This was going to be my answer. Except we didn’t even read it as a class. We were doing some other boring stuff and I was flipping randomly through our textbook, where I found it and read it. I still think about it, and sometimes use it in RPGs.
It would’ve also been super appropriate if I could never find it again in the textbook, but I can’t remember if that’s true.
Well “love that dog” made me cry a little just now, so thanks for that.
They sold Bandcamp to some company I’ve never heard of. SongTradr https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition
I buy music from Bandcamp. Drm free. Musicians get a bigger cut. You can write a note to the band when you buy and sometimes they write back. Their recommendations and write-ups feel more human than algorithm. Feels pretty good. Renting music on Spotify sounds like a bad deal for me and my personal habits.
Of course, they sold themselves and probably will enshittify in a couple years.
For older stuff that’s not on Bandcamp… Honestly I don’t feel bad about pirating music that’s 15 years old. Copyright is too long, anyway.
And for new mega pop stuff? Not my jam, but I’d probably still buy it drm free somewhere.
I also cannot recommend her novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.
I hope you meant you can recommend them. They’re both very good.
I liked the dispossessed a lot
Sounds a lot like aspects from Fate.
Fate still has numbers, but you could probably hack them off without too much trouble. I don’t know if “the troll is fantastic brawler and you’re a good swordsman” is especially better, but it’s an option
I mean, yes, you’re right that it’s a simplistic take. However, falling for that kind of nonsense is not a sign of intelligence. Being able to assess “Is this a good source?” and “Are other people in fact people?” are signs of intelligence.
Low density places are always going to kind of suck on a lot of metrics. You just don’t have the people to support a lot of stuff. I’m sorry that small towns are dying but like there’s not really a reason they’d thrive.
Cities have been important since like the dawn of history. At least farms grow food. Suburban sprawl is the worst.
Cost of living needs to go down and wages up, but no one should be vying for low density.
Your brother is an fool and shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision, nevermind voting and operating heavy machinery.
That doesn’t address the opportunity cost. Spending time on this means not spending time on something else. There are other optional things and user choices they could work on instead. This is always the case when doing anything, but AI is very far down the list of things I think are worth paying the costs for.
Opportunity cost
If libraries didn’t exist, and someone tried to invent them, I am confident that conservatives would fight them tooth and nail with a thousand bad reasons.
I have very little patience for people who can’t or won’t do the hard thing. Like, yeah withdrawal is going to suck but sometimes you have to do something unpleasant to get something better.
I mostly keep it to myself though. A lot of people have this problem. Not just about smoking.
Conversations like
“I’m so tired I don’t know why.”
“When did you go to sleep and get up?”
“Uh sleep at like 3am and up at 7am.”
“Well that explains it. Why up so late?”
“… YouTube videos.”
“You should probably stop staying up so late watching videos so you’re not exhausted all day.”
“No.”
But I mostly keep it to myself because there’s not really anything I can do to make someone listen.
Most smokers I’ve talked to get really defensive about it. “it’s not that bad! Sugar is worse for you! It’s not like you exercise or anything! I don’t smoke as much as so-and-so!”
It’s pathetic, really. I’d respect them more if they could just own “this is bad for me and everyone around me.”
You might enjoy this 1964 essay “the paranoid style in American politics” : https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/
American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.
Guy I know worked for a pretty big video game studio or two. (You’ve definitely heard of some games he worked on). Then he realized it sucked. Took a job in FinTech, made like double the money for half the work.
I like to sometimes remind people that being numb doesn’t mean you aren’t being hurt. If your arm is numb and someone is stabbing it with a knife, that’s probably still a problem.
Many people are bad at delayed gratification and long term thinking.
Supposed to go to a party this weekend. Last time I went to one with this crowd, it was pretty okay and I made a new guy-i-text-sometimes-friend.
Though the time before that was really dull, so who knows.
Unknown Armies is a tabletop RPG that has a school of magic predicated on a. Being drunk all the time and b. Drinking out of really cool cups.
Post reminded me of that. Good game (though I only know 2nd edition)