did what. I'd like to say its deductive reasoning, but its only like that in a couple of the games.

If anyone likes this genre, other recommended games are:

  • The Painscreek Killings
  • The Case of the Golden Idol
  • Return of the Obra Din

As always, watch the first episode of a Let's Play on YouTube and then make your mind up in 10 minutes before things get spoiled.

Edit: Almost forgot Shadows of Doubt

I was considering replaying BG3 and was wondering about which mods might be good. My first thought was some kind of narrator replacement since I really dislike the default one.

I found AI versions of both Lenval Brown and William Morgan Sheppard, both of which seem pretty good.

Does anyone have any other versions they like or some other kind of mod they find to be essential?

I was gonna say BG2 but with genAI, we might actually get someone porting that to a modern engine.

Gameplay wise, it's somewhat more interesting and story / lore / character wise it's a whole grade above.

Ancient Megapack has been an absolute gamechanger. It randomizes all (non-quest-essential) loot and adds like 2000 new items. Surprisingly, it doesnt screw up the balance too bad. You'll have better gear, but the mod also tweaks the enemy AI and a few encounters to increase the difficulty accordingly. It's been great forcing me into using different builds since I can't predict what items I'll get.

I found some good narrator mods that work with the latest version of the game. I'm currently using Christopher Lee, and I've tried out Philomena Cunk, too, who is amusing. The Cunk file can be downloaded here. They both work well.

Other mods I consider to be essential: Carry weight increased (I go for 2x to keep from feeling too cheaty), change Shadowheart's hair(!), Configurable movement speed (requires Mod Configuration Menu).

Optional: Realms Restored, No Alphabets, Better Romance. These three can be found on the socially dubious rpghq forums.

BG3 has.. carry weight? I played the game but don't remember that ever being an issue- even though it should. Isn't there infinite camp inventory which you can access at any time?

I run into the carry weight restriction a lot, even with the 2x mod. Yes you can send stuff to camp, but then it isn't immediately available to you, e.g. in combat. Everything has a weight. Even your hoard of gold coins.

Nice, thanks!

There are many words in the English language which are formed using a prefix or a suffix, but for which the antonym formed by removing that prefix or suffix (or using the opposite prefix or suffix) is never used. There are even a handful of cases in which two compound words can be formed using a prefix and its antonymic prefix, but the word itself is never used in isolation, or has a vastly different meaning than would be inferred based on the meaning of the two compound words. Some examples:

  • abuse, v. (antonym: disabuse): to affirm that another's belief is correct and not a misconception
  • appointment, n. (antonym: disappointment): the state of feeling satisfied
  • baseful, adj. (antonym: baseless): (of claims) with sound evidentiary backings
  • concerting, adj. (antonym: disconcerting): tending to cause ease and comfort
  • faultful, adj. (antonym: faultless): containing many imperfections
  • feckful, adj. (antonym: feckless): purposeful, competent, effective
  • gormful, adj. (antonym: gormless): sharp; intelligent; with his wits about him
  • gruntled, adj. (antonym: disgruntled): content, satisfied
  • gutful, adj. (antonym: gutless): brave, courageous
  • hatful, adj. (antonym: hatless): the state of wearing a hat
  • homeful, adj. (antonym: homeless): of a fixed abode
  • inotic, adj. (antonym: exotic): indigenous, native
  • interminate, v (antonym: exterminate): to commit mass suicide à la Jonestown
  • interpret1, v. (antonym: misinterpret): to understand correctly and accurately
  • jointed, adj. (antonym: disjointed): connected, coherent.
  • parage, v. (antonym: disparage): to commend or praise.
  • peerful, adj. (antonym: peerless): (of individuals) with many equals
  • pitiful, adj.2 (antonym: pitiless): empathetic, caring
  • rate, v.3 (antonyms: overrate, underrate): to assess the value of accurately
  • react, v.4 (antonyms: overreact, underreact): to respond in an appropriate fashion
  • reckful, adj. (antonym: reckless): cautious, careful
  • ruthful, adj. (antonym: ruthless): scrupulous
  • seamful, adj. (antonym: seamless): amateurishly put together
  • spotful, adj. (antonym: spotless): dirty, disheveled
  • substar, n. 5 (antonym: superstar): a minor celebrity; a B-, C- or Z-lister
  • subvise, v. (antonym: supervise): to oversee ineffectually
  • superstandard, adj. (antonym: substandard): in excess of requirements, superior
  • timeful, adj. (antonym: timeless): bound to a particular era, a product of its time; an unintentional period piece
  • tireful, adj. (antonym: tireless): prone to exhaustion, easily worn out
  • topful, adj. (antonym: topless): decently clad
  • underdose, n. v. (antonym: overdose): an insufficent dose
  • underdraft, n. (antonym: overdraft): a positive bank balance
  • underkill, n. (antonym: overkill): to use methods insufficient to accomplish one's goal
  • undersee, v. (antonym: oversee): to supervise ineffectually; to ignore or forget about
  • understay, v. (antonym: overstay): to cut one's residence short
  • undertake, v.6 (antonym: overtake): to be overtaken by sb
  • whelm, v. (antonyms: overwhelm, underwhelm): just the right amount, neither surplus nor insufficient to requirements
  • witful, adj. (antonym: witless): intelligent, sensible

Can you think of any other good examples?

1 Obviously this word does see use on some occasions, and yet it isn't strictly an antonym for "misinterpret": "misinterpret" specifically denotes an inaccurate interpretation, whereas "interpret" is equivocal on whether the interpretation was accurate or not.

2 We move here into the realm of pedantry, as while this word does see use, it's not used as an antonym of "pitiless": rather, it denotes someone deserving of pity, which is more properly denoted by "pitiable". See also "nauseous"/"nauseated". In other cases people get this distinction right e.g. "contemptuous"/"contemptible".

3 See also "interpret": unlike "to overrate" and "to underrate", "to rate" does not pass judgement on whether the assessment was a fair or accurate one. Confusingly, "to rate" also carries a colloquial meaning of "to think highly of, to commend"; when Roy Keane said of Mick McCarthy, "... I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager, and I don't rate you as a person..." he meant that he didn't think highly of him in any of these capacities. This runs contrary to the word's usual meaning of "to assess", which includes both positive and negative assessments.

4 See also "rate".

5 There was a British comedian (it might have been Lee Evans) who once quipped that every actor who appears in a porn film is denoted a porn star, which is not the standard we apply to actors in general, only a minority of whom can be called "stars". "Where are all the porn actors?"

6 As distinct of its meaning "to undertake a task".

baseful, adj. (antonym: baseless): (of claims) with sound evidentiary backings

Amusingly, "based" has recently started being used to mean something similar.

faultful, adj. (antonym: faultless): containing many imperfections

"Faulty" is used.

inotic, adj. (antonym: exotic): indigenous, native

My research into the etymology suggests you're misreading the prefix and the correct inversion would be "endotic".

interminate, v (antonym: exterminate): to commit mass suicide à la Jonestown

My research into the etymology suggests "ex" is not referring to "others".

spotful, adj. (antonym: spotless): dirty, disheveled

"Spotted" can be used that way, IIRC, though it rarely is.

underdraft, n. (antonym: overdraft): a positive bank balance

"Overdraft" IIRC refers to the act of drawing too much, not the state of a negative balance. An "underdraft" would hence be the act of drawing too little.

undersee, v. (antonym: oversee): to supervise ineffectually; to ignore or forget about

That's actually an old, obsolete meaning of "oversee", not an antonym. "Over" in "oversee" is more literal - it's someone on high looking over his minions.

These are called lexical gaps or accidental gaps and are quite common in English in particular due to its relatively complex development course.

"Rate" seems to me like it is indeed used as you describe. Someone's accoplishments can "rate", or properly deserve, praise. A work of art can be "rated highly". There are plenty of industries in which saying that someone's job is to rate, or grade or assess, quality or purity would be perfectly logical.

I believe that "rueful" is both the true antonym for "ruthless" (not scrupulous) and actually a word for which the suffix change is fairly normal. Not sure why this one is slightly irregular... "faithful" exists, as does "shoeless", so the problem would appear to be with "ruthless". Perhaps "rueless" is just too wimpy a collection of sounds for this idea.

For abuse, I have always thought of it being the opposite of disabuse in that an abused person's thought process, etc, is being abused by incorrect notions. Thus, to disabuse is to free someone from a figurative abuser.

A fun example to add to the list (possibly) is inchoate, which means not fully formed. Apparently, lawyers do use the implied antonym choate, but Scalia has long criticized this because the "in" here is not in fact a negative prefix, so creating the implied antonym is nonsenical. Personally, I have always thought of coalesced as a good opposite. https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_dictionaries_accept_choate_although_scalia_has_long_disagreed

There is an archaic noun "ruth", which seems to mean the same thing as "rue". Many centuries ago it was a commonplace for Christian parents to name their children after Christian virtues they want them to embody, which is where the name "Ruth" came from: along with "Grace" it's the only such name which has really stuck around in Ireland. Some of these like "Hope" are more common in the states, and you'll sometimes encounter Nigerians called "Goodluck" ("Chastity" only gets used ironically by sex workers).

As you said, virtue names are uncommon, but by no means unheard of, in the US. Almost exclusively for girls, though Felix arguably counts as a virtue name for boys. For girls I've seen Hope, Faith, Grace, Mercy, Charity, Joy and Constance around, as well as one extremely out there example whose full name was Ever Lasting Love (apparently her parents were hippies, lol).

Hope, Faith, Grace, Mercy, Charity, Joy and Constance

Destiny, Trinity, Felicity, Harmony, Heaven (and Nevaeh), Serenity, and the aforementioned Chastity also come to mind for girl names in that direction.

There’s quite the Venn diagram intersection between virtue names (or virtue name-adjacents) and stripper names, whether due to hoeflation or the downward mobility of names.

What did she go by? Eva?

She went by Ever. It was unusual but you got used to it.

Good point on the Biblical Ruth, but that is supposed to mean friendship or friend, right? I think "ruthless" has to be a slant of "rue-less". Surely we dont have people out there naming their kids "Regret" as a desired virtue! (Well, actually maybe Hunger Games fans...)

Regret is a name, Sergeant. The name of one of the Covenant's religious leaders. A Prophet.

Dear humanity: we regret being alien bastards. We regret coming to Earth. And we most definitely regret the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!

Oo-rah!

"Rate" seems to me like it is indeed used as you describe. Someone's accoplishments can "rate", or properly deserve, praise. A work of art can be "rated highly". There are plenty of industries in which saying that someone's job is to rate, or grade or assess, quality or purity would be perfectly logical.

But my point was that the adjectives "overrated" and "underrated" refer to instances in which the assessment of an item's quality was considered to be inaccurate, either too generous or too harsh, respectively. To me this implies that "to rate" something is to make an accurate assessment of its quality. But I don't think it really does carry this de-/con-notation: much as with "interpret", the verb "to rate" is equivocal on whether the resulting assessment was a fair or accurate one.

Hmm, I do think that "to rate" implies accuracy, even if a rating does not necessarily imply the same, perhaps a controversial take in performance review season, but I think of that as "giving ratings" rather than "rating".

But then this gives us the prefix issue of that it being clear that an undercooked dish has not been cooked enough and that an overcooked dish has been cooked too much, a common sense application of over/under. What, then, does it mean to do insufficient/excessive accurate assessment? (Since this was all still very common sense with cook, perhaps over/under are just not good prefixes for us to do this with at all.)

It's interesting again because the words "overrated" and "underrated" are only ever used in the context of qualitative assessments which are extremely subjective, namely those of artistic works. "Breaking Bad is an overrated TV show" sounds normal; "the bridge collapsed because the inspector overrated the quality of the steel used in its construction" sounds weird, even if that's literally what happened.

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