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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • It is incredibly stupid to value “change” on its own as a key metric. Some changes are good, some are bad, and some are mixed.

    It’s like saying “I want to go fast” without specifying a direction. You want to get from NYC to Boston and on foot is too slow? Get on this jet, it’s a change of speed. Except the jet is going to LA. But it was a change!






  • I don’t think the working class is taking out $10mm personal loans against their stock portfolios. And if you do it with a progressive model, smaller players won’t be impacted much or at all. Otherwise, if it’s being used like income it should be taxed like income.

    I don’t think the rich people’s “resources” are that useful if they can’t turn them into fungible money. Can’t eat Tesla stocks. They have power through other mechanisms like access and owning platforms, but money is a big part of it. They can spend money on elections, on bribes, on buying platforms. So I’m not really sure what you meant by the distinction between resources and money.


  • I was on a grand jury some years ago in NYC. It really did a number on my faith in people and the legal system.

    Now, a grand jury is different than a regular (petit) jury in a few key ways. First, you only need simple majority to move forward with an indictment. You can’t 12-angry-men hang a grand jury. Second, as I learned later, even if you do convince a majority to not indict, the prosecutor can just try again. So all those times the police didn’t get indicted for murder and the prosecutor just gave up? They could have tried again. They didn’t, because they didn’t want to.

    All of that said, the cases were largely about drugs. People selling weed and heroin and the like. No violence. I suggested to the jury that we maybe just say no, and don’t ruin people’s lives over marijuana. You don’t have to show your work. You can just say whatever. The whole rest of the jury was like “are you insane?” Some of them were just anti-drug, full stop no context. Some of them were like “We have to do what they tell us” very obedient. Some of them just wanted to go home, and thought an indictment would be the fastest way.

    They all voted to indict on every charge. The guy who was sleeping, and the lawyers and cops laughed at him snoring, also voted to indict.

    I asked the little old white lady sitting behind me a hypothetical. I asked if she was on a jury in the 60s, and the charge was a black man eating at an all white’s diner, if she would indict. She was like, “Hmmm maybe.”

    I tried. One of the cases the cops said they found a gun in the man’s house, so they charged him with intent to use it in a violent crime, or something. I was like, they didn’t even try to prove it was his or that he was going to use it. Everyone voted to indict. I’m just like, why do you have to make it easier for the police?



  • Oblivion is the go-to example of how not to do level scaling. It’s impressive how badly they fucked it up. Like, they managed to make exploring pointless and unexciting.

    You find a tomb, but you know that whatever’s inside will be “level appropriate”. If you’re low level it’ll be steel weapons, and if you’re high level it’ll be daedric. There’s not really any point in going in at low level. Might as well level up some other way and come back when the loot will be good.

    On top of that, the gameplay is so bland and unresponsive that you can’t really punch above your weight class. The game is very much a levels game. It’s not like Dark Souls where someone can get really good and beat the whole thing while naked (and in the game, too). There’s a lot of “well, this guard is level 30 and you’re 10, so no matter how many times you hit him with your hammer he’s not going to flinch.” Knowing you’re always going to get kind of bland treasure wouldn’t be so bad if the act of getting it was fun. Like, sometimes a tomb or whatever in Elden Ring will have crap loot, but it’s still a solid core gameplay.

    Morrowind had a lot of these problems, but it was also kind of wacky and heartfelt.






  • Yeah, I think there’s a big difference between “I thought they were going to investigate the smith, but they’re really suspicious of the wizard now and want to check her out first” and “they decided to forget about the whole civil war for the throne thing and open a BBQ joint for the local goblins”

    Nowadays I’d probably just explicitly be like “Hey, so, when we started this game we agreed on a certain tone and direction. Specifically, it was going to be about a power struggle for the throne. Running a restaurant business in D&D sounds wild, but that is really a different kind of story and a different game. If you want to do that, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, I’m asking you to stay more on theme.”

    Though I say that and my best game had plenty of “beach episodes”. One time literally, after they saved some sahaugin from being subjugated by a siren.