domain:furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com
Crowstep
19hr ago
So you're avoiding a vaccine which stopped a global pandemic that killed millions because four out of every million (that is, 0.0004%) people who get the vaccine develop a heart condition because of it?
It feels like your position is based more on political contrarianism than statistical sense.
Like, I get it, governments got authoritarian and petty when it came to vaccines. I couldn't buy a beer in a German biergarten because I didn't have the right vaccine passport app, while all my friends (who I was sitting with) were allowed to, as if the beer somehow facilitated the transmission of the virus. That was dumb. But you're not sticking it to the wokes by not getting a vaccine, you're just increasing the chance that you get ill or (God forbid) die from a preventable disease.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
19hr ago
It's also a good weather because you can wear a light jacket if you want to, especially if you're out til night and it starts getting chilly for the few hours the sun is down.
No_one
19hr ago
The worst things we know of were done in Canada, the 'straw country' US uses for dirty work bc their judges have no jurisdiction there. Ewen Cameron kept some people on LSD in a coma so long they lost memories.
In the US I know that CIA ran a brothel where they were drugging people and drugged some military personnel in experiments, but I have never seen claims US universities (not just a few individual researchers) participated in this.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
19hr ago
No. Shared parenthood without marriage too easily degrades into single parenthood as the parents are incentivized to sabotage each other to go about their lives independently. Even if it doesn't, being "shared" by two independent households is harmful to children. The default needs to be at least cohabitation and a binding relationship, with the possibility for the courts to adjudicate abnormal situations.
No_one
19hr ago
You're Indian and raised there. To the British and many central/northern European guys, 15°C is shirt-sleeve weather when doing anything more active than sitting outside. If it's 15°C and sunny, I often just go shirtless because after the bloody winter it feels so nice to feel the sun on your skin once more.
Temperature sensitivity is bound to where you were raised, I think. I have seen black people wearing puffy jackets in a thirty degree weather, the kind of jackets I unzip when it's >10 °C because I'd sweat otherwise.
Autonomic nervous system just gets used to some particular temperature..
newcomputerwhodis
19hr ago
I always hear people going on about how you're supposed to be eternally in love with your first, and 6 was not my first, so that can't be it.
...though I was about 14 when I played it, so maybe a point for your formulation there.
charlesf
19hr ago
Yes, I have memorized several poems. I'm gifted with an extremely good memory. I'm a formally trained musician and have, over the last 35 or so years, memorized hundreds of songs as well. I can't always immediately recall all of them 100%, but I can brush up 15-20 or so of them in a week to performance level by reviewing the sheets and playing them a couple times. I also enjoy memorizing quotes, passages from books, religious verses etc. I can do pi out to 72 digits w/o brushing up, 144 if I refresh (this is as a song btw, each number is a distinct note). I find the memorization of all these superficially different things to be very similar in practice. In my case I can't really help it. Even brief contact with writing or music can trigger fairly solid, if partial, memories which compel me to put in the work of fully memorizing whatever it was. Its like an itch. I feel like the main sources of this skill are both the naturally very good memory and the formal music training since childhood. Memorizing musical notation feels like memorizing words. I can also "replay" songs in my head with all the instruments differentiated, accurately, beginning to end.
I don't think photographic or eidetic memory are real. Or, at least my own internal experience feels nothing like the descriptions from people that claim to have photographic/eidetic memory. To me it feels like the inability to forget, and I'm pretty sure its a form of, or related to, mental illness, like a weak form of hyperthymesia, but it doesn't really feel like the descriptions of that either. It's not an entirely positive ability. I remember every humiliating thing I've ever done, or awful thing that has been done to me, in vivid detail. I can tell, at the moment I hear or read something, that I'm going to remember it forever. I can also tell when I'm going to struggle to ever remember it; some things just slip right off my brain. Sometimes those things are important. Most stuff falls somewhere in the middle and I can memorize it with a small amount of effort and practice. The worst aspect is if I learn something incorrectly and have the "remember it forever" reaction. When my brain locks onto something inaccurately I will struggle with that for the rest of my life. As a toddler I got east and west reversed in my head. I now have to remember an additional memory that my first recall of these concepts are flipped, like a brain patch. This has caused me to read/study new things very carefully.
I'm completely hopeless with the people's names. There is nothing to grab ahold of, mentally. The sounds that represent that person feel entirely arbitrary. My work requires me to meet and remember a lot of different points of contact for different issues, as well as a rotating roster of my own team of employees. I have to make flashcards and devote time to using them. I also find most people, especially women, largely uninteresting and interchangeable. Unless they aren't, but rare people are rare. The exception to this is if the person's name is in a song. I can reliably make the song start playing in my head when I see them. This was very helpful with my wife when we met 30 years ago; her name is Amy. The song by Pure Prairie League still plays to this day when I look at her.
You are basing your worldview on random ragebait TikTok videos
Uh, No.
I've basing it on literally years of research on the topic:
I've researched the Low TFR Issue
I've researched the legal and economic side of it. Pointed out how corporations are technically competing with men for women's comitment.
I brought up the "how many marriageable women are actually out there question literally a year ago, then I ran some very rough numbers
I've pontificated on why intersex relations have degraded over two years ago.
I've even researched the age-gap question.
This includes talking to real people, I can offhand name a dozen people in my circle experiencing the EXACT. SAME. ISSUES.
I beg you to try and give me some data that I haven't seen yet. You came in and assumed off of 3 comments that I've somehow NOT bothered to look into this issue at every level I can?
In fact, I've put in a LOT of effort to try to find the evidence that runs against this point, but in this search I keep finding videos like the ones I posted, which seem to confirm the data, the anecdotes, the personal experience. All of it pointing in the same direction.
Your attempt to dismiss my point out of hand without a single argument has been noted, and my opinion has remained utterly unchanged.
But anyway, that should be an advantage for you. Getting a nice haircut, moisturising regularly and buying a few well fitting fashionable outfits will already set you apart from the crowd.
This is not a problem for me. I am not the one who needs to hear this advice.
I am the one telling you this advice is useless for most men under current conditions and you sound like a Boomer telling someone to sharpen up their resume and give the manager a firm handshake to get hired.
Owlify
19hr ago
Couldn't you make the default to be shared parenthood without the marriage part? I don't see why that can't be done. I don't know what area you live in, but where I live, fathers have a right to raise their children as much as mothers(as per my understanding).
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
19hr ago
No, it has everything to do with this scenario. Right now the default is single motherhood and the father has to fight in court to change this default. This would make it so that the default is shared parenthood and the mother has to fight in court to change it. She still could be a single mother if she convinces the court that his behavior is bad enough to warrant divorce, but that requires actually demonstrating his bad behavior rather than simply her not wanting to cooperate with him.
Owlify
19hr ago
Well whether a life is or is not a person is an important moral factor in deciding how immoral it is to kill that life. Everyone has a concept of personhood. I wouldn't consider it an ad-hoc moral concept. For example, people generally don't consider taking animal lives equally immoral as taking human lives. In the case of a fetus, the concept is fuzzy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think many people (and pro-lifers) consider late-term unborn fetuses to be people, which is why they find killing them horrifying, so I wouldn't say that it's not a convincing argument. I can see why others may believe otherwise, just like how people wouldn't consider a single-cell fertilized egg to be a person (although they may believe it still has enough moral worth that it should not be killed because it may eventually become a person, which is also valid).
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
19hr ago
Expecting someone to be able to ballpark the population of Iran isn't actually looking for deep expertise though, it's expecting a strong generalist's knowledge of trivia. Sitting United States Senators should be better than a typical bar trivia team at knowing things like world capitals and national populations. If they're not at that level, I'd consider them too stupid or incurious to hold the office. Senators should be polymaths with strong interests in things like CIA World Factbook information.
Gaashk
20hr ago
The key in the southwest is sunshine and rainbows -- sun showers. Especially the kind where there's rain on one side of the house, but not the other. A key to sunshine with rainbows weather is that the rainbows happen when the light is low and the storms are dense, say 7pm when it's lovely out and smells like creosote, ozone, and petrichor.
Owlify
20hr ago
Yes, but that doesn't have anything to do with this scenario right? Like I said, if the father wants to be in the child's life then court can decide custody. And if the mother is being a net negative, then it is still better that the child have some stability in their life atleast some of the time.
Gaashk
20hr ago
Lol.
The highlight of my social life was going to people's houses for Bible studies where they recounted their dreams, a funeral wake, and "Slavicing" (visiting everyone's houses for Russian Christmas, where people exchange silverware and eat moose stew and Crisco with berries).
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
20hr ago
The usual reason for the error is that telephone surveys were used. Telephones were disproportionately owned by the wealthy, who were more likely to support Dewey. But yes, it wasn't an error made by Dewey himself but pollsters and the Chicago Daily Tribune.
phailyoor
20hr ago
prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant
True but the point the rich guy is trying to make is that he is perfectly happy to drop hundreds on a meal and not think twice. Yes, I personally know people who don't care about spending $5 or $500 on a meal as long as it's the best around.
prices are strong indicators of food quality
Very much so not true.
decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant
Not a problem if you always dress classy enough to drop into a michelin star restaurant any day of the week.
So maybe you care about how expensive the restaurant is, but that's because of your own circumstances and motivations. Don't project those onto others.
felis-parenthesis
20hr ago
thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, sometimes abbreviated to TTS
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
20hr ago
I think FF8 is a great game. Yeah parts of it are a fever dream that make no sense, but the same is true of FF9 as well (Necron). And I think gameplay wise it is one of the most fun character building systems they turned out. It really rewards mastery of the mechanics in a way not many other FFs do, and on top of that it gives you multiple ways to become strong (e.g. while many favor low-level runs where you junction high level magic, I myself enjoy a high level run where you level up with the stat bonus abilities). And it has the greatest minigame ever, bar none.
He mentions the primary source and gives keywords in the description: the MKUltra subproject guidebook. I'd agree that I'd like him to show more of his work in where he's drawing his elaborations from.
WhiningCoil
20hr ago
Man, different strokes, different folks. I positively loathed Final Fantasy 10. I hated it's VO, I hated it's world, numerous boss fights sent me through the roof with frustration (Yunalesca in particular). I think what frustrated me most, especially towards the end game, was how insanely wasteful with my time the game got. You die in a boss fight, and you are committed to 5-15 minutes of unskippable cutscenes every attempt. It was excruciating. I found Tidus an infinitely more annoying character than Vaan, but that could have had more to do with the VO.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
20hr ago
Climate data (expand the table)
4 - The best gameplay in the series. Characters were uniquely distinct from each other, with a mix of magic types and unique abilities that gave them deep flavor without being gimmicky, much in the way 1's class system and upgrades had worked. This worked with the linear story to regularly remix your party and keep things fresh from a gameplay perspective; a character dying or leaving the party meant the flavor of the fights changed significantly, and these mechanical changes underlined the story beats. Exploration was significant, because you could find hidden fights and treasures that noticeably spiked the power of your party, especially in the endgame. The characters were awesome, and the story hit hard. Coming from FF1 and from the Dragon Warrior games, it was a complete revelation.
6 - The best story in the series. Kefka had far more depth and menace as a villain, and many of the character set-pieces and story beats were delightful. Amazing mood, amazing music. In terms of gameplay, though, I felt like it was a step down. You had much more control over which characters you used through the game, and every character could learn every spell through the esper system; this was a huge upgrade in terms of player freedom, but a huge downgrade in terms of focused gameplay, because it made the characters feel much more generic and made the gameplay much more open-ended and flabby. They tried to compensate by giving every character a unique skill, but there were so many of them and they all competed with universal magic/Espers, and the end result often just felt gimmicky and pointless; combined with the much longer intended playtime, the gameplay felt much more monotonous by the end.
...The other games I played were downhill from those two. 7 and 8 felt like elaborations on the theme of 6, but each felt flabbier than the last. I never played 9. 10 felt like they were trying to pull things back in the direction of 4, but by that point the bloat seemed terminal. I gave up somewhere in the second disc, and haven't played an FF since.
The series as a whole seems like a monument to the truth of "less is more". FF was the series where I realized "100 hours of gameplay" wasn't necessarily a good thing, like a bit of butter spread over too much toast.
...I've often wondered how much of the above might just be the "nothing will ever be as good as that thing you liked when you were 14" effect, though.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
20hr ago
24 is pretty low. Does it ever get warm there?
Zephon (2024)
Intro:
Is another C-tier(budget wise) 4x game using some crap Unity implementation(I guess, loading time 20s on a PC capable of 4K Cyberpunk 2077) that gameplay wise is easily on par with Civ V or earlier 4x games in most graphic stuff but the combat AI is actually not that bad and will punish you for fighting fair. Trailer here.. I get good frames but I feel a worse PC would probably suffer.
It's by devs who previously made the Gladius WH40K 4x game. This is a refinement of that game with their own post apocalyptic setting, that of a 22nd century some decades after first contacts came in the form of a surprise genocidal attack that was supposedly self defence. So it is a 4x with all the features of a typical 4x games, and is combat oriented. Even if you don't fight any player faction, the unplayable NPC factions will definitely fight you eventually and at quite the scale.
Overall, I like the gameplay and combat, the setting and writing of quests and characters is interesting if not that well executed and overall while I like the outline of the writing and the themes, in execution I am mildly annoyed there's that stench of Netflix/tweet chatGPT over some of it and they could have done so much better. But unless you're a literate right winger you may not even notice the annoying crap, I think. The most 'cringe' part for me is the 'forced diversity' part on which I'll elaborate later in the 'factions' section.
The map/game itself:
Unlike in common 4x games, the 'NPC empires' are an important part of the game and an inextricable part of the story. There's three of them, a retarded Skynet (did not cause the apocalypse, claims to want to help, not that good at R&D), survivors of the of the alien invasion fleet( definitely did cause the apocalypse), and your basic post-apocalyptic barbarian cannibal federation who somehow survived a few decades in a world of constant warfare between said mildly retarded Skynet and the aliens who while looking only mildly disgusting themselves employ biotech instead of most common machinery that looks like something puked up by a particularly sick cat and animated with voodoo.
Aliens and Skynet are perma-hostile to each other, Barbarians try to shake you down constantly. These factions don't really improve and apart from barbarians, don't colonize much and start with relatively strong cities.
Economy:
The economic part is not that complex, mostly standard 4x approach if a bit refined: all facilities in a city are physically visible on the world map and, at 3 per hex, a city of 7 hexes can only have at most 21 of them, though you're going to want multiples of each for later game units of course. Each facility has its own production and its own building queue, so there are large tradeoffs to make. You can't make planes in a tank factory or barracks and so on.
A city good at expanding itself can easily put up military factories and mothball the productive ones.. but building up that capacity means you delay your military production by quite some time. There's sadly no fun strategies based around slaving or causing refugee waves to exploit! All construction costs minerals, running everything takes energy, and people need to eat too. Late game units require stable transuranic elements and antimatter, sometimes in ludicrous quantities.
Combat: There's line of sights, terrain effects on cover, but mostly only for small unites (e.g. tanks or most planes don't benefit from forests or ruins providing cover and concealment much).
Weapons have damage, armor penetration, range and number of attacks, whether they're direct or indirect fire. Most units can overwatch so you need recon to avoid running into enemies and getting hit. Or if you move into a concealing tile (forest), they may not see you unless they're directly adjacent.
Units have experience level, morale, armor value, movement speed, evasion, vantage point (e.g. planes see over most obstacles etc but are also seen), number of subunits in each formation and a lot of less common properties. (e.g. basic human soldiers does 2x more attacks at close range, reflecting the difficulty of hitting anything with a rifle further out)
Most units (infantry) are composed of multiple small entities each with its own HP pool that each attack, so an attrited infantry unit delivers far less damage.
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