domain:academic.oup.com
No_one
8m ago
Road 96 is an adventure video game played from a first-person perspective. The game's campaign has the player assume the role of several teenage hitchhikers attempting to flee the authoritarian nation of Petria without being arrested or killed
It sounds incredibly naive. If emigration is actually illegal, the border involves things such as
- self-attacking dogs (they chill in their kennels until it's time to maul a border intruder who unwisely tripped an alarm releasing them)
- a 'fake' dummy border, to make the intruders think they've made it
- electric fences, silent tripwires, flare tripwires
- sometimes, patrols unloading at the intruders with machineguns
It does actually get so bad people would hijack aircraft to get out, or fly a hang glider over it, or if they're a pilot, steal their plane. Usually, though, people just left through a foreign country they could travel to but which did not have prison camp style border. In the real world, this was Yugoslavia.
clo
8m ago
Count one up for the furries. Zootopia is probably the best rubber-meets-the-road film about the prejudice of biological differences. And they get to make that story because it stars talking animals.
During the writing of that movie, there was a significant amount of development done around the concept that in order for the society to work, the dangerous animals were fitted with control collars. In the making of, there's this wonderful deleted scene that they didn't end up including in the movie where an father predator animal is at his son's birthday and getting him fitted with that collar, and for the kid it's this great rite of passage: I am finally an adult - and there's just this sadness in the adult's eyes because they know what is being done to their child.
They didn't keep it in for obvious reasons after a few rounds of story review, but I think about that scene a lot these days.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11m ago
Been playing Helldivers 2 with some old friends. Lots of fun. I recall some mottizens complaining about it being a bad shooter, which is a sentiment I'm amibvalent about, or about it being a grenade-lobbing simulator, which isn't entirely incorrect, but ultimately I think the game just contains lots of mechanics to recommend itself.
- You can generally make do with common-sense tactics and a little experience; finely honed twitch reflexes or esoteric game-specific knowledge aren't required.
- The theme of "squishy humans attaining superiority through firepower" occupies a sweet spot in between power fantasy and challenge.
- The game makes do with very little hand-holding. You can get killed by the smallest enemy when you don't pay attention. You can teamkill and there are no guardrails against it.
- The game is exceptionally well-crafted, full of lovingly-implemented detail, little nods to realism and in-depth mechanics other games would simply elide.
- There's no woke in the writing. The game's campy lore and plot can be played straight or seen as parody however you like; much like w40k but without the need to fit into a tabletop figurine merchanidse form-factor.
- The game can be approached easily enough by my challenge-averse friends, and once they get into the groove I can slowly ratchet up the difficulty on them.
- A level 1 player can be just about as effective as a level 150 player, give or take some very minor bonuses and, of course, experience. All the equipment that goes into loadouts is side-grades, and there is zero grind required to be able to contribute to a team. All the grind does is unlock more equipment variety.
- Speaking of equipment variety, each and every item in the arsenal is useful. Some are more specialized than others, some are perhaps too niche or slightly underpowered, some are perhaps a little overpowered, but there is overall a good sense of balance in everything.
- There are always multiple ways to solve a given problem, but my problem-solving-averse friends ("I already do that for work and don't need it in my free time!") can just pick the one they're most used to while I get to improvise and experiment.
- You can play a mission or three in the evening and still go to bed well on time. It doesn't take a massive investment of time to play.
Helldivers 2 earned a ton of awards, and I'd say it well deserves them. It really is an usually well-made game.
If any Mottizens want to go on a dive together (and our time zones aren't too incompatible. German time here, I usually play between 21:00 and 23:00), let me know.
I suspect they think they're feminists. Joshua Norton thought he was emperor of the United States.
As far as I can tell they're fandom carnies.
Kaja looks like one of those women who Doesn't Count as far as the People Whose Opinions Matter are concerned, like most autistic "feminists" who think principles trump social skills and status. Occasionally useful, always disposable.
The writing is too "sex pest" to earn remembered approval in real life and too heterosexual to thrive outside it. (I see there's already been drama of the expected variety.)
I would file it under the same category as any "comic-book woman with green eyes, red hair, and Amazonian physique" thing. Even if the protagonist doesn't look the part. She's burlesque enough.
BahRamYou
50m ago
But we've been here before. Around the late '00s, Disney felt that it was shackled by its perception as a girl brand,
This is weird. To me they are a girl brand, and they've been that way a very long time. I vaguely recall liking Disney when I was a very young child, but it seems like me and every other boy I knew stopped liking them when we were around 10 years old. Not even into puberty yet, but old enough to be interested in more violent, action-heavy stuff. Disney was about pretty Princesses singing songs and wearing fancy clothes. And that was fine, we didn't make fun of girls for liking it, we just weren't interested, for the same reason we weren't interested in any of the other pink brands.
I can see why their corporate executives might want to change that and become some universal brand that appeals to everyone. But institutions have cultural inertia and sometimes they just can't be changed. It's like how almost every country tries hard to get into the World Cup but there's only a few that are regularly good at it. And it's not always about money or resources because tiny countries like Uruguay can be weirdly good at it while the US struggles. Sometimes we just have to accept that things are as they are.
When I went to Disneyland for the first time a few years ago, everything had this feeling of "cute, safe, friendly." Perfect for a stereotypical 1950s family on vacation for 2 young children, and I guess also fun for Disney adult women who want to cosplay as princesses. But the whole Star Wars area felt weirdly out of place, like trying to cram an actually scary haunted house into a McDonalds.
FtttG
1hr ago
Less than a hundred pages from the end of Speaker for the Dead. Still can't really say I'm loving it, and certainly I'm not enjoying it half as much as I did its predecessor.
I have a copy of The Children of Men which I've never read, but I've seen the film adaptation several times and (one major plot hole aside) loved it. Well worth checking out. I believe the author gave it her seal of approval.
Kindles? iPads
The Kindle Fires (I don't know if they use the term "Kindle" for these anymore) are the cheapest way to get a kid a tablet and they went crazy coming out with various kid-themed versions and cases.
Edit: for instance, here's a $100 tablet advertised for kids and themed to the Avengers.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
It's, pardon me, superfluous in idea and idiotic in practice.
See: Heavy troopers being unable to fire from rooftops because they hold their guns at hip level. See also: Sniper being unable to take his shot because there's a lamppost halfway in between him and his target, and leaning left or right isn't possible because it's grid-based, dammit.
You can't actually fine-control where things stand relative to each other, yet first-person shooting depends on exactly such fine control. It's the wrong genre for it!
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
I take some perverse pleasure in remembering the old arguments around ditching the EU was good, actually, because it unburdens thr new writers by what has been, and enables them to be more creative.
I also seem to remember one if our regular posters had a bit about how nerds need to shut up, because corporate executives know better how to make their product appealing to a wider market.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
We had the Witches of Dathomir and they were fine.
Much like The Rise of Skywalker was an incompetent and facial adaptation of Dark Empire, this is once again just Disney remaking the EU but worse.
CanofWorms
2hr ago
Treehouse is a great call
Warrior Apprentice does start slow, but it gets a lot better when Miles get into Dendarii mode. If you got turned off in the first couple chapters, try skipping to chapter five and start from there. On the other hand, if you were still getting bored by the pathos in chapter ten, you're probably better off skipping the book. The main character's a bit bipolar, so Warrior's Apprentice isn't the last time he'll go into a pointed funk, but it's usually paced a lot better. If that's issue, some options:
Cetaganda works without having much knowledge of the setting. I think it leans a little to heavily on the 'throw a grenade in when stuck' approach to plot pacing, but it's got a reasonably good grabber and at worst that pacing errs toward the rushed, so it's a good middle-of-the-pack read. Murder-and-politics mystery in a scifi setting that pushes real heavy on what transhumanism might actually look like rather than Star Trek-style goofiness, though the expectations are a bit dated today.
The Vor Game is much stronger work and a lot faster to the point -- which is good, because it sets up a lot more small plot points for the rest of the series, often in pretty subtle ways -- but it is still very much The Sequel To Warrior's Apprentice. It'll tell you most of what you need to know about big plot, but there are especially some character bits that won't hit as hard without having seen the characters in action before. Great villains, witty heroes, and Miles at his most second-most saving-the-day-by-the-seat-of-the-pants, and necessary reading for the great Memory and Komarr (and, indirectly A Civil Campaign). There's a particular quote about unsolvable problems that'll stick with you.
Barrayar is probably easier as a starting point, and a much faster-paced work with clearer stakes (and a more specific timeline) for the protagonists, along with being set chronologically earlier. It gives a lot more complete an understanding of how fucked up the titular planet is, rather than leaving you wondering if it's Just These Assholes, and the motivation for all the characters is generally resonant even where a reader might know what the actual conclusion to the character's arc is going to be. Downside is that Miles is literally prenatal, and while Cordelia is a good main character, she's drastically different in tone. Also, like Pratchett's Night Watch there's a lot of subtle references to chronologically later works that you don't need to know, but will still miss out on. (Shards of Honor is chronologically even earlier and is readable, but it's the most Star Trek-fan-story of them all, so I wouldn't recommend it as a first read in the series.)
Borders of Infinity is a short story, and does show up enough in the rest of the stories to be worth reading in timeline order, but also they're representative of the highs and lows of the series. Would read before Komarr regardless, but it's a good intro to the pre-Memory Miles character and works with fairly little knowledge of the setting. There's a few stories in the series that are better, but if you don't like this one you're probably going to find getting to the best ones not worth it.
The strength of the Star Trek female fan base has always been slightly surprising to me: it’s military science fiction! That said, I can see it: it’s military sci-fi, but the military solves problems through the power of empathy and diplomacy, Kirk and Riker (my phone literally autocorrected his name to “Romeo,” which is hilarious) are… present, and most stories in Trek are soft science fiction, using alien societies or time travel to explore social structures and personal relationships. TNG always stood out to me as having a remarkable number of episodes about character romance, particularly for the female characters.
Trek also stands out to me for how it’s very formalized and society (in Starfleet — who knows what people do on Earth) is regimented, and I think that’s a factor in geek culture more broadly. Geeks seem to really like dreaming of societies with clearly-defined rules and chains of commands and even uniforms. I have a theory that geeks, often autistic or hypo-social, find the improvisational and non-explicit social rules of society hard to navigate or understand, and wish things were more explicit and systematic. I think this is what psychologically unites ren faire people who dream of m’ladying their way into a woman’s affections (or a woman who would like to be treated like a courtesan), and Trek fans who dream of color-coded uniforms.
Star Trek has ranks and command structures (but is highly non-rigid in social organization for a quasi-military organization — it’s how a progressive imagines a military should operate), Harry Potter has Hogwarts houses with found families based on character traits ordained by a magical hat. Both are about social institutions that provide the security of structure without the rigidity of oppression, with many stories revolving around how morality and justice override authority. There’s a fundamental liberalism at the heart of nerd interests, but one that absolutely finds the improvised social structures that actually characterize liberal society hard to fathom.
But also after a long period of miss after miss, even my geeky friends aren’t into Star Trek. I know more fans of The Phantom Menace than The Next Generation. I remember when I took IT classes and the instructor was appalled when I was the only one in the class who copped to liking Trek. Nerd culture has changed.
I don’t think it was Scott Bakula’s show that killed it — I’ll come out as actually liking Enterprise, but also I liked Voyager so I have terrible taste in Trek. Was it Abrams? I always used to joke that Abrams ruined Star Trek as a job interview for ruining Star Wars. No one should have let this man near a franchise. (While I hated The Last Jedi, I also generally like Rian Johnson, just not for a main episode in a long-running franchise focused on nostalgia.)
The only person in my cohort I’ve ever known as a Star Trek fan was an autistic, asexual girl who seemed to have picked it as her special interest, reading the novels, playing STO, and of course writing fan fiction. I would have liked to have known her better but she was a hard person to get to know.
Forty-Bot
3hr ago
He's being forced to insure the value of his own car even though (presumably) he is prepared to replace it out of pocket in the event of an accident. If the car is paid off this is an entirely plausible problem.
odd_primes
3hr ago
Kids love digging holes. Whether that counts as actual landscaping, however...
As for an actual constructive suggestion, a treehouse or some other type of outdoors semi-permanent structure that would be impractical to install at a rental.
GBRK
4hr ago
Subisides are just a strict loss of monies, and treasuries have abysmal interest rates. The superior growth rate of stocks makes them a means to raise government revenue without raising taxes.
TIRM
4hr ago
I thought it was the other way around. Lewis wasn’t a Christian for most of his life. He converted in his middle age and wrote those books. Not everyone was Christian.
Mormon cosmology definitely has something to do with it, but the "Banned Mormon Cartoon" doesn't have much in common with Mormon cosmology.
If you don't believe me (a Mormon), here are a bunch of bitter ex-Mormons saying the same thing.
As for the substance, it is largely accurate, in the sense that, for most things it says, you can find some quote where something like that was taught by a Mormon leader at some point. There are a few just plain misstatements like “Star Base Kolob.” No church authority has ever called Kolob a star base, as far as I can find anywhere.
But it is wildly inaccurate in the way it characterizes and connects things. If they were giving the Catholic Church the same kind of treatment, they would say that Communion is “Catholic ritualized zombie cannibalism.” And one could argue that they are technically correct. After all, Catholics believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And another word for a person who came back from the dead is a zombie. And Catholics believe that in a sense the Host is transformed into the literal body of this Christ. And another word for eating someone’s literal body is cannibalism. But calling it that communicates a wild caricature, that no Catholic would actually identify with. No Mormon would identify with the caricatures in the cartoon, despite the fact that you could find a seed of truth in most of the particulars.
Early Christians were put to death partly because they were said to be practicing cannibalism. This statement is much more true of Christians than most of the claims in that cartoon are of Mormons.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4hr ago
Why is that an improvement? This seems like a terrible way to allocate capital.
Glassnoser
4hr ago
I'm confused. Are you regularly getting into accidents? It is definitely never worth the cost to get insurance for something that regularly happens. Insurance is for things that will probably never happen in your life.
Glassnoser
4hr ago
No, I think that in practice, private companies are much more focused on the long term than governments because they have very strong incentives to be. Most real humans aren't paid millions of dollars to run large companies after going through an extensive filtering process disciplined by markets. Most companies don't even survive more than a few years. The market selects for companies that are unusually well-run and mostly only allows them to survive, at least in competitive industries. It's not perfect process but I think it works much better than politics.
Glassnoser
4hr ago
The entire value of the company comes from the money it eventually pays out to its shareholders.
Glassnoser
4hr ago
Well, the shareholders care about the market's assessment of the long-term profitability of the company, and the shareholders elect the board of directors, so the company has a much stronger incentive to care about the long term than the government does. For the government to care about the king term, the voters need to be able to assess their performance and vote in that basis, and they just don't.
CanofWorms
4hr ago
As another commenter said, I think painting or wallpaper is going to be your best bet because this is the easiest DIY project and the most easily fixable if your kids make a mess. Other DIY projects are, while satisfying, not exactly fun.
Landscaping is a potentially good option, but I would have found gardening/landscaping as boring as watching paint dry when I was a kid.
Other ideas:
- Wall mounting a TV
- Pillow fort with wall hooks installed
- Putting glow in the dark stars up on the kids ceiling
- Installing new LED lights in the kids room (adhesive strip lighting is really cool even for adults lol)
- Adding dimmers or other custom lighting. Be careful if you're going to do any electrical/outlet work.
- Installing shelves
- Setting up a woodworking/art studio if you now have a dedicated space or garage
Reading this list, I think the custom lighting would be a really fun one for the kids.
Also, you should ask ChatGPT!
I had Blue Prince strongly recommended to me, but it just looks a little expensive for a puzzle game.
More options
Context Copy link